8v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 special focus editor’s note emerging and advanced technologies continue to creep into public and private life. particularly forceful, the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) is unavoidable. new and advancing technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and the internet of things have injected themselves in big and small ways in various aspects of daily life. lavopa and delera (2021) note that 4ir is much more than a ‘technological leap forward’; indeed, this industrial revolution is likely to have much wider-reaching consequences than any other than has come before it. the use of technologies in politics and international relations is not a new phenomenon. throughout history we have witnessed that technological trends have often impacted domestic politics and state relations. the radio was welcomed by politicians as they were able to communicate to large amounts of citizens, domestically and abroad – think of roosevelt’s ‘fireside chats’. radio transcended the reach of print media in that it allowed listeners to hear the speaker’s voice, and in turn leant the speaker the benefit of verbal communication – the use of elements that might otherwise be lost in printed word. decades later, the invention of the email allowed faster communication within and between states. overtime, technology has too transformed how states process and store information. the use of social media, for example, has been adopted by most states as a tool for engagement and has completely altered the way in which states communicate with the public – their own citizens, other ‘publics’, the media, stakeholders, and each other. the purpose of this special issue is to explore a topic that is new and continuously evolving: the intersection of the fourth industrial revolution with aspects of the practice of politics and international relations. the issue focuses on a number of diverse areas of impact as an introductory exploration of this theme. the issue begins with dominique uwizeyimina’s exploration of the contributions by black africans to industrial revolutions, from a pre-industrial era to the current 4ir. africa is home to a wealth of talent and materials; however, it requires the support of african leaders through funding, training and supply. anthoni van nieuwkerk seeks to understand if, and how, the topic of digital driven warfare is relevant to africa, further tracing how the continent may protect itself from 4ir-induced attacks. the reality of technological advances is that powerful processes, knowledge and tools are not limited to government and for positive use but may be utilized to manipulate a scenario, impose threats and endanger human life. robyn williams and lisa otto explore the potential of artificial intelligence when applied in public diplomacy, exploring the case of the united states and iran who have had strained relations for several decades. 4ir’s intrusive is not limited to international relations, as it prompts itself into domestic politics. the effects of 4ir are both far-reaching and wide spanning, having detrimental effects on labour-intensive industries. alecia ndlovu seeks to understand the prospects for the mining industry, exploring if and how the adoption of advanced technologies, driven by 4ir, may impact political settlement in south africa’s mining industry. furthermore, public service delivery may be positively transformed if a state were to adopted a highly digitized and efficient system, in some states, 4irdriven service delivery may have already been adopted at a highly sophisticated level but in many developing states, implementation remains in the earlier phases. samantha layton-matthews and chris landsberg explore the potential of 4ir in south african public service delivery. while these articles cover five areas where we can witness an intersection of 4ir and politics/international relations, it is worth noting that there are more areas worth discussing, such as e-governance. however, the intersection remains in its infancy and implications and opportunities are yet to fully present itself. acknowledgments we offer thanks to the peer-reviewers for providing high quality and detailed reviews. lastly, thank you to bhaso ndzendze and tshilidzi marwala for the providing our concluding note and offering their insightful thoughts on the continuously evolving topic surrounding 4ir and politics and international relations references lavopa, a., delera, m. 2021. unido: ‘what is the fourth industrial revolution? available online from https://iap.unido.org/articles/ what-fourth-industrial-revolution note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel angela muvumba sellström is a senior researcher at the nordic-af rica institute with expertise on wartime sexual violence prevention; international interventions and mediation; gender, women, peace and security; and the un security council and the role of non-permanent members. anna-mart van wyk is  a historian and a professor of international relations at the university of johannesburg. she is internationally recognised for her work on  south af rica’s nuclear weapons program and the politics of the cold war in southern af rica. celine meyers recently completed her phd in sociology at the university of johannesburg (uj) and is coordinator at the south af rican national resource centre for the first-year experience and students in transition (sanrc). she holds an ma (cum laude) and ba honours (cum laude) in sociology. her current research focuses on the emerging interdisciplinary field called ‘digital migration studies’ in south af rica. other research interests include studies on transnationalism, gender, family, intersectionality and higher education. håkan juholt, ambassador of sweden to south af rica, is originally f rom the town of oskarshamn on the baltic sea. after finishing grammar school, he was hired in 1980 as a photographer and journalist for the social democratic newspaper  ostra smaland  (ostran).  from 1984 to 1990, he served as a board member of the swedish social democratic youth league (ssu) and later, f rom 2005 to 2011, he became regional chairman of the social democrats of kalmar county and was also former chairman of the board for oskarshamn’s harbour, john lindgren’s peace fund,  former prime minister tage erlander’s memorial fund, and of the ownership board for the  ostra smaland  newspaper. ambassador juholt has been a member of the swedish parliament riksdagen f rom 1994 to 2016 and member of the parliamentary committee on defence issues until 2011, serving as its chairman for one year. between 1995 and 2008, he also served as a member of the joint parliament-government committee on defence policy  (forsvarsberedningen),  and its chairman between 2000 and 2007. between 1995 and 2002, ambassador juholt was also appointed as adviser to the minister of defence and delegate to the parliamentarian summits of nato between 1995 and 2011. between 1996 and 2012, ambassador juholt was delegate to summits of organisation for security and co-operation in europe. ambassador juholt served as chairman of the social democratic party of sweden between 2011 and 2012. he was appointed as swedish ambassador to the republic of iceland f rom 2017 until 2020, when he was appointed as sweden’s ambassador to south af rica. jo-ansie van wyk is professor of international relations in the department of political sciences at the university of south af rica. she is the co-editor of four volumes of the south af rican foreign policy review since 2012. v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 julia forsberg holds a bachelor of science in political  science and economics f rom lund university, during which she focused on international relations, and studied in south af rica for one semester. she is now studying for her master’s degree in the russian language in international relations, currently at tartu university in estonia for exchange. julia has also completed two internships, one at the af rica department at the swedish ministry for foreign affairs, and one at the oecd in paris. julia is passionate about foreign politics and multilateral cooperation and she dedicates much of her f ree time to the south af rica-sweden university forum. pragna rugunanan is a professor of sociology at the university of johannesburg. her research focuses on the construction of af rican and south asian migrant communities to south af rica and migration in the global south. her research interests include the sociology of migration, labour studies, family and well-being, migration and digital technologies, and community studies. her co-edited book migration in southern af rica was published by springer press in 2022. prof rugunanan was invited to join the canadian excellence research chair in migration at toronto metropolitan university, as a visiting professor-cerc migration distinguished scholar in the fall of 2022. suzanne graham is an associate professor in the department of politics and international relations and vice-dean: teaching and learning in the faculty of humanities at the university of johannesburg. she holds a ph.d. in political studies f rom the university of johannesburg.  sven botha is an assistant lecturer in the department of politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg. his research interests include: af rica-nordic relations, counterterrorism, gender, foreign policy, and diplomacy. in 2022, sven co-created the student essay contest on south af rica-sweden relations in partnership with the university of johannesburg, the embassy of sweden in pretoria and the south af rica-sweden university form. sven is also the director of the professors without borders think tank. tove sternehäll holds a master’s degree in economic history f rom stockholm university, with a specialisation in global political economy. she has an interdisciplinary background, with bachelor degrees in international social sciences f rom linnaeu university and economics f rom södertörn university. her main research interests include the economic heritage of colonialism in sub-saharan af rica, as well as economic foreign policy and power imbalances in bilateral relationships between countries f rom the global north and the global south. v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 contributors to this edition note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel lizzy attree is the co-founder of the safal-cornell kiswahili prize for african literature. she holds a phd from soas, university of london. blood on the page, her collection of interviews with the first african writers to write about hiv/aids from zimbabwe and south africa, was published by cambridge scholars publishing in 2010. she is the uk director of short story day africa and was the director of the caine prize from 2014 to 2018. in 2015, she taught african literature at kings college, london and has since taught at goldsmiths college. she now teaches narratives of change, world and contemporary london literature at richmond, the american international university in london. she is the producer of ‘thinking outside the penalty box’, an african footballers project partnering with chelsea and arsenal, funded by arts council england and supported by the poetry society, as well as a freelance writer, reviewer and critic. lusanda batala is an economist with a junior degree from the university of cape town, honours from nelson mandela metropolitan university and master’s from university of london (soas). he is currently completing his phd with stellenbosch university with a focus on ‘access to financial services and the implications of being in poverty in south africa.’ he has vast experience in regional integration, as well as regional, continental, and global development issues. juanee cilliers is the head of the school of built environment, and professor of urban planning at the university of technology sydney (australia). she has 17+ years’ experience as a professional planner, with professional registrations from both the south african council for planners (sacplan) and the planning institute of australia (pia). she is currently appointed as an adjunct professor of planning at north-west university (south africa), following her position as head of urban planning and leader of the research program for sustainable development, implementation and planning. jua is the co-chair of the climate action group of the commonwealth association of planners and board member of the international society of city and regional planners. trynos gumbo is currently an associate professor and head of the department of urban and regional planning within the faculty of engineering and the built environment at the university of johannesburg.  he holds a phd from stellenbosch university, as well as master’s and honours degrees from the university of zimbabwe. he has previously worked in the africa institute of south africa of the human sciences research council as a research specialist for the sustainable development programme, and as an international instructor in the urban management master’s programme within the ethiopian civil service university college (ecsuc) in addis ababa. he has published three books, several book chapters, journal articles, and conference proceedings on urban transportation, informality, housing, urban planning, development, and management. mondli hlatshwayo is an associate professor at the centre for education rights and transformation of the university of johannesburg. he has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on the following topics: xenophobia and trade unions, football world cup and stadia, education and immigrant learners, and trade unions t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 and technology. he is co-editor (with aziz choudry) of the forthcoming pluto press book, just work? migrant workers, globalization and resistance. zaakirah jeeva is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the university of johannesburg. she is also affiliated  as a researcher with north-west university. she has over 15 years of research experience as an urban and regional planner. her research interests align with the spatial administrative reform of south africa.    david moore retired last year as professor of development studies at uj but is hanging on a bit as an associate and co-teaching an honours course. after work in canada and australia for ten years he moved to south africa, where he remains after over two decades. in addition to mugabe’s legacy this year has seen the appearance of new leaders, new dawns? south africa and zimbabwe under cyril ramaphosa and emmerson mnangagwa, co-edited with chris brown and blair rutherford (mcgill-queen’s university press).   nkafotseng laurencia motloung is a teacher at cosmo city secondary school with five years’ experience, helping thousands of learners to fulfil their academic needs. she specialises in teaching african languages. she holds a degree in senior and fet teaching, specialising in history and isizulu language. laurencia also holds honours and master’s degrees in african languages, both attained at the university of johannesburg, specialising in african literature, concentrating on the preservation and adaptation of culture in african literary works. in her master’s study, titled ‘some cultural aspects in zulu novels’, she explores sexuality, immorality, and cultural devotions. her line of research is african traditions and culture. when she is not teaching, laurencia spends her time researching in preparation for her phd studies in african languages. zilibele mtumane is professor and head of the department of african languages and school of languages at the university of johannesburg. he holds the degree of dlitt et phil from the university of south africa, specialising in african languages. he also has a higher education diploma from the university of fort hare and a diploma in translation from the university of south africa. he has presented a number of academic papers at various national and international conferences, where he chaired sessions as well. he has authored and co-authored over thirty articles in various accredited journals. he has also authored and edited books. apart from publishing, he is a regular adjudicator for various accredited journals and has edited (and evaluated) book manuscripts for various publishing houses. mtumane has supervised a number of postgraduate students, some of whom passed cum laude. he is also external examiner of both undergraduate and postgraduate students for various universities. he is a member of various professional and academic organisations. mandla j. radebe is an associate professor in the university of johannesburg’s department of strategic communication and director for the centre for data and digital communication. he is the author of constructing hegemony: the south african commercial media and the (mis)representation of nationalisation (ukzn press) and the  forthcoming the lost prince of the anc: the life and times of jabulani nobleman ‘mzala’ nxumalo (jacana media). tanusha raniga teaches social work and community development at the university of johannesburg. she is a c2 nrf rated researcher. she is actively involved in research primarily in the areas of social protection policy, feminization of poverty and sustainable livelihoods. she has published widely in national and international journals and has presented at numerous social work conferences. her teaching areas include: social policy, development management and integrated social and economic development.   nokulunga shabalala is a clinical psychologist registered with the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa). she consults at rahima moosa mother and child hospital. she also works as a lecturer, clinical and research supervisor at the university of johannesburg. she teaches predominantly in the clinical master’s programme and is responsible for the work-integrated learning component of the programme. areas taught include: developmental psychology and psychopathology at undergraduate levels; abnormal child psychology at honours level; adult psychopathology, child and adolescent psychopathology and psychotherapy, legislation, and psychological assessments at master’s level. dr. shabalala also coordinates the psychology phd programme. her research areas of interest include decoloniality in psychology in south africa, critical psychology, intersectionality and feminism, as well substance use disorders in south africa. contributors to this edition v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 7 introduction when asked to convene a colloquium about something that, for me, defines the art world during this on-going pandemic, i thought of the obvious – revisionism in the west, and the stratospheric obsession/fetishization of the black body. why, i wondered, is black portraiture ‘a thing’? and why, of all people, was amoako boafo the most sought-after black portraitist in 2020? why, at this historical moment, should the art world reclassify its driving concerns, rethink curation, staffing, education, and access? because black art is the new f rontier? because of a seismic ethical shift, generated by the slaughter of blacks in america? because the spectre of imperialism persists? all of the above is relevant, but a deeper question and doubt persists: what constitutes blackness? is it a category? must it be championed reactively, progressively, conceived as a defining principle? or is it not, rather, a cognitive limit: something which – despite the very real yet excessive claim to substance, ‘i am somebody’ – refuses or escapes the declarative? both achille mbembe and frantz fanon have noted a zone of indistinction, a terra incognita, a void, as an inextricable dimension of black being. this sensation or intuition is pervasive – it cannot be ignored in a humanist bid to reclaim black substance. in 1980, kerry james marshall painted a self-portrait titled a portrait of the artist as a shadow of his former self. the painting is schematic – other than the white v of a vest, leering white teeth, and the whites of the eyes, the painting is black on black. the effect is crude, caricatural, obscenely vacant. ‘one of the things i was trying to do was embody in a picture the concept that ralph ellison had laid out in his v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 black self notes for a conversation by ashraf jamal 8 introduction novel invisible man,’ says marshall. ‘he describes the condition of invisibility as it relates to black people in america – this condition of being seen and not seen simultaneously.’ marshall’s portrait, and the concern it addresses, was the trigger and inspiration for a colloquium that i convened at nirox and columba in november 2021, as well as the accompanying publication, co-edited with sven christian. titled ‘black self,’ it includes a series of papers, initially delivered as talks, by vusumzi nkomo, phumzile twala, hlonipha mokoena, thembinkosi goniwe, heather hart, bernard akoijackson, nkgopoleng moloi, thulile gamedze, stacy hardy, and phokeng setai. the overarching drive was to breach the divide between the void and selfhood, conditions mutually exclusive yet inextricable. our concern: the interplay of visibility and invisibility – how and why a black person is seen by others, how black people see themselves. much has been written on the matter, and much of it has been misunderstood, consciously or otherwise, in the bid to secure a predictive or essentialist construction of black identity. however, as ellison’s famous opening paragraph begins, ‘i am an invisible man…i am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids – and i might even be said to possess a mind. i am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me… that invisibility to which i refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom i come in contact. a matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.’ this observation, made in 1952, remains searingly significant today, not only because of ongoing inequality, the persistent invisibility of the black body within a controlling white optic, but because of the urgent interest in black art today – black lives, black bodies, black portraiture. what are we looking at when we look at black portraits? my android, attuned to my obsessions, never ceases to direct me to the latest revisionist exercise to foreground blackness, once redacted, erased f rom history. is this cultural phenomenon symptomatic of the age – the rise of the black lives matter movement, the critical urgency for a new perception of humanity – or is it a symptom of an age-old struggle for selfhood, in a world in which black life – the black self – remains superfluous, inexistent, beyond humane cognition? it is not surprising that marshall chose to paint his self-portrait in variations of black, a colour – rather than a non-colour – which articulates the precarity of black presence and selfpresence. as theaster gates notes, ‘if blackness has something to do with the absence of light, does black art mean that sometimes i’m making when no one’s looking? for the most part, that has been the truth of our lives.’ and now, in a historical moment when black portraiture is being spectacularised? when it is avidly sought after and monetised? when, as though for the first time, the black body is being seen? what now? how do we address this objectification and fetishization of the black body? as for the artists of black america and the af rican diaspora who are being celebrated – what do their works tell us of this moment? as for artists of the af rican continent? do they exist only once they’ve developed a western interface? what of indigenous thought? is there such a thing? is indigeneity not a variant of essentialism – an imperial, secular, and religious project, designed to globally imprint whiteness as the imprimatur of existence and being, and blackness as beyond the pale? is the sovereignty of whiteness in decline? is hybridity the new norm? if so, where does this place blackness? if eugenics was always profoundly corrupt, surely any other rationale for parsing humanity according to some genetic or biocultural inheritance is equally so? sticking with blackness, to what extent is it overwhat constitutes blackness? is it a category? must it be championed reactively, progressively, conceived as a defining principle? or is it not, rather, a cognitive limit: something which – despite the very real yet excessive claim to substance, ‘i am somebody’ – refuses or escapes the declara-tive? t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 9 introduction exposed and poorly understood? how opportunistic, how authentic, is this moment of black portraiture in the art world, and can it be separated f rom a broader cultural life? is the trade in black bodies durable? can one consider black portraiture a genre? if blackness is the thing, how does it express its substantiveness, its meaningfulness? how is blackness seen? what of the light, denied the black body? ‘until we own the light, i’m not happy,’ theaster gates resumes. ‘until we’re in our own houses of exhibition, of discovery, of research – until we’ve figured out our way to be masters of the world, then i’d rather work in the darkness…my fear is that we’re being trained and conditioned to only make when there’s a light. and that makes us co-dependent on a thing we don’t control. are you willing to make in the absence of light?’ this historical moment is a complex one, especially so regarding the black self and its representation in art. what i ask of you, the reader, is to continue to reflect on darkness and light, the void and its imagined inverse, the black body as a thing, an idea, a dreaming tool, a possibility, and a reality. what of the veracity or continued inexistence of black being? what is the purpose of portraiture, traditionally the province of the wealthy and powerful, now in the public domain? what happens when one looks upon a black body in an art museum today? what do we see? ourselves? an unbreachable other? a f retwork of guilt and conscience? a liberation? there are many artists one can turn to, amongst them zanele muholi, amoako boafo, nelson makamo, titus kaphar, kerry james marshall, kehinde wiley, amy sherald, billie zangewa, lynette yiadom-boakye, to name a few. what happens when one encounters one of these celebrated artists? i’d venture that our experiences are very different. this is because there is no such thing as ‘black art’, or rather, no essential category as such. in a book which never ceases to astonish me, achille mbembe’s critique of black reason (2017), the author reminds us that ‘the word “black” refers first and foremost to a phantasmagoria… the process of transforming people of af rican origin into blacks, that is, into bodies of extraction and subjects of race, largely obeys the triple logic of ossification, poisoning, and calcification. not only is the black man the prototype of a poisoned, burnt subject. he is a being whose life is made of ashes.’ is black portraiture a pile of bones, a heap of ashes? is the project poisoned at its core? or am i being too bleak on god’s day? then again, this is an op-ed; one is expected to think aloud, and i was asked to reflect upon what is exercising me. certainly, i’m drawn to the profound tenderness of yiadom boakye’s paintings, sceptical of amy sherald’s fantasy that a greyscale amounts to some relative neutrality, moved to the core by the deepest black which marshall uses to colour his bodies, averse to the pop and populist artifice deployed by wiley, magnetically caught up in the deconstructed rigging of muholi’s self-portraits, in love with zangewa’s private pleasures, exposed to the world. you, dear reader, will have a very different view. at this critical moment, i ask only that you are exacting in your analyses of the cultural phenomenon dubbed black portraiture. there is much that must be thought and written in our collective and singular attempts to grasp the significance and nature of the black self today. what are we to make of dealerships across af rica and the western world? are we in the midst of a new slave trade, or are we witnessing a fundamental, epistemological shift in insight and reception? how opportunistic are the changes we see about us, how real? whatever one chooses to focus on, remember that one’s focus is caught in a greater complex. you may wish to challenge the spotlight fixed upon black portraiture, withdraw into the night-world of a voided black identity, or, like the nobel laureate toni morrison, you may choose to ‘play in the dark.’ v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 105 [2020. jacana media. 655pp. isbn 978-1-3413-3022-2] by tshepo mvulane moloi culture book review: the pan-african pantheon: prophets, poets and philosophers edited by adekeye adebajo v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 106 t h e t h i n k e r a dvocates and critics of literature on pan-africanism stand to studiously benefit from this contemporary book on the theme of pan-africanism, meticulously edited by nigerian scholar adekeye adebajo. for the record, adebajo is the incumbent director of the institute for panafrican thought and conversation at the university of johannesburg (uj). when contextualised, this edited text is certainly a welcome addition to the discourse on pan-africanism. this book adroitly adds to contributions made by other scholars who have also addressed the theme of pan-africanism. a sample of preceding texts include hakim adi and marika sherwood’s panafricanism history: political figures from africa and the diaspora since 1787 (2003), followed by guy martin’s african political thought (2012), and marika sherwood’s origins of pan-africanism: henry sylvester williams, africa, and the african diaspora (2012). observably, adebajo’s text shares the same publication year as african-american reiland rabaka’s edited volume the routledge handbook of pan-africanism (2020). from this list of scholars, one may justly opine that the theme of pan-africanism has been addressed by scholars from around the world. adebajo’s introductory chapter to the collection cogently points out key details about this book, and eruditely provides an array of definitions of panafricanism (what ‘it is’ and ‘is not’), while tracing the ‘origins of pan-africanism historically to the two scourges of european slavery and colonialism’ (adebajo, 2020: 7). the collection offers 38 chapters about both pioneering and contemporary pan-africanists. although adebajo deserves to be credited for his duteous acknowledgement of the aforementioned texts, he mostly explicates how his book differs from them. although adebajo acknowledges that there are similarities with hakim adi and marika sherwood’s text, a key difference is that while adi and sherwood’s very useful compendium has 3-5-page biographical sketches of each pan-african figure, adebajo’s volume has more substantive 15-20-page essays (adebajo, 2020: 4). the latter ‘go beyond the short biographies of these figures to examine the struggles in which they were involved within a broader historical and contemporary context’ (adebajo, 2020: 4). differing from rabaka’s text, adebajo’s collection is ‘organised thematically rather than biographically or regionally…we have thus not imposed any theoretical or philosophical framework on any of the authors’ (adebajo, 2020: 5). regarding limits, he says: ‘our volume does not attempt to develop any theory or philosophy of pan-africanism. instead, we set out the history of pan-africanism and the evolution, interaction and intellectual ideas and impact of the 36 pan-african figures covered in this book’ (adebajo, 2020: 4–5). what may be the flaws of this book? in sum, its omissions. among others, in the category of ‘pioneers’ (in part 2) and the ‘female’ pan-africanists (only seven were featured in stark contrast to 29 males). it is not an understatement to mention that no reason can justify such a gender bias. it is disappointing that adebajo’s text omitted chapters on some ‘pioneering pan-african pantheons’ who undoubtedly laid the foundation of panafricanism. in particular, this omission covers figures such as trinidad and tobago-born henry sylvester williams (shockingly only mentioned five times) even though adebajo mentions in his opening chapter that williams is ‘credited with having coined the terms ‘panafrican’ and ‘pan-africanism’’ (2020: 22). south african alice victoria kinloch or avk is not focused on either (sparsely addressed by aldon morris in chapter 4 and colin grant in chapter 5). this criticism is mindful that, elsewhere, sylvester williams (as he is commonly called) has arguably received his fair share of attention which is quite in contrast to avk [1]. it is with disappointing dismay that i note how avk’s marginalisation persists to date. as present scholars concerned with overcoming patriarchal hegemonies, and as part of decolonial scholarship, cases such as avk’s marginalisation challenge us to address such gaps. it must also be noted that adebajo’s claim of sylvester williams having ‘founded the african association in london in september 1897 to lobby the british parliament and public opinion to oppose the violence of european colonial rule in africa’ (2020: 22) is deceptive. to be clear, what is refuted is not the action taken by sylvester williams but the false claim about him having been the ‘founder’ of the african association. what is even more concerning is that adebajo is not alone in making such a misleading claim, as other contributors in the book under discussion, such as aldon morris (2020: 96), are just as guilty of the same misrepresentation. the following primary source ought to assist in arresting any existing doubts that sylvester williams was contextually only one individual of the three who count as the co-founders of the african association. the following words are quite telling: ‘in presenting this the first annual report of the african association to our culture 107 friends, it is well to mention that the founders were mr. h.s. williams, mr. t.j. thompson, and mrs. a.v. kinloch’ (williams, 1898: 1). even if it was never adebajo’s intention to do so, his and morris et al.’s aforesaid claim(s) unfortunately centre patriarchal views. with poignant concerns around patriarchy in mind, i cannot downplay how worrisome it is that such lacunae persist in adebajo’s text in similar ways to others which preceded it, and even the one which was republished just after it, which continue to centre men such as edward wilmot blyden and web du bois as ‘father(s) of pan-africanism’ (adebajo, 2020: 21; morris, 2020: 88). not once in this text is there a reference to ‘mother(s) of pan-africanism’. my lamentation therefore about the marginalisation of female pioneers such as alice kinloch, who may arguably serve as the ‘founding mother of pan-africanism’, deserves attention. with all things being even, however, sylvester williams and alice kinloch should have topped adebajo’s ‘part 2’, as part of the key organisers in the leading up to the founding panafrican conference in 1900. and finally, reading this text from south africa, i was curious why hardly any reference was made towards the pan african congress (pac) of azania? for this reason, a ‘false postcolonial’ ontological existence could not escape me. in the final analysis, prospective readers of adebajo’s book should advisably consider assessing it according to the following three key points: there are unique features about this volume. firstly, as the 38 essays are written by african, caribbean and african-american scholars largely based in their regions, the book contributes substantively to efforts to transform curricula in all three regions and across the globe; secondly the book covers 36 major pan-african figures in a bid to build a contemporary pan-african canon; and thirdly, the volume encourages a cross-general dialogue between scholars, as well as between past figures of pan-africanism and more contemporary ones with whom current students would already be familiar (adebajo, 2020: 6–7). ultimately, besides this book’s shortcomings, it is a timely and valuable text on pan-africanism. i agree that ‘it comes at a time of increasing interest in pan-african thought and africa’s international relations’ (adebajo, 2020: 6). only time will tell, however, if indeed the editor’s claim is realised of ‘seeking to ensure that pan-african knowledge forms part of knowledge production [and] forms part of, and influences, mainstream global thinking’ (adebajo, 2020: 6). the overall richness of pan-africanist insights from this book compels it to be considered as ‘a must read’. notes [1] in addition to the earlier mentioned marika sherwood’s origins of pan-africanism: henry sylvester williams, africa, and the african diaspora (2012), there are full-length biographies about sylvester williams. a sample list may at least commence from the american biographer and alleged former central intelligence agency (cia) agent james r. hooker’s henry sylvester williams: imperial pan-africanist (1975), fellow trinidadian owen charles mathurin’s henry sylvester williams and the origins of the pan-african movement, 1869-1911 (1976) and alas another trinidadian scholar dr. ronald noel wrote his masters in philosophy (mphil) thesis entitled henry sylvesterwilliams: a new enquiry into the old hero (2006). references adebajo, a. (ed.) (2020). the pan-af rican pantheon: prophets, poets and philosophers. johannesburg: jacana media. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526156839 williams, h. s. (1898). annual report of the af rican association: from 24th september 1897 to the 23rd september, 1898. manchester: the labour press ltd. culture with poignant concerns around patriarchy in mind, i cannot downplay how worrisome it is that such lacunae persist in adebajo’s text in similar ways to others which preceded it, and even the one which was republished just after it, which continue to centre men such as edward wilmot blyden and web du bois as ‘father(s) of pan-africanism’ (adebajo, 2020: 21; morris, 2020: 88). not once in this text is there a reference to ‘mother(s) of pan-africanism’. v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 86 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition by nolan stevens | photo essay forward trajectory of a positive black self 87 ‘fairer skin has been in favour for what, the last couple of hundred years? but now the pendulum has swung back. black is in fashion!’ – get out: the motion picture. it is said that the future of black art is bright. the truth is the future of blackness in any context can only ever be promising. the past fails to provide a representative depository of positive black excellence. it is with this in mind that the present and more specifically the future are the only spaces were blackness can hope to aspire for more. simply put, positivity connected to blackness can only ever truly exist as a futuristic endeavour. the asisebenze art atelier (aaa) artist studio and dealership is an apt case study f or this argument. the newly formed aaa space in downtown johannesburg houses a collection of artists who each personify the realities of the black art experience present within the johannesburg and south af rican landscape. if the artists currently occupying the asisebenze building are indeed an illustration of the effects of south af rica’s dark political past, then it stands to reason that they are but a small sample size of the contrasting divide that exists between black artists and those of their white counterparts. as most of the resident artists in the building are either selftaught artists, technically sound but inexperienced in theoretical understandings of art, and are firstgeneration artists within the context of their families or communities, they have not had the luxury to draw f rom the same pool of resources their peers have. many of whom are only recently being exposed to the reservoir of conceptual and intellectual f rameworks which supports the technical skills they now explore. all of which subliminally suggests that they have had to learn the nuances of the industry whilst simultaneously grappling with their practices. at present, this crop of artists each engages with ideals of futurist blackness in very specific ways which manifest in one of two means: the first method taking on an aspirational approach, which is mostly conveyed through the subject matter of their work; the second method of incorporating an outlook of futuristic selfhood as illustrated in the artist’s process itself. to unpack this idea, i will use a variety of both the asisebenze residents and those artists affiliated to the space as examples, in the hopes of depicting how a sense of positivity aligned to a futuristic view of the black self is cultivated. in the case of samson mnisi, the most senior artist at asisebenze, it is not the past violent experiences during his youth as part of the af rican national congress’ military wing that are focal points, nor does he tap into his foray into crime thereafter which, as he puts it, was a natural progression due to his familiarity with firearms. instead, his artistic practice is one which does not seek to engage with what once was. rather, he uses his abstracted work and process of transforming life to its most fundamental point as his true vehicle of expression. a portrait study is finetuned into a collection of lines. his abstractions exist not as minimalist renderings of a past lived experience but rather thrive as visual meditations of the present which aid him in better understanding that which is yet to come. print-maker, painter and drawer, treatwell mnisi, is in some ways the ying to samson mnisi’s yang. this is glaringly evident in the works each artist creates. treatwell’s gestural figurative works and the over twogeneration age gap are the most obvious differences between these two. it is in treatwell’s ballet dancers where we are most directly conf ronted with imagery which feeds off ideas of futuristic aspirations of blackness. his dancers did not fall into his canon of subject matter because he had at some point witnessed a ballet performance. it’s surprising to learn that this young artist has never been to the ballet, and chose to depict ballerinas because a childhood crush of his danced. it isn’t difficult, however, to imagine how these statuesque dancers could become personifications of attainable black excellence which may not exist in the present, but akin to the dancer who hones her craft in the pursuit of future greatness, works towards a better version of herself. treatwell’s dancers appear to be signifiers not of the humble beginnings he has surpassed but of the possibility of greatness yet to come. themba shabala’s pyrography on woodworks see him deconstruct, burn and texturize the wooden surfaces he works on in an attempt to wrestle with the effects of physical trauma. but rather than thrust to the foref ront the trauma of the injury that cost him his right eye, he fashions and moulds it, fusing it into the core of his process, while allowing his subject v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 88 matter to take centre stage. these subjects which speak of future hopes and not past failures become a staple element of shabalala’s work. as is the case in his layers of self triptych, a depiction of his partner and their son. the work which revolves around the promise of things to come, muses on the life he and his partner created and alludes to a continuation of his own lineage f rom this to the next generation. even though the three panels are depictions of his son, his partner and of her carrying their child, he is an invisible ever-present presence breathing amidst the crevices of the wood. these are depictions that suggest that shabalala himself will live on in some way through the man his son will become. samantha maseko’s prints and paintings are visual soliloquies which speak of black femininity in its most natural state. her fixation on black hair, more specifically with the aesthetic of the af ro as a proud and authentically black aesthetic, is central to her work. maseko’s practice is one which pushes back against a long history that sort to sell a synthetic version of beauty to black women and girls, teaching them through years of indoctrination that the beauty associated with blackness was not good enough. maseko’s vibrantly painted portraits and detailed prints aim to destabilise these notions, by presenting the black self in all the crowning beauty associated with black hair. the undeniably alluring process she employs is purposeful in her desire to one day make the natural state of blackness an ever-present element in popular visual iconography. vivien kohler, an artist affiliated to aaa, presents a darker view of the af rican condition in his pieta, a work which draws inspiration f rom the iconic michelangelo sculpture of mary cradling the dead christ. in the same way in which michelangelo’s pieta serves as a reminder of the connection between a mother and her child, reminding us of the loss a mother feels at the moment she loses her child, kohler’s pieta attaches those same emotions to a work which speaks to the scourge of xenophobia. the painting asks us to remember that which connects us as sons and daughters of mother af rica. this painting simultaneously draws f rom an expansive gallery of imagery central to the south af rican political arena, as connections to the iconic june 16 image of hector peterson can be made. whilst this piece asks pivotal questions of the prevailing powers that be, as indicated through the use of anc election posters, it poses sterner questions to us as af ricans as well – daring us to take responsibility for the future we wish to collectively create. the cautionary tale presented by kohler is rooted in the past as well as in the present, but if its message is heeded, the future created can only be positive. mashir kresenshun’s mixed media pieces exploring indian culture offer a much softer presentation of multicultural unity. his works serve as subtle reminders of the complexities at play within these narratives by not holding true to a binary black and white viewpoint. the charcoal and ink works which make up his indian trade series function not only as a means of speaking about a heritage of the commodification tied to cultural exchange, but also seek to broaden the understandings of non-whiteness, which often finds itself automatically being equated to blackness. kresenshun addresses this in his use of colour. here the use of black charcoal, white ink and the brown of his cardboard, each representing black, white and brown peoples, aim to represent a broadness to the af rican understanding. his work acts as engagements which wrestle with the assumed understandings of identity, as they pose hidden questions such as ‘if i’m not white does that automatically make me black?’, or ‘is my contribution valued less because i’m not your kind of black?’ mashir kresenshun’s works do not fit easily into the scope of this essay but therein is the reason for his inclusion. he offers an alternative to the black self-conversation; an alternative which hopefully encourages a furthering of understandings special edition themba shabala’s pyrography on woodworks see him deconstruct, burn and texturize the wooden surfaces he works on in an attempt to wrestle with the effects of physical trauma. but rather than thrust to the forefront the trauma of the injury that cost him his right eye, he fashions and moulds it, fusing it into the core of his process, while allowing his subject matter to take centre stage. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 89 v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition to the narratives surrounding blackness within the cosmopolitan environment that is johannesburg and south af rica. the selection of artists aligned with the asisebenze art atelier studio and dealership present a diverse, complex and varying perspective on the positive trajectory of the black self-conversation. it is undeniable, however, that the aaa f inds itself in a unique position as studio space and dealership – to not only guide the swinging of that pendulum as it swings forcefully into in vogue blackness, but simultaneously to ensure that it does so in a manner which impacts history and the art world in a positive light. samantha maseko ”rebellion” oil on canvas 100 x 60cm 2021 samson mnisi the golden under the pink sky acrylic on canvas 1800 x 700cm 2022 90v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 special edition themba shabalala ”layers of self” pyrography on wood 240,4 x 120,3cm 2022 treatwell mnisi “unforgettable” charcoal on incissioni 70cm x 100cm 2021 91 v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition vivien kohler ”pieta” campaign posters, acrylic and oil on board 182 x 193cm 2019 mashir kresenshun “there is always knowledge learnt at the end of the day” archival cardboard, turmeric, masala, charcoal and ink on canvas 135 cm x 120cm 6v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 t his special issue is part of the collaborative research project initiated by the chair in epistemologies of the global south with emphasis on af rica, based at the university of bayreuth in germany, and the johannesburg institute for advanced study (jias), based at the university of johannesburg in south af rica. the collaborative project is entitled “the changing af rican idea of af rica and the future of af rican studies.” at the university of bayreuth, the research project is also part of the af rican multiple cluster of excellence supported by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (grant number ex 20521-390713894). the overarching agenda of the af rican multiple cluster of excellence is that of reconfiguring af rican studies, and at the centre of this is the imperative of doing af rican studies with af ricans while also privileging af rican voices and intellectual/academic productions. the project commenced in april 2022 with a series of keynote seminar series and the commissioning of this special issue themed “the af rican idea of af rica.” af rica as an idea, concept, space, home and other iterations, continues to elicit contestations by sabelo j. ndlovu-gatsheni & bongani ngqulunga opinion introduction: from the idea of africa to the african idea of africa 7 opinion and animated debates in both scholarly circles, as well as in political discourses of governance and development. consequently, to write about af rica has not been an easy task for both af ricanists and af rican scholars. this is why binyavanga wainaina (2022) posited the question of how to write about af rica. perhaps, it was these contestations that provoked the harlem renaissance poet countee cullen in his famous poem “heritage” (1924) to posit in poetic terms the soul-searching question: “what is af rica to me?” john henrik clarke (1991: xiii) expanded the question to “what is af rica to af ricans, and what is af rica to the world?” it perhaps these same concerns that prompted the congolese scholar valentine y. mudimbe to write the invention of af rica: gnosis, and the order of knowledge (1988) and the idea of af rica (1994). in these two widely celebrated works, mudimbe delves deeper into the complex politics of knowledge, representation(s), and indeed invention and reinventions of af rica. he explained in detail how missionaries, explorers, anthropologists and other literate observers of af rica propagated an exotic idea of af rica. to make sense of the politics of knowledge and representation, mudimbe coined the term “the colonial library” as an epistemic f raming of a particular idea of af rica, which still remains a challenge in af rican studies. at the centre of the idea of af rica are complex and tormenting issues of subject, subjection, subjectivation, and subjectivity, which sabelo j. ndlovu-gatsheni (2013: 101) described as “the ticklish subject,” borrowing a concept f rom slavoj zizek. reflecting on mudimbe’s concept of “the invention of af rica,” lewis r. gordon (2008: 204) elaborated on mudimbe’s idea and posited that af rica was invented in a double-sense: “it was invented by the system of knowledge constituted by the process of conquest and colonization, which always erupted with discovery, on the one hand, and it was also constituted by the processes of resistance borne out of those events the consequence of which is an effect of both on each other.” as far back as 1963, ali a. mazrui published “on the concept of ‘we are all af ricans,’” where he delved into the politics of resistance to colonialism and rise of pan-af rican ideas. pan-af ricanism was propagated by such figures as kwame nkrumah who made it clear that af rica was born in him and julius nyerere who articulated the concept of the “af rican sentiment” (mazrui 1963: 24-26). this thinking created the af rican idea of af rica (internal, af rican-centred view of themselves), as a shift f rom the mudimbean idea of af rica (external representation). ngugi wa thiong’o (2009: 72) expressed this shift in this way: v. y. mudimbe describes the idea of af rica as a product of the west’s system of selfrepresentation, which included creation of an otherness conceived and conveyed through conflicting systems of knowledge. but i prefer to think of the idea of af rica—or, more appropriately, the ‘af rican idea,’ as af rican self-representation. to distinguish it f rom the mudimbeist formula according to which europe is finding itself through its invention of af rica, i see the af rican idea as that which was forged in the diaspora and travelled back to the continent. ngugi wa thiong’o (2009: 35) introduced the concept of “re-membering af rica” as a central leitmotif of the af rican idea of af rica. re-membering is the opposite of dismemberment. it entails the recovery of f ragments. it means the picking up of pieces. it is a reconstitution and restitution process after centuries of de-constitution and destitution. ngugi wa thiong’o (2009: 35) depicted it as the “quest for wholeness, a question that has underlain af rican struggles since the atlantic slave trade.” therefore, such initiatives as ethiopianism, garveyism, negritude, pan-af ricanism, t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 lewis r. gordon (2008: 204) elaborated on mudimbe’s idea and posited that africa was invented in a double-sense: “it was invented by the system of knowledge constituted by the process of conquest and colonization, which always erupted with discovery, on the one hand, and it was also constituted by the processes of resistance borne out of those events the consequence of which is an effect of both on each other.” 8 the black consciousness movements, af rican socialism(s), the af rican renaissance, and many others are constitutive of “re-membering.” these initiatives were and are also part of what adom getachew (2019) depicted as “worldmaking after empire.” the current calls for a new understanding of af rica are inspired by what sabelo j. ndlovu-gatsheni (2018; 2020; 2021) has depicted as the “resurgent and insurgent decolonization of the 21st century.” this resurgent and insurgent decolonial politics is characterised by what geo maher (2022) depicted as “the second sight of the colonized” drawing f rom w. e.b. du bois. at the centre of this decolonial politics is not only the re-opening of basic epistemological questions, but also the exploration of heteropatriarchal sexism, the afterlives of racial enslavement, racial capitalism, colonialities, as well as the recovery and articulation of knowledges and ideas that have been marginalised. it is within this context that the contributions to this special issue are largely informed by the decolonial and anticolonial spirit of revisiting, recovering and articulating af rican ideas of liberation and the imaginings of a liberated af rica. the essays are unique in that they recover and affirm, subject to the ideas of critical analysis, what remains useful for the unfinished struggle for liberation. consequently, the very af rican struggles for liberation are opened to new critiques and new affirmations informed by empathetic readings and keen revisions of the past. the first essay by bongani ngqulunga is focused on genealogies of af rican nationalism and how national imaginaries articulated the idea of af rica, where what is explored are individual thinkers and ideas. what is underscored are the complexities of ideas and the avoidance of easy dismissals of some of the imaginings and ideas. the second essay is by tlhabane mokhine dan motaung and, like ngqulunga, he focuses on the af rican nationalist idea of af rica. af rican nationalist thought dominated the twentieth century and animated the anticolonial struggles, as well as decolonial imaginaries of liberation. the degeneration of a once coherent af rican national self-consciousness into detestable forms of ethnic conflicts, genocides, nativisms and xenophobia is opened to analysis in this article. the expansive work of mahmood mamdani is mobilised and deployed to understand both colonial and postcolonial realities of af rica. the contributors to this special issue also turn their analytical lens to specific political figures like julius nyerere, robert mugabe and thabo mbeki in their critical explorations of the af rican ideas of af rica. some of these figures dominated the political landscape of af rica and they invariably contributed to specific ideas of af rica. william mpofu’s essay is focused on thabo mbeki in south af rica, who became a leading voice of the “af rican renaissance” and actively participated in reworlding af rica f rom af rica, including its institution-building. prolific maturuse’s essay is focused on distinctive “af rican philosopher” leader julius k. nyerere of tanzania and his ideas of af rican socialism. blazio manobo’s essay centers on robert gabriel mugabe of zimbabwe, a controversial leader who is both adored and loathed in equal measure. mugabe’s delivery of land to his people, in the face of all sorts of criticism, made him a hero among af ricans. like kwame nkrumah, perhaps mugabe became a great leader outside of zimbabwe and a dictator within zimbabwe. such a figure could not escape attracting the attention of scholars as he is a polarising figure mugabe is caught up in what one can term “mugabephilia” (love for mugabe) on the one hand, and “mugabephobia” (hatred for mugabe) on the other hand. the glaring lacuna in these essays is a lack of focus on women leaders who were also actively involved in the liberation struggles and imaginings of a liberated af rica. this lacuna is reflective of the operations of patriarchy in knowledge production and in imaginings of af rica. ifi amadiume (1997) in her advancement of women in reinventing af rica, underscored the realities of matriarchal thinking in pre-colonial af rica and how women commanded a powerful voice as leaders. oyeronke oyewumi (2016: 220) highlighted the significance of what she termed “maternal ideologies’’ because it is ‘‘enabling, ennobling, and inclusive’’---it is “community oriented, all-inclusive, life giving, life sustaining, and life preserving.” therefore, the decolonization of knowledge has to entail depatriarchization of knowledge too. v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion 9 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 in the last set of essays, there is a shift f rom individuals, to ideas and intellectual productions. kelvin acheampong’s essay highlights the contributions of novelists in his analysis of the literary turn in af rican studies. zama mthombeni’s essay focuses on values (ubuntu) and ethics in the context of an exploration of the problem of xenophobia in south af rica and how to transcend it. the last essay by kudzai vanyoro analyses the topical issues of sexuality and homophobia, as these issues cannot be ignored in any reflections on the af rican idea of af rica. taken together, these essays demonstrate the complexities, multiplicities, ambiguities, ambivalences and even contradictions with af rican ideas of af rica. references amadiume, ifi. 1997. reinventing africa: matriarchy, religion and culture. london and new york: zed books. clarke, john henrik. 1991. notes for an african world revolution: africa at the crossroads. trenton: africa world press. getachew, adom. 2019. worldmaking after empire: the rise and fall of selfdetermination. princeton & oxford: princeton university press. gordon, lewis r. 2008. an introduction to africana philosophy. cambridge: cambridge university press. maher, geo. 2022. anticolonial eruptions: racial hubris and the cunning of resistance. california: university of california press. mazrui, ali a. 1963. “on the concept of ‘we are all africans.”’ american political science review, 57(1), pp. 24-97. mudimbe, v. y. 1988. the invention of africa: gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. mudimbe, v. y. 1994. the idea of africa. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. ndlovu-gatsheni, sabelo j. 2013. empire, global coloniality and african subjectivity. new york and oxford: berghahn books. ndlovu-gatsheni, sabelo j. 2018. epistemic freedom in africa: deprovincialization and decolonization. london and new york: routledge. ndlovu-gatsheni, sabelo j. 2020. decolonization, development and knowledge in africa: turning over a new leaf. london and new york: routledge. ndlovu-gatsheni, sabelo j. 2021. “the cognitive empire, politics of knowledge and african intellectual productions: reflections on struggles for epistemic freedom and resurgence of decolonization in the twenty-first century.” third world quarterly, 42 (5), pp. 882-901. ngugi wa thiong’o. 2009. something torn and new: an african renaissance. new york: basic civitas books. oyewumi, oyeronke. 2016. what gender is motherhood? changing yoruba ideas of power, procreation, and identity in the age of modernity. london: palgrave macmillan wainaina, binyavanga. 2022. how to write about africa. london: penguin books opinion 81 building resilient leadership: lessons from covid-19 abstract c ovid-19 poses the greatest challenges for effective leadership in many years. covid-19 undermines the deepest security we feel as humans and disables people’s capacity to work and create. this opinion piece argues that leaders should not merely hold on until covid-19 passes, but rather learn the lessons covid-19 wishes to teach us. in so doing, leaders become resilient to adversity and can facilitate the resilience of employees, teams, and organisations. this article addresses these lessons in relation to our common humanity, the centrality of relationships, the vital importance of spirituality, and the need for structure to enable productivity. by adrian van breda | opinion africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 82 t h e t h i n k e r introduction covid-19 has wreaked havoc with leaders and their leadership. we can all—as leaders or as people who are led—look back over the past two years and think of countless challenges that lteaders have faced, sometimes successfully, and perhaps all too often unsuccessfully. i have held formal leadership and management roles for 16 years, in government, research and academic spaces, as well as in church, as a lay person and as a priest. i cannot recall a time that was more challenging than these past two years. there is a part of me that longs for covid-19 to be ‘over’ (whatever that means) so we can ‘go back to normality’ (whatever that was). but, in truth, things never were ‘normal’. and things never were that great in leadership. and i can as yet not envisage a post-covid-19 society. so, i choose to regard covid-19 as a companion to be journeyed with, rather than as an enemy to be vanquished. this shift in my construction of covid-19 first helps me to be less adversarial about covid-19 and more accommodating and patient. and second, it helps me to think about and even appreciate what covid-19 has taught me about being a leader. leaders in general do not appear to have made radical changes in how they lead during covid-19. my employers still have the same expectations and targets of staff as they did pre-covid-19. there has been little or no letting up on targets and indicators; if anything, targets have continued to grow, expressing a philosophy of more rather than sufficiency. as a leader, i am trapped in much the same performative, new managerial, neo-liberal system as everyone else. i wish i could say my leadership has been transformed by covid-19; it hasn’t. but i have come to recognise and appreciate what covid-19 has taught me about priorities and strategies for leading. i cluster these under four themes: humanity, relationships, spirituality, and structure. humanity a few years ago, i wrote an academic paper titled ‘students are humans too’. in it, i unpacked the myriad personal, family, and community challenges that students face, all while striving to meet our academic expectations for grammar, referencing, and due dates. as i heard the profound challenges students faced daily, i grew to appreciate the heroism of students who pitch up and deliver. as educators, we need to better recognise and celebrate that students are humans too. in much the same way, employees (be they academics, researchers, administrators, technicians, or labourers) are humans too. they are not just employees. the ‘two-worlds myth’—that the worlds of work and life are separate and autonomous— is just that: a myth. these worlds are inextricably intertangled because employees are humans too. leaders need to better appreciate the lives of employees outside of the workspace. this involves cultivating a holistic understanding of the people we lead. we can no longer afford to think of employees as automatons. we must recognise and engage with the whole person. once we know something about the ‘private’ life of our employees, we can no longer blithely impose our performance targets and working conditions on them. we begin to realise how deeply socially unjust such a managerialist approach is. instead, we must begin to accommodate the holistic life of employees: their responsibilities towards their children or partner or pets, their health needs, their need for downtime, their need to go shopping or to visit a f riend. in a word, this is about compassion. or caring. or even love. it requires us to care not only about organisational performance and targets, but to care also and even more about our employees, their wellbeing, their capacity to be, to flourish, to grow, and to achieve. relationships extending f rom the humanity of employees is the collective experience of a shared humanity through relationships between co-workers. while we all know that teamwork and collegiality are important elements of a healthy and productive team, covid-19 has helped us recognise that there is more to relationships than collegiality. this is not to say that everyone should become best f riends; there may always be people we work with whom we don’t africa as usual 83 particularly like. but the common challenge of a disease like covid-19, which affects almost everyone in one way or another, helps us recognise and feel compassion towards each other. shared suffering both necessitates and enables closer and more authentic relationships than in pre-covid-19 times. my research area is resilience. one of the recurring and resounding enablers of resilience in the face of adversity is the quality of relationships with other people. relationships characterised by affective support are particularly important, providing a foundation of belonging and the nourishment we need during diff icult times. relationships are also the crucible for another important resilience enabler: adaptive meaning making. this refers to the capacity to make sense of adversity in ways that enable us to move forward through or around our diff iculties. meaning making is something that is done in families, religious communities, and working environments. until covid-19, i had thought of staff meetings primarily as business meetings to discuss what we need to do and how we need to do it. covid-19 shifted my understanding to thinking of staff meetings as opportunities to build collaborative, authentic, and compassionate relationships between staff; to cultivate space for silence and reflection that enables quieter members to give voice to their thoughts and feelings; and through this relational foundation to then work on the work. in so doing, we cultivate a collective understanding of the challenges that we face and formulate collective solutions on how to move through them. spirituality while my personal faith has long been central to my life and to how and why i do what i do as an educator, researcher and leader, i have not thought as much about faith and spirituality as i have since covid-19 arrived in our lives. some of my clergy colleagues refer to my work at the university as my ‘secular job’; implying that it is something almost dirty, compared with the lofty spiritual calling to the priesthood. i always respond that my ‘secular’ job is as sacred as my work in the church—they are all part of the same fabric. there are moments, though, when my vocation as a pastor rises in prominence in my ‘secular’ workspace—when a colleague loses a loved one, when a colleague becomes seriously ill, when the world starts to feel like a dangerous and threatening space. in these moments, my capacity as academic-researcher-priest to hold together the sacred and secular becomes important, because covid-19 conf ronts us with deeply existential and thus spiritual challenges. covid-19 is not merely a virus; it is a threat to our sense of self, to our humanity, to our survival, to the integrity of our family. these all speak to the deep existential fabric of life, which we may think of as the spiritual dimension of life. priest or atheist, a leader needs to have the capacity to engage with the deep, intangible, existential layers of life, to create space for them to breathe and be given voice, and to hold and contain them like a living organism. this is the stuff of life. and a good leader needs to be a midwife. it is within this kind of spiritually-attuned space that a leader can begin to challenge their team members to perform, to produce, to deliver. working persistently in the midst of a prolonged crisis is an act of defiance and challenge; it is about taking back power and ownership of one’s self and one’s body, thereby disabling or peripheralizing the threat of covid-19. this is the collective adaptive meaningmaking i mentioned under relationships working to subvert the negative impact of a threat like covid-19 on our ability to be who we deeply want to be. my research area is resilience. one of the recurring and resounding enablers of resilience in the face of adversity is the quality of relationships with other people. relationships characterised by affective support are particularly important, providing a foundation of belonging and the nourishment we need during difficult times. africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 84 t h e t h i n k e r structure everything so far may be sounding rather touchyfeely. some may be wondering when we actually do any work, focus on targets, accomplish goals, and meet our key performance indicators. my experience is that when we create sufficient space for humanity, relationships and spirituality, we are then able to focus on the structure of the work itself. this is not either-or; rather, it is about layering one’s leadership to cultivate an environment, a group dynamic and an individual capacity to work, even in the midst of challenge. the earliest resilience in human development occurs within the secure base established by good-enough parenting in the f irst year of life. the rhythm, predictability, nourishment and structure of such parenting creates a f ramework for the world as a manageable and safe space, even during periods of adversity. during a profound and prolonged crisis like covid-19, structure is necessary to cultivate a sense of safety and security to contain the many unknowns that covid-19 presents. a good leader will thus help their team put in place boundaries, procedures, and plans (even if only short-term plans) that form guardrails to contain the anxiety of an unknown, unpredictable, and dangerous environment. my mantra over the past two years has been ‘flexibility’. we don’t just ‘go with the flow’; instead, we plan and structure, and then when things change, we replan and restructure, and again and again, to ensure that we have boundaries that contain, reduce anxiety, and facilitate performance. a good leader in such times will be constantly looking to the future, to anticipate the opportunities and challenges that lie around the next corner, and to capitalise on or mitigate these as required. covid-19 has been highly unpredictable and disruptive in many ways. understanding and anticipating where it is going, even if only a week at a time, is an important role for strong leadership. this enables staff to continue delivering work and to be creative and productive, despite the uncertainty of the world around them. conclusion covid-19 has wreaked havoc with leaders and their leadership. it has tested us to the limit, or at least to what we may think is our limit. we may long for life to return to ‘normal’. but the reality is that life may never be that old ‘normal’ again. and even if it could be, we should probably not allow it to be. covid-19 has created unique opportunities for new understandings of what it means to lead and to be a leader during unprecedented times. these lessons should not be relegated to the archives of the covid-19 era. rather, we should learn the important lessons covid-19 has offered to teach us and pull these lessons forward into the world beyond covid-19. fundamentally, covid-19 has obliterated the division between work and life. for good or for bad, this boundary has been removed. the challenge for leadership going forward is how to use this shift in a way that celebrates and protects the different facets of human life (including both work and life) in a way that is mutually respectful and harmonious. in so doing, leaders in the workplace can contribute to the resilience of individuals and their families, of employees and their work teams, of places of employment and their clients and stakeholders, and of communities and societies. leadership is thus far more than getting the job done, or even getting the job done excellently. it is about leading people to flourish, in partnerships with each other, with a sense of the larger and sacred life and world issues around us, and in ways that are socially just and for the common good. if we can journey on this path, leaders can co-create social environments that are sufficiently resilient to handle the future challenges that will inevitably face society. africa as usual 65 conclusion: towards a general theory of technology and politics? abstract t his article reviews the insights made throughout this volume by the contributors and notes the myriad ways the articles have advanced our knowledge, on their own and in the aggregate. it also reviews the potential for further incorporating 4ir technologies into the political science methodological arsenal and making a case for theory-building inquiry on account of, and through, the emerging technologies as the next f rontier in this expanding discipline. by bhaso ndzendze and tshilidzi marwala | opinion special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 66 t h e t h i n k e r special focus it is nearly impossible to conclude a special issue such as the present volume; one which, as it itself acknowledges throughout, is studying a phenomenon at its relative dawn and whose implications are only at an early phase. yet this special issue presents us with many critical observations that deserve reflection, stock-taking and emphasis before, as it were, we ‘proceed’ as a discipline. robyn williams, lisa otto and their contributors have weaved a timely contribution to the burgeoning literature, both scholarly and practical, of the 4ir technologies in political science and ir, with all their attendant sub-disciplines, with just as many questions raised as answers provided. well-executed, this volume begins with af rica’s history of contributing meaningfully to past technological transformations on a major scale. going beyond some of the by-now-familiar observations and sentiments which downplay the continent’s agency – for example inikori’s (2002) brilliant work, but which nonetheless notes the mainly passive contribution through af rican slavery and minerals for england and the americas – this work showcases how af ricans were in many ways at the foref ront in the story of human ingenuity, how that is still the case today and how this can be nurtured. one encouraging feature in the preceding number of years has been the liveliness of the debate, with many positing the notion of ‘leaping’ and others sceptical of how possible this is. yet both the proponents and the sceptics have one feature in common: they want an af rica acting on the basis of agency, without reliance, as was the case for much of the preceding several decades, to mimic one model or another. though still taking inspiration f rom many models – as the pc4ir report notes, starting relatively late can be an epistemic advantage – the emphasis has been on homegrown approaches and purposive engagement with the outside world that is rooted in af rican interests. added to this, there is scope for reflective exercises on the 4ir approaches of other states, allowing for a more nuanced af rican approach. far f rom being the preserve of major powers (though they do certainly have the edge), the 4ir is universal in its scope, if not in its benefits. indeed, change is inevitable, and innovation has consequences, as williams and otto note in their introduction to this volume: ‘throughout history we have witnessed that technological trends have often impacted domestic politics and state relations.’ many of these impacts were the result of earlier years of foundational work, whose outcome could never have been known to their originators (e.g., the nuclear bomb for early 20th century theoretical physicists, which killed hundreds of thousands in japan, and forever endowed ir thought and parlance with the concept of ‘mutually assured destruction’). af rica is readier now more than at any previous point in its history to take a seat at the table, insist on optimal outcomes and to be an active mover and beneficiary of an industrial revolution. current efforts to ensure that the af rican continental free trade agreement (afcfta) is ‘digital-ready’ as well as the au’s af rican digital transformation strategy are cognizant of this, and ensure full participation not just between countries, but also within countries. one of the threatening trends is unevenness – in uptake, regulatory mechanisms, and culturation. all these require harmonisation, yet distressingly the majority of countries on the continent do not have legislation on data, blockchain, and general guidelines on ai. elsewhere we have also written about the opportunities in the realms of culture, heritage, language and psychology (marwala, 2020; ndzendze and marwala, 2021; ndzendze and card, 2021). yet there is much that the continent can both benefit f rom and contribute to. from an ethical standpoint, af rican scholars, for example, have shaped guidelines on drone warfare (heyns, 2017: 46) and ai in healthcare (including one of the authors [marwala]; see who, 2021). first and foremost, the 4ir is an ideational phenomenon. all policy and commercial activity emanates, and/or at leans gains some form of legitimacy, f rom how we understand society and actors within it – f rom the role of the government, to what merits taxation, to ideas about what is worth preserving, as well as notions of progress. af rica has as much of a role to play as any other region in this thinking through about the future (see for example jm lamola’s [2021] demonstration of the eurocentric roots of dystopian expectations about ai and how these have found their way to af rica). this is the crucial importance of the social sciences; a point made material by this special issue. this collection is characterised by a focus on the empirical and observable, which in turn enables a focus on the future. this is evident, for example, in the assessment of digitally-empowered warfare on af rica (whose loci of focus are normally us actions in the middle east), ai as a tool for public diplomacy 67 (using the troubled iran-us relationship) and the impact of 4ir technologies on the mining sector, and public service delivery. they thus traverse the various levels of the political experience f rom the local to the national, and the international. these are matters which should have our collective and simultaneous focus as we enter into the 4ir, which, unlike previous industrial-scale changes, happens at a time of much political openness (though that too is on the decline, thanks in part to the rise of these technologies [kaiser, 2019]). williams and otto rightly observe that academic work on the intersection between 4ir and political processes, whether domestic or global in scope, is nascent and growing. further studies are invited. there is much to be done. some of this work begins with synthesising many of the elements touched on in the preceding articles and the literatures they touched on. these are vast, and hint at the magnitude of the task ahead for the scholarship. this includes synthesising domestic and foreign audiences, economic growth, innovation policy, and security thinking. a conscious theorisation, perhaps ambitiously driving towards constructing a general theory or typological theory (i.e., the emergence of only a handful of theories with various ‘turfs’) of technology and politics, is possible however far ahead it is f rom being achieved. the latter is more likely out of the two, as scholarship in political science and ir tends to operate in paradigms operating f rom different axioms and ideas about what objects or entities merit study. it is true that political science begins in critique and is founded on dissent, but the tools for such theory-building perhaps exist in this realm (i.e., the technology-politics nexus) than on any other question. indeed, it is true that what constitutes political science and international relations is not so clear-cut and that these are shorthand for a dozen sub-disciplines, including comparative politics and public policy (or government) studies on the one hand, and international political economy, foreign policy analysis, and security studies on the other. this is not to mention the various other terrains in which political scientists encounter scholars f rom other worlds, including sociology, economics and law, demography and migration studies, development studies, and international law. our own anticipation, put forth in our upcoming book artificial intelligence and international relations theories (2022), is that the field will first experience a further splinter (including splinters within theoretical paradigms) before coalescing towards a common set of assumptions and broad conclusions on key issues. but there is much ground to be broken f rom the methodological standpoint. politics and ir scholarship can embrace the 4ir technologies, if not the concept of the 4ir itself (about which there remains some muchneeded hesitancy and critique [1]). whatever name we give the phenomenon, it is undeniable that seismic changes are taking place and changing patterns of manufacturing, consuming, destroying, combatting, and other integral components of the human experience and international interaction. for political science, the opportunities lie in the areas of deep learning, natural language processing, and big data. this includes their incorporation into research design and analysis, for which there is some track record through the digital humanities (dh), though this has had a very modest uptake in political science. there is much on offer, f rom both a qualitative and quantitative approach. nlp, for example, can be utilised for the benefit of discourse or thematic analysis at a mega scale. on the other hand, big data can yield insights. this goes not only for contemporary or future events, but also for the past. indeed, the latter is the mainstay and may be termed the ‘source code’ of political science and ir theorisation. it is f rom here that case studies are drawn, and it is history which stands as a common reference point. indeed, the field understands its proto-origins this collection is characterised by a focus on the empirical and observable, which in turn enables a focus on the future. this is evident, for example, in the assessment of digitallyempowered warfare on africa (whose loci of focus are normally us actions in the middle east), ai as a tool for public diplomacy (using the troubled iran-us relationship) and the impact of 4ir technologies on the mining sector, and public service delivery. special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 68 t h e t h i n k e r as being marked by the text of thucydides’ history of the peloponnesian war in which the athenian general/historian, admirably, sought to tell the events of the conflict as they were (despite his being on the losing side) and deduce general patterns f rom them. developments in historical studies, for example, have seen ai being used to unlock previously unreachable or obscure details about the past. for example, yannis assael, a deepmind research scientist, in 2019 published a paper in collaboration with oxford university historian thea sommerschield on a deep learning model called ‘pythia,’ which they designed to ‘fill in the gaps’ currently missing f rom ancient greek inscriptions (see ndzendze and marwala, 2022: 11). these developments, in addition to perhaps removing linguistic barriers and expanding collaboration horizons in research, will have a considerable impact on how we think about periods we had largely deemed ‘closed’. the gaps that existed will be largely accessible and known. with the change in the source code, there is bound to be corresponding change in the conclusions reached. what are the hypothetical implications of new discoveries affecting our fundamental understanding of the peloponnesian war, ancient rome, the sanghor empire, the british and dutch east india trading companies, and colonial outposts, for instance, on theory? would the fundamentals be rethought? is there a mechanism for doing so in a field-encompassing manner, rather than within its theoretic silos? there is some promise of this, most notably through the methodological pluralism and theoretical dialogue encouraged by bennett (e.g., 2013) and many others in addition to the growing use of mixed methods research in the fields’ most prominent periodicals and conferences [2]. this has the necessary corollary of new forms of education with the goal of training political science and ir scholars in the various fields, along with interdisciplinary collaboration. williams, otto and their contributors have contributed immensely to this trajectory. notes [1] this concern partially arises out of the corporate interests undergirding the narrative and is justified not only because of present-day ‘big tech’ commercially exploiting data insights to exacerbate consumerism (though this too is important), but also for historical reasons. ibm, for example, has an uncomfortable history of contracts with nazi germany to use its cutting-edge data-sorting technology to systematize its campaign of jewish extermination (black, 2012). [2] our review of papers using either method in leading (high impact factor) ir journals (european journal of international relations, international affairs, international organization, journal of east asian security and international affairs, journal of international relations and development, and the south af rican journal of international affairs) in recent years, for example, found that there is a greater prevalence of qualitative methods over quantitative ones, and all of these having mixed methods as their second-most common research design (ndzendze and marwala, 2022: 37–38). references bennett, a. (2013). ‘the mother of all isms: causal mechanisms and structured pluralism in international relations theory.’ european journal of international relations, 19(3): 459-481. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066113495484 black, e. (2012). ibm and the holocaust: the strategic alliance between nazi germany and america’s most powerful corporation. new york: dialog press. heyns, c. (2017). ‘autonomous weapons in armed conflict and the right to a dignified life: an african perspective.’ south african journal on human rights, 33(1): 46-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/02587203.2017.1303903 inikori, j. e. (2002). africans and the industrial revolution in england: a study in international trade and economic development. cambridge, uk: cambridge. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511583940 kaiser, b. (2019). targeted: my inside story of cambridge analytica and how trump, brexit and facebook broke democracy. london: harper collins. lamola, m.j. (2021). ‘the future of artificial intelligence, posthumanism and the inflection of pixley isaka seme’s african humanism.’ ai & society. [online], doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01191-3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01191-3 marwala, t. (2020). closing the gap. johannesburg: macmillan. ndzendze, b. and card, m. (2021) (august 16). ‘ai will change the study of psychology,’ mail & guardian: 22. ndzendze, b. and marwala, t. (2021). artificial intelligence and emerging technologies in international relations. singapore: world scientific press. https://doi.org/10.1142/12216 ndzendze, b. and marwala, t. (2022). artificial intelligence and international relations theories. new york: palgrave macmillan. forthcoming. ndzendze, b. and marwala, t. (2021). (april 16). ‘build artificial intelligence for africa,’ mail & guardian: 17. presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution. (2020). report of the presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution. government printer. world health organization. (2021). ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health: who guidance. geneva: whodraftnationalydeterminedcontributions_2021updated.pdf. africa as usual t h e t h i n k e r48 global introduction: when everyone agrees, something is wrong in healthy dialogue, there are always people who disagree, even if they are eccentric flat-earthers. something about human psychology seems to require that some people always take up a contrary position to the majority on any substantive idea, and empirical evidence always permits this, because it always underdetermines the conclusions we draw from it. when there is no disagreement on a certain idea, therefore, we have to consider that we’re either not assessing the idea properly, or not entertaining all opinions. if we were, some of us would come to different conclusions. my concern is that there is too much agreement about the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), which is far less well understood and confirmed than the idea that the world is round. we’ve by alex broadbent the fourth industrial revolution and the © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m disagreement importance of 49v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 global heard so much about what’s going to happen, and why. how carefully have the bases of these claims been tested? how seriously have we asked ourselves about the most likely scenarios in which the 4ir does not happen— because it is derailed, or because we have “topped out” already in our latest phase of industrialisation, or for some other reason? in short, have we asked: what could possibly go wrong (broadbent, 2011)? the 4ir story “the fourth industrial revolution” is a tag-line for a hypothesised major change in how society is organised, driven by the availability of new technologies. these are fundamentally driven by the growth of computing power, enabling smaller and faster devices, and the implementation of artificially intelligent systems. combining small and intelligent systems allows a much tighter cyber-physical interface. growing biological knowledge, especially of the human body, enables the cyber-physical interface to include the cyber-human. as a result of all these new technological possibilities, the story goes, we’re going to see huge changes in the way people work, interact, govern, travel, think, play, and quite generally live. moreover, these changes are already occurring. finally, it’s characteristic of the 4ir story to emphasise that the exact changes we will see in society are not easy to predict and are under our collective control. emphasis is therefore placed on the importance of awareness, embrace, preparation, and a focus on protecting values such as equality and privacy. this article argues that most of this story is false, insofar as it says anything at all. i will outline several reasons for this statement. i could f rame my argument as “probably” false, but i’m more confident than that, and would like to instead propose that it is mostly false, f rom start to finish. fitting your data to the theory the 4ir story is constructed with little or no reference to the accumulated work of people who have thought about the nature of society and the reasons for its changing shapes. the historical literature does not make place for three prior industrial revolutions, but for one. moreover, that one industrial revolution was not a global phenomenon, nor even a template, model or trope of some repeatable event-type that may occur anywhere and anytime with the right conditions. rather, it is a particular and very complex historical episode taking place in particular countries at particular times. it’s easy to see why most historians think in particulars when one considers the tangles that the 4ir story gets itself into in the context of countries that are still in the process of industrialisation. in many countries, smart phones, the internet and social media exist alongside agrarian societies that continue to use rudimentary technologies. the question of needing a dependable energy source for the 4ir is important to consider, and many countries have uneven societies where, arguably, only some people are participating in the 4ir. it’s easy to retro-fit your hypothesis to new evidence. however, if that were the way scientists did their work, we would not have smartphones. it doesn’t work in the empirical sciences, and it doesn’t work in the social sciences either. when you retro-fit a hypothesis to fit new data, your predictions don’t come true. you can alter your hypothesis some more to explain this failure away, but explaining away your errors today doesn’t help you to be right tomorrow. foxes and hedgehogs there’s clear empirical evidence for this assertion. the psychologist philip tetlock, who worked on understanding what makes the difference between predictive failure and success, argues that the key differentiator is cognitive style (tetlock, 2005; tetlock and gardner, 2015). tetlock conducted multi-decade studies in which he interviewed a wide range of people about sociopolitical events, such as election outcomes, wars, the collapse of the ussr, and many similar, more fine-grained events. these studies are ongoing. based on his research, tetlock identified two my concern is that there is too much agreement about the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), which is far less well understood and confirmed than the idea that the world is round. t h e t h i n k e r50 types of people. so-called “foxes” are tentative, entertain complex and qualified hypotheses, and change their minds—or at least consider doing so— in the face of new evidence. “hedgehogs”, on the other hand, have a view that makes sense of the world, and sees all evidence either as confirming this view, or else as invalid and irrelevant. this gives us what philosophers would call a second-order argument that predictions around the 4ir are false. the argument doesn’t engage with any of the first-order details of the 4ir hypothesis. it simply points out that most of what we hear about it sounds very hedgehog-ish. in his book the fourth industrial revolution, klaus schwab mentions that fox-like thinking will be needed in the 4ir, but in my opinion it is a hedgehog’s book, through and through. the apparently round-the-corner creation of “smart-dust”, very small computers that can “arrange themselves” into networks for particular purposes, is extrapolated to the prospect of a medical panacea, in which the dust is injected into us and computers arrange themselves to attack viruses or release “healing medicines”, without any consideration of the various possibilities that might prevent this result (schwab, 2016). i read something similar in my early teens, in a sciencefiction book f rom the 1960s. in that book, details forgotten, there was a machine on a spaceship that was able to overhaul or service a person. afterwards, the protagonist “felt like he had been oiled”. admittedly, this was a machine and not smart dust, but the idea is basically the same, and the differences in detail reflect the science of the day, rather than differentiated predictive exercises. in my opinion, neither case is a decent prediction; both are mere projections. that’s exactly what foxes don’t do: project. they look around for other ways that things might go, that are not more of the same. there’s precious little of this in schwab’s book, and many excited talks, videos, op eds, and so forth that i’ve failed in my efforts to avoid. room is made for the possibility that the 4ir could turn out in more than one way, but this is always within a f ramework of predictive certainties: the continuing growth of computing power and data, increasing connectivity, and, most importantly, continued technological advances, on an exponential trajectory. the world’s response to this trajectory is allowed to be uncertain, but the trajectory is treated as a certainty. technology marches on, and society must respond, like it or not. getting causality wrong so much for second-order arguments. let us now turn to first-order considerations: the evidence and arguments for the 4ir hypothesis. the overarching problem with the considerations advanced for the 4ir hypothesis is that they get causality all wrong. they see technology as marching along more or less under its own steam, thus driving change. they don’t see the reverse causal direction, which is also important: society driving technological change. in truth, both technological development and societal change are caused in very complex ways, including by each other, and the causal model set up by 4ir proponents is nowhere near complex enough to be credible. for example, a 4ir enthusiast might wonder why the “first” industrial revolution occurred in england and not india, which is more populous, and thus more likely to stochastically throw up great ideas. there’s nothing in schwab’s book, for example, to explain this. the question presupposes that invention is more or less a random occurrence, perhaps a confluence of genius with adequate social traction, which is therefore more likely to occur in a larger society. there’s a further assumption that societies which are broadly similar in complexity and some basic structures, such as class-like stratification (a feature of all the complex societies i can think of), will respond to such sparks of innovation in much the same way. then it’s natural to ask: why did the spark of the “first” revolution occur and catch in the small, soggy island of britain, and not in much more populous india? of course, the assumptions are false. there are in truth, both technological development and societal change are caused in very complex ways, including by each other, and the causal model set up by 4ir proponents is nowhere near complex enough to be credible. global 51v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 complex reasons for the initiation of the industrial revolution in britain. it may be that good ideas are more common than we realise (i certainly suspect they are more obvious), but even if a spark of genius is part of the story, conditions need to be such as to educate the genius enough to have a relevant idea—and then the spark has to catch. despite being damp, britain’s and especially england’s eighteenth-century development was such as to make it flammable for good ideas. although a class-stratified society, english classes rubbed shoulders with each other to an extent that french visitors found quite strange, as roy porter remarks (1990). the squire would joke with the stable boy. in russia, by comparison, the stable boy might be a serf, a virtual slave, and the nobleman might well choose to address his peers in a language the stable boy would not understand, such as french. in england, for further historical reasons, a large body of english-language literature was available, and english readership of all kinds of material—books, pamphlets, posters—was far higher than in continental europe. a political culture of debate was evolving, and while riots were common, the general development of politics was towards an inclusion of more voices and away f rom the violent assertion of power. none of these things could be said of european neighbours, nor indeed of eighteenth-century india. eighteenthcentury england was no paradise: it was violent, cruel, unfair, scourged by gin, debt and gout; it was miserable for many. and i fully concede that merely mentioning the factors i’ve mentioned hardly amounts to a case for england as a tinderbox for innovation. nonetheless, it was clearly a sociopolitical context that cannot be ignored when asking why the industrial revolution happened in england rather than, say, india. such considerations do not feature at all in the reasoning of schwab’s book, either as regards the unfolding of the supposed previous three industrial revolutions, nor as regards projections for the fourth. it’s not so much that socio-political factors are ignored; i’m sure he would admit that they matter. it’s rather that their complexity is underestimated. entire academic disciplines (history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy) devote huge energy to understanding the shape and development of human existence. even if one doesn’t think much of these efforts, one can’t ignore the fact that the shape and progress of humanity has proved remarkably tough against the intellectual blade. the beginning of exponential growth, or the edge of a new plateau? there is another, perhaps deeper, reason for why many researchers get the wrong answer: an underlying lack of appreciation of the nature of change in the world of ideas—including technological ideas. progress across many fields of human inquiry seems to display two related properties. it occurs in step changes, and its direction is unanticipated. together, these features explain the embarrassing history of big-picture predictive narratives, which is that they are nearly always wrong. the direction of development is usually unanticipated, and usually the point at which wild projections are made represents not the start of a dizzying climb, but the cusp of a new plateau. travel is a great example. space travel to the moon was a highpoint; concorde was eventually decommissioned in favour of massive lumbering disappointments. there were other remarkable technological developments in the following decades, but they had little to do with high-speed or long-distance travel; instead, they concerned communication and computation. and even there, developments have not produced the conscious computers with which the science fiction writers of the 1960s equipped their interstellar spaceships. sadly, we still do not have robots that can gain consciousness and take over the world. thomas kuhn argued compellingly that science does not proceed in a smooth accumulation of knowledge, but in a series of step changes, or “paradigm shifts” (bird, 2000; kuhn, 1962, 1977). there is a lot more to this much-abused notion, but what matters here is that the model of continued there is another, perhaps deeper, reason for why many researchers get the wrong answer: an underlying lack of appreciation of the nature of change in the world of ideas—including technological ideas. global t h e t h i n k e r52 global and accelerating development is not one that we generally see in knowledge acquisition. even before science, the scholastics famously developed aristotelian and christian thought for centuries; and, while they certainly made intellectual innovations, the basic f ramework was not challenged until the renaissance and the enlightenment. newton upset the apple cart of aristotelian physics, and einstein did the same for newtonian physics, but there was not a steady growth of innovation between the two. medicine, after years of f rustrating curative impotence, went through a step-change in effectiveness in the twentieth-century, which saw it come to grips with infectious diseases – then mount a new plateau, returning to a shallow trajectory of incremental improvements. of the top ten causes of death in 1900, six remained in 1998, and the number of deaths per 100  000 had risen in several of these (rockett, 1999, p.8). it is therefore a mistake to see physics, medicine, or any of our other great human achievements as an accelerating, cumulative curve. the projection of sharp recent upward trends has always been a tempting method of predicting the socio-political future, but has never yet proved successful, because of the stepped nature of progress. the real value of the 4ir i want to finish by talking about what i find valuable about the 4ir story. as executive dean of humanities at uj, i’ve been extremely active at “readying” the faculty for the 4ir. in particular, i’ve pushed a complete overhaul of the undergraduate offering. where we offered 13 degree programmes with a further four specialisations, we now have an interdisciplinary ba, to be rolled out in 2020. we’ve reduced lecture time, increased small group contact, and trained our entire faculty in blended delivery and contemporary pedagogy. we’re moving away f rom traditional assessment practices in many cases. it’s the biggest change the faculty’s teaching offering has ever gone through, and it’s all related to the “4ir”. i mention this to prove that i’m not a luddite. i welcome the conversation about the 4ir when it’s done well, as a call for thinking carefully and openly about the future. especially for af rica, there’s huge value in the call to look outwards and forwards, to reorganise workplaces and bureaucracies, and to train different skills. these are valuable messages for an isolated region, mired in its past. i don’t see the 4ir story as an entirely benign fiction, because many commentators go beyond contingency planning and make fantastical assertions about what will happen, which i then worry may become the basis of terrible decisions. my worry about the 4ir is that it may influence the making of specific decisions on an inadequate basis: in policy, investment, curriculum design, and many other areas of collective decisionmaking. there is no doubt that change is occurring (indeed, occurring is change’s favourite pastime), and there’s a need for af rica in particular to wake up and respond. af rica tends to be isolated, forgotten, ignored, inward-looking; it tends to be mired in its past and to lack clear, realistic hopes for its future and plans for how to get there. the 4ir discussion is a wonderful wake-up call for this region. my worry is related to the specifics. we must not start building a future based on fiction, even science fiction. we cannot design curricula to teach inaccurate soundbites. most importantly, if we’re to teach critical thinking, we must imbue the entire 4ir ethos with that approach. my hope is that this article will encourage a dose of healthy scepticism, giving rise to reflective pause before basing decisions on bold predictions. ■ references bird, a. (2000). thomas kuhn. london: acumen. broadbent, a. (2011). what could possibly go wrong? a heuristic for predicting population health outcomes of interventions. preventive medicine, 53(4–5), 256–259. kuhn, t. s. (1962). the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: the university of chicago press. kuhn, t. s. (1977). the essential tension: selected studies in scientific tradition and change. chicago and london: university of chicago press. porter, r. (1990). english society in the eighteenth century (2nd ed.). london, england; new york, usa: penguin books. rockett, r. h. (1999). population and health: an introduction to epidemiology. population bulletin, 54(4), 1–44. schwab, k. (2016). the fourth industrial revolution. london: penguin uk. tetlock, p. (2005). expert political judgement how good is it? how can we know? princeton and oxford: princeton university press. tetlock, p. e., & gardner, d. (2015). superforecasting : the art and science of prediction. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781107415324.004 i don’t see the 4ir story as an entirely benign fiction, because many commentators go beyond contingency planning and make fantastical assertions about what will happen, which i then worry may become the basis of terrible decisions. t h e t h i n k e r24 pan-african in 2016, klaus schwab – founder and executive chairman of the world economic forum (wef) – introduced a term that would have significant consequences for global politics, economics, science, and the way in which the world is organised. the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), according to schwab’s book by the same title, would be different in scale, scope and complexity f rom any that the world had seen before. this fusion of advances in complex technologies, including but not limited to robotics, quantum computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence (ai) and the internet of things (iot), would affect all disciplines and industries of the modern world. it would reconstruct space, economies, governments and even challenge existing ideas about what it means to be human (schwab, 2016). the world was excited, and both developed and developing countries were swept into the f renzy. south af rica became deeply invested in cementing itself at the centre of this revolution, with government and the private sector dedicating over r30 billion to research and development (department of science and technology, 2017). but while discourses on the 4ir are locked in the domain of politicians and captains of industry, its consequences extend to ordinary workingclass people in our country. for this reason, it is crucial that these ordinary people be centred in this discourse, not as mere spectators, but as participants in a revolution that could, if not well managed, leave a vast majority of the largely poor working-class population behind. using a black feminist philosophical perspective, this essay aims to analyse the ways in which the 4ir could perpetuate existing patterns another industrial revolution leaving black women behind? the fourth industrial revolution by malaika mahlatsi 25v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african of racialised and gendered inequality. the essay demonstrates how the failure to meaningfully transform education and the segmented labour market will set parameters for an industrial revolution of the elite. it contends that the digital inequality paradox must be resolved through the redress of systematic challenges conf ronting our democratic dispensation so that, ultimately, black women are not alienated f rom these inevitable technological developments. industrial revolutions as processes of workingclass exploitation like all preceding industrial revolutions, the 4ir transcends industry, science, technology and economics. while prevailing discourse presents them as isolated, these fields are interdependent structures that evolved historically. this necessitates that we engage the 4ir as both an industrial and an ideological revolution. fundamental to understanding the importance of grounding discourse on the 4ir in ideological analysis is an appreciation of the historical developments that have led us to this revolution. as such, my starting point is to trace a barometer of the industrial revolutions that have occurred throughout history, in order to situate the 4ir within a broader ideological context. linked to this, i want to demonstrate how industrial revolutions have, throughout history, involved working-class exploitation and oppression. this is done in order to contextualise the salient argument of this essay: that the 4ir could potentially perpetuate inequalities and further disenf ranchise the poor working-class majority across the world. the foundational industrial revolution, referred to as the first industrial revolution, was characterised by a change from an agrarian economy to an economy based on industry and machine manufacturing. this process started in britain in the late 18th century, before spreading to other parts of western europe and the world. the feature of this revolution was not only technological, but also socio-economic and political. the technological changes that included the use of new basic materials and the invention of new machines impacted the sociology of work. the increased production that led to decreased expenditure of human energy resulted in the development of the factory system that led to the specialisation of functions and the division of labour. this marked the early stages of global capitalism and, simultaneously, laid parameters for colonialism. the link between the first industrial revolution and colonialism is pronounced. the increasing application of science and technology to industry enabled the mass production of manufactured goods. but the manufacturing of goods at this scale needed a huge supply of raw materials and natural resources. the acquisition of these was facilitated through the conquering of countries that were rich with minerals and natural resources – a significant amount of which are located on the af rican and south american continents. these are parts of the world that were systematically underdeveloped, and which today we refer to as developing countries. while colonised countries in af rica and south america were used as large agricultural factories to feed the growing populations of industrialising countries, western europe itself was experiencing a decline in land as a source of wealth in the face of rising industrial production and international trade. the modern phenomenon of urbanisation gestated during this period as new cities were established in industrial and manufacturing nerve centres such as manchester in the united kingdom. this rapid urbanisation had implications not only for the urban landscape, but for the very nature of work in the newly developed industries. as more factories were built, the demand for labour grew. with the decline of the agricultural economy and migration into urban spaces, there was a long line of people, many of them unskilled, willing to do the difficult work. working conditions in these factories were appalling. according to the literature, factories were a health hazard characterised by overcrowding and dilapidated inf rastructure. but another feature of modern capitalism had begun to emerge: the it contends that the digital inequality paradox must be resolved through the redress of systematic challenges confronting our democratic dispensation so that, ultimately, black women are not alienated from these inevitable technological developments. t h e t h i n k e r26 pan-african super-exploitation of workers by those owning the means of production. not only were workers underpaid, but the exploited labour also included children (humphries, 2010). additionally, women received even less wages than men – a feature of the capitalist labour market that exists to this day. the second industrial revolution was not radically different in its exploitation of both working class people and natural resources. beginning in the 19th century, this revolution was also characterised by a modern industry that exploited natural and synthetic resources. a key characteristic of this revolution was the development of new energy sources. it was in the second industrial revolution that we saw an expansion of electricity, steel and petroleum. with this came radical developments and technological innovations that set parameters for the massification of international trade as we know it. but where the first industrial revolution led to precarious employment, the second saw increased levels of unemployment as machines began to replace workers and other forms of fixed capital become antediluvian. this happened alongside rising levels of hunger as cash crops replaced traditional crops grown for subsistence. exploitation in the second industrial revolution became grander in scale and, in many significant ways, it was this revolution that cemented the march of imperialism. m shahid alam, professor of economics at northeastern university, contends in his study on colonialism and industrialisation that imperialist policies in colonised and dependent countries, largely in africa and latin america, worked to concentrate gains from export growth in the hands of foreign factors (1998). this is to say, the underdevelopment of colonised nations was facilitated by european imperial superpowers who repatriated incomes generated from exports of the raw materials of colonised countries to the metropoles. this underdevelopment of african and other countries had devastating effects on women. several studies of women’s work during this colonial and imperial period, including the seminal work of iris berger, demonstrate that the introduction of cash crops led to women losing economic autonomy (2003). in addition to this, the exclusion of women f rom the global market ensured that international commerce completely benefitted men, who beyond having an unfair footing in this labour and business market, were also able to rely on the unremunerated labour of women. this was especially pronounced in af rican societies where gender relations had shifted to reflect the heteronormative patriarchal power relations imposed by the european patriarchal division of labour that were imposed on their own often patriarchal systems. like the revolutions that preceded it, the third industrial revolution, also known as the digital revolution, impacted not just the labour market and global economies, but the social and political constructs of our society. the digitisation of manufacturing and other industries set parameters for a monumental shift in the very nature of the global economy, and south af rica was not left untouched. by the mid-1990s, it was becoming evident that the country’s economy was transitioning f rom being industry-based to being knowledge-based, and that this was having a great impact on the already segmented and gendered labour market. the evolution of information communications technologies (ict) in south af rica, a key feature of the third industrial revolution, has been steady and – to a great degree – on par with the rest of the developing world. computers were introduced as far back as 1921, and the internet was introduced in 1991. but this progress has occurred within the context of heightened inequalities and discrepancies at the level of development between sectors in the economy. access to information remains a great impediment – according to statista, south af rica had an internet penetration rate of just 54 percent by january 2019 (clement, 2019). a study done months prior, by the same institution, found that men made up over 50 percent of internet users in the country (clement, 2018). when we factor in the racialised patterns of income in south af rica, we can deduce that f rom the overall lower percentage of women who have having determined that industrial revolutions have, throughout history, left women (particularly african women) behind, we must necessarily reflect deeply on whether the 4ir can re-write this narrative. but we must do this contextually, 27v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african access to the internet, black women constitute the minority. the 4ir in racist south africa having determined that industrial revolutions have, throughout history, left women (particularly af rican women) behind, we must necessarily reflect deeply on whether the 4ir can re-write this narrative. but we must do this contextually, for we cannot hope to pose a view without an appreciation of the point of view. this is to say, the f rame is a type of context, and so in f raming discourse around the 4ir in south af rica, we must have a deep appreciation of the country’s history and the prevailing material conditions that shape its contemporary realities. the history of south af rica, like the history of all colonised nations, is a history of dispossession, dehumanisation and de-civilisation. it is a history of colonial conquest and imperial devastation, at the heart of which was the segregation of people. this was done through the instituting of legislation that set parameters for separate development – leading to the further disenf ranchisement of the majority of the country’s population. the impact of this history on the institutionalisation of poverty and underdevelopment in the post-apartheid dispensation is well documented. for the purpose of this essay, however, there are two specific legacies of this history that necessitate critical engagement in the context of the 4ir. the first is the segmented labour market and the second is the inequalities in higher education. the south african labour market is reflective of our apartheid past, where white men and women enjoyed preferential employment, while black men and women were at the bottom of the ladder, both in terms of the remunerative scale and prospects for upward mobility. according to stats sa, the wage gap between south africa’s racial groups has been on the increase in the democratic dispensation. not only do black households have the highest rate of unemployment, they also earn the lowest wages. in addition to this, on average, white people earn three times more than their black counterparts – even with the same level of qualifications, for the same jobs. white people also have the highest annual median expenditure – ten times higher than that of black south africans (stats sa, 2019). but the inequalities are not just racialised, they are also gendered. the same report by stats sa indicates that women earn around 30 percent less on average than men, and that their share of income is significantly lower than that of men, despite them being a demographic majority, at just over 51 percent of the total population. in the technology industry, men are paid 22.9 percent more, and 21.8 percent more in the financial sector.  importantly, the report also found that black people have the lowest levels of access to the internet and health insurance cover (stats sa, 2019). these racialised and gendered inequalities in the labour market are a microcosm of the broader inequalities that black women in particular must negotiate. they express themselves in education as well. according to a recent report, while south af rican women outnumber men by a ratio of 3:2 at post-secondary level, women are less likely to enrol for higher degrees. additionally, while universities admit more women than men at undergraduate level, there are more men at masters and doctoral level than women (department of women, youth and persons with disabilities, 2015). but it does not end here. according to a study conducted by the audit firm pricewaterhousecoopers (pwc), the proportion of men to women who graduate with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) related degrees is astounding. the ratio of representation in maths and statistics is 4:5, in ict and technology it stands at 2:5, while in engineering, manufacturing and construction it stands at a low 3:10 (pricewaterhousecoopers, 2018). the numbers are debilitating when it comes to black women, who account for less than 30 percent of women stem graduates. these disciplines are crucial to the economy of the 4ir, and so the realities of the racialised labour market and the inequalities in higher education have great implications for women, particularly black women. if higher education is not producing the graduates needed to compete in this revolution, and the labour market is not promoting or remunerating black women adequately, then the 4ir, like those before it, will leave black women behind. what is to be done? the starting point for centring black women in the march towards the 4ir is to ensure the protection of industries that are dominated t h e t h i n k e r28 by women, as these are the biggest victims of automation and mechanisation. these include the retail and hospitality sectors, as well as the agricultural sector in af rica. while we cannot halt the march of time and technological developments, and therefore must accept that some jobs will be rendered obsolete by the advanced technologies of the 4ir, our government must make concrete choices about regulations to protect worker’s rights. companies must be compelled, legislatively, to contribute to social protection, so that workers are not reduced to a state of vulnerability. in addition to this, companies must be encouraged to equip their workers with skills that can be marketable and useful in the 4ir economy. as argued, the 4ir is not just about industry and economics, it is also ideological. as such, the solution to the potential crisis of the 4ir leaving black women behind lies in the transformation and decolonisation of higher education. institutions such as the national research foundation (nrf) and other funding bodies must develop genderbiased quotas in terms of post-graduate funding, to ensure that black women in particular are given the needed financial and academic support to excel. the ways in which knowledge is created in the age of the 4ir must also change. in this regard, we must look to solutions as provided by such scholars as professor tshilidzi marwala, who has introduced an af rican module in artificial intelligence at the university of johannesburg, in order to develop solutions to af rican problems using technology that recognises the phenotypes and languages of af rican people (molele, 2019). this is an example of the decolonisation of technology, and it must be at the centre of efforts to include black women in the 4ir. but it is not higher education alone that requires transformation. 4ir technologies must also be transformed. joy buolamwini, a researcher at massachusetts institute of technology (mit) media lab, discovered that facial recognition technology does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and as a result established the algorithmic justice league to advocate for more humane uses of technology and to call for legislation to protect against racial bias in algorithms. work of this nature must be supported, and scientists must be encouraged to approach science with a conscience and a moral obligation to fashion a higher civilisation. in addition to this, the department of labour must aim not at the reduction but rather at the criminalisation of the gender and racial pay gap. like the european country of iceland, paying men more than women must be made illegal, and companies who continue the practice must be heavily fined or forced out of business. this is the only way in which capital can be held accountable for its continued facilitation of income inequality. ultimately, we must fashion a 4ir that bestows upon the historically marginalised and disenf ranchised women of south af rica the greatest gift possible: a more human face. ■ references alam, s, m. (1998). colonialism and industrialization: empirical results. mpra paper no. 37866. berger, i. (2003). af rican women’s history: themes and perspectives. journal of colonialism and colonial history (2)1. clement, j. (2019). digital population in south af rica as of january 2019. statista [online]. available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/685134/ south-af rica-digital-population/ [accessed 25 dec. 2019] clement, j. (2018). distribution of internet users in south af rica as of march 2017, by gender. statista [online]. available at: https://www.statista.com/ statistics/253490/distribution-of-internet-users-in-south-af rica-bygender/ [accessed 25 dec. 2019] department of science and technology, in partnership with stats sa and the human sciences research council, (2017). south af rican national survey of research and experimental development statistical report 2015/16. south af rican government [online]. available at: https://www. gov.za/documents/south-af rican-national-survey-research-andexperimental-development-statistical-report. department of women, youth and persons with disabilities, (2015). the status of women in the south af rican economy. pretoria: government printing. humphries, j. (2010). childhood and child labour in the british industrial revolution. cambridge: cambridge university press. molele, c. (2019). uj’s marwala jets for innovation through decolonisation in higher education. inside education [online]. available at: https:// insideeducation.co.za/ujs-marwala-jets-for-innovation-throughdecolonization-in-higher-education/ pricewaterhousecoopers, (2018). women remain under-represented in emerging tech. pricewaterhousecoopers [online]. available at: https:// www.pwc.co.za/en/press-room/changing-gender-perceptions-andbehaviours-in-the-workplace.html schwab, k. (2016). the fourth industrial revolution. london: penguin uk. stats sa (2019). inequality trends in south af rica: a multidimensional diagnostic of inequality. report no. 03-10-19. pretoria: department of statistics. pan-african as argued, the 4ir is not just about industry and economics, it is also ideological. as such, the solution to the potential crisis of the 4ir leaving black women behind lies in the transformation and decolonisation of higher education. 10 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion background i have a beautiful painting of oliver tambo and olof palme in my off ice. every day, i look into the eyes of these humanitarian role models. i see a pair of committed leaders sharing hopes, commitments, and respect for one another and other human beings. i see their eyes telling me the story of a unique relationship between south af rica and sweden, one of trust and shared common values. how did two nations, separated by more than just geography, build such a strong bond in the beginning of the 1960s? sweden was at that stage an industrialised, prosperous, and stable country with many years of economic growth and progress, while south af rica was a repressive apartheid state where the people suffered. a unique aspect of the relationship was that it was driven by the unique people of each of these nations, with a realisation that their common goals could not be reached in isolation but through an interconnectedness that moved mountains and split oceans apart, joining our two nations for endless opportunities, for years to come. by håkan juholt, ambassador of sweden to south africa south africa and sweden: a story of solidarity, trust, and shared common values 11v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion up to the 1950s: flourishing positive relations contact and relations between south af rica and sweden date far back. for centuries, south af rica was considered one of the major emigration destinations for many swedes. since the mid-17th century, various swedes have emigrated to south af rica, with a majority opting to settle in the cape area. they were later followed by others, including sailors, explorers and, f rom the late 19th century, mainly gold and diamond miners. many immigrants came with considerable industrial and entrepreneurial skills and experience, which led to the inception of new commercial enterprises and flourishing trade activities. in 1948, swedish export to south af rica amounted to 2,3% of total exports, the third highest outside of europe. south af rica’s export to sweden was also considerable, mainly regarding agricultural produce. the exchange between the two countries was substantial and differed in outcome. the fact that the majority of south af ricans were living under severe impoverished conditions, and that f rom 1948 onwards they were living under an apartheid regime, was seldom raised. diplomatic relations continued to flourish, and the major interests were geared towards promoting further links, not least when it came to commerce and culture. increased awareness and solidarity with more f requent contact and exposure, the knowledge about the situation for the majority of the people in south af rica grew. the concerning situation became even more obvious after the introduction of apartheid rules. a number of individuals and an increasing number of communities within the swedish public reacted. by the end of the 1950s, the image of south af rica had changed dramatically. the growing interest about developments in south af rica put pressure on the leaders in the rest of the world, including sweden, to react. organisations and individuals wanted to contribute and presented ideas on how sweden and swedes could support change for the people of south af rica. the swedish trade union raised the issue of a consumer boycott. this was, together with consumer organisations, implemented in early 1960. in 1987, as a young man in my hometown, oskarshamn, a municipal council debate about the trade embargoes against south af rica ensued. where many argued that this should be dealt with in the government level, i was one of those who pushed for local municipalities and civilians to take part in the boycotts. most significantly, we were successful in the boycott of wine and f ruit imports with notable impact. later i was informed that it was cyril ramaphosa, today the president of south af rica, who had asked the world to take these measures. in my hometown, i recall that we were most successful in the boycotting of shell gas and oil consumption where we picketed at all the stations and convinced customers to choose alternative fuel suppliers. i’m still convinced that moral responsibility cannot be handed over to someone else, it must be carried with each one of us at every moment. the first financial contribution f rom sweden towards the fight against apartheid was made in 1959 by the trade unions and consumer organisations, with support f rom leading liberals and social democrats forming the fund for the victims of racial oppression. shortly thereafter, another body was formed which became, in my view, the most important group for increased support to the anti-apartheid movement: the sweden south af rica committee’ (ssak, later the isolate south af rica committee). under this umbrella, hundreds of organisations f rom different sectors of the swedish society became involved, all with the desire to support the elimination of apartheid. the movement was registered and active in 178 different locations in sweden, a dispersion that few, if any, organisations have since achieved. visits to sweden by leading anti-apartheid activists became more and more f requent. the anc leader oliver tambo was a f requent guest and participated in various demonstrations. he became politically and personally close to olof palme, who later became sweden’s prime minister. this special f riendship reinforced the long-standing relationship that the two countries share today. late south af rican ambassadors billy modise and lindiwe mabuza were both posted in sweden during parts of their leadership tenures within the anc and remained f riends of sweden. they are reminders of the special relationship between our very distant countries, and they were both decorated with the royal order of the 12 polar star for their services to sweden and for raising awareness among swedes about the injustices of the apartheid regime ravaging their country. direct humanitarian support to the struggle against apartheid in the early 1960s, south af rica was a priority for many swedes. swedish foreign policy was geared towards the condemnation of apartheid and support for the liberation struggle. many swedes at this time knew more about south af rica than about their neighbouring countries. at the un, the swedish government was at the foref ront of initiating and supporting resolutions condemning the apartheid system. the foreign policy stand was to support the liberation movement (the anc) and activities with the aim of dismantling the apartheid system, isolating, and placing sanctions on the regime, as well as providing support for the f rontline states surrounding the country. a fundamental and ‘sacred’ criterion was that the swedish support had to be humanitarian. swedish funds were not to be used for military purposes. the first direct contribution to liberation movements in southern af rica began in 1969. a consultative committee on humanitarian affairs (ccha) was created as a forum to discuss and decide upon swedish support to southern af rica. in the years to come, it became the most important organisation for decision making regarding assistance. it was composed of high-level representatives f rom sida, the foreign ministry, political parties, civil society organisations and a few engaged individuals. its meetings were strictly confidential. during its years, ccha took decisions amounting to 4 billion swedish kronor (today almost 400 million usd) out of which 2,5 billion was channelled to south af rica and 900 million directly to the anc. massive humanitarian support based on trust. the historic decision to commence with support for the liberation movement in sovereign states was possible only because it was strongly supported by almost all sectors of swedish society. everyone, f rom political leaders to the public, engaged in a multitude of organisations that shared the wish to contribute to liberating south af rica. the first direct contribution to the anc came in 1972/73 and consisted of 35 000 swedish kronor (sek). the contributions increased substantially and reached 135 million sek in 1993/94. what must be emphasised is that the strong support was based upon the warm f riendship between the then-swedish prime minister olof palme and the then-anc president oliver tambo, which developed during this time. so how were the funds used? initially, the allocation was made to cater for what was called ‘daily necessities’ for anc refugees in neighbouring countries. after the soweto uprising in 1976, the number of political refugees surged. i have heard recollections of diplomats serving in the swedish embassy in lusaka f rom 1987–91 talking about the legendary treasurer general of the anc, thomas nkobi, arriving at the embassy every quarter with plastic bags full of receipts of expenditures showing how the swedish funds had been used. the scope of the cooperation increased and was used for anc office expenses, information campaigns including supporting radio freedom, agricultural projects, and schools (solomon mahlangu freedom college in morogoro, tanzania). what was most confidential and not revealed until after the apartheid system was abolished was that roughly 30% of the allocation was set aside for the budget item ‘the homef ront activities’, which were the anc’s humanitarian activities within south af rica. a consultative committee on humanitarian affairs (ccha) was created as a forum to discuss and decide upon swedish support to southern africa. in the years to come, it became the most important organisation for decision making regarding assistance. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion 13 every year, formal consultations between sweden and the anc took place: with thomas nkobi often leading the anc, and a high-ranking official f rom either sida or the foreign ministry representing sweden. the situation inside south af rica, as well as the anc’s and sweden’s activities with relevance to the struggle for the removal of apartheid, were discussed. the use of the allocations was presented in written form (except for the ‘homef ront’, which was only orally disclosed). sweden’s financial support of the anc ended in 1993, when the anc, in line with the swedish definition, became a political party (and hence no longer a liberation movement). more clandestine support the direct support to the anc’s civil activities was a small part of the swedish support under the heading ‘humanitarian assistance to victims of and opponents to the apartheid regime.’ part of the funds were also distributed to international organisations, such as idaf and different un agencies. a large part of the assistance was channelled through a complicated and creative scheme based on trust, devotion, and a touch of diplomatic and legal shrewdness. a great number of swedish organisations were involved, and an even greater number of south af ricans received the contributions. tor sellström – diplomat, researcher, and esteemed author of publications including sweden and national liberation in southern af rica – estimated that more than 180 south af rican organisations received swedish aid f rom the late 1960s to 1993/1994. when the united democratic front (udf) was formed in 1983, a considerable part of the increased support was channelled to and through udf. a system so strongly relying on trust was at risk of misuse. the charismatic leader, udf-founder and clergyman allan boesak, was accused of intercepting scandinavian funds meant for the poor and sentenced to prison, but subsequently received a presidential pardon a year later. political, trade, and cultural anti-apartheid activities with the historical united support involving a large part of the extensive swedish civil society, other forms of support were initiated as well. under olof palme’s leadership, sweden was a clear voice, not seldom condemning all forms of oppression. at the un scene, sweden was very active in presenting different forms of actions, not least un-resolutions. in our diplomatic work, the issue of apartheid was high on the agenda in our deliberations with other countries. the broad anti-apartheid movement increased their plea for isolation in the late 1970s and demands were high to impose sanctions. a first act of swedish legislation regulating trade with south af rica was introduced in 1979. later, after severe pressure f rom the swedish public, the umbrella organisation isolate south af rica committee (isak) demanded tighter legislation. a total embargo on trade with south af rica (and namibia) was passed by the swedish parliament in 1987. the trade between the two countries plummeted f rom 1,5 billion sek in 1984 to 41 million sek in 1988. a good example of the swedish solidarity with and backing of the anti-apartheid movement was ‘the gala for the anc’, in which twenty of the swedish leading popular musicians of the time came together in november 1985 in a major exhibition for the anc in sweden. later, in 1987, most of them joined together once again and performed in zambia and zimbabwe in what was called the ‘frontline rock tour’. in february 1986, the ‘people’s parliament against apartheid’ was organised in stockholm, with important international attendance. one week later, palme was assassinated. when his f riend oliver tambo in 1989 suffered f rom ‘cerebral haemorrhage’, sweden organised for him to be treated in sweden. after his release f rom prison, nelson mandela made his first trip outside of af rica to sweden to visit his old f riend tambo at the hospital in sweden, while also showing his gratitude to sweden’s support and contribution to the struggle. post-1994: new challenges, supporting one another to build a better tomorrow it was obvious that the relation and cooperation between the two nations had to be transformed due to the fundamental changes brought by south af rica’s first democratic elections. the unique financial support for the anti-apartheid movement was transformed into a more traditional kind of development assistance. the aim was to contribute v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion 14 to improving economic conditions for the poor, especially due to the structural disadvantages established during apartheid, to develop the young democracy, and to assist in state building. the assistance was f rom the outset designed to be finite and the official development cooperation with south af rica ceased in 2013. sweden has, however, recently relocated a team managing the regional sexual and reproductive health and rights strategy (srhr) as well as a hub working on democracy and human rights in the region. a new government strategy for support to srhr in the region was decided last year, covering the period 2022–2026, and amounting to about 3.5 billion sek, equivalent to 314m usd. through sida, and the 57 msud regional eastern and southern af rica 2gether4srhr joint un programme partnership, a total investment of about 871 264 usd has been made in south af rica. priorities have included strengthening the integration of hiv, srhr, and gbv services in recent years. through the programme, sweden also contributed 440 000 zar towards the budget for the presidential gender based violence and femicide summit in 2022. the total support f rom sida which has flowed directly to south af rica through a variety of partnerships and programs amounted to over 20m usd in 2020. the sanctions were removed in 1993 and the trade started to increase. in 2021, trade between our two countries amounted to over 900m usd. the political contacts were maintained, and mutual state visits took place. however, the intensity diminished during president zuma’s time in power. a political vehicle aimed at deepening and expanding the links between our two countries was introduced by president mbeki and prime minister persson in 1999, constituting of a bilateral commission (bnc) at the vice-presidential level. the bnc is intended to meet every second year. lately, however, the f requency of these meetings has been affected by the covid-19 pandemic. this has not stopped our countries f rom working to support one another and collaborate on several other levels. south af rica, as a unique and attractive country, has continued to attract around 100 swedish commercial ventures, including but most certainly not limited to scania, saab, h&m, polarium, and – recently inaugurated by president ramaphosa – sandvik. we have a trade commission, business sweden, stationed in the country to facilitate trade and investment between the two countries and the region, with many exciting collaborations and possibilities envisioned in the sectors of innovation and technology, city twinning, climate and environment, manufacturing, and more. education can never be taken f rom an individual once they have received it. this is a shared sentiment between sweden and president nelson mandela. we recently, together with nine other embassies across af rica, and the liliesleaf foundation, again with the support f rom the swedish institute, launched a project on sweden’s links to various liberation struggles across af rica, highlighting the value of international solidarity and activism in the fight for f reedom. this was launched in the form of an interactive website, aimed at inspiring young people to learn about the challenges of the past as a context for addressing their current challenges as the leaders of tomorrow. we also have the greatest collaboration between our two countries recently renewed in the form of the south africa sweden university forum. sasuf is a transformative project uniting 40 universities from across sweden and south africa, bringing together leading researchers, teachers, students, university leaders, and other stakeholders to develop joint solutions to the challenges posed by the un sustainable development goals (sdgs) and agenda 2030. our shared common values can be seen in the years of policy promotion activities and values-based promotion. the ongoing work toward a gender equal society has encouraged us to run campaigns together with local partners in events and discussions like ‘swedish south af rican dads’, an exhibition inspired by the value that fathers have found in taking extended parental leave (480 days for both parents) available to them in sweden, to care for their children and take a more active role in unpaid care work. during this period, south af rica also passed the legislation to increase paternity leave f rom 3 days to 10 days, marking a significant milestone. culturally, sweden has continued to honour the legacy of the freedom fighters of the previous generation, while also providing platforms to engage with the leaders and influencers of the future. among several cultural exchanges and grants for young practitioners, including the ngo hear my voice, south t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion 15 af rica was also recently welcomed as the guest of honour to scandinavia’s largest cultural gathering: the gothenburg book fair, also honouring ambassador lindiwe mabuza and tor sellström. we have so much in common and we need to all have the mutual interest to protect and develop our shared values. most importantly, we cannot work in silos. we need to meet, share experiences, knowledge, challenges and continue to show one another mutual respect to continue to achieve the goals we are working towards on so many levels. so, what are our shared common values which need to be strengthened 35 years after the untimely death of olof palme? some significant priorities i have identified include: the need for social dialogue in the workplace for the just transition agenda, women, peace and security, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and a multilevel focus on the effects of climate change on our environment. how do we achieve these and other important priorities? we must focus on inclusion and the building of good relationships between civil society, trade unions, private sector, sport, culture, academia and government through continuous dialogue and bond-building. because, i still see it every day in the eyes of those two heroes on my wall: our unique resource, where their dreams truly can be our reality, are the relations between the people of our nations built on a foundation, long ago, of solidarity, trust, and common values. many of the facts in this article are based upon the two volumes by tor sellström, sweden and national liberation of southern af rica. tor, regrettably, passed away in august 2022. rip. v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion t h e t h i n k e r8 international for zpra the battle of wankie was understandably the watershed in the history of zimbabwe and south africa's armed liberation struggles. the luthuli detachment’s indomitable fighters proved the lie of the invincibility of the rhodesian and south african racist and apartheid regimes. by dumiso dabengwa © s hu tt er st oc k. co m the 1967 wankie and 1968 sipolilo campaigns the impeccable zapu and anc alliance in retrospect 9v o l u m e 8 0 / 2 0 1 9 international the delay of more than four decades before telling our nations about the zimbabwe people’s revolutionary army (zpra)’s version of the armed struggle in zimbabwe’s war of liberation has not been deliberate. but the politics in play since 1980 have been to blame. as the war combatants of 1962 – 79 are getting reduced in number as a result of natural wastage and memory loss, the necessity to record their story now cannot be over emphasised. the million rand question that you as readers out there may want to ask is “why did anc cadres from umkhonto we sizwe (mk) die alongside zapu’s zpra cadres between 1967 and 1979 in the zimbabwe war of liberation?” my major focus will delve on the impeccable zapu and anc alliance in retrospect; the 1967 wankie and 1968 sipolilo joint campaigns. early zpra inland rhodesia operations between 1965 and 1966 had specific, intelligence missions defined by reconnaissance and military hardware logistics personnel. apartheid south africa had sought to enter zambian territory under the pretext of miners destined to the zambia copper belt mining towns, gathering information that would be relayed back to rsa in collaboration with rhodesia for military incursions. it became necessary that the zapu and anc forces worked together to dismantle colonial rhodesia’s impunity that was supported by apartheid rsa. anc type chapters in southern rhodesia, northern rhodesia and nyasaland had been established in the 1950s. these chapters were banned in 1959. in the end, the ndp was formed in 1960 and facilitated the anc cadres who came through rhodesia to cross the border into zambia. later, in 1962, when zapu decided to engage in the armed struggle, it established an external office in zambia. by this time, the anc had already established an office in lusaka. as a result of the relationship of both parties, the heads of the military wings of zapu and anc realised the need to engage each other. first they held a number of exploratory meetings where they discussed their strategies. the zpra (then known as the zapu military wing) was represented by its commander akim ndlovu and chief of reconnaissance dumiso dabengwa, plus, whenever necessary, by other relevant command staff. the anc military wing mk (umkhonto we sizwe) was represented by its commander joe modise, chris hani, zola zembe plus others in the command structure where necessary. during these interactions, the anc explained its main obstacles in the deployment of its cadres for operations in south africa. they told of their limited choice through botswana and how in most cases their cadres were intercepted by police, arrested and sent to prison before they were deported back to zambia. zpra on the other hand felt uncomfortable about the extent of this co-operation, taking into consideration that their military wing had only been established in 1965 and had started with small scale deployments into rhodesia. they were still testing the ground as it were. on the other hand, mk had been on the ground for some time. however, their cadres at the holding camps in tanzania were growing weary of waiting to be deployed. this posed a big headache for mk as they were expected to come up with some significant movement or face a revolt in their holding camps. the main topic therefore became the need for cooperation between the two military wings to use zimbabwe instead of botswana for significant deployment of their cadres. it was then recommended that the leadership of the two parties be briefed before they could be any concrete suggestions on the extent of the cooperation. after each side had briefed its party leadership, the leaders approved the idea and suggested that the military should come up with firm proposals on how they would implement this cooperation. at this stage the two commanders then set out to establish relevant sub-committees to plan and submit their recommendations. the sub-committees made their reports which included a full operations plan with the wankie and sipolilo campaigns earmarked to kick-start the cooperation. this operations report was later presented to a combined meeting of the two organisations and their military wings. in this meeting the anc was represented by oliver r tambo and thomas nkobi while zapu was represented by james r chikerema and jason z moyo. at the end of this meeting the military wings were given the go ahead to work out the details of this implementation and to report back to another combined meeting. all the relevant military departments such as reconnaissance, logistics, training and operations were assigned to study their roles and ensure that they would fit into the broad operational plans of the two campaigns. initially, it had been suggested to undertake the two campaigns simultaneously through wankie and sipolilo; but later on account of logistical problems, it was agreed to start with wankie. the wankie campaign reconnaissance, logistics, operations and training departments all went into overdrive to achieve their targeted date of august 1967. the choice of selecting a crossing point at the zambezi river gorge area, about ten kilometres from victoria falls entailed complications: • climbing down the 90 metre distance by rope to the river. • using three available canoes capable of carrying only two passengers. • climbing up another 90 metre distance by rope onto the rhodesian side. this issue was debated at length but the main topic therefore became the need for cooperation between the two military wings to use zimbabwe instead of botswana for significant deployment of their cadres. t h e t h i n k e r10 the reconnaissance team would not be drawn to find another alternative. the operation strategy entailed that within one week after crossing, two zpra sections (6 to 8 men) would separate from the detachment with one to deploy permanently in the wankie district and the other in lupane district. these would remain springboards to provide support for future campaigns. similarly, when the detachment reached southern matabeleland another two zpra sections would support the mk cadres to cross the limpopo and stay behind to redeploy in the matopo and gwanda south districts. for the wankie operations the luthuli detachment was led by john dube (sotsha ngwenya) deputised by chris hani as the commissar. in spite of some setbacks, the final combined meeting of the two parties and the military commanders approved august as the crossing date. august 1, the setting down of the sun signalled the d-day for the luthuli detachment. or tambo was there to raise the flag for the crossing to go ahead. it took the whole night to cross about half the detachment of three platoons. at daybreak, everyone on both sides of the river had to take cover and rest until nightfall the following day. on the following day, crossing resumed at night until early hours of the morning. once the entire detachment had crossed, they were guided towards the main victoria falls to wankie road by a few cadres selected from the reconnaissance team. as soon as they cleared from the rhodesian side of the bank, two old men from matetsi village, as arranged, drove a large flock of goats to cover the footprints of the detachment. the two zpra sections were allowed to separate for deployment in the wankie and lupane areas. meanwhile the detachment proceeded and encamped in the inyantuwe area on 12 august. the following day on the 13th, they had their first encounter with the rhodesian forces, comprising a platoon made up of bsap and rar. after inyantuwe, they had a number of other major battles at sinamathela, tsholotsho and along the natha and tekwane river areas before they retreated into botswana. the botswana police arrested and had them imprisoned before deporting them back to zambia. for zpra the battle of wankie was understandably the watershed in the history of zimbabwe and south africa's armed liberation struggles. the luthuli detachment's indomitable fighters proved the lie of the invincibility of the rhodesian and south african racist and apartheid regimes. chris hani as commissar of the combined forces in the luthuli detachment commented on the battle of inyantuwe thus, "it was one of the battles they were engaged in that will probably go down in the history of mk military operations as one of the most heroic. displaying outstanding heroism and sacrifice, they fought like lions and actually kept smith's forces pinned down for the better part of the day". the rhodesian account of the same battle, "contact was made between the terrorists and a patrol led by senior officer barry tiffin at first light on the 13th august near inyantuwe railway siding. the bsap was pinned down and reinforcements were called for. after reinforcements had arrived and during the encounter, five zpra terrorists were killed and tiffin was seriously injured. two rar were killed and three european and one african security force members were wounded". the tegwane river battle one of the most memorable of the battles of wankie which perhaps places the commanders and fighters of the luthuli detachment in a class of the greatest fighters of all time anywhere was fought on 23 august 1967 in the tegwane river area. chris hani had this to say about the battle: so the enemy commander and the enemy’s hq must have believed that the air-force had struck at us accurately and yet the truth of the matter is that we were not affected by the bombardment at all. the commander of the joint mk/zpra detachment took the decision that this was the time to raid the enemy. we organized units to go and raid the enemy. i was in that, together with james april, douglas wana, the late jack simelane, victor dlamini and others. we crawled towards the enemy’s position and first attacked their tents with grenades and then followed with aks and lmgs. the enemy fought back furiously and after fifteen minutes, we called for reinforcements from the rear and within ten minutes we overran the enemy position. in that battle, we killed the enemy’s colonel who was commanding. his name was thomas, a huge chunk of a man wearing size 10 boots. we killed a few lieutenants and other soldiers. the story was the same as in our previous battle. the enemy fled leaving behind supplies, weapons, grenades, and ammunition and communication radios. another victory for our detachment! i want to emphasise the question of victory because the luthuli detachment was never defeated in battle. chris hani’s account of the battle is also corroborated by a member of the rhodesian forces: after a fleeting twelve minutes of strafing by the hunters and before a scheduled bombing run by canberra’s from no 5 squadron at 1800hrs, wintall moved the two platoons into thick cover to prepare a safe night position. all their movements were watched, however and as the rhodesians relaxed with no apparent sentries, terrorist leader dube and one of his men put on captured rhodesians combat jackets sauntered over to unsuspecting it took the whole night to cross about half the detachment of three platoons. at daybreak, everyone on both sides of the river had to take cover and rest until nightfall the following day. international 11v o l u m e 8 0 / 2 0 1 9 r.a.r platoons. shortly afterwards, heavy fire was brought down onto the platoons by hidden terrorists wounding eight including p.o. horn wintall himself. p.o spencer thomas died of gunshot wounds to the chest. two terrorists were killed. taken totally by surprise and under immediate threat of his position being overrun, wintall organized a withdrawal as fast as he could, leaving behind weapons and kit. the story of victory was the same in all the battles. the enemy was overrun and leaving behind supplies, weapons, grenades, uniforms and communication radios. the sipolilo campaign soon after the wankie campaign, the joint zpra/mk command and its subcommittees started to prepare for the sipolilo campaign. the reconnaissance team had recommended a crossing point where the zambezi river is flat and wide between after the manna pools area and feira, near where the chewore river on the rhodesian side flows in. this crossing point although less strenuous, had its disadvantages: • the twenty kilometre road from the great east turnoff was only accessible with four wheel drive vehicles. • crossing by canoe was going to be a challenge when they got to the circulating current of the river. • since wankie, rhodesian low flying air force planes patrolled this part of the border along the zambezi river between feira and the kariba dam. therefore commander joe modise developed a plan to construct a pontoon using sealed empty 100 litre drums with a wooden platform on top. this he argued would make crossing easier in particular for the transportation of heavy equipment and ammunition. this second detachment with moffat hadebe as the detachment commander would comprise two zpra platoons and anc with also two platoons, with ray tichafa as the deputy commander. johnson melani was commissar, deputised by sly masuku. ralph mzamo was chief of security, george mthunzi was responsible for communications while felix kayiya was chief of personnel. kenneth mzathi was chief of staff completing the command of the detachment. the crossing happened in december/january but battles would only break out in march after the game rangers had informed the authorities that there was an intrusion into the vicinity by unknown people. they had established 5 bases, but communication was very poor as they could not quickly relay information from base to base since they had only one radio manned by a cde zilani in base 1. they were also far from the people, so they could not use locals to communicate. the operational plan was to create a makeshift headquarters along the mountain range overlooking the dande river. one of the zapu platoons would be permanently deployed there to protect weapons, ammunition and ration stores for future campaigns. they therefore needed heavy armourment such as mortars and heavy machine guns. the rest of the detachment would proceed south with another zpra platoon to accompany them across the limpopo. whilst advance teams prepared storage places along the headquarters mountain range, the rest of the men would transport the equipment from the zambezi to those mountains about forty kilometres away. when the whole detachment was at the crossing point area, it was decided to cross them in batches of platoons. this process started during the heavy rains in january up to february. the pantoon idea proved to be a disaster as it was wrecked midstream by high current that swept off its entire load and dismantled it into pieces. fortunately, the few cadres on board who were to guide it wore air jackets, so they were able to swim back to the river bank in time before the patrol planes flew over. this time it had been decided that some of the zpra and mk commanders should accompany the luthuli detachment up to its pyramid headquarters on the mountains. the following were selected from zpra, abraham nkiwane, dumiso dabengwa, jabulani ncube plus other reconnaissance team members. from mk, joe modise, walter msimanga, zola zembe and other cadres were selected. this team walked the whole day and arrived at the pyramid headquarters just around sunset. their strategy was to inspect the location of the headquarters, acknowledge its suitability and to spend a week with the detachment commanders to ensure they were clear about their assignment. however, after a few days of inspections and discussions, the detachment commanders felt they had had enough of the high command and suggested that they return to lusaka. they would keep the high command briefed through coded radio communication. we had no choice but to take their polite orders. we further left room for courier messages from either side should there be need. about ten days after our departure, the detachment had their first contact with the rhodesian forces. for about a week, our people back home had witnessed an unprecedented call-up by the smith regime of all members of their security forces and their reserve, with orders to report at their brigade headquarters. meanwhile the detachment had also noted the frequent spotter plane flights above their area. as a result, they took a decision to evacuate their headquarters shelters and move to an area where they would be better placed to defend themselves. reports on the sipolilo battle the enemy fled leaving behind supplies, weapons, grenades, and ammunition and communication radios. another victory for our detachment! i want to emphasise the question of victory because the luthuli detachment was never defeated in battle. international t h e t h i n k e r12 campaigns have been recorded from the detachment commanders and other participants. herewith an example of one of the encounters recorded from the rhodesian high court trial of the detachment’s deputy commissar. bulawayo, friday, august 16 1968 sly masuku, the rhodesian-born african who claimed he shot two rhodesian soldiers, troopers christopher wessel and reginald binks, in self-defence during antiterrorist operations last march, was sentenced to death by mr justice davies at the high court, salisbury. giving judgement, the judge referred to a claim by masuku’s counsel, mr n scobie, that the attack made by the security forces on the anthill in which masuku and six armed companions were hiding on the day of the incident, was unlawful, because the men were given no chance to surrender. the judge said he considered that lt reid-daly, who led the attack, was perfectly entitled to act the way he did, and the fact that the men were not at first called to surrender did not make it unlawful. the judge said masuku was one of a considerable number of people who had crossed into rhodesia from zambia armed with modern weapons. he had admitted that the objective was to train others in the use of fire-arms “so that eventually a rebellion would break out”. but also to get a fairer picture of the wankie and sipolilo campaigns, listen to what political leaders from both zapu and anc had to say. in the zapu report of the central committee to the 1984 congress of 12 to 15 october, joshua nkomo had this to say: one of the most important experiences of the armed struggle was contained in the wankie/sipolilo campaigns of 1967 and 1968. using the experiences of the 1960s these became the first large scale operations ever launched in zimbabwe, which involved several men. these campaigns were planned and jointly led by zpra and mk commanders. their full history is yet to be told like so much of our rich history of the liberation struggle. but we would like to mention two important aspects of these campaigns. in the first place, because of the scale of the fighting and the outstanding courage of our fighters, these battles had a profound effect on the people of zimbabwe. they showed that it was possible to tackle the enemy on our own soil with modern weapons and inflict serious damage on the regime. they showed that the racists were not as invincible as they claimed. in the second place, these military campaigns provided invaluable lessons for the future conduct of the armed struggle and gave us concrete experience of battle conditions in our country. this experience was analysed by our military commanders and political leadership and provided basis for the new strategies and tactics which we then adopted. or tambo on the anc side acknowledged the outstanding display of courage at wankie and sipolilo. how the enemy were rendered panic stricken by the relentless courage of our combined forces, who on the banks of the zambezi before they marched into the hostile rhodesia, were armed in memory of our great leader, the late president general of the anc, chief albert luthuli; and who are known since then and for all posterity as the luthuli detachment. in battle after battle, the racist forces were overwhelmed by the courage and fire power of our gallant fighters instance after instance, the coward enemy broke ranks and fled, abandoning weapons, their injured and dead. many members of that indomitable detachment fell in battle in wankie and on the eastern front. their names are inscribed in the roll call of honour of our revolution. on this day every year, we pay special tribute to those illustrious combatants who fell on sacred fields of zimbabwe with the warrior cry 'victory or death!!' on their lips. a complimentary write-up of moffat hadebe memoirs is being edited for publication. the sipolilo battle campaign narrative will be shared amongst us as a national heritage pride. the 1967 wankie campaigns signalled to the international community the magnitude of the efforts strengthen the military and combat capacities of zipra and mk in rhodesia and south africa whose geo-strategic position for the west meant they could not be allowed to fall into “communist” hands. as the war intensified, the cold war vestiges weakened the centres to hold leading to round-table talks. rhodesia was losing the war. we recognise the heroic deeds of our military men who laid down their lives for freedom in southern africa. in doing so, we also recognise that during that difficult period of the liberation struggle of southern africa, zapu was one of the five authentic liberation movements (others being mpla, frelimo, swapo and anc). the other four are in government. lest we forget, these movements still have an obligation to acknowledge and honour the sacrifices of our people (in particular those in our liberation armies) by fulfilling what they fought for – the values of our liberation struggles. these values include ensuring better standards of living for all our people, respect for, promotion and protection of human rights and full participation of our people in the governance of their countries. ■ we also recognise that during that difficult period of the liberation struggle of southern africa, zapu was one of the five authentic liberation movements (others being mpla, frelimo, swapo and anc). international 46 special edition bonding over blacks: mario moore’s a student’s dream by vusumzi nkomo | peer reviewed t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract through marx and freud, scholar frank wilderson iii asserts that ‘there is no self to be known,’ owing to the notion that the conceptual integrity of the self relies on ‘outdated notions of a unitary self.’ i want to think about the implications of this provocation for black subjectivity, and by extension take seriously david marriot’s lament, ‘what do you do with an unconscious that appears to hate you?’ i intend to demonstrate this tragic relation between the black imago and the black image/portrait, as well as its dependence on a global consensus (or civil society’s collective unconscious) that regards the black as an object (rather than subject/self) of enjoyment. at the risk of pushing this argument too far, i want to consider how mario moore, lynette yiadom-boakye, and cinga samson’s black subjects (and the worlds they inhabit) struggle against what wilderson, by way of marriot, describes as a phenomenon where ‘all sentient beings, humans and blacks, bond over the imago of the black.’ 47 ‘existence might be a daily struggle for us all, but for the black his being is the effect of a war fought on at least two f ronts. he must enter into combat not only with the presentiments and premonitions of a world condemning him to nonexistence, he must also enter the lists against his own image.’ — david marriott, on black men (2000: 88) through fanon, through marriott, we might begin to see the horror of the intimacy that binds together the white-human subject and the black object (this crucial distinction follows what marriot (2000) calls ‘the paralysing split between being black and being human’); this binding might help elucidate the nature of the fantasies and anxieties that sit comfortably in the minds of, say, white people, which is to say, parts of themselves they can’t shake off and, simultaneously, help us understand the fantasies and anxieties that sit nervously in the minds of blacks. they can’t shake these off not because of lack of will, but can’t shake them off for as long as white people remain white, and blacks remain black1, in ways that vouchsafe not only racist performances but the integrity and intensity of racial categories writ large. it is by centralising this drama that i seek to look at some paintings of black figures by black artists, particularly mario moore’s a student’s dream (2017), to consider what looking at these images entails: for me, a black ‘man/person’ (here, as wilderson puts it, ‘yes the scare quotes matter’ (2009: 119)), for the artists, the figures in the artworks, the world in the artworks, the world outside the artworks, the ‘extra-diegetic’ where the black ‘people’ (upon which these figures are mapped and figured) are always already corporeally and socially dead and dying. the human subjects looking at black people, looking at blackened figures. black people looking at themselves, looking at themselves being looked at (by an act of identification, the black person doing the looking, attempts to identify with the blackened figure and thereby begins to look at themselves looking at themselves2). in what follows, this text considers the implications of reading ‘black images’ by paying attention to the processes of phobogenisis in relation to the unconscious3. it remains unclear what resistance, exactly, can a black image put up against a racial and racializing imago (see laplanche and pontalis, 1988) that intrudes on the (in)capacity of its figures and subjects (this is struck through to underscore a peculiar subjectivity that is always under erasure and dead) to appear in ‘their own terms’. the possessive ‘their own’ is complicated at best and thrown out the window at worst when one considers fanon’s declaration that the black (person or in this case, image) has no ‘ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man’ (fanon, 2008: 83). as ‘genealogical isolates’, to borrow f rom orlando patterson (1982: 312), the socially dead fungible objects can never have ‘their own’ anything, which is to say, they can’t have it in ways that are essential or seem to matter in essential ways. ‘genealogical isolates’ have no ‘terms’; in the sense of (i) not only language but speech (to summon language for the purposes of naming and the full expression of a unitary self), an uncoerced speech that can be expressed with impunity, and ‘terms’ as in (ii) times or periodicity, a temporality that is not displaced and undermined, the time of a ‘permanently belated’ black derelict psyche that is, according to marriott, following fanon, ‘waiting…for an imago that is already there, lying in wait for him…a moment of suspension, one that delays, perhaps permanently, the timely expression of anything that might be called one’s own4 (2000: 82). we might add, a belated black derelict psyche that has no time5. ‘it is in white terms,’ writes fanon, ‘that one [black] perceives one’s fellows’ (emphasis mine, 2008: 126). the white-human ocular hyper-capacity for perception, for looking, (i) invades and conquers the on-looking black, and (ii) enjoys the blackened subject that is portrayed in the black image. the white terms are the anti-black racist culture’s anxieties and phobias about black people that are enjoyed by both blacks and whites-humans ‘to form a bond through racial antagonism’ (2007: 211), a ‘sick bond’ (2007: 216) that is constituent to the white terms of looking and perceiving. i emphasise this degrading and wretching looking to highlight it as a constituent element of seeing, which is to say the white-human subject does not know how else to look at black people even if it tried, and further, how looking, here understood not simply as a way of seeing but the very privileging of the sense of seeing (against a blackness that, according to rizvana bradley and denise ferreira da silva, constitutes a ‘threat to sense’), is always already an anti-black endeavour that is parasitic on the black object being looked at/seen.6 special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 48 furthermore, what is the place of black images in the world of images, or what barthes calls a ‘family of images’? what this question is after is the place of images of people who have no place in the world because they have no world7, no people-ness, no relationality that could resemble what is socially coded as the ‘family’. what this question wants to take seriously is whether we could separate these black images f rom black imagoes and considers ‘the place of the black imago in the white unconscious’ that invades ‘our’ unconscious. black desolation8 ‘as reeking tombs in the public life of culture, black men can be cannibalised, shredded and torn open because, like the living dead, they are imagined as vicious and parasitic, insatiably feeding off the lives of their living, white hosts.’ — david marriot, on black men (2000: 40) mario moore’s a student’s dream (2017), f rom his solo show recovery (2018), features three white men: two clad in clean white coats, the other in a black tux. the artist, or the figure of the artist, lies on a table with no support structure for his head, his eyes are wide open, we can see his shoulders, the rest of his body is covered with a white sheet. a dog rests under the table, closer to us a skull sits on a stool, looking at us. the light that lit or hits his face is not for me, which is to say not intended for my looking but i’ll take what i can get f rom this blank black face and emotionless and silent smile of a ‘pained flesh’ (hartman, 1997: 56). the light is a prop and function of the operation. the absence of any surgical tools is quite curious: is his body torn open or simply accessible by virtue of open vulnerability to gratuitous violence? are they, the white men, opening him up or just looking at him unjustly, looking at ‘the within loss’, as m. nourbese philip puts it (2008: 28)? is he numb (to it all)? we’ve established that the light is for their pleasure (of looking) and enjoyment (of his flesh). the skull on the stool is him and all his deaths that he has died and will continue to die at the hands (or seeing eyes) of these white men. their look(ing) is murderous; it is a ‘history of [...] looking [at black men],’ writes marriott, that ‘reveals a trait of wanting to devour, to destroy and modify via the eyes’ (2000: 41). this face being looked at (or experimented on), ‘the living image of a dead thing’ (barthes, 1982: 79) can never die enough from this ‘deadening objectification’, to borrow from saidiya hartman (1997: 101). listen to the painter: ‘mentally, looking at these images of black men being killed, over and over, that trauma — and then a constant state of black men having to work, work, work. this idea of resting is a mystery, fantasy land!’ — mario moore (in sharp, 2018) below his head is an uppercase ‘dream.’ – written in white. the end-quote mark, with the full stop sign, signals an end to a sentence, something said (the table is big enough to carry the title of dr king’s famous speech) but cannot be said loud enough without consequence. however, i’m inclined to read the (colour) ‘white’ of the sheet (with/and/because of the whiteness of the three men) with the visible word as ‘white dreams’ (of culture); resting is fantasy land because it is nothing but white (men) dream(ing), or white fantasies/dreams that are parasitic on and invade black capacity for dreaming. this invasion by the white unconscious is the conquest of the black unconscious that ‘violently evacuates’ (2007: 216) the self-subject; it is, marriott argues, ‘the intrusion, into [the black’s] unconscious, of phobias which racist culture project[s] onto the bodies of black people’ thereby attaching to them racist imagoes. ‘[t]he longer you look, the stranger it becomes.’ these are the words of british art critic jonathan jones reflecting on lynette yiadom-boakye’s no such special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the human subjects looking at black people, looking at blackened figures. black people looking at themselves, looking at themselves being looked at (by an act of identification, the black person doing the looking, attempts to identify with the blackened figure and thereby begins to look at themselves looking at themselves2). in what follows, this text considers the implications of reading ‘black images’ by paying attention to the processes of phobogenisis in relation to the unconscious3. 49 luxury (2020). he could as easily be reflecting on cinga samson’s black figures. i continue to consider this ‘strange wanting to look’ at black people; jones feels it, the stakes of looking at a subject that always ‘fails to escape its socially dead conception’ (marriott, 2016: 34) and so it remains (a) strange(r) and pleasurable to the ‘devouring eye’ (2000: 32) of others. it is as strange as cinga’s black subjects whose flesh is equally enjoyed with equal force. i look at them, they are alive, even though it is ‘specifically as a corpse that blackness appears’ (marriott, 2016: 34). these images seem to be enjoyed as ‘corpsed’ sans pain9; what we know about black people ‘in’ the world is carried by the viewer into the world of the artwork. what we could possibly know about us is already conquered and intruded upon by a racist imago and ‘ an unconscious that appears to hate [us]’ (2000: 79). plantation optics taking seriously the implications of a seeing that kills, and of looking at things that are killed by and when they are seen. a seeing that satisfies necrophiliac desires and pleasures, repulsions and phobias, fantasies and longings. we call this, here, plantation optics.10 one could feel that the pairing ‘optic’ and ‘plantation’ are curious phrasing. i am interested in ‘optics’ as (i) the study of sight and seeing, and additionally, (ii) the perception of events, bodies, courses of action by the public or within the codes of white-human civil society. we want to think about optics in relation to black corporeality, or/and bodies, and what seeing them means or rather the implications of seeing black bodies. it is in the context of these meanings that we are drawn to the second definition of optics: how are these meanings (re)produced in ways that f rame how the public-world sees black people and images of black people. the concept of the plantation (pulled away f rom a definitive time and place but as the foundation of modern society) is considered here as foundational to these optics of/ or looking at black images-people; it is the ‘onticidal terror/destruction/death’11 of capture-captivity which finds and outlives the plantation estate as a formal institution which informs this enquiry as much as it informs the modern world writ large, and the perceptible and imperceptible ways in which black images-people are perceived. furthermore, looking in the plantation, looking at the plantation, can’t escape the practice of ‘overseeing’ (a yoke so inescapably real for the black bodies it oversees): the brutal exercise of force over slaves, a terror that is foundational to what we know as policing. this power, vested symbolically and otherwise in the hands of all white people, marks what we now understand as the social death that marks all black bodies as not only slaves to their legal masters but every single white person. in red, white and black: cinema and the structure of u.s. antagonisms, frank b. wilderson iii, by way of orlando patterson, defines social death as a paradigmatic position12 (not simply an identity or ‘anthropological accoutrements’) of those who are ‘generally dishonored, perpetually open to gratuitous violence, and void of kinship structure, that is, having no relations that need be recognized, a being outside of relationality…’ (2010: 11). according to marriott, ‘[b]lack social death is taken to be a rule of life that prescribes to [b]lacks that they live under the command of death’ (2016: 34). discussing what he calls af ropessimism’s most ‘comprehensive and iconoclastic claim’, wilderson argues that ‘blackness is coterminous with slaveness: blackness is social death’ (2020: 102), an inseparability that marks a profound shift in how we may think about not only ‘conceptions of suffering’ (wilderson in mngxitama et. al, 2008: 97) when the subjects are black bodies, but as an extension of this; how we are seen, how we see the socially dead. in the right to look: a counterhistory of visuality (2011), visual culture theorist nicholas mirzoeff argues that ‘visuality’s first domains were the slave plantation, monitored by the surveillance of the overseer, operating as the surrogate of the sovereign’ (2011: 2). ‘visuality,’ writes mirzoeff, ‘supplemented the violence of authority and its separations’ (2011: 3) and, we should add, it was an extension of terror of and in the plantation. the techniques of overseeing, embodied by the overseer, constitute what mirzoeff calls ‘oversight’ (2011: 10), a total violence and ‘worldgenerating optic’ (2011: 8) that we may think of as a force that makes the world-modernity possible and structurally positions the slave as a thing anyone can do anything to, including the capacity to look at. i am interested in theorising the plantation optic as a f ramework to situate the terror of the plantation in and as the act of looking: to consider the violence of special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 50 the human subject as constituent to the ways in which black subjects are looked at and enjoyed ‘as abject representatives of death’ (marriott, 2000: 15). how are the images of the (socially) dead digested? what is the nature of the hunger for black images and can it be approached and/or theorised independently f rom the appetite for black flesh? what is the function of this deadly fetish for black flesh that (re)produces it as ‘health tonic for everyone who is not black; an ensemble of sadistic rituals and captivity’ (wilderson, 2020: 40; emphasis mine). furthermore, mirzoeff’s ‘overseeing’ connotes more than just a functionary of power operating at the level of the extra-judicial but points us to an excessive form of seeing, an unbounded looking embodied by human bodies abundantly bestowed with ontological capacity that owes its integrity to the theft of bodies. this ‘strange, and ruthless, world of wanting to look at black [people]’ (marriott, 2000: 34) is the function of over-seeing that kills, a ‘sadistic form of looking’ (2000: 32) at the ‘killable and warehousable objecthood of black flesh’ (aarons, 2016: 5), the socially (and corporeally) dead-dying and only fatally alive. overseeing is the plantation optic. notes 1. beyond being a provocative statement, it must be noted that what i am gesturing towards is a theorisation of these categories (black, white, as well as slave, human) as structural positions as opposed to identities. i argue, contentiously, that the people who embody them can only be f ree of them once we step into a new epistemological order, following the end of the world as we know it, a conceptual terrain where bodies will be imbued with different sets of meanings and capacities. 2. probing what he calls kobena mercer’s ‘divided identifications’, david marriot (2000), in the essay titled ‘murderous appetites: photography and fantasy’, develops a sophisticated reading of mercer’s readings of robert mapplethorpe’s images and asks us to consider the complex nature of a black person looking at an image of another black person/subject. another example is provided by marriott in footnote 4 of the opening essay of on black men where he considers identification between a young muhammad ali and images of emmett till, as well as the black community looking at mass distributed images of till’s body, ‘black communities who…are looking at an image of themselves – what they can become – in white culture’ (2000: 22). 3. i am indebted to the literature of af ropessimists in my attempts to think the relation between visuality and the black body. 4. marriott is inviting us to reconsider the moment fanon is seen by the violent gaze of a white child who, in a moment of horror (for him and fanon), exclaims, ‘look, a negro...mama, see the negro!’ (emphasis mine), and immediately followed by ‘i’m f rightened’. fanon adds: ‘now they were beginning to be af raid of me’ (2008: 84). what we witness, with and through fanon, is an arrival that is too late to challenge the predominance of a black imago. 5. to push this further, we might think this concept as an anti-time relation, an ontological dereliction that we can call an anti-narrative ‘flat line’ with no beginning and no end, a disequilibrium-faux equilibrium-disequilibrium, to borrow f rom the af ropessimist parlance. 6. i am not in any way suggesting that to liberate black people f rom this human hypercapacity to look would amount to the so-called liberation of black people, or the ‘end of the world as we know it’, to borrow f rom aimé césaire. 7. in his fine essay ‘ the social life of social death: on af ro-pessimism and black optimism’ (2011), jared sexton argues that: ‘black life is not lived in the world that the world lives in’, and asks us to distinguish the ‘world’ f rom ‘earth’. 8. i borrow this phrase f rom david marriot, on black men (2000: 32). 9. it is beyond the scope of this essay to argue how black images that don’t feature figures in pain, whether perceived/imagined or real, aren’t immune to racial imagoes about black people. this remains an interesting subject to explore in the context of an obsession and pervasive special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 51 consumption of black portraiture in contemporary art. it is in this context that i mention samson and yiadom-boakye, whose black figures enjoy a relative distance to black death (even though samson’s solo, iyabanda intsimbi/the metal is cold, at flag art foundation (2021), flirts with it, at least conceptually). 10. my interest here is tracing the history (which is to say, the past, present and future incarnations) of the desire and murderous appetite to look at black bodies and how this phenomenon of a looking that devours can be located in the violent matrix inherit to the plantation paradigm. 11. i am thinking about this total violence with the ideas developed in calvin l. warren’s ontological terror: blackness, nihilism, and emancipation (2018). 12. wilderson’s intervention is crucial; there is a general tendency to conflate blackness as a structural position and blackness as an identity. or to put it differently, how we may think the difference between how black people are structurally or paradigmatically positioned in the world, as opposed to black people’s decision to identify as black. the implications of this conflation are huge; this essay then concerns itself with the former as something that can be theorised separately f rom the latter. references aarons, k. (2016). ‘no selves to abolish: af ropessimism, anti-politics and the end of the world.’ mute [online]. available at: http:// www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/ no-selves-to-abolish-af ropessimism-anti-politics-and-end-world barthes, r. (1980). camera lucida. london: vintage. bradley, r. and ferreira da silva, d. (2021). ‘four theses on aesthetics.’ e-flux journal [online]. available at: www.e-flux.com/journal/120/416146/four-theses-on-aesthetics/ fanon, f. (2008 [1952]) black skin, white masks. new york: grove press. hartman, s. (1997). scenes of subjection: terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century america. oxford: oxford university press. laplanche, j. and pontalis, j.b. (1988). the language of psycho-analysis. new york: routledge. marriott, d. (2000). on black men. new york: columbia university press. ———. (2007). haunted life: visual culture and black modernity. new brunswick: rutgers university press. ———. (2016). ‘corpsing; or, the matter of black life.’ university of minnesota press. cultural critique, vol. 94. mirzoeff, n. (2011). the right to look: a counterhistory of visuality. durham: duke university press. mngxitama, a. et al. (2008). biko lives! contesting the legacies of steve biko. london: palgrave macmillan. patterson, o. (1982). slavery and social death: a comparative study. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. philip, m.n. (2008). zong! as told to the author by setaey adamu boateng. middletown: wesleyan university press sharp, s.r. (2018). ‘a painter reflects on when black men get to rest.’ hyperallergic [online]. available at: www.hyperallergic. com/449582/mario-moore-recovery-david-klein-gallery/ sexton, j. (2011). ‘the social life of social death: on af ro-pessimism and black optimism.’ intensions journal, issue 5. warren, c.l. (2018). ontological terror: blackness, nihilism, and emancipation. durham: duke university press. wilderson, f. (2009) ‘grammar & ghosts: the performative limits of af rican freedom.’ theatre survey, 50(1). ———. (2010). red, white and black: cinema and the structure of u.s. antagonisms. durham: duke university press. ———. (2020). af ropessimism. new york: liveright. special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 96 t h e t h i n k e r culture dr andy carolin—senior lecturer in the faculty of education at uj—interviews british human rights campaigner peter tatchell about his role in achieving a commitment to lgbt+ rights within the anti-apartheid movement. lgbt+ rights and the fight against apartheid: an interview with peter tatchell 97 andy: my reason for initiating this discussion now is the netflix documentary that was released in 2021 titled hating peter tatchell. this documentary focuses on your human rights activism over fi e decades and maps a compelling history of the fight for lgbt+ rights in britain. but our conversation today emerges in response to a glaring gap in the story that the documentary tells about you. in particular, the documentary is silent on your work in the anti-apartheid movement, and, more specificall , your work in refigu ing the relationship between the anti-apartheid movement and lgbt+ rights. so, i think a good point of departure, then, given its omission from the documentary, is for me to ask you about your personal experiences of being part of the anti-apartheid movement in london in the 1970s and 1980s, and specifically being a gay activist in the movement. there have, for instance, been several accounts of homophobia. peter: i wouldn’t say the british anti-apartheid movement was homophobic. but i certainly think there was a failure to address the intersection between race, sexuality and the broader lgbt+ movement. the only group that made the connection meaningfully was the so-called ‘renegade’ city of london antiapartheid group, which broke away f rom the mainstream movement because the city of london group wanted to do direct action. the official antiapartheid movement favoured occasional set-piece mass marches and lobbying. but that was often about the extent of it. the city of london group was very much about picketing the south af rican embassy, which they did for nearly fi e years nonstop: all day and night, through hot weather and cold. it’s one of the great direct action campaigns in post-1945 british history. the official anti-apartheid movement would hold a mass march every year f rom hyde park to trafalgar square, often getting tens of thousands of people. they also did periodic street stalls, petitions and protests against barclays bank. and they lobbied political parties, members of parliament and the government. but they didn’t do direct action like the city of london group. the city of london anti-apartheid group was also the only faction within the wider anti-apartheid movement in britain that saw sexuality as being part of the struggle for a f ree south af rica. so, you are suggesting that the city of london group had a far more intersectional approach to human rights. how did the homophobia start coming into view for you across the different factions in the movement, which ultimately led to your monumental intervention in 1987? well, the official anti-apartheid movement did not want to engage with the lgbt+ movement here in britain or in south af rica. they saw it as a distraction f rom the main fight against apartheid. i argued that engaging with the lgbt+ movement both in britain and south af rica would draw lgbt+ people into the anti-apartheid struggle and thereby strengthen it. on a number of occasions, i also raised the point that if the alleged homophobia – well it wasn’t just alleged – of some people within the af rican national congress (anc) was not challenged, post-apartheid south af rica might easily end up with the same kind of homophobic persecution that we witnessed in cuba after the revolution there. in south african public discourse today, the antiapartheid movement and the anc have almost become synonymous. but what you’re describing is a far more complex set of solidarities. well, there are two issues here. within south af rica, in addition to the anc, there was, of course, the pan af ricanist congress, azapo, and the black consciousness movement which developed around steve biko. so, there were really four strands to the anti-apartheid movement inside south af rica. or you well, the official an -apartheid movement did not want to engage with the lgbt+ movement here in britain or in south africa. they saw it as a distraction from the main figh against apartheid. i argued that engaging with the lgbt+ movement both in britain and south africa would draw lgbt+ people into the anti-apartheid struggle and thereby strengthen it. 1 culture v o l u m e 90 / 2 0 2 2 98 t h e t h i n k e r could perhaps say fi e strands if you included the church and people like archbishop desmond tutu. as it happens, i knew robert sobukwe of the pac. although he never said so publicly, privately he was broadly supportive of lgbt+ rights. but i don’t think he or the pac ever took a public stance on it. for activists such as robert sobukwe, did you get the sense that they were starting to warm to an intersectional human rights movement because of a deeply held ethical conceptualisation of human rights, or was it a question of strategy? i wouldn’t go as far to say that robert sobukwe or the pac were warming to an intersectional anti-apartheid struggle. they were still a bit dismissive. they would say things like ‘yes, of course, gay people shouldn’t be persecuted’, but there was no sense of urgency in integrating lgbt+ people into the anti-apartheid struggle. there were people in the anc who said similar things: ‘gay people shouldn’t be criminalised’, but that was not the official position of t e anc. you’ve written previously that it was ‘deemed betrayal to question the anc’ and that ‘criticism was unwelcome’. can you elaborate on this? the way in which the city of london anti-apartheid group was treated by the official movement was typical of a degree of sectarianism. dissenting voices within the movement were not encouraged or welcomed. that is why the city of london group, which was passionate about direct action against apartheid, had to effectively leave the mainstream movement and set up on their own. there wasn’t a place within the official movement for them. for instance, when david kitson was released f rom prison in 1984 after being imprisoned in south af rica for his anti-apartheid activities, he and his wife norma came to live in london. they immediately engaged with the uk’s official anti-apartheid movement. but the anc was critical of david kitson and the official movement kept him at arm’s length out of deference to the anc. david kitson was in return critical of the official anti-apartheid movement in britain. he therefore gravitated to the city of london group. he and norma were regular attendees at the 24/7 nonstop picket outside the south af rican embassy. i felt quite heartbroken that someone like david kitson, who had spent so many years in prison because of his antiapartheid work, was so badly treated. even if he had had some falling out with the anc, the british antiapartheid movement shouldn’t have treated him the way it did. not surprisingly, the city of london group had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the official ovement. if we can move then to your historic engagement with the anc in 1987, which eventually resulted in you securing the f irst-ever formal commitment f rom the anc that gay and lesbian rights would be recognised in a then speculative post-apartheid state. i was doing an interview for the labour party’s weekly newspaper, labour weekly, with ruth mompati, a senior anc official, to promote south af rica’s women’s day. as an anti-apartheid supporter, i wanted to help publicise women’s day and the role that women had played in the struggle against apartheid. it was only at the end of the interview that i decided to ask the question about the anc’s stance on lgbt+ rights. ruth mompati is quoted in your 1987 article as saying: ‘i cannot even begin to understand why people want lesbian and gay rights. the gays have no problems. they have nice houses and plenty to eat. i don’t see them suffering. no-one is persecuting them… we haven’t heard about this problem until recently. it seems to be fashionable in the west.’ i concluded f rom this interview that there was clear evidence that at least one very senior member of the anc was homophobic. the interview confi med the allegations and rumours of homophobia that i had previously heard. i knew that if the anc was not challenged, it could end up like cuba, pursuing extreme policies of homophobic persecution in a post-apartheid state. even though many people in this period were pessimistic about the chances of change in south af rica, i always took the long view that the anc would be victorious in the end. so, i knew that having them onside for lgbt+ rights was tremendously important. if i and others could help persuade the anc before apartheid fell and before they came to government, then that would secure the place of lgbt+ people in a f ree and liberated south af rica. i knew that publicity would put pressure culture 99 on the anc to respond. i wanted to get an official response – not just f rom ruth mompati – but f rom the anc leadership in exile, then based in lusaka. i realised that unless there was a lot of publicity about what ruth mompati had said, they would not be motivated to respond. and although i didn’t want to embarrass the anc, i felt it was necessary to provoke change. so that is why, in addition to publicising the interview in labour weekly, i then got it published in lgbt+ publications in britain and other countries. and i also sent it to the anti-apartheid movement here in the uk and in several other countries as well. the idea was to publicise what had been said and to provoke an internal debate, and that is what happened. you know, there was an outcry in the lgbt+ community about what ruth mompati had said. there was also quite a lot of dissension within sections of the official anti-apartheid movement in the uk. they thought ‘this looks bad’. they knew this was going to damage the anc’s credibility. some grassroots members in the official movement agreed the anc was wrong: that they should be supporting lgbt+ rights. so there were lots of different tensions and lots of different responses that came back. some people seemed primarily concerned about protecting the anc’s reputation, while others were genuinely concerned to ensure that lgbt+ south af ricans would have a place in a post-apartheid society. it was in september 1987 that i published the full interview in london’s capital gay newspaper, under the heading ‘anc dashes hopes for gay rights in south af rica’, which included quotes f rom solly smith, the anc’s representative in the uk. he expressed very similar negative opinions to those expressed by ruth mompati. his response was very much that lgbt+ matters were not an issue in south af rica. they were a diversion f rom the struggle against apartheid. the anc was committed to majority rule, he said. given that lgbt+ people were a minority, by implication their rights didn’t matter. i had also asked solly smith if the anc had a policy, or would have a policy, about repealing the anti-gay laws that existed under the apartheid regime. his reply was quite negative and dismissive. your original article quotes solly smith as saying: ‘we do not have a policy. lesbian and gay rights do not arise in the anc. we cannot be diverted from our struggle by these issues. we believe in the majority being equal. those people are in the minority. the majority must rule.’ the publication of the interviews with mompati and smith was a bombshell. no one had ever got the anc leaders or representatives on record as being homophobic. but here i had it in black and white. it provoked an outcry, not just within lgbt+ circles but also among liberals and progressives, including some activists in the anti-apartheid movement itself. the next phase was to spread the word internationally. my thinking was to put the anc under sufficient embarrassment and pressure that they would have to respond, and hopefully issue a policy in support of lgbt+ rights. that was merely a hope. i can remember that the publicity i generated did lead to both the anc and the broader anti-apartheid movement being deluged with letters of protest and condemnation. a lot of people, even those that recognised that the fight against apartheid was the main figh , still were appalled that an anc representative could speak in that kind of language about lgbt+ people. what was the immediate response to your publication and distribution of those interviews? by this stage, i was persona non grata in the official anti-apartheid movement because i’d already been supporting the city of london group. the attitude of the official movement was that if you’re in the city of london group, you’re not with us. you’re not one of us. you’re not part of us. it was very, very sectarian. i had discussed the interviews with some members of the city of london group, including norma and david kitson, who suggested that i should write personally to thabo mbeki, who was then the anc director of information in exile in lusaka. i remember hearing that he was the most liberal and open minded of the anc leaders, and that he was the best placed to get the anc to rethink its policy on lgbt+ rights. it was thabo mbeki who then wrote to you directly to clarify that the anc would support lgbt+ rights. in his letter, he is quoted as saying: ‘the anc is indeed very fi mly committed to removing all forms of discrimination and oppression in a liberated south africa. you are correct to point out that this commitment must surely extend to the protection of gay rights.’ on a strategic level, it was an extraordinary success to not only get the anc on record being homophobic but also to secure the anc’s public support for gay and lesbian rights. there was about a two-month delay in publishing culture v o l u m e 90 / 2 0 2 2 100 t h e t h i n k e r your article and then getting thabo mbeki’s response. can you describe this time? i’ve since been told by other senior sources that it provoked a really quite heated debate within the anc in exile. i’m told that oliver tambo was quite supportive of a rethink of the official anc policy and he was broadly in agreement with thabo mbeki’s reply to me. when i wrote to thabo mbeki, i made the point that lesbian and gay activists were involved with the anti-apartheid movement and specifically cited simon nkoli and ivan toms. this apparently made an impact. at thabo mbeki’s request, i communicated his reply to lgbt+ and anti-apartheid groups and media worldwide – the same people to whom i had sent the original damning interviews. i also sent it to members of south af rican lgbt+ groups, such as the organisation of lesbian and gay activists (olga), which was based in cape town. i also forwarded it to members of the united democratic front, the quasi-legal anti-apartheid coalition inside south af rica. so, very quickly, mbeki’s declaration of anc support for lgbt+ rights spread out all over the world and, most importantly, inside south af rica itself. my letter was the trigger that shifted the anc’s stance. but of course, what i was doing complemented and reinforced the pro-gay efforts of activists within the united democratic front in south af rica. the person that comes to mind most significantly in that regard is simon nkoli. simon nkoli is an activist who appears to have divided both the anti-apartheid and lgbt+ rights movements. do you want to speak about how he was perceived within the structures that you were working with in london? when simon was arrested on treason charges, i was put in touch with him through an intermediary based in scotland. i wrote to him via his mother while he was in prison and she passed them to him. soon after his arrest, i organised a global letter writing campaign to support him. all the letters were directed to his mother’s home. i’ve been told that the letters arrived by the sack-full f rom all over the world. simon later told me that it was a great psychological and emotional boost to know that literally thousands of people f rom countries all over the world knew about his imprisonment and supported his courageous stance. there is a photograph of you protesting in london to raise awareness about simon nkoli, and the sign indicates this was done under the banner of the city of london group. there was a huge groundswell of support with the lgbt+ community in the uk towards simon nkoli and his two-edged fight for lgbt+ rights and an end to apartheid. but much of the official anti-apartheid movement largely ignored simon nkoli. many said that our focus should be on overthrowing apartheid, not highlighting individual cases or ‘side’ issues like lgbt+ equality. in as much as he was a divisive figu e in parts of the anti-apartheid movement, there was also a strong feeling among parts of the white-dominated gay rights groups in south africa, such as the gay association of south africa, that the priority should be securing lgbt+ rights. their ambivalence on apartheid can be construed as complicity with the apartheid system itself. that ambivalence on the anti-apartheid struggle is the sort of feedback that i was getting f rom some south af rican lgbts at the time. a lot of gay white men in south af rica were asking ‘why are you supporting this black communist who will destroy our society?’ if we can move then to the final years of apartheid and the negotiations. while thabo mbeki’s letter in response to me was a watershed moment in the anc’s formal commitment to lgbt+ rights, securing similar support within the united democratic front inside south af rica would not have been possible without the tireless activism of lgbt+ campaigners within the anti-apartheid movement, like olga in cape town, and individuals such as simon nkoli, ivan toms and others. it was in 1989, about two years after the published interview and mbeki’s letter, that i learned that the anc was beginning work on drafting a constitution for a f ree and democratic south af rica. albie sachs was a leading anc member and a key figu e in the process. i asked him whether he planned to include an antidiscrimination clause in the draft constitution and whether this would include protection against discrimination based on sexuality. i remember that albie was originally not very sympathetic and certainly culture 101 sceptical about whether it was possible. i explained that there were already anti-discrimination laws in several european countries that could provide a model for a clause in the post-apartheid constitution. i think albie was a bit resistant because i wasn’t south af rican and wasn’t black. but to give him his credit, he did ask me to come back with examples of anti-discrimination clauses, and that’s what i did. i gathered together copies of anti-discrimination laws that existed in denmark, france and the netherlands. each of these countries had comprehensive antidiscrimination laws, which in many cases included an explicit ban on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. i remember speaking to albie after he’d seen the sample legal statutes and it was quite clear that his mind had changed. not only did he seem to think it was a practical proposition, but he also thought it was a very good idea – not only that there should be an anti-discrimination clause in the postapartheid constitution but that it should include sexual orientation and protections for other disadvantaged, discriminated communities. while i was heartened by the fact that albie seemed to be warming to the idea, i had a nagging doubt that he might backtrack and i thought that he would probably be more convinced if the initiative came f rom inside south af rica itself. so, i sent copies of these anti-discrimination clauses to lgbt+ groups in south af rica: olga and glow (gays and lesbians of the witwatersrand), which was formed by simon nkoli after his release f rom prison. i urged them to lobby albie direct. then i thought: nothing beats a face-to-face meeting. i discussed my plan with olga and suggested they should send a representative to london to meet albie sachs in person to make the case for a broadbased comprehensive anti-discrimination clause which would, among other things, include protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation. at the end of 1989, i arranged a meeting between albie sachs and two representatives f rom olga, derrick fine and niezhaam sampson. i calculated that a faceto-face meeting would have a much bigger impact than any letters or phone calls. they then discussed what became olga’s constitutional proposals, because by then olga had adopted the ideas that i had proposed and they had become olga’s proposal and not mine. the meeting with sachs went well. once albie was on our side, he was able to use his influe ce and leverage to win over other key people in the anc leadership. the next thing that happened was that olga held meetings with kader asmal and frene ginwala. they were very influential in the anc. once the formal constitutional negotiations started, several lgbt+ groups worked together and used thabo mbeki’s 1987 letter to me to win further support for lgbt+ rights within the many constituent organisations of the united democratic front. your discussion of this history emphasises the importance of solidarity-building and relationships among activists. if i can ask you a broader question, then: i have argued elsewhere that lgbt+ rights in south africa were engineered by a political elite, despite the fact that the majority of people in the country were quite homophobic. this is very different to the model we have seen in britain, ireland and the united states, where it was popular support that forced the political actors to change laws. if we contrast these two approaches – one in which grassroots movements put pressure upwards versus political elites imposing more progressive views on sceptical publics – what does this mean for lgbt+ mobilisation and activism going forward? obviously, a grassroots movement with public support is the best way to win lgbt+ human rights that are lasting and durable. but in situations where public awareness and support is very weak, then those in political power still have a responsibility to protect the human rights of the vulnerable and marginalised. it’s not the ideal way to do it, but the priority must be to protect people f rom discrimination and hate while thabo mbeki’s letter in response to me was a watershed moment in the anc’s formal commitment to lgbt+ rights, securing similar support within the united democratic front inside south africa would not have been possible without the tireless activism of lgbt+ campaigners within the anti-apartheid movement, like olga in cape town, and individuals such as simon nkoli, ivan toms and others. culture v o l u m e 90 / 2 0 2 2 102 t h e t h i n k e r crimes. human rights campaigns cannot be based on majority opinions but should be rooted in certain fundamental and inalienable principles, based on equality for all and discrimination for none. in the end, the anc ensured the world’s fi st constitutional protection for lgbt+ people. that was a trailblazing achievement. it was particularly courageous given that there was not much public support for it. today, although the legal protection is there, the extent of daily anti-lgbt+ discrimination and hate crime is still high. it shows that changing the law is not enough. what is required is a cultural change, as much as a legal one. as an anti-apartheid activist based in the uk, what are your feelings about the current state of the post-apartheid project? let me fi st say that i was overjoyed when apartheid fell. i had been involved in the movement against the racist regime for two decades, since i was a teenager, and i’d always believed that the system of racial segregation would eventually come to an end. i felt so happy for non-white south af ricans that they would be treated as f ree and equal citizens. when the post-apartheid constitution came into force, with its protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, i was both elated and relieved. i felt relief that the fear the anc might back out at the last minute, and ditch sexual orientation, did not come to pass. i applaud the anc for sticking to its guns. but like many anti-apartheid activists in the uk and south af rica, i feel badly let down by the way that the anc seems to have strayed so far f rom its founding ideals. the level of corruption is truly shocking. the huge contract for weapons at a time when millions of black south af ricans were malnourished or without water or electricity was deeply, deeply distressing. if i were in south af rica today, i would fi d it very difficu t to vote for the anc. i feel the party has betrayed the ideals for which so many of its members fought and, in many cases, lost their lives and liberty. it is heart-breaking. there is a lack of progress on land reform and a lack of any serious attempt to institute economic democracy and uplift the very poor. in too many respects, south af rica today is run by the anc along elitist lines very similar to how the country was run in the dark days of apartheid. the gap between the rich and poor is unacceptable, especially given that so many people suffered in order to build an equal south af rica. thank you so much for your time, peter, and for sharing these perspectives and experiences. for more information about peter tatchell’s human rights work: www.petertatchellfoundation.org dr andy carolin is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at the university of johannesburg. he is the author of post-apartheid same-sex sexualities: restless identities in literary and visual culture (routledge, 2021). culture 31 special edition ngiyabonga belungu bami abstract considering how black people are often seen/unseen as a monolith of ‘black bodies’ in township spaces in south af rica, i attempt to unpack what it looks like for black people to blend into or stand out f rom contradictory, collective-led definitions of who/what black people are in these spaces. by exploring where the individual black self meets the collective and how this delineation is blurred, i aim to delve further into notions of individuality and how these seep into a real or imagined whole. what does it take to be ‘kasi’? who wants to be known as ‘kasi’? who is ‘udarkie ekasi’? as an arts practitioner developing an interdisciplinary praxis, i’m keen to explore these kinds of identity politics through the lens of translanguaging and township-based experiences and expressions. my aim is for this text to offer alternative insights into the intersection of ‘black bodies,’ the various notions associated with how ‘black people’ are perceived, and their self-perceptions within township spaces.. by phumzile twala | peer reviewed v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 32 i want to begin this paper by sharing an anecdote about an experience that left me simultaneously amused and confused. it’s essentially an invitation to search in between the margins and gaps that exist in the interrogation of gestures of a resistance towards rigid definitions of the black self. i am entering a re-imaginative space that mediates conceptions of black personhood, the black gaze, language, and the translation of the conceptual. i am offering some assertions, rather than fixed conclusions. the main idea i am grappling with is one of an unlanguaged world of blackness, an existence that defies strict definitions. it’s the social absurdity of it all (see ndebele, 1984). that’s what comes to mind when i recall the scenario. except that unlike njabulo ndebele’s assessment of violence and brutality that captures the imaginations of spectators, my reading of the scenario is mostly comical. some of the contradictions of black personhood in south af rica defy logic. social activist and feminist bell hooks reminds us of the power in looking. thinking about this scenario has made me look beyond the superficial and deeper as a way of understanding how some of these contradictions manifest in daily life. in 1964, the nigerian novelist chinua achebe wrote: ‘for an af rican, writing in english is not without its serious set-backs. he often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the english way of life.’ this is my problem exactly with this scenario. some things just don’t quite translate. there i am, travelling f rom emndeni to the joburg cbd in a purple quantum minibus taxi. the driver is a boisterous white man full of jokes. this scenario isn’t very common and my sense is that i’m not the only one grasping for some kind of normalcy as i struggle to wrap my head around what i’m witnessing. i’ve seen him before as taxis whizz past one another as they near booysens on the soweto highway – one arm dangling out the door, wearing ispottie (also known as a bucket hat in urban lingua f ranca), speaking loudly, and cursing at fellow abomageza1 as they expertly weave the taxis between lanes. i’m at the edge of my nonfour-four-masihlalisane2 seat, anxiously waiting to see if it’s going to happen. in a typical taxi trip scenario in this context, what is generally used as a term of endearment f rom our beloved mdrayiseni3 when he wants to be polite and gracious is to refer to his paying customers as ‘belungu bami’. loosely translated, this means that he is referring to his passengers as ‘my white people,’ but in this context it alludes to the idea of people with power and financial muscle – bosses who are in control. now i don’t know if i was surprised or sad when umjita4 didn’t fulfil my fantasies. what i know for sure is that it made me take a second glance at the skin on my body, fully feel myself in it and soak in the lived experiences that come with it and left me pondering what a moment that i imagined happening would have looked like. i couldn’t help but notice that with each story he told he kept peppering his sentences with the word ‘singabantu,’ as opposed to disassociating himself f rom a particular identity by saying ‘abantu abamnyama’. at such moments, i’m drawn to the proverb ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,’ meaning that one’s humanity is exalted through the grace of fellow human beings seeing one’s humanity and by valuing the reciprocity of this relationship. the symbiotic bind that is forged when one sees the humanity in another should ultimately sustain the values that shape the existence of the collective. philosopher ndumiso dladla writes extensively about the af rican philosophy of ubuntu and how it has been usurped in recent times to propel certain agendas in both academic and public discourse. he observes a pertinent and persistent trend in such discourse, which is that conceptions of ubuntu lack the recognition of abantu, the bantu-speaking people whose philosophy it is (2017: 43). what did umageza5 mean by the bold statement and (claiming of space) of ‘singabantu’? who are abantu to which he refers? his statement could mean, ‘we are people’ but it could also mean ‘we are people, who are black’. the latter statement denotes a conception of a human being that author panashe chigumadzi (2021) describes as a social person who is always in a state of becoming. the former implies a simplified translation that is disconnected f rom the philosophy of black personhood as defined by bantu-speaking peoples. why did umageza not identify as umlungu (white person)? would this mean that he equates his personhood with the idea of something that is devoid of humanness – which is a perception in some af rican special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 33 societies. chigumadzi also alludes to this in her article. what would this mean in this scenario? i don’t have the answers but i am posing these questions as a way of probing further into ideas of the gaze in this specific context of blackness interfacing with whiteness and its ideology. locating locations, the ‘lokasie’and the oppositional gaze ikasi6 is a place that at any given moment can be embraced or rejected. the same goes for identities associated with being f rom ekasi. for instance, being assumed to have limited thinking capacity because of exposure to life in only one area, being assumed to be dangerous, being poor and disadvantaged, and stereotypes such as being considered to be uncivilised and unruly. ekasi, that which can’t be expressed through the limits of language is reconfigured, reshaped and navigated anew through a different lens. the black self is constantly in flux. here, the black self is always evolving. when seen in a certain light, ekasi udarkie is ingamla7. here, the black self defines and redefines blackness and is in a constant fight to be seen and unseen under different circumstances. things are never simply black and white. one sees an image of who or what they are when they see another person. ikasi is a place where the black gaze is a site of resistance, an oppositional gaze as posited by social activist and feminist bell hooks. it’s a courageous navigation of the power of looking outward and inward. in the essay ‘we blacks’, activist bantu biko defines the essence of black consciousness and calls on the black man to look inward and ‘come to himself ’ (1978: 31). biko’s essay agitates for black people to show the value of their own standards. this view is echoed by hooks who claims that the act of looking enables a coming home toward oneself (2003: 98). what does it mean for a person f rom ekasi to do this? it means enduring the unpleasant task of facing the various societal assumptions placed on their shoulders. the evergreen ‘umuntu wase lokshin’ is never too far f rom thought. this colloquial expression is laden with negative perceptions of a person f rom the location or township in this context, meaning one who is stifled by their conditions, limited in thought processes as a result. it’s through such expressions that the idea of ‘black bodies’ becomes personified, a faceless amoeba of identities. the notion that the array of complexities within these spaces can be reduced to a single imagined one-size-fits-all ‘being’ or approach is something i find puzzling. unlike kerry james marshall’s a portrait of the artist as a shadow of his former self8 , painted on paper in egg tempera, featuring variations of black, when this limited monolithic view of blackness occurs and black people are not seen through the lens of multiple approaches as the people they are, but are reduced to ‘black bodies’, this well-meaning descriptor encompasses so much and yet simultaneously excludes so much. witnessing and living through the sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit dynamic of belonging and rejection and of the individual versus the collective can be mind-boggling. as an arts practitioner developing a praxis based on community engagement and museum practice in township spaces in the south af rican context, my concern is the people living in these spaces and their claim to the narratives represented in historical museums in these spaces. my interest is in the idea of confinement interfacing with the defiantly uncontrollable nature of township living. my interest is in the refusal to conform to a formulaic approach that keeps reproducing a particular kind of narrative of stagnant blackness. what happens in this space of ambivalence? how does this state of ‘inbetween’ show up? i’m interested in unravelling the curatorial attempts made to preserve certain narratives within these special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 as an arts practitioner developing a praxis based on community engagement and museum practice in township spaces in the south african context, my concern is the people living in these spaces and their claim to the narratives represented in historical museums in these spaces. my interest is in the idea of confinement interfacing with the defiantly uncontrollable nature of township living. 34 historical museums and how i can find ways of introducing more flexible modes of thinking around blackness and how it is represented in these spaces. i’m interested in how this can continue to be interrogated, reclaimed and reconfigured by black people in these spaces. how does the investment in the commodification of historical narratives of a particular kind of blackness interface with the f ragile community relations that tend to accompany the knowledge production process? what emerges when politics enforce the idea of a blackness devoid of character, a distinguishable face or nuanced imagery? what keeps the black body so attractive, that it is revisited time and again through various forms of representation through art? how do we continue to language an unlanguaged world of blackness in these spaces? and how can knowledge producers avoid creating limited, static visual tropes of blackness in township-based museums? in the taxi scenario related above, what emerges f rom the brief interaction is an example of how particular ideas of blackness can influence how people perceive themselves and others. at this pivotal moment in time, when so many people are sbaweling9 black portraiture, what does it mean for the black self? one such example is a key moment within popular culture, when the release of the february 2022 edition of british vogue magazine sparked controversy (see mail online, 2022). featuring an array of black models, the cover was intended to celebrate the rise of af rican models and their beauty on a large scale. the models’ skin was edited to look darker, which seemed to irk many critics, who shared their negative opinions on social media. this is an indication of yet another wave of rising popularity of the representation of black bodies through imagery, how they are observed and how these images are both imbibed and rejected. in ‘the role of the writer in a new nation’, achebe quotes léopold sédar senghor’s thinking, which supports the idea of af ricans becoming ‘producers of culture and not just its consumers’ (1964: 13). this is a call for af ricans to become more deliberate in using their sense of agency towards taking a more proactive role in how their personhood is represented. there’s a lot that can be said about this statement regarding blackness and the idea of af ricanness, but i’d like to approach it f rom the point of view of the resurgence of black portraiture’s popularity. what exactly does this moment mean? does the burden of blackness cease to exist when black people are creators and producers? does blackness become more substantive? what happens when the black gaze is internalised? in other words, what happens when black people observe themselves in greater detail? hooks’ theory of the oppositional gaze (2003) reminds us that there is a power in naming what is seen and interrogating it. the power in looking is expanded when this action of looking is turned inward and a courageous looking occurs, making the gaze a site of resistance – a resistance to inaccurate visual tropes and false representations of what being a black person means. the politics of the act of looking as black people is a complex topic, which i won’t fully expand on here, but i do acknowledge that it informs the ideas to which i am drawn. my observation is that the beauty of the black self can’t fully be captured or contained. sitting in the potential discomfort of a space without clear definition may be exactly what is needed to retain a sense of reflexive approaches towards understanding and navigating the black self. interlude: black is beautiful there’s a specific image that always comes to my mind when i think of black portraiture and its many iterations within township spaces. it’s an image that feels like home. it reaches out to you with warm, comforting hands and embraces you, allowing you to think that absolutely nothing can disturb the feelings what keeps the black body so attractive, that it is revisited time and again through various forms of representation through art? how do we continue to language an unlanguaged world of blackness in these spaces? and how can knowledge producers avoid creating limited, static visual tropes of blackness in township-based museums? in the taxi scenario related above, what emerges from the brief interaction is an example of how particular ideas of blackness can influence how people perceive themselves and others. special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 35 of peace and love that envelope you in that moment of gazing into it. it’s the popular mother and child image that has been revisited by the likes of artist meleko mokgosi. i stand corrected, but i think to this day it hasn’t been uncovered who the original photographer of this popular image was. i’m left with so many questions about how this particular image ended up on the walls of so many black homes ekasi, probably hung not too far f rom the portrait of a crying child (another popular one). as a child growing up ekasi, i can’t recall ever really paying much attention to this photograph because of how often my eyes landed on it when visiting different homes. i was always curious about why so many people owned it though. i think it’s safe to say that i had a similar level of curiosity about the kind of f rames i saw on the wedding portraits of so many elderly couples. these images tended to all look the same to me: the oblong, octagon shaped f rames would typically house the black and white portrait of the bride and groom in western wedding regalia, showing their smiling faces (however, more often than not it would be straightfaced people staring back at you). it was almost a certainty: you would visit your f riend’s home and, on the mantle, or hanging above a doorway in the living room, this photograph would greet and stare back at you. despite seeming to be uniform, each visual carried its own narratives, articulating the sensibilities and self-image of the black populace of the time. my own attempts at finding out why the images were so popular didn’t get too far, with the most reason given being that they were just fashionable. in my opinion, this points to what may be considered an appreciation for black portraiture at the time. ngugi wa thiongo (2009) writes: ‘images are very important. most people like looking at themselves in the mirror. most like to have their photos taken. in many af rican societies the shadow was thought to carry the soul of the person.’ languages tend to carry a lot of power and are evolving repositories of customs, rituals and wisdom. for instance, the words ukuthwebula isithombe carry a dual meaning. in a literal sense, it means to take a photograph, but it’s in the deeper meaning where one begins to understand what is meant by wa thiongo. the intention that lies behind the word ukuthwebula is laden with undertones of darkness, taking one’s essence, one’s being – the taking of the soul (or perhaps, ubuntu babo). ubuntu bethu my interest has been in exploring the intersection of ‘black bodies,’ and the various notions associated with how ‘black people’ are perceived and their selfperceptions within township spaces. what shapes how some of these people think about themselves in these spaces? what informs how some of them see themselves? i’m interested in what that thought process looks like and how it shows up in a physical form. a typical 21st-century kasi conversation could go like this: darkie 1: ey mara ntwana udarkie uyohlala awudarkie.10 darkie 2: smoko?11 darkie 1: ichiskop yasho ntwana… umn’tomnyama akafuni uk’bon’ umn’tomnyama ayaphambili… mara why?12 darkie 2: fede outi yami. yiwaar leyo.13 darkie 1: neh, ntwana… ithi ngik’lay’tise…yazi thina abodarkie sikhawatheke blind. blind kabi! iyinglamla zis’ncandele izinto ezibhaye, angali. mara cava, ntwana nou di laas yithi esizikhawathayo.14 the conversation between these lamajita15 gives us a glimpse into some of the negative self-perceptions that one tends to encounter ekasi. my thinking is that their observations about fellow black people ekasi are based on what they’ve seen, what they’ve lived through and what they imagine. they are both including and also excluding themselves f rom this narrative. ithi ngik’layitise (let me enlighten you). blind (to an extreme extent) but also a play on the idea of light and dark, in a sense that things are so bad that it feels like you are in complete darkness. the opening special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 36 statement that udarkie uyohlala awudarkie sets the scene for an ongoing lamentation festival, a dressing down of the darkie mentality ekasi. the idea that can be articulated as a negative mentality of blackness holding black people back f rom moving forward. there is a chapter in mmatshilo motsei’s re-weaving the soul of the nation (2017) titled ‘when spider webs unite they can tie up a lion’. i’m drawn to this af rican proverb as a way of understanding the idea of a collective consciousness. i’m keen to make sense of the idea of seeing and embracing a black self ekasi that comfortably co-exists within a collective consciousness of blackness in this context. in other words, how much space is there for one to assert their individuality within the greater collective? musician and anthropologist johnny clegg writes: ‘identity in its most primitive expression is attachment’ (2021). this attachment can be to family, to a community, or to an imagined nation because of shared values or ideals. is this sense of attachment because of what one sees, recognises (and identifies with) in another? what determines the extent of attachment to or detachment f rom the black self that exists as a unit and within a broader community that is ikasi? there’s a silent beauty in the undercurrents of how personhood is expressed ekasi. my sense is that the black self in township spaces exudes a quiet confidence, supported by the awareness of the greater whole that exists. the black self embodies not only individual characteristics but carries external perceptions, gazes and assumptions. there is a lot that can be said about the persistence of whiteness even as black people self-introspect and continuously assert themselves as they redefine their existence. ultimately, i am of the view that attempts at translating the conceptual expressions of blackness and black personhood shouldn’t be limited to one perspective. it should be a continuous redefinition in actu. the crevices that exist in the unknown and misunderstood spaces should be recognised and utilised as prompts towards further probing of the human condition. the resistance to definition offers knowledge producers room for shifts in thinking, shifts in conceptions and shifts in modalities of creating new knowledge. notes 1. iscamtho (slang): refers to minibus taxi drivers. 2. iscamtho (slang) phrase referring to the act of seating four passengers per row of seats in a minibus taxi. this sometimes occurs even when the seat is designed to accommodate three passengers. 3. iscamtho (slang) word referring to a minibus taxi driver. the word alludes to the action of a circular motion, or to turn. the af rikaans word for this is draai. the slang version is drawn f rom this word. 4. iscamtho (slang) word referring to a young man. 5. mageza is a slang term in iscamtho, meaning ‘taxi driver.’ 6. ikasi is a word derived f rom the af rikaans version of the word ‘location’. ‘lokasie’ has been used to describe living areas of non-white people under the apartheid administration. kasi is a contraction of lokasie. 7. iscamtho word referring to a white person. 8. artist kerry james marshall produced the piece a portrait of the artist as a shadow of his former self in 1980, when he was 25 years old. his subject matter derives f rom black culture and stereotypes, as well as his own life experience. 9. iscamtho (slang) word drawn f rom isixhosa slang meaning to desire something. 10. loosely translated, meaning that a black person will always be a black person. 11. iscamtho word meaning: what is the problem? 12. loosely translated, meaning that the kwaito group chiskop told us [in their song]. the lyrics mention that one black person doesn’t want to see another black person prospering and getting ahead in life. 13. loosely translated, meaning: oh well, it is what it is; that’s true. 14. loosely translated, meaning: no, my f riend, let special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 37 me enlighten you. black people are damaged. i acknowledge that white people have taken a lot f rom us [as black people] but now we are the ones hurting ourselves. 15. singular form is ‘umjita’, which is iscamtho for ‘man’. references achebe, c. (1964). ‘the role of the writer in a new nation.’ in: g. killam, ed., af rican writers on af rican writing. ibadan/nairobi/lusaka: heinemann, 7–13. biko, b. s. (1978). ‘we blacks.’ in: b.s. biko, i write what i like. london: bowerdean press, 29–35 chigumadzi, p. (2021). ‘can white south af rica live up to ubuntu, the af rican philosophy tutu globalised?’ the guardian [online]. available at: www.theguardian.com/commentisf ree/2021/dec/31/white-southaf rica-ubuntu-af rican-tutu clegg, j. (2021). my early years: johnny clegg – scatterlings of af rica. illovo, south af rica: macmillan. dladla, n. (2017). ‘towards an af rican critical philosophy of race: ubuntu as a philo-praxis of liberation,’ journal of af rican philosophy, culture and religions, 6(1): 39–68. hooks, b. (2003). ‘the oppositional gaze: black female spectators.’ in: a. jones, ed., the feminism and visual culture reader. new york: routledge, 94–105. mail online. (2022). ‘‘this is one of the worst vogue covers ever’: magazine featuring nine af rican models is branded offensive for ‘fetishising’ them with lighting that hides their features and makes them ‘look like mannequins’’. mail online [online]. available at: https:// www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10402325/this-one-worst-voguecovers-issue-featuring-nine-black-women-slammed-fans.html motsei, m. (2017). ‘when spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.’ in: m. motsei, re-weaving the soul of the nation. south af rica: af rika ikalafe, 73–77. ndebele, n. (1984). ‘the rediscovery of the ordinary: some new writings in south af rica.’ new writing in af rica: continuity and change. london: commonwealth institute. wa thiongo, n. w. (2009). something torn and new: an af rican renaissance. new york: basiccivitas books. special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 90 after an attempt at a theoretical and contextual introduction to mugabe’s legacy, i dug into the main menu with something akin to the mainstay of joost fontein’s nearly simultaneously published book on the politics of death in zimbabwe: a death. i am sure joost would agree that such a denouement hardly means ‘the end’. my end-that-is-a-new-beginning entailed the somewhat magical way i discovered that robert mugabe had indeed reached the final point of his mortal coil, and my recounting of stephen groote’s hastily rallied zimbabwean éminence activistes grises’ epitaphs on safm’s sunrise. surprisingly (to me), none of them mentioned in other than laudatory mode mugabe’s learning many of his trade’s tricks during zimbabwe’s liberation war. i tried to remedy some of such lacunae at the end of the interviews on that september 6, 2019 morning, but when writing the book discovered writer percy zvomuya’s historical delving reflected my interests. zvomuya zeroed in on the mid-1970s moment mugabe’s legacy takes as integral to mugabe’s political making: that being his ability to get rid of those he thought challenged him. zvomuya’s never-erring literary marksmanship hit on some remarkable writers’ takes on history and politics, including graham greene, one of af rican arguments brilliant managing editor stephanie kitchen’s favourites. i brought zvomuya and his interpretations to my story in these excerpts: i owe him the book’s literary legacy. percy zvomuya’s exception proved the rule that few of the raconteurs on the death of this man of history reached below the magic 1980 cutoff date. zvomuya recalled a story recounting that even mugabe’s mother warned his fellow nationalists back in the early 1960s. mbuya bona mugabe wondered why they thought her son cared about ‘your politics’. she told them that ‘he doesn’t care one bit about that. you don’t know how cruel my son is. you don’t know him at all.’ of course, the issue rests on more than what a mother knows. as zvomuya cited graham greene (apparently one of mugabe’s preferred reads), ‘a man isn’t presented with two courses to follow: one good and one bad. he gets caught up.’ that brings us back to what is special about the maelstrom that sweeps up a very intelligent son. it involves the biographies of many people, spread far and wide in space and time. zvomuya also took the mid-1970s as a missed turning point. he cited robert bolaño’s warning about waiting too long for the stages of history to t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 excerpt f rom moore’s mugabe’s legacy: coups, conspiracies, and the conceits of power in zimbabwe excerpt 91v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 unfold as if to counterpoise the ‘infantile and ultra-leftist’ line samora machel impressed on the young political soldiers daring to cross mugabe. we were on the same track, although i am still unsure if they were childish and extreme or the best indication of how the national democratic revolution might have worked had it a measure of time and space. much depends on definitions of ‘infantile’. if frelimo’s brand of ‘democratic centralism’ foreshadowed their future, it was hardly for machel to invoke lenin’s swipes at those who sneered at parliamentary democracy when it was a viable option. frelimo’s economic policies were far f rom bukharin’s too. the vashandi feared zanu (pf)’s road deadended at democracy. zvomuya’s new frame interviews with decolonial theorist sabelo gatsheni-ndlovu also invoked history’s makers and making, perhaps inadvertently contrasting these with more hifalutin endeavours. zvomuya and gatsheni-ndlovu discussed why mugabe and his peersin-power embraced ‘violence as a mode of rule’: was it nietzsche’s monster, that being the progeny of colonial brutality, or was it hamartia? ndlovu-gatsheni said it could have been a both an original condition and ‘sociogenesis – political socialisa tion’. ndlovu-gatsheni emphasised how the liberation struggle ‘schooled’ the aspirant rulers’ violent propensities, mentioning this at least seven times, as if it was uncontrollable. he invoked ‘tribalism’ too, although almost omitting the ndebele and zapu f rom that sin. then zvomuya introduced the young vashandi (‘the people’ or more specifically ‘the workers’) radicals in the mid-1970s who mugabe got rid of when tired of their critique. ndlovugatsheni dismissed the ginger group quickly: he praised the radicals’ ability to suss out the falsity of the old guard’s marxism-leninism, but claimed they had fallen into the colonial trap of accept ing the westphalian idea of the nationstate. ironically, however, the vashandi question relates directly to ndlovu-gatsheni’s claim that abel muzorewa and ndabaningi sithole [two who tried but failed to lead] ‘lost it’ because they were unwilling to ‘worship the barrel of the gun’. sithole and muzorewa’s losses were a direct result of the [young radicals’] zipa (zimbabwe people’s army) ginger group’s dismay at the possibility of their leadership. this, to carry the irony to a second level, was a large component of mugabe’s ladder to his coronation. sithole – f rom 1964 until the ‘coup in [rhodesia’s] prison’ retired him in 1974 the leader of the breakaway party that eventually ruled zimbabwe – ‘lost it’ in the wake of zanu national chair herbert chitepo’s assassination in lusaka in march 1975. he abandoned ‘his’ soldiers to the zambian army’s guns and disappeared to the usa, apparently to visit his sick daughter. on return, he scurried to nyerere in tanzania to claim his due, and then the mozambican camps to curry the soldiers’ favour. he was too late. denied the f reedom f ighters’ support, in the late 1970s neither sithole nor muzorewa hesitated for a second when the smith regime offered the vicious ‘auxiliaries’ to pave the path to one of the most short-lived governments ever [that being ‘zimbabwe-rhodesia’, lasting seven months in 1979]. muzorewa’s story is sad. the liberal and nationalist forces of opposition to a plebiscite on a mild-mannered constitutional proposal pulled the (american) methodist bishop out of his pulpit in 1972 to preside over their ‘no’ campaign. edgar tekere told me that the imprisoned nationalist leaders approved – indeed suggested – muzorewa thinking it was an interim measure for an umbrella grouping. yet muzorewa hung on long after the pearce commission, treading water out of his depth until dumped. well past his zvomuya’s new frame interviews with decolonial theorist sabelo gatsheni-ndlovu also invoked history’s makers and making, perhaps inadvertently contrasting these with more hifalutin endeavours. zvomuya and gatsheni-ndlovu discussed why mugabe and his peers-in-power embraced ‘violence as a mode of rule’: was it nietzsche’s monster, that being the progeny of colonial brutality, or was it hamartia? excerpt 92 sell-by date, his last letter to margaret thatcher pleaded for his family’s sustenance. in mid-1981 his ephemeral prime ministership in the hybrid ‘zimbabwe–rhodesia’ long gone, he asked for $25,500. his sons’ university education needed cash. kent state was about to expel one for non-payment of fees, the one in london was expensive. five months on, he demanded $30,000 for durawall fencing, security guards and a chauffeur, because the zimbabwean state no longer provided these. in march 1980 peter carrington had donated $100,000 towards the residence. the negative reply – for which the poor prelate had to wait another month, if he got it at all – was for the harare-based high commissioner to deliver orally: ‘it would be a mistake in [carrington’s] view to commit any response to paper’. this should, carrington relayed to thatcher, put a stop to the perception that there is ‘something of an open-ended commitment’ in train. whatever their ends, neither sithole nor muzorewa decried guns as means. why did ndlovu-gatsheni say that their refusal to ‘worship’ them was why they failed? zvomuya’s final conversation with ndlovugatsheni concluded with the bible. if god planted the tree of knowledge in eden, ‘knowledge creates reality’. we were back to alternative truths [discussed in my introduction], seemingly out of thin air or holy breaths. it could be worthwhile to return to their pasts, to see which ones made history. that might take us beyond fleeting moments of idealist fantasy. … graham greene’s historicism beats edenesque fantasies. one finds history’s webs and works the best way possible within them, changes them, or exits. who finds whom in those labyrinths, and how do they work for or against each other? for mugabe and his zimbabwe, we need to know more about the stage on which his workings were constructed during the early decades of nationalism and the liberation struggle – and the actors acting (not just thinking) on them. contra greene, history did not just catch them up. they were catching up. some won the race. others were ahead of it but beaten by it: that might be the meaning of ‘infantile ultra-leftism’. was mugabe the only one in zimbabwe who caught history, and made it fit his hands perfectly? maybe for a moment: they soon went on their separate paths. the political historian’s questions should be when and why. somewhere in proximity to this discussion, i inserted a vignette that seemed to illustrate how, as political history is caught or it escapes attempts to grasp it – is often imbued with variations on the notion of truth, i.e. representing reality as close as possible to what it might have been. when politicians are conf ronted with challenges to versions of history they would like to stand as their truth, it takes them awhile to shift strategies. some are faster than others – sometimes too fast, as donald trump (might) indicate. those who are not so quick-footed flounder in what santiago zabala might say are the large spaces in which “alternative facts” contest for the f reedom to reveal themselves. and so a particular politician offered a new starting point for this book. aside f rom attempting to analyse the many means by which robert mugabe gained power, and thus did so much to create a particular space of power for zimbabwean politicians in his wake, mugabe’s legacy also tries to account for the conceits that accrue with it. that includes believing their versions of truth will be consumed by their subjects without question. after discussing ideas about ‘development’ ranging f rom marx and gramsci to magical realism, the book gets closer than these ‘universal’ abstractions to mugabe and what he left us. thus it arrives at an event that got the text moving f rom its initial focus on the november 2017 coup that ended mugabe’s nearly four decades of rule, to a longer view of how his power was finalised in such ignominy. there may well be new means – universal enough, yet with closer grain and depth of field–enabling closer examination of the time and space of the above structured and processual phenomena as they wrapped around robert gabriel mugabe’s enigmatic ‘agency’ and its effects. the cure f rom excessive abstraction and context-and-thoughtless empiricism could be recent academic indications of a renewed gramsci. combine them with a theory of lying, and one has a less vague t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 excerpt 93 idea of mugabe and his moments. percolations f rom a particular event – which also led me to extend this book beyond the coup to more about the man who was soon to die – inspired this way of thinking. following a rendition of the meeting that generated at least three variations of lying, i will attempt to ‘interpret’ them given the current age of extended interregna and ‘alternative facts’ if interregna stretch beyond imagination then so can clausewitz’s dictum that the difference between politics and war is only a matter of means. likewise, that truth is the first casualty of war (be the expression’s originator aeschylus or a johnson) bears similar semantic elasticity. this particular event, a mid-2019 chatham house conversation with zimbabwe’s foreign affairs and trade minister, involved at least three lies. the most important one has been transcribed and youtubed for eternity. the other two circle around ‘public intellectuals’ within the state–civil-society–politics gordian knot, which gets tighter the more it expands. sibusiso moyo (who [it is said, officially] died of covid-19-related illnesses just as i was tweaking the last revisions on this book), famous while as a major general he announced the ‘militarily assisted transition’, adept at defusing a dem onstration threatening to move towards the state house, and later touted as a prospective president, was on the deck. he performed as well as one tutored by a world bankish soul in the british embassy could (‘long-term gain after short-term pain’, etc., etc.). however, shaken by journalist violet gonda’s fiery questions, he faltered further when i asked him two more. the first was about the roots and consequences of the economic crisis, arguably the source of the many crises in his country. the land invasions that started the new millennium, perhaps? maybe earlier: the 1998 intervention to assist laurent kabila in the war against rwandan sponsored ‘rebels’, wherein army officers (and emmerson mnangagwa, and he) got rich via what the united nations called the ‘plundering’ of the drc’s minerals? second, i asked him if he was worried about the international reputation of a country where in january at least seventeen people died in a chaotic series of demonstrations, riots and killings sparked by a spike in the price of petrol. i wanted to know if a ‘briefing’ his office had apparently released after that, seemingly laying the blame at the feet of a group of democracy missionaries named ‘canvas’, indicated his take on the root of zimbabwe’s existential threats. his answer(s) veered in and out of the scripts prescribed by the dictates of development discourse. he did not want to repeat what he had said a few months before at chatham house regarding zimbabwe’s economic woes, but did claim that ‘we learnt to unlearn the past, and as a result, we then managed to chart our way forward’. chuckling, he remarked that ‘there are so many things, i’m sure, which have hap pened in your life, since you were born’. there were ‘many factors’ contributing to the crisis, ‘which came to be to the boiling point, par ticularly in 2008’. fundamentally, though, ‘it was a country under sanctions’. second, however, ‘some of the issues were, also, the man ner in which we dealt with specific matters … our own faults could have contributed’. after he said he wished he was rich, he uttered the following fascinating lines: but all i can tell you is that all these issues, which have been taking place, are issues which were as a result of perceptions and other, which then developed into real truth or false truth, whatever the case may be. but all i can tell you is that it’s very straightforward and transparent. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 his answer(s) veered in and out of the scripts prescribed by the dictates of development discourse. he did not want to repeat what he had said a few months before at chatham house regarding zimbabwe’s economic woes, but did claim that ‘we learnt to unlearn the past, and as a result, we then managed to chart our way forward’. excerpt 94 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 i thought at the time that this was the answer to my second question. on reflection the minister might have still have been considering the drc situation, which as far as he was concerned was all wrapped up because now ‘we are very close’ to rwanda’s president: the war was ‘nothing personal, it was an organisational response … to that particu lar issue’. still, his final words seemed indicative of one of mugabe’s legacies–lying. was this what ‘operation restore legacy’ (the coup) was resuscitating? of course, being economical with the truth is a com ponent part of coups and conspiracies. the conceit is that your power means everybody had better believe you. yet there are many indicators of doubt within such utterances: ‘all i can tell you’, twice; ‘perceptions and other’ unnamed contingent approaches to veracity; and after the separation (or lack of it) between real and false truths, the second ‘all i can tell you’ was a promise that ‘it’s very straightforward and trans parent’. what was ‘it’? the minister’s confusing words have bothered me for a long time. as well as explaining a lot about the twists and turns in zimbabwe’s political history, they also spoke to a universal concern. the scourge of ‘alternative facts’ as they spewed forth f rom the mouth and twitter account of the past president of the united states has generated much thinking about how truths are constructed.. before trying to deal with some conceptual takes on the generality of real and false truths, how ever, the other two alternative truths around this particular communi cation event may be worth recounting. starting at the beginning might present a more rounded picture. when i arrived at the chatham house meeting, i passed a small group, presumably of exiled zimbabweans, demonstrating against the minister and the regime he represented. violet gonda was inside. the seat beside her was f ree. i took it. she was exuberant at scoring an inter view with the minister, albeit on the side of the chatham house meet ing or another with members of the zimbabwean diaspora at zimbabwe house on the strand that evening. minister of foreign affairs and international trade, lt. general (retired) dr sibusiso moyo’s diary was quite full, but we guessed that since his primary reason for being in london was to attend a media f reedom conference, he would deign to keep his promise to converse with a journalist seen to be solidly in the opposition’s camp. ms gonda’s bold questioning gave me courage to stumble along with my queries. but as the meeting closed, she received a message cancelling her chances for further interrogation: no interview for her. her manner was too conf rontational. ‘crestfallen’ barely manages to indicate her sentiments on that news. we left together, made some inquiries of the demonstrators, and i went to another meeting. while i was occupied in regent’s park a protester sprayed water on the min ister as he approached his car. ndabaningi ‘nick’ mangwana, the regime’s permanent secretary for information (perhaps ironically, a united kingdom citizen),96 tweeted a condemnation of such wanton violence; gonda heard that she was blamed for an organisational role in the demo. tweets in her support revelled in the irony of her cur tailed interview just after the minister’s participation in the media f reedom conference. the day went on. minister moyo’s meeting with the diaspora was next. the guest list was poorly organised, so i found it was easy to get in without an invitation. there was violet gonda, the intrepid journal ist, in animated conversation with a couple of women showing off the latest wedding pictures of cabinet minister dr sekai nzenza (who once worked for world vision in australia). after minister moyo announced the imminent one-stop investment window, another question period came up–mostly about business opportunities, for the good of the nation of course. when minister moyo belittled a journalist’s scare-mongering questions that morning, ms gonda fired back with the issue of her cancelled interview. soon her erstwhile f riends, and many others, were booing, hissing and telling her to sit down. the moderator f rom chatham house suggested she get to her question. s. b. moyo looked perplexed. when the hubbub abated, he said he had never instructed mangwana to call off the interview: had it taken excerpt 95v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 place, he and ms gonda would have been f riends. another false truth exposed. what did they all mean? the message f rom a public-relations hack who thought he could protect a powerful minister (who, as with any one-time military leader, is never fully retired f rom the organisational means of force, but liked to talk to journalists) f rom a journalist’s osten sible bad manners. thus resulted social media wars, sullying the zimbabwean ‘second republic’s’ claims to media f reedom, and a con fused minister in f ront of a crowd. the fickle crowd turned on a dime against the outspoken journalist. real truths; false truths; a legacy of lies: and a promise to make it all ‘straightforward and transparent’, possibly among ‘f riends’. a crowd that guaranteed the conceits of power. was this day a microcosm of zimbabwean politics in toto? to consider that this was simply the contemporary condition of world politics and its culture in miniature (there were assuredly more tears and wars in the trump camp) might be taking things too far. so too would john le carré’s contention that a swindling father could well relieve a son or daughter (in this case him) ‘of any real concept of the truth. truth was what you got away with.’ it is not enough to repeat the story about mugabe’s father abandoning him to understand the tangling of truth and power in his case. who knows s. b. moyo’s psychohistory? in any case, it was clear by that day’s end that i would have to inter rogate more than the coup. its context and consequences would extend far before and after it. mugabe’s certain death also meant that more emphasis needed laying on the legacy already outgrowing him. the theories at hand seemed too big for that task. a few months on– during the purgatory phase of re-writing – new waves in those waters began to crest. they might help to unpack the uncertainties and untruths displayed at the london houses of chatham and zimbabwe – and the november 2017 events wrapped up in them. 1. percy zvomuya, ‘the accidental dictator: even mugabe’s mother said he shouldn’t have been president’, the citizen, 9 september 2019, @ https://citizen.co.za/news/south-af rica/insight/2176711/theaccidental-dic tator-even-mugabes-mother-said-he-shouldnthave-been-president/; ‘what’s left of zimbabwe? part iii: too late for change’, new frame, 30 august 2018, @ https://www.newf rame. com/whats-left-zimbabwe-part-iii-too-late-change/; ‘unlearning the zimbabwean lesson,’ new frame, 17 april 2020, @ https://www. newf rame.com/long-read-unlearning-the-zimbabwean-lesson. 2. zvomuya, ‘what’s left …’new frame, 30 august 2018; henrick ellert and dennis anderson, a brutal state of affairs: the rise and fall of rhodesia. harare: weaver, 2020; luise white, the assassination of herbert chitepo: texts and politics in zimbabwe. bloomington: indiana university press, 2003; luise white, ‘“normal political activities”: rhodesia, the pearce commission, and the af rican national council’, journal of af rican history, 52 (3), 2011, 321–40; luise white, unpopular sovereignty: rhodesian independence and af rican decolonization. chicago: university of chicago press, 2015; national archives, uk. fco 106/753, ‘bishop muzorewa’, 4 july, 25 november and 14 december 1981; zvomuya, ‘part ii: unlearning the zimbabwean lesson’, new frame, 24 april 2020, @ https://www.newf rame.com/ long-read-part-two-unlearning-the-zimbabwean-lesson/. 3. santiago zabala, being at large: freedom in the age of alternative facts, montreal and kingston: mcgill-queens university press, 2020. excerpt 58 special edition for ambivalent black figures by thulile gamedze | peer reviewed t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 black figures have appeared for almost as long as black ‘figures’ have been. the speculative proposition of this piece is that not all black figures today are equal before the violence of the contemporary art marketplace. numerous practices involving black figuration go unrecognised commercially, remaining “in the dark,” less comprehensible, although potentially offering possibility beyond the static of this new aesthetic status-quo. i propose that marketable black figures are those that visually (whether or not rhetorically) adhere to sustained taxonomies of the neoliberal world; figures rooted in the mantra of representation ‘mattering.’ engaging garth erasmus’ state of emergency series (1985 1989), and randolph hartzenberg’s map of the neighbourhood series (1996 2004), the text studies less profitable practices of black figuration, concerned with matter/s other than representation. moved beyond the disturbing identity erotica of neoliberal post-apartheid south af rica, both practitioners, rejecting mainstreamed taxonomies, are continually invested in the body inasmuch as it operates as a vessel for forms of opened (and i argue black conscious) political, philosophical, spiritual, and social life. their figures may be ‘furtive’ or on the move they appear with ambivalence, opacity, and do not present themselves as knowable. if not f ree, they remain un-captured, unpredictable. 59 prelude: a note on ambivalence ambivalence is ‘the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something,’ a state into which flux and morphability are hardwired. ambivalence could be said to be committed to occupying a number of realities at once, even when these realities throw each other off, and even when this throwing-off makes every reality equally untenable. in my best reading, ambivalence is a suspiciously open state – (and this next bit is crucial) – where the necessity for openness in orientation is rooted in stable resistance to what we might call ‘the current conditions’.1 to me or for us (if you want), ambivalence can be recognised for its resonance with queer politics: anarchic and unresolved, as well as disinterested in, or even failing neo-liberal aspirations and applications of success.2 because ambivalence is certain only of what it rejects, its main occupations are in listening for, to, and with other options.3 given the recursively colonial conditions of ownership and ‘taste’ that shape the life of the contemporary ‘art world’, art’s analysis and production demand, at the very least, ambivalence.4 (this text arises f rom, seeks, and produces, ambivalence.) context: fraudulent images ‘art,’ as a result of its relation to excessive wealth and its history of patronage, has long been entangled and implicated within, parallel to, or as a benefactor of various forms of exploitative horror.5 today, the art world subtends monopoly capital, the ‘washer’ of blood spilt by nefarious neo-liberal operations – military, prison, pharmaceutical, and immigration industrial complexes, as well as forces of apartheid, settler colonialism, and gentrification. the central irony of this nasty enterprise is that it is often through funded art practices that nuanced forms of ‘speaking back’, ‘self-representing’, and ‘counter-narrating’ are given space and time. such practices may routinely aesthetically undermine the politics of the resources and institutions that circulate and display them, whilst themselves being structurally undermined by the politics of the resources and institutions that they circulate in. in other words, representational ‘counter-narratives’ produced under these conditions are doomed to enacting varying levels of political f raudulence. i want to be clear that this f raudulent status-quo is not unique to the aesthetic practices of the art marketplace, and is broadly descriptive of the central contradictions in representation under neoliberalism. in art, we could think about the 2014 sydney biennale boycott by artists, who refused to participate given that the funding f rom the ‘transfield foundation’ came at the hands of its running offshore detention sites for asylum seekers that were inhumane, dangerous, and in violation of international civil and political human rights.6 we could think of disturbing phenomena like ‘rainbow capitalism’, the commercialisation of aesthetics of the lgbtqia+ community, at fundamental odds with queer positions that have historically put lives on the line in rejecting ‘business as usual’s’ reproduction of capitalism and its inherent patriarchy. we could think of ‘greenwashing’ and apartheid israel’s forests; advertised as a selflessly ‘environmentally conscious’ project but, in fact, a deeply unsettling one, whereby trees are planted onto stolen palestinian land.7 locally, we could think of the countless mandela statues littered around south af rica that somehow fail to be read as an indictment of the new dispensation’s failure, and themselves instead function strangely – a seeming replacement for equitable material life? we exist, in other words, in an odd scenario in which we know and understand the f raudulence of these kinds of images, yet are somehow able to cognitively dissociate, accepting them as an appropriate replacement for our own realities. in the context of democratic south africa – which has largely been defined through its deepened identification with, and violent reproduction of, our inherited apartheid and colonial racial schema – the art marketplace is a particularly bizarre arena of exchange. contemporary practices of black portraiture or figuration are the hot product of this fraudulent zone, often representing black autonomy or agency that is ultimately undermined by the conditions of its fetishized consumption and predominantly whiteowned economy. i might add that, in many cases, the work is not only special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 60 these algorithmic traps tend to repress less legible expressions of black and queer people interested in forms of presence, existence, relation, and internality, rather than in the aestheticized performances of existence. undermined by its ‘world’, but by its own dealings with black bodies. of particular interest herein are seeming parallels between black portraiture trends, and the algorithmic manipulation of platforms like instagram, which shape ‘desire’ through surveillance, and either the repression or promotion of content. these methods of policing consistently produce more and more identity categories that become defined by perfected and much-circulated archetypes: black ‘excellence’ is visually signalled via middle class-ness, nuclear familyness, and uncritical participation in capitalism; black queerness is visually signalled via fixations on the flesh body, its fashioning and its hyper-visibilised transition states; black joy is visually signalled through middle class ‘leisuring’ activity and the disappearance of the black worker, who in fact pays for others’ middle-class leisure using her largely joyless labour time. these processes of aesthetic flattening result in the collapse of everything, or everyone, into product and brand. accompanied often by sweet nothings like ‘representation matters’, such images, more and more frequently mirrored in contemporary painting and photography, fail to acknowledge that their trendiness functions to quell, and thus to stall, actions informed by the reality of sadness, violence, and humiliation defining modern relations of race.8 these algorithmic traps tend to repress less legible expressions of black and queer people interested in forms of presence, existence, relation, and internality, rather than in the aestheticized performances of existence. in this text, i occupy myself in work – and worlds – that sidestep singular visual investment in the body as body only, as flesh, and look to expressions of presence even as these attempts are doomed to obscurity and inevitable illegibility. i consider forgotten work, forgotten worlds, canonically neglected work – that is, committed work, layered work, ambivalent work, and ambivalent worlds. i engage the ambivalent black figure: the obscured, abstracted, ambiguous, scary, running black figure, who both arrives to and disappears from view, and whose relation to the world of the body is fundamentally unstable. for its simultaneous openness and secure rejection of the world as it is, i love ambivalence. it is not an antidote to the neo-liberal capture of the art world – instead, it is an elusive ethic, where ‘slipperiness’, of both aesthetic work and dealings with the ‘art world’ is a strategy enabling constant movement, thus the resisting of seductive new taxonomies of art discourse. i arrived at randolph hartzenberg and garth erasmus through my part-time research work with af rica south art initiative (asai) – a small, highly generative world of necessary ambivalence (around the state of southern af rican art discourses), intergenerational interactivity through writing, and intentional efforts to engage with artists whose work is neglected by mainstream history. these considerations of their practices and lives are attended by the exchange of a number of warm and detailed emails with both randy and garth. body: hartzenberg’s distillation hartzenberg’s figures leave everything to the imagination. they are diagrammed outlines with tubes connecting heart to ear, heart to mouth. they are anonymous tumbling faces caught in a network of arrows, empty profiles in symbolic fields of dust and salt and exile. hartzenberg’s figures give almost nothing, so occupied they are in being present amongst staircases that lead nowhere, darkened squares of somethings painted over, empty cubes, empty houses, words scratched sharply into once-wet surfaces, chaos of excavation and buildings, and chaos of loss. hartzenberg’s figures float balefully in tragedy and trauma, spun upside-down and still spinning (they are objects, maybe), in a seemingly perpetually re-ordering practice, whose looping character delves into deeper readings with each new render. he sends me a string of emails, patiently working through my multiple curiosities, which, in this moment, special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 61 are enquiries into the ways that bodies or their parts arrive amongst the seemingly obscure set of objects and materials that root his multimodal practice. (the images in his flat work are the objects of his sculptural work and are the props of his performance work.) salt, dust, the oresteia greek tragedy, ‘exile’, suitcases and staircases, connective pipes, stones: ‘an integration of a number of interconnected elements conceptually, materially and contextually…’ (hartzenberg, 2021, personal email correspondence). his emails layer on top of one another in a series of subject lines, ‘thoughts in the margins of time,’ then ‘continuations,’ then ‘recurring images,’ and then ‘more thoughts.’ the lines read kind of like poetry. each message opens for and to the next, reminding me of his characteristically re-rere-re-painted canvases, whose seemingly resolved top surfaces still hold and implicate the heaviness of the aesthetic histories they cover (the ground left behind series has, for instance, been ongoing since 2015, with each work a palimpsest, or a pile of past iterations.) in the series, no.8 is one of the only works depicting the ‘figure’ (if we would choose to define this through the literal representation of a body). a set of two small anonymous faces in profile, seemingly tumbling leftward, appear amongst the mild greyscale chaos in the lower right plane of the canvas. i imagine them now paused, stilled for this moment, but ready to keep it moving whenever we’d choose to exit the scene and allow them to re-commence. the tumbling faces are ambiguously elaborated through the addition of the words ‘stone’ and ‘salt,’ which hang above them in a kind of absurdist labelling system. their bodies are intentionally negated, ‘displaced within the context of south af rican social, historical, political terrain’ (hartzenberg, 2021, personal email correspondence). elsewhere, we see arrows without clear direction, a floorplan, a black cube housed inside a transparent one, and the words ‘nails,’ ‘bread,’ ‘dust,’ and ‘a-... silent… throughout,’ all rendered in the haphazard, diagrammatic style which moves through randy’s practice. ‘i work towards a distillation of imagery…’ (hartzenberg, 2021, personal email correspondence) body: erasmus and trauma erasmus’s figures move or are moved. they are running stick people rendered quickly in spray paint, or pools of dried ink on pages warped by their former wetness. they are conglomerations of greasy smoke, vaguely rendered, loosely drawn improvisations with medium; ‘ghosts,’ he says (erasmus, 2021, personal email correspondence). garth describes the figures in his work as primarily his ‘own personal ghosts,’ who have arrived as a result of trauma. garth understands that trauma is something that goes far beyond the body, affecting our ‘deep emotional and spiritual condition.’ violence is inflicted through the invocation of body taxonomies, like gender or sexual orientation or race, but its deeply gratuitous and dissonant nature – the trauma it passes on and expands – cannot be comprehended through the same invocations. in other words, our bodies and their type-castes, read in imperial or colonial or apartheid or neo-liberal terms, do not indicate the trauma itself, but that trauma lives inside. erasmus’s figures or ghosts are in fear, in song, fleeing, or making sound. one special figure, appearing in the mantis praise series, is horizontal, at rest; this is another kind of presence, symbolic of the artist’s late father, a figure of familial spiritual gatekeeping and guidance (erasmus, 2021, personal email correspondence). erasmus is himself regularly in song, the maker and player of khoisan instruments, whose sounds collapse time, beckoning ancestral histories into the present, and moving us away and away and away etc, f rom the identificatory options that constitute legible south af rican life (options which are always in hot pursuit.) erasmus, full of music and of sound, is himself the black figure of his practice too – the black portrait, even as he resists an aesthetics which over-identifies with the body as surface. in images of both erasmus’ and hartzenberg’s much varying works, we encounter figures in a hurry, figures en route, or figures otherwise occupied. while they appear, and although we may look at them, they avoid giving themselves over to us in the space of display, and are often more pressingly involved with and motivated by the sometimes absurd, sometimes colourful, sometimes chaotic fields in which they live. when they sleep, they dream of spaces we cannot see, when they tumble, we are unsure of exactly where they are going, when they yell, we do not quite know what they are saying – when they are there, we do not know how long they are staying. they do not stand still, are not strategically posed, and do not gaze special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 62 du boisian double consciousness offers a route in considering the pain of bloody splitting that xnau 13’s figure is subject to. i ask garth about the ‘twinning’ or the double presence, which i notice in a number of his works in the series. appropriately, there is more than one answer. straight at us with perfect skin, performing their own presence. these figures are living! of map in the neighbourhood, hartzenberg explains that ‘the works reflect…an internal state. a map of the internal neighbourhood.’ in the series of monoprints with collage, he repeats the anonymous figure in profile, who finds themselves floating above a familiar ‘distillation’ of elements – the dust and the salt, maths equations, body parts, and always oresteia… an ancient narrative of terror, trauma and suffering under violent warfare and unthinkable collective grief, which, for randy, had urgent parallels with the violence of south af rican apartheid, (and after) (hartzenberg, 2021, personal email correspondence). garth’s xnau is another internal map. the blue facial imprint – blueprint? – of erasmus’s thirteenth xnau figure is on its way out, or on its way in. arms are raised high in a moment of seemingly bloodied intensity. eyes are empty. the disembodied imprint, hanging above its more visceral twin, creates a presence x2. the central figure’s occupation is intense – fleeing? bleeding? astral-projecting? du boisian double consciousness offers a route in considering the pain of bloody splitting that xnau 13’s figure is subject to. i ask garth about the ‘twinning’ or the double presence, which i notice in a number of his works in the series. appropriately, there is more than one answer. his first response is an articulation of the work’s existence beyond his own ‘intellectual control’: that the images themselves constitute a kind of uninhibited material response to ‘the peculiarities and characteristics of the medium’ (erasmus, 2021, personal email correspondence). in this case, the peculiarities of the medium are liquid, with figures and faces being subject to the motion and wetness of water, loosening f rom the page, even tearing in some cases, and then settling and drying differently, with puddled pigments, but, i think, a sustained sense of motion, instability. in this improvised mode of making, where medium and the hands or the body consent to one another’s agency, the produced image itself enacts a further openness, an orientation to the world that notes its meaning as changeable, as changing, in accordance with the irregular conditions of the world around it. when images’ claims are difficult to grasp neatly, are dealing in contradiction, in motion, and in the mushiness of what’s unnameable about being, they are less easily appropriated by the spaces in which they act. they are slippery, and always already halfway out the door. a conclusion: for ambivalent black figures blackness, if understood through south af rican black consciousness, would seem to necessitate the production of aesthetics which are disruptive to (or reject) the central taxonomic force that creates the exploitation f rameworks of art institutions. blackness finds its position in refusal of the fundamental violence of racial capital – its responsibility is in the recognition of this system’s production of relations of violence and oppression, understanding that racism and class are produced by, and produce, patriarchy, ableist world views, messed up beauty standards, and so on. this political refusal – systematic in its nature – makes way for an opening, an insistence that blackness as ‘identity’ not be articulated with any fixity, even as its base of solidarity stands (see gamedze, 2021). for erasmus, the underlying motion of such an approach to identity unfolds: ‘the body represents the soul as an outer/physical manifestation of an inner world. but in another ironic sense, the condition of the emotional/inner state is influenced by the outside and the environmental…’ i find an echo with biko, as he talks of the loss of the ‘black man’ under apartheid as the ‘loss of his personality,’ that the conditions of oppression erode the personality – the soul! – and that restoration is only possible through black self-reliance, materially, psychologically, and spiritually (biko, 1978). special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 63 in their visual articulation, we already know that garth’s figures are often ghostly or accompanied by ghosts, lost personalities perhaps? at times, they are bodied, but herein, are just separated body parts, dismembered, violated. hartzenberg too reflects these states of body detachment. both practitioners speak of histories of trauma. i think that through their strategic and poetic and varied withhold of fixed bodies, both offer us openings to the other, less knowable realms of being that resist our gaze. representation through systems of colonial identif ication (which continually recur in new language, with consistently ref reshed liberal vigour) and through colonial ‘worlds’ of circulation and display, are not suff icient in relaying the textures of our experience. fraudulent images expand the cognitive dissonance – the metaphysical dissonance – that def ines marginalised experiences of this world. motion, flux, and all that is unseeable in the body, is much in excess of, even if consistently pressed and shut down by colonial and new taxonomies of the algorithm. randolph hartzenberg and garth erasmus’s figures do not pretend to capture enveloping, or revised versions of ‘the black body’. instead, they avoid representation, offering work consumed by trouble, conflict, and the unsolvable equations of be-ing in the horror of coloniality-modernity’s accumulation and loss. hartzenberg’s figures are rolling in space, are incomplete, erasmus’s are buried, ghosted, disembodied — they are all opaque, and certainly not f ree, but continue, somehow, to be un-captured and unpredictable. they are ambivalent black figures, and while they don’t have the answers, they do keep things moving. notes 1. during the weekend of the ‘black self’ colloquium at nirox, my f riend phokeng mentioned patricia hayes’ book ambivalent (2019) in response to my presentation. whilst the notion of ‘ambivalence’ for me seemed to possess an organic relation with the style of my enquiry, i was interested in this particular mobilisation of it due to the shared proximity of our concerns and locations. the f raming of this collection draws f rom photographer santu mofokeng’s claim that his work is informed by ambivalence, that ‘he is gesturing toward these planes of the conscious/ unconscious and, indeed, the polyvalent work that photography does.’ in this way, an ambivalent orientation is restitutive, ‘returning’ ambiguity and instability to the reading of images, and in their case, understanding photography as only one part of broader social, administrative and narrative operations, which do not always seem to make complete, neat sense. 2. halberstam thinks of queer failure as a disruption to heteronormative notions of success, which have been imagined through a white supremacist and patriarchal world view, and strengthened through the increased fascism and wealth gaps created in the period of neo-liberalism. a ‘failed’ queerness in this way, is a position moving away f rom desire for respectability, assimilation, adherence – a politics beyond sexual orientation: ‘while liberal histories build triumphant political narratives with progressive stories of improvement and success, radical histories must contend with a less tidy past, one that passes on legacies of failure and loneliness as the consequences of homophobia and racism and xenophobia’ (2011: 98). 3. in the introduction to globalization and the decolonial option (2010), walter mignolo says: ‘master paradigms are just but options dressed with universal clothes.’ his observation here is rooted in the idea that decolonial options need to be sure to locate their approaches in understandings of coloniality that delegitimize the ‘normalisation’ of imperial desire in the shaping of the modern world. 4. (if not their destructive overhaul.) 5. art here is not used as a generalised term enveloping broader understandings of cultural and aesthetic practices taking place everywhere. rather, i invoke the (less interesting) ‘art’: a discipline and product of the western world, whose exhibition, patronage, epistemic, and taste conventions have largely been accepted and assimilated into the (art) world at large. 6. see butt and o’reilly (2017) for reflections on this boycott, and considerations of boycott as a special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 64 crucial claim of autonomy under the precarious conditions of art practice in neo-liberalism. 7. there is a myriad of resources on this horrific practice. see, for instance: holm, 2012. 8. a trend in black portraiture herein seems to be in the novelty of paint’s application to scenic depictions of contemporary middle-class social life; renderings of young conventionally attractive black people having a good time. nkgopoleng moloi’s review (2021) of the exhibition everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, curated by anelisa mangcu and jana terblanche, shown at johannesburg’s ‘art mall’ – keyes – critiques the group show, a large collection of contemporary works of black portraiture f rom emerging artists, as impeded by a level of curatorial irresponsibility, as a result of its ‘limitations in adequately challenging or stretching what is often the problematic portrayal of black imagery that is not aware of itself or aware of its consumption.’ i fully agree and would suggest that, in parallel, black artists take some responsibility too, in considering the ways that representation for its own sake may end up consenting to a rigged epistemological f ramework that is structured through hierarchies of bodies, and mediated – and in these spaces, owned – by the white gaze. this comment arrives in response to both production of images and the conditions of these images’ exhibition – artists should take seriously the cognitive dissonance created by the limits of the art world and find ways to explore and expand their practices through insisting on also showing in contexts of care and reciprocal intellectual work. references biko, s. (1987 [1978]). ‘black consciousness and the quest for a true humanity.’ in: i write what i like: steve biko. a selection of his writings, edited by aelred stubbs c.r. oxford: heinemann. butt, d. and o’reilly, r. (2017). ‘inf rastructures of autonomy on the professional frontier: ‘art and the boycott of/as art’, a non-cartography of power.’ journal of aesthetics & protest, 10. gamedze, t. (2021). ‘“ordinary people, ordinary issues, ordinary emotions”: practising with garth erasmus and black consciousness.’ af rica south art initiative [online]. available at: www.asai. co.za/practising-with-garth-erasmus-and-black-consciousness/ halberstam, jack. (2011). ‘the queer art of failure.’ in: the queer art of failure. durham: duke university press. hayes, p. and minkley, g. (eds). (2019). ambivalent: photography and visibility in af rican history. ohio: ohio university press. holm, j. (2012). ‘greenwashing the occupation.’ miftah [online]. available at: www.miftah.org/display.cf m?docid=24391&categoryid=13 mignolo, w.d. (2010). ‘coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking.’ in: globalization and the decolonial option. edited by walter d. mignolo and arturo escobar. london and new york: routledge, 1–21. moloi, n. (2021). ‘black portraiture and the gaze: ‘everything was beautiful and nothing hurt’’. mail & guardian [online]. available at: www.mg.co.za/f riday/2021-10-22-black-portraiture-and-the-gazeeverything-was-beautiful-and-nothing-hurt/ special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 t h e t h i n k e r34 pan-african outline this article argues that it is necessary to take into account political, cultural, and economic factors when evaluating potential responses to the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). this approach is similar to that taken by joseph schumpeter, who argued for the essential relevance of politics, culture and economics (1942). this article begins by identifying past national information and communication technology (ict) policies in nigeria and their impact or lack thereof. it then seeks to identify the nexus that controls decision making in respect of ict and responses to new technology, as well as which aspects of policy have been successful and unsuccessful. finally, the article discusses the opportunities and challenges presented by the 4ir, with a focus on what a successful policy response would need to include and what might be the necessary preconditions for success. the nigerian government and ict the nigerian government is aware of the importance of ict: it holds regular conferences by o.a. ladimeji the fourth industrial revolution and nigeria a policy conundrum and high stakes for the future of the african continent 35v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african and produces many policy documents related to this matter. a recent egov conference held in 2019 focused upon utilising ict to drive transparency, improve tax collection, and improve the provision of government services to citizens. the history of nigeria’s ict policy in 2002, the general view appeared to be that af rica was woefully behind in terms of ict, and that serious government policy was needed to address the issue. analysts wrote of a “digital divide” (yusuf, 2005), and of a lack of basic access to equipment. at that time, a focus of academic energy was on government institutions, and the national information technology development agency (nitda) was created to implement nigeria’s national ict policy. typically, the policy announced a series of goals but no specific means to achieve them. for example, it focused on the use of ict in schools, but made no provision for appropriate training for teachers. appropriate local content was not recognised as an essential requirement. though the policy mentioned the importance of ict, it had no specific goals or proposed directions. despite this inadequate policy environment in 2002, the use of ict exploded. policy discussions at the time focused on government or private sector expenditure. this reflected the dominance and capture of af rican academia, such that only two options existed in the minds of policy analysts: either the government controlled it and paid for it, or it was wholly devolved to the private sector. it is useful to identify what led to the explosion in the use of ict. mobile phones and banking were the two areas that made the most impact on the population as a whole. mobile phones provided considerable benefits in a society where the inf rastructure of communication and travel was either lacking or very expensive. in the past, businesses in lagos had to use private courier as a means of communication. mobile phones and the internet overcame this issue by offering instantaneous communication options. there were also significant changes in banking, driven in part by the market but also by government regulation. the central bank of nigeria (cbn) insisted that all banking data must be held locally, thereby creating the basic market for local cloud provisions. other regulations by the cbn also drove deeper and effective digitalisation of banking services. in large part, it is these cbn regulations that kickstarted the fintech sector that is presently booming. m.o. yusuf outlined several important steps in the development of ict in nigeria: “maximising ict potentials will involve quality ict policy, greater involvement of private and public in the funding of the implementation, and proper implementation and monitoring” (2005). however, no mention was made of the role of regulation. regulation policy advisers have overlooked the important role of regulation. instead of basing policy around government expenditure, a focus on regulation would have achieved far more. the government is capable of making the provision of tablets and e-learning a precondition for school registration. to avoid the unnecessary closure of small or rural schools, the government could use its purchasing power to provide tablets to educational institutions at or just above cost, but far below market price. such a policy would drive e-learning adoption without any net government expenditure. the policy analysts’ focus on government expenditure (as opposed to regulation) made it easier for the government to get off the hook, as they were able to agree that some things should be done, but declared a shortage of funds. policy analysts also failed to understand their own market. for instance, audu wrote of nigerian ict policy and made recommendations which entirely ignored the place of markets and market mechanisms, economic incentives and the role of reward and competition (2017). adomi commented on the fact that “very little progress has been achieved in policy implementation in nigeria” (2011). while the analysts recount the failures of implementation, there is never the suggestion the article discusses the opportunities and challenges presented by the 4ir, with a focus on what a successful policy response would need to include and what might be the necessary preconditions for success. t h e t h i n k e r36 pan-african that these failures may reflect inappropriate or undeveloped policies. adomi concludes that “there is a need for the government to ensure strict implementation of its ict policy so the objectives can be fully achieved” (2011) – however, no suggestion is made as to how this is to be done. impact of neo-liberal consensus/structural adjustment programs on policy analysts in the 1990s, the imf stepped in to stabilise af rican foreign exchange and debt balances. as a result, major decisions were taken by creditors and international multilateral organisations, and then put into effect by local leaders. a side-effect was that policy analysts found that discussions and debate had become pointless: all that mattered was the decisions taken by the countries’ leaders. this has essentially corrupted the policy makers’/analysts’ environment and demoralised its participants. central governments are perceived as all-powerful (rather than as weak) and control of the central government becomes the goal of policy makers. this mirrors the goal of multilateral agencies such as imf and the world bank, who prefer to deal with specific leaders. nigeria’s current ict environment the united states department of commerce’s international trade administration states that: “nigeria exited a protracted economic recession in 2017, though the country remains af rica’s largest ict market with 82% of the continent’s telecoms subscribers, 29% of internet usage, and about 11.8% contribution to national gdp in 2018. the nigerian communications commission estimates that the country has over 64 million subscriptions on broadband (penetration of 34%) and 173 million lines in the voice segment as of march 2019, representing 91% teledensity. the federal government of nigeria recognizes ict as the enabler for developing other critical sectors, including agriculture and manufacturing” (2019). it is clear that extraordinary progress has been made in the field of ict in nigeria, despite woefully inadequate government policy. however, for 5g and the 4ir, much will depend on appropriate and effective government policy. success in spite of inadequate government policy may not be easily repeated in the future. nigeria’s policy conundrum nigeria’s policy conundrum can be expressed as follows: policies are announced without any indication of incentives or sanctions, or any evidence of market coordination. this has led to a tradition of policy announcements and policy documents that are in effect mere platitudes. to understand how this has come about, we need to look deeper at the cultural conflicts that exist in nigeria. cultural conflicts in nigeria there is a tendency to see cultural conflicts as merely synonymous with ethnic differences. while ethnicity plays a role in cultural conflict, it often disguises the true underlying dynamic. in nigeria, there is a major cultural conflict between the political class and the business class. the political class is still culturally dominated by a landowner culture, which consists of landowners, farm managers, farm labourers and the farm (in sequence: politicians, business men, voters and the country). farm managers are hired, fired and paid a salary, but are at the beck and call of the landowners. at the end of the year, there is a surplus that is available to the landowners to consume. this cycle naturally repeats itself. then there is a business class whose dynamic is to make money, and whose members often deride the political class. from the present business class point of view, the role of the political class is to award contracts. while there is this fundamental difference in the two cultures, they interrelate in practice. the political class becomes a rentier class on the state. it sees the national surplus not as capital to invest, but as surplus to consume, with the belief that there will be a renewed surplus in the following year, without any further intervention. this political class looks down on the business class as mere there is a tendency to see cultural conflicts as merely synonymous with ethnic differences. while ethnicity plays a role in cultural conflict, it often disguises the true underlying dynamic. in nigeria, there is a major cultural conflict between the political class and the business class. 37v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african farm managers seeking a share of the surplus that fundamentally belongs to the political class, the landowners. this is evidenced by the widespread pattern of the political class awarding contracts but seeking an immediate payment of a significant share of the potential surplus in advance. this leads to businesses being unable to generate the surplus as capital for future investment. an arbitrary system of the award of contracts means that the greatest return on investment comes f rom political activity and networking. in turn, even the business class begins to have a low respect for managerial ability and to treat its own managers as lower-class farm managers available to be hired and fired and of little fundamental importance. generally speaking, most business tycoons in nigeria have been successful political operators and networkers, rather than introducers of major new management techniques or brilliant investment strategies. the exception of policy co-ordination between the government and the business sector in the case of aliko dangote is worth looking at in detail. the exception of aliko dangote giving a speech at chatham house, chief olusegun obasanjo explained how dangote became af rica’s richest man (chatham house, 2017). obasanjo was obsessed with the cement crisis in nigeria. the country had all the ingredients to make cement, but was importing cement in large quantities, wasting foreign exchange and constraining the development of the country. he identified dangote as a person with the appropriate business skills to tackle this crisis, and asked dangote what would be required to start a domestic industry that eliminated the need for such imports. dangote indicated that he could do this if he was given import protection while he developed capacity. obasanjo discussed this with his officials and agreed to restrict annual imports according to dangote’s productive capacity. it then became government policy to allow imports only to the level that dangote’s own production could not satisfy local demand. as dangote’s capacity increased, so import allowance would also decrease, until there would be no need for any imports. there are some very important elements to note in this case. nigeria has often tried to encourage domestic production with import restrictions, but has in the past been met with the rentier behaviour of the business class, which focused solely on short-term profit making and not long-term investment. secondly, business men in the past who have sought to engage in long-term investments have often found themselves subject to changes in political climate and government policy – often resulting in the bankruptcy of those who had invested heavily in the future. this inconsistency in government policy leads to the entire business class having a short-term focus. the exception in dangote’s case was the policy co-ordination between the government and the business sector. in this case, the policy co-ordination was between two people: dangote and obasanjo. as a result, the government obtained its goal to massively reduce the import of cement and dangote became the richest man in af rica. unfortunately, this policy nexus has been seriously misunderstood, as most nigerian businessmen and policy analysts see it as “business as usual” – in other words, the common view is that dangote became rich as a consequence of politicking, networking and politically motivated contracts. this was not the case – the key difference between this event and prior attempts was the existence of deep policy co-ordination between government and business, a priority given to management skills and an understanding of incentives. by restricting the import controls to proven capacity, the government gained control over possible rent-seeking behaviour and the worst aspects of a monopoly. the focus in dangote’s case was on long-term investment. this story of successful policy rejects the neoclassical mantra of making policy at the centre and then leaving matters “to the market”. in countries such as the us, germany and china, there is close policy co-ordination and strategic matters are not this story of successful policy rejects the neo-classical mantra of making policy at the centre and then leaving matters “to the market”. in countries such as the us, germany and china, there is close policy co-ordination and strategic matters are not left to the whim of market forces. t h e t h i n k e r38 pan-african left to the whim of market forces. government policies – through regulation, funding or supply contracts – are focused on driving the market in the strategic direction mapped by the state and as agreed with the business class. only a few policy analysts have focused on the exception of dangote’s case, what it says about policy making, and what it proves about the possible speed of market change in nigeria in the event of good policy making. obasanjo understood the critical importance of good management and that the landowner model was culturally inadequate. obasanjo had a large-scale farm, and the challenges of this demonstrated to him the fundamental importance of management techniques. he sought to manage his own assets and, in doing so, learned important certain lessons. in contrast, many other politicians obtained largescale assets, sub-contracted the management to independent managers and simply received “rent”. the 4ir and its opportunities in order to understand the opportunities presented by the 4ir, we must now turn to the dynamics of ict, investment cycles and the compromised situation of many foreign western advisors. the importance of legacy and creative destruction schumpeter believed that there was “a necessary symbiosis between economic, historical, political, social and all other elements of the process of the functioning and development of the capitalist world” (croituru, 2012). he also highlighted the role of creative destruction in the emergence of new technologies. new technologies threaten to render existing inf rastructure obsolete, whereas existing inf rastructure can act as a brake for new developments. the greatest asset of new entrants is their lack of a past legacy. many western advisors, aware that af rica has a potentially competitive advantage due to its lack of legacy inf rastructure as a late entrant, have cynically sought to impose a legacy inf rastructure on af rica. in the early 2000s, the uk’s department for international development (dfid) sought to raise money and send 1 million second-hand computers to af rica. i pointed out that it costs more to send 1 million second-hand computers to af rica than to send new computers, due to the high labour content and warranty expiry involved in second-hand computers, as contrasted with the high automation and decline cost curves available in new computers. the response to this criticism was an attempt to have me dismissed f rom un agencies. as it happened, i did not work for any un agency. as a city of london professional, i was outraged at this attempt to silence criticism. on the one hand, many foreign western institutions are compromised when advising af rica, as they would be advising af rica on how to overtake their own country. on the other hand, many af rican academic institutions and personnel have been “captured” by this system and are incapable of providing independent policy (ladimeji, 2019). education in the field of education, it is now possible – if one starts f rom a green field perspective – to provide the latest education to the highest standard using a blended education model for $50 a year per child. i was involved in developing a model for modern education for out-of-school syrian children, through unesco and unhcr. a blended model involves children using tablets and ai systems that identify where the child is good, where s/he needs assistance and where the assistance may be urgent – the model not only alerts the teacher that the child needs attention, but indicates specifically with what (oweis, 2018). such a system would auto-pace itself according to each child’s learning style, so that each child’s experience would be personalised. our model was met with immense surprise, was closely reviewed, and was found to be appropriate. later, i mentioned this to a group at a dell conference in texas, only to have several af ricans working at intel explain that they were aware of this and had demo-ed a similar system to the nigerian i pointed out that it costs more to send 1 million second-hand computers to africa than to send new computers, due to the high labour content and warranty expiry involved in second-hand computers, as contrasted with the high automation and decline cost curves available in new computers. 39v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african government, who apparently did not appreciate the system’s implications. the costs of change would be dramatic for western countries with established inf rastructure, textbook producers and teachers. the opposite is true for countries who have little inf rastructure, inadequate numbers of teachers, and poor and out-of-date textbooks – in these contexts, giving up text books for the latest online services and providing higher quality teaching for a larger number of students with fewer teachers would not involve any costs of change. an appropriate policy choice would be to design a system to adopt what will be available in the mid-future (as opposed to the near-future), given the lag time f rom decisions to implementation. most of the world’s educational systems are adapting to the provision of digital services, whereas af rica has the option of developing systems that are “born digital” and can therefore be far more radical in conception. in this scenario, af rica would go f rom having the least educational provision to having the best. health in terms of health, the impact of machine learning will be extensive. in af rican countries, local clinics would be able to draw upon machine learning and ai to provide the best response to sub-critical events, as well as the ability to accurately identify conditions requiring critical services. smartphones could be used to take pictures, record audio and report data, which would then be analysed by a learning engine. an appropriate response would be provided, extending high-quality services to remote areas. working in collaboration with an existing ai player, af rican countries would provide extensive data, learning and test fields to catapult the quality of learning engines. according to the royal society, machine learning requires big data and becomes the first step towards a full appreciation of ai and the emergence of the 4ir. they state: “in healthcare, machine learning could help provide more accurate diagnoses and more effective healthcare services, through advanced analysis that improves decision-making… a machine learning system in terms of health, the impact of machine learning will be extensive. in african countries, local clinics would be able to draw upon machine learning and ai to provide the best response to subcritical events, as well as the ability to accurately identify conditions requiring critical services. t h e t h i n k e r40 pan-african trained on tissue images was able to achieve a higher accuracy than pathologists…moving forward, the potential for machine learning algorithms to assist doctors is substantial” (royal society, 2017). some of these opportunities for developing countries have already been identified: “this confluence of revolutions sets developing countries on a new “leapf rogging” growth trajectory that may not reflect how the united states, canada, europe, and other developed regions emerged… most important, whereas these developing economies used to be mainly consumers of technology, they now are becoming producers” (runde and milner, 2019). however, there is additional power in establishing all these technologies at the same time. much of the core inf rastructure technologies are capable of being repurposed at low costs, so that the potential network effects and synergies could be astounding. manufacturing and capacity it is essential that nigeria should move away f rom the consumer model of simply purchasing assets. the 4ir is an opportunity to build productive inf rastructure and government policy should be developed with this direction in mind. for example, while it is beneficial to make regulations requiring the use of tablets in schools, this should also be seen as an opportunity to ensure the local production of tablets, given that the government has created a guaranteed market. there is also the opportunity to set the groundwork for a maintenance culture, by requiring suppliers to offer maintenance contracts at reasonable prices. effects on employment in their early stages, new technologies can be surprisingly labour intensive. as china’s wages rise almost exponentially, other regional sources of low-cost labour are being sought. af rica, with its surplus of young labour, is well-positioned to supply a well-educated labour force for technology collaborations, specialising in those areas where large amounts of labour are required. content creation for educational systems for af rica is entirely labour intensive and would generate large-scale employment. pan-african context one of the key factors in the cost model of ict is high initial capital costs and very low marginal costs. in terms of distributing both costs and benefits, it is advantageous to consider projects of the 4ir on a pan-af rican scale. while nigeria can be largely self-sufficient, this would not be feasible for many smaller af rican countries. however, by nigeria making its projects pan-af rican in scope, a greater data scale is included, a larger talent pool is available, a wider cost-sharing pool is created, and network effects are available. af rican countries should compete collectively on the global stage, as opposed to primarily and directly against each other. policy and competition at the level of policy, it should be clear that tactical competitive issues do not belong in the public realm. if detailed competitive steps were outlined in a policy, other players and other countries could easily seek to make counter steps. only a broad strategic profile belongs in the world of open policy. path to the future as previously discussed, there exists a cultural conflict in nigeria between a political class that is primarily based on the landlord model, with many coming f rom aristocratic or semiaristocratic backgrounds, and a business class that is divided. in the 1980s and 1990s, a large part of the business class who believed in long-term private investment was destroyed by structural adjustment and inconsistent government policy. those business men who focused on seeking rent f rom government contracts prospered. the net effect is a coalition between a landlord political class and a rentier section of the business class. these models of conduct, where the surplus generated by a country or a business sector is this confluence of revolutions sets developing countries on a new “leapfrogging” growth trajectory that may not reflect how the united states, canada, europe, and other developed regions emerged… most important, whereas these developing economies used to be mainly consumers of technology, they now are becoming producers. 41v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african perceived to be available for consumption by the “owners”, as opposed to being capital available for investment in the future, are fundamentally in conflict with what is required for either nigeria or the af rican continent to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the 4ir. the existing leadership class needs to change their model of governance or step aside. if they fail to do so, they will be a brake on the future development of nigeria and will be risking its economic survival. the inevitable result of this will be to create a revolutionary situation. political activists have already begun calling for dramatic political change. omoyele sowore, an activist and former presidential candidate, called for a revolution and was detained and only released after mass public and international protests (sahara reporters, 2019). at present, such calls for revolution do not have widespread support, but it is nonetheless significant that they are being made. summary and conclusions just as schumpeter argued, this article has demonstrated the significance of the interrelations between politics, culture and economics in understanding the processes of important economic change. the article has discussed how growth in ict activity in nigeria in the early decades of this century occurred despite government policy. there exists a fundamental cultural conflict between those who see the national surplus as funds available for consumption and those who see such surplus as capital available for investment in the country’s future. with appropriate policy in place, however, astonishing and rapid changes are possible. any future policy related to the 4ir should involve formal government regulations, incentives and sanctions, the coordination of government, business and public support, and an acknowledgement of the primacy of management skills. the previous sole focus on government funding should be recognised as inappropriate, and a renewed focus should be placed on government regulation, management skills and strategic direction. if these factors are taken into account, af rican countries could use the 4ir to slingshot the continent into the future. ■ o.a. ladimeji is the editor of the af rican century journal. references adomi, e. (2011). handbook of research on information communication technology policy. vol. 2. new york, usa: igi global. audu, b. (2017). implications of the nigerian information technology policy for agricultural extension services in nigeria. journal of emerging trends in engineering and applied sciences 8, volume. 1, pp. 14–24. runde, d.f. and milner, a. (2019). introduction: evolution of revolutions – the human element of technological change. in: a. milner and e. yayboke, eds., beyond technology: the fourth industrial revolution in the developing world. washington, d.c.: center for strategic and international studies, p.3 [online]. available at: https://www.csis.org/analysis/beyondtechnology-fourth-industrial-revolution-developing-world croitoru, a. (2012). book review: schumpeter, j.a., 1934 the theory of economic development: an inquiry into profits, capital, credit, interest and the business cycle. journal of comparative research in anthropology and sociology, volume 3, number 2, december 2012, pp. 137-148 [online]. available at: http:// compaso.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/compaso2012-32-croitoru.pdf royal society, (2017). machine learning: the power and promise of computers that learn by example. royal society [online]. available at: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/machine-learning/ publications/machine-learning-report.pdf nigerian federal government, (2020). federal ministry of communications and digital economy [online]. available at: https://www.commtech.gov. ng/ [accessed 12 jan. 2020] nigerian federal ministry of communication, (2019). the nigeria egovernment conference 2019 [online]. available at: http://egovernment.ng [accessed 24 oct. 2019] ladimeji, o. a. (2019). af rican academy and its crisis: conflicting agendas and institutional capture. in: o. anyanwu, t. forde and i. otieno, eds., higher education in af rica & the united states: the black experience. stillwater, oklahoma: new forums press, pp. 71-94. chatham house, (2017). book launch: making af rica work. chatham house [online]. available at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/book-launchmaking-af rica-work oweis, t.i. (2018). effects of using a blended learning method on students’ achievement and motivation to learn english in jordan: a pilot case study. education research international, 2018 [online]. available at: https://doi. org/10.1155/2018/7425924. sahara reporters, (2019). sowore: you are tarnishing nigeria’s reputation, us lawmakers tell malami. sahara reporters [online]. available at: http:// saharareporters.com/2019/12/21/sowore-you-are-tarnishing-nigeriasreputation-us-lawmakers-tell-malami schumpeter, j. (1942). capitalism, socialism and democracy. new york: harper & brothers. united states department of commerce, international trade administration, (2019). nigeria – information and communications technology. export.gov [online]. available at: https://www.export.gov/ apex/article2?id=nigeria-information-and-communications-technology yusuf, m. (2005). information and communication technology and education: analysing the nigerian national policy for information technology. international education journal, volume 6, pp. 316-21. africa, with its surplus of young labour, is well-positioned to supply a well-educated labour force for technology collaborations, specialising in those areas where large amounts of labour are required. the impact of digitaldriven warfare on africa 20 t h e t h i n k e r abstract modern warfare is becoming more technological and increasingly employs advanced technologies. advances in precision location, targeting and strike, navigation, large data transmission, weapon-system range and manoeuvrability, and the growing importance of the outer space and cyber domains are collectively altering the ‘spatial dimensions’ of warfare. but are these rapidly evolving technologies and their use in defence and warfare relevant to developing nations and africa in particular? there still exist high barriers to implementation, especially in countries with weak military research and development infrastructures. this article examines these 4ir-induced shifts in warfare thinking and practice, and focuses on the implications for africa. it also probes the options open to states to prepare for the use of digital technologies in the warfare domain, in particular drones and their application. it concludes with a number of recommendations for african security decision-makers to enhance innovative, effective, and efficient security sectors [1]. by anthoni van nieuwkerk | peer reviewed special focus 21 introduction hypersonic weapons travel fi e or more times the speed of sound. the indian/russian brahmos is currently the fastest operational supersonic missile capable of speeds around 3,700 km/h. technologically advanced nations are scrambling to develop a deterrence against this latest threat. clearly, modern warfare is becoming more technological and increasingly employs advanced technologies. this phenomenon shifts the nature of confli t and the international legal context within which it takes place. the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) is being shaped by a fresh wave of innovation such as autonomous vehicles, smart robotics, materials engineering, big data, the internet of things (iot), and 3d printing. overall, the 4ir could have a dramatic impact on operational capabilities. as bitzinger (2021) points out, advances in precision location, targeting and strike, navigation, large data transmission and discrimination, weaponsystem range and manoeuvrability, and the growing importance of the outer space and cyber domains are collectively altering the ‘spatial dimensions’ of warfare. but are these rapidly evolving technologies and their use in defence and warfare relevant to developing nations and africa in particular? there still exist high barriers to implementation, especially in countries with weak military research and development infrastructures. in fact, most militaries operate in the context of the second industrial revolution. is digital-driven warfare relevant for africa? a recent survey of threats facing the southern african region (van nieuwkerk, 2021) notes data fraud and theft, cyber-attacks, and risks associated with fake news and identity theft. the potential vulnerability of critical technological infrastructure is also fl gged as a growing national security concern. however, given that many african militaries and national security structures suffer from capacity constraints and remain wedded to conventional warfare mindsets, how could they go about preparing and defending against such advanced technological attacks? this article examines these 4ir-induced shifts in warfare thinking and practice, and focuses on the implications for africa. it also probes the options open to states to prepare for the use of digital technologies in the warfare domain, in particular the implications of drones and their application and how to apply these to their benefi whilst upholding the human rights of their citizens. the article uses secondary data sources as its main data collection method, although interviews were conducted with experts on the subject matter who provided in-depth insight. interview requests were sent to several peace and security practitioners but few were able to elaborate on the impact of 4ir on south african and african security, which presumably speaks to a lack of focus and/or expertise regarding this area of the region and continent’s defence capabilities. as a result, it is important to pay close attention to this space and identify where africa can enhance capacity at a pace suitable for the continent. the global south, including african countries, are not yet equipped to compete with developed nations in terms of 4ir capabilities vis a vis weapons and security apparatuses but it is in africa’s interest to develop a strategic perspective on the need for cooperation, collaboration and deployment of advanced warfare capabilities. global trends the 2021 global risks report of the world economic forum points out that covid continues to widen inequalities and societal fragmentation. in this context, two global risk perceptions dominate current research and analysis. these are extreme weather, climate action failure, and human-led environmental damage, as well as digital power concentration, digital inequality and cybersecurity failure (wef, 2021). technology continues to play a profound role in shaping the global risks landscape for individuals, governments, and businesses. a previous report (wef, 2019) identifie massive data fraud, theft and cyber-attacks as highprofile threats, and noted that risks associated with fake news and identity theft increased. the potential vulnerability of critical technological infrastructure has increasingly become a national security concern. a frequently cited risk interconnection was the pairing of cyber-attacks with critical information infrastructure breakdown (wef, 2019). more specificall , the united states of america, which maintains one of the most powerful armies in the world, is a good demonstration of advancements in digitaldriven warfare. when he took over as us president in special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 22 t h e t h i n k e r 2016, donald trump loosened the reins of the us drone programme, as he lowered the standards for who could be targeted by the programme and where. as we will note later in this article, the impact on counterterrorism operations in africa has been severe—especially in the horn of africa and the sahel. in summary, the trump rules gave the united states the right to kill virtually anyone it designates as a terrorist threat, anywhere in the world, without regard to human rights laws prohibiting extrajudicial killing (shamsi, 2021). in the meantime, the pentagon has developed a plan to promote the innovation referred to as direct energy weapons (dews), which weaponize lasers to be used against military targets. between 2017 and 2019, the us military significantly increased its spending on dews, from $535 million to $1.1 billion (cohen, 2021). dew systems are also being developed by other nations, such as china and russia. according to reports, china may have used microwaves against indian troops in 2020 (cohen, 2021). high-energy lasers, high-power radiofrequency or microwave devices, and charged or neutral particle beam weapons are examples of de weapons. both microwaves and lasers are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, including light energy and radio waves (obering, 2020). how do global developments impact africa? africa is not spared from evolving digital threats. in july 2021, transnet—a south african state-owned enterprise that manages the nation’s rail, port, and pipeline infrastructure— reported problems with its information technology networks. the disruption affected operations in several container terminals, interrupting cargo movement. transnet eventually confi med it had suffered a cyber-attack (naidoo, 2021). reva (2021) noted that following the covid-19 pandemic, the number of cyber-attacks has been increasing worldwide and in south africa, infli ting fina cial losses across the manufacturing, banking, and energy sectors. the recent incident was the fi st time the operational integrity of the country’s critical maritime infrastructure has suffered a severe disruption (reva, 2021). apart from the cyber domain, we have to point to drone warfare. drones are formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) and can be described as autonomous robots, remotely controlled through softwarecontrolled flight plans in their embedded systems, working in conjunction with onboard sensors and gps (lutkevich, n.d.). in addition, underwater unmanned vehicles (uuvs) or remotely operated vehicles (rovs) are submersible, waterproof drones that enable users to explore marine environments remotely. the prc seems to be at the forefront of developing this technology for military purposes (seidel, 2020; sutton, 2021). drones have long been associated with global wars, but are assuming a new role in africa where they have played a critical role in humanitarian services such as providing medical supplies to remote areas, mapping displaced people, assisting anti-poaching rangers, and helping with precision farming (koigi, 2019). however, as reported by allen (2021), the risk of militarisation of drone technology in africa represents a new asymmetric tool that violent nonstate groups may deploy to extend the reach of their coercion, reshaping the african battlefield what are the challenges with drone application? while commercial drone usage increases in africa, with humanitarian aid agencies and agricultural institutions using uav technology to streamline their work, the lack of standardised regulations to ensure safety and security remains a major concern (khanyile, 2019). in many african nations, the civil aviation authorities are struggling to ensure that the presence of drones in the sky does not present significant risks to aircraft drones have long been associated with global wars, but are assuming a new role in africa where they have played a critical role in humanitarian services such as providing medical supplies to remote areas, mapping displaced people, assisting anti-poaching rangers, and helping with precision farming (koigi, 2019). special focus 23 as they try to integrate them into their air navigation and surveillance systems (khanyile, 2019). privacy is also a big concern as uavs equipped with cameras, scanners, and sensors could be used by individuals with insidious motivations to collect and record sensitive or damaging information on civilians, businesses, and other organisations (joshi, 2018). a further issue is that drones are being used to kill people in war, as many african countries are in a state of protracted confli t (allen, 2021; krähenmann, call and dvaladze, 2020). in confli t zones, drones may be difficu t to distinguish from the military drones that are used in battles resulting in a scenario where even a helpful drone may be perceived as a threat by local residents. lastly, electronic systems used by drones for navigation, data gathering, and other procedures also need to be safeguarded from hackers. many uavs can be easily hacked and hijacked by malevolent forces to conduct criminal activity (yaacoub et al., 2020). uavs must obtain an insurance policy to cover their liability if, while operating their drones, they cause physical or bodily damage to another (khanyile, 2019). other important regulatory acts include requiring a permit to fly over areas where citizens reside, as well as requiring drone operators to obtain a special permit from the civilian aviation authority (south african civil aviation authority, n.d.). many african countries are still struggling to put the necessary regulations in place to support uav operations. there are still drones in those countries, but they are operated illegally by untrained and unlicensed operators (khanyile, 2019). how does the african peace and security environment respond to these emerging and growing high-tech challenges and opportunities? the african union (au) established the african peace and security architecture (apsa) and the african governance architecture (aga) in response to ongoing and deepening insecurity, but the reality is that democracy and development struggle to flou ish in insecure environments. under such environments, confli t resolution becomes critical—but also contested. stakes are high, especially in areas rich in minerals and other potential resources. hence, outsiders and insiders compete amongst and between themselves with intervention logics that tend to promote narrow interests instead of advancing human security agendas. this includes the application of ‘stabilisation’ and ‘liberal peace’ logic. these are attractive options to outsiders. it tends to ‘freeze’ a confli t in space and time, allowing for the threat to be minimised (particularly refugees and migrants) and for economic opportunities to be pursued (arms trade, humanitarian and peacekeeping activities, access to mineral resources). consequently, a pattern often emerges of collaboration between local actors (victorious rebels, ruling elites, business) and external forces (donors, international cooperating partners, business interests, arms dealers), which tends to postpone confli t resolution and therefore the achievement of human security. the southern african region is not spared in these dynamics. below, we profile t e region’s capabilities. figure 1: profile of sele t sadc defence forces sadc member state budget in usd active personnel 2019 total army navy air other angola 1.70bn 107,000 100,000 1,000 6,000 10,000 rapid-reaction police south af rica 3.54bn 74,850 37,600 7,000 9,650 7,6000 military health service 15,000 reserve tanzania 827mn 27,000 23,000 e1,000 3,000 1400 police field force inlc. marine unit source: the military balance, 2020 special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 24 t h e t h i n k e r the security landscape in the sadc region in the last fi e years has generally been stable compared to other regions on the african continent. however, it suffers from protracted confli t in the democratic republic of the congo (drc) and mozambique, and political instability in eswatini, zimbabwe, and some indian ocean islands. the region’s ‘superpower,’ south africa, suffers from violent crime and growing poverty, aided by a toxic mix of economic stagnation, grand corruption, ruling party instability, and state fragility. violent extremism and cyber threats stand out as rapidly evolving trends. southern af rica is experiencing an upsurge in violent extremism (ve). the drc, mozambique, and tanzania have all experienced attacks, with events in cabo delgado, mozambique making international headlines. the southern af rican development community (sadc) has been called on to provide support to mozambique and has deployed a sadc standby force to the area. although a force intervention limits the number of violent attacks, it cannot bring sustainable peace to the area. lasting peace requires interventions that address the sociopolitical, security, and economic complexities that have enabled the rise of violent extremism. the digital age realities tend to enhance integration (in particular, ease of communication) and act as an aggravating factor (in particular, abuse of communication). increasingly, social media are being used to promote fake and false news and information peddling for political reasons. closely related is the reality of cyber threats, including cybercrime and cyber-terrorism. sadc displays little understanding of the nature and magnitude of this threat, and has little capacity to detect or prevent this rising phenomenon. this view is supported by research that points to the changing nature of cybersecurity threats in af rica (mills, 2020). cybersecurity and crime are hardly unknown to af rica. but the format of af rican cybercrime is rapidly changing. there have been rapid changes in telephony and broadband, which have and will continue to change continental connectivity and the opportunities, thus, for cyber-malfeasance. in the mid-1990s, for example, af rica’s telephone density was at just 5%. today, one-third of af rican mobile users, some 250 million people, already have a smartphone, which is projected to double by 2025, when over half of the continent will subscribe to mobile services, and when one-quarter will have access to 4g or 5g. this raises the question of how civil society, in particular, could guard against election and other national narrative manipulation, and whether heightened cyber-threats, in general, can best be countered through partnerships with commercial or state-centred agencies outside of af rica. the state of the region’s defence sadc has produced sophisticated peace and security f rameworks, but to what extent does it have the hardware and tools to implement these? an interview with an academic expert reveals that conventional military assets are here to stay in af rica, for several reasons. as he put it: one, they are affordable; two, they’re tried and tested. three, our geographies are such that they require that kind of equipment. four, our mindset, the mindset of warring parties that we know of today, are still very much embedded in their beliefs in conventional warfare. at the same time, the size and preparedness of the sadc member states’ defence and security sectors constitute a mixed bag. on the one hand, two member states maintain sizeable defence forces and budgets: angola and south af rica. on the other hand, several member states have miniscule defence and security sectors and budgets: lesotho and eswatini, and comoros and seychelles. many with small defence and security sectors rely on bilateral arrangements—many with india and some with nato countries—for protection. indian ocean member states focus on maritime security issues and maintain coast guards. except for south af rica, none have a defence industry. equipment is increasingly obsolete or poorly maintained. few have the ability to participate meaningfully in un or au peacekeeping operations. special focus 25 it is doubtful that the collective can mount a sadc standby force operation to deal with a breach of peace and security or a substantial natural disaster. international cooperation is therefore unavoidable. in this context, one interviewee was of the view that sadc ought to capitalize on its bilateral and multilateral agreements with entities like the brazil/ russia/india/china/south af rica alliance (brics) because the global powers continue to play a role on the af rican soil, and they have a keen interest in what is happening here. as he noted: ‘now and then they (brics) would like to demonstrate their willingness to support regional initiatives, i think we’ll have to rely on them to help us with it.’ arguably, the region’s attempt to deal with violent extremism in the cabo delgado region of mozambique requires such collaboration and coordination, not only f rom the global south but also f rom af rica’s international cooperating partners, particularly the european union as well as a range of un agencies (chingotuane et al., 2021). is it possible to close the gap? how can the rapidly evolving global technologies and their use in defence and warfare be made relevant to developing nations and af rica in particular? until recently, the south af rican cybersecurity response capacity was faced with an uncoordinated ‘silo’ approach (f ragmented policy-making and strategic responses), a lack of public-private partnerships, and the absence of an overall international cooperation f ramework (gwala, 2020). to address these, in 2015, it adopted a national cybersecurity policy framework (ncpf) to address national security threats in the cyberspace, create a f ramework for combating cybercrimes and other cyber ills, build confide ce and trust in the secure use of icts, and create policy guidelines to steer ppp and international cooperation (ssa, 2015). however, it is unclear to what extent the policy f ramework allows for strategic decision-making and threat management (sutherland, 2017). the case of a cyber-attack on transnet in july 2021 is deserving of a fuller investigation—even though much detail remains shrouded in secrecy. a recent feature of modern warfare—drones— deserves the focused attention of af rican national security decision-makers. the impact of the us drone programme on counterterrorism operations in af rica has been severe—especially in the horn of af rica and the sahel (donnenfeld, 2019). for example, in 2018, us special forces conducted airstrikes against suspected al-shabaab militants in somalia, killing 24 people. drone strikes in somalia caused about 300 casualties during barack obama’s eight years in offi e. trump nearly tripled that total in less than a quarter of that time (donnenfeld, 2019). to what extent can drones be regarded as effective and efficient weapons in the struggle against violent extremism and terrorism, particularly in af rica? imagine, for example, the rise of a new breed of armed drones capable of swarmed and coordinated attacks, and able to operate in uncertain or changing combat environments. more disturbingly, imagine this tool in the hands of violent extremists. analysts suggest an increased use of drones by nonstate actors in the cabo delgado theatre of confli t (allen, 2021). should the south af rican defence industry persist in a military drone programme? who would benefi ? the advantages should be seen against the reality of a struggling defence industry, hobbled by mismanagement and corruption, and a consequent shrinking customer base (heitman, 2021). a useful perspective is offered by dyer (2018) who examined the extent to which drones are able to defend af rican maritime sovereignty and advance ocean governance. in his analysis, the further development of a south af rican and af rican drone sector is conditional upon stakeholder user and producer requirements including cost-effectiveness, mission performance and efficie cy, technologically feasible and environmentally sustainable solutions, with sufficient training, sensor capacity, appropriate autonomy, redundancy and system risk management. he points out that the most significant risks for monitoring and awareness drones include the uncertainty of climate change, and technological and business cycles influe cing uncertain demand and supply (dyer, 2018). indeed, if drones are to be included in future maritime security arrangements, south af rica and af rica need to consider the extent to which effective governance can be enacted and secured. a range of special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 26 t h e t h i n k e r emergent risks need to be resolved: climate change and environmental uncertainty, cybersecurity, socialreligious/other tensions, flu tuating economic and technological cycles, ai and automation, legal risks and increased prospects of militarisation and warfare. these threaten to undermine any arising advantages and opportunities (dyer, 2018). conclusions it is true that many af rican militaries and national security structures suffer f rom capacity constraints and operate with conventional warfare mindsets. how can they go about preparing and defending against advanced technological attacks? perhaps the question is misplaced. as described above, the af rican threat landscape is marked by socio-economic deprivation, corruption and poor governance, violent competition for political power, the exploitation of natural resources, transnational crime, and the emergence and spread of violent extremism and terrorism. conventional warfare and weapons systems remain appropriate for dealing with many of the threats facing af rica. the breakthrough technologies noted in this article—f rom hypersonic missiles to advanced seaborne second-strike capability, militarygrade spyware, to direct energy weapons—are meant to be instruments in the hands of nations striving to become global superpowers, or of those protecting its perceived image as the world’s most powerful military and economy. however, in the long run, for af rica to build and maintain effective and efficient security sectors, able to respond to human and natural disasters, terror attacks, and exploitation by foreign militaries, af rica needs to tap into the innovation brought by the fourth industrial revolution—autonomous vehicles, smart robotics, materials engineering, big data, iot, and 3d printing. digitisation can have a dramatic impact on operational capabilities. as noted above, advances in precision location, targeting and strike, navigation, large data transmission and discrimination, weaponsystem range and manoeuvrability, and the growing importance of the outer space and cyber domains are collectively altering the ‘spatial dimensions’ of warfare. these building and maintenance tasks are the responsibility of national security decision-makers and their personnel on the national, regional and continental level, requiring an overhaul of the apsa. in ensuring af rica’s preparedness, they may benefit f rom the following two proposals: one, education and training of the future soldier, starting with enabling the schooling system to be digitally-capable and ensuring defence colleges and related training and educational institutions are equally made digitalf riendly; and two, accepting that the lines between hardcore military and non-military warfare f rom a cyberspace perspective are blurred—meaning, the military increasingly uses private sector assets in order to implement warfare as part of warfare tactics without importing them fully into their arsenal. this emerging domain of collaboration requires proper governance to prevent abuse. the relationship between civilians and military or security practitioners should be based on respect for human rights so that they don’t abuse that landscape for criminal and unconstitutional purposes. without a paradigm shift in military thinking, the lofty ideals of the au’s agenda 2063 will not materialise: a prosperous af rica based on inclusive growth and sustainable development. notes [1] the author recognises the valuable contribution to a previous draft of this article by research intern daisy mbutho. references allen, k. 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(2021). ‘defence innovation and the 4th industrial revolution in russia.’ taylor & francis [online]. available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2020.1856090 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003268215-5 special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 t h e t h i n k e r58 global the russia-af rica summit and economic forum was held on 23-24 october 2019 in sochi. this was an unprecedented event in the history of russian-af rican relations, and was especially noteworthy in light of the almost total abandoning of af rica by russia in the last thirty years. a brief history of russian-african relations to understand the significance of the russiaaf rica summit of 2019, it is important to begin by briefly discussing the history of russianaf rican relations. tsarist russia did not have any possessions in af rica and never engaged in the slave trade. moreover, the russian navy repeatedly participated in maritime convoys to prevent the transportation of slaves f rom af rica across the atlantic, after the adoption in july 1890 of the general act of the brussels conference on the af rican slave trade. though russia took part in the notorious berlin conference of 1885, it never took part in the colonial division of the af rican continent. moreover, russia was categorically against the project that provided the german colonial zone in morocco in 1911. in 1898, russia established diplomatic relations with ethiopia and provided assistance to emperor menelik ii in his fight against italian aggression in 1895–1896. russian-af rican relations became especially strong after the great october socialist revolution of 1917 and the creation of the ussr in 1922. the establishment of the comintern by the first soviet leader, v. lenin, was aimed at the liberation of all oppressed people of the world, with particular attention to the liberation of colonised countries and peoples. some scholars have rightly pointed out that there were some difficult discussions between the comintern and the south af rican communist party (davidson et al., 2003), but those differences were about matters of tactics, and not about overall strategy. the ussr introduced the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples into international law (peters, 2017) – thereby strengthening support for oppressed peoples all over the world, including in af rica. under soviet initiative, on december 14 1960, the united nations adopted the “declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples”. by alexander mezyaev the russia-africa summit and economic forum an unprecedented event in the history of african-russian relations 59v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 global the adoption of this instrument ensured the legal base for decolonisation and the creation of independent states in af rica. the relevance of this declaration in the present time was confirmed last year by the international court of justice (icj) in the case of the chagos archipelago. in its advisory opinion, issued 25 february 2019, the icj stated that the united kingdom is under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the chagos archipelago as rapidly as possible. the position of the icj almost fully reflected the position of the af rican union and the official statement made by the government of the republic of south af rica on this matter (icj, 2019). in 1960, the ussr had economic relations with four af rican countries. by 1970, this number had risen to 20, and in the early 1980s it had risen to 37 states. the priority fields of cooperation were the industry and energy sectors. between 1960-1984, the foreign trade turnover with af rican states increased by 13 times. by the mid-1980s, the share of af rican countries in soviet imports amounted to: in bauxite – about 60%, in manganese – total ore – about 56%, for cobalt – 100%, for cocoa – about 64%, for valuable wood – about 58% (deich and kukushkin, 1988). soviet assistance was provided, as a rule, under specific conditions: the share of preferential or gratuitous lending was not lower than 40%, and investment loans for a period of 10 to 15 years were provided f rom a calculation of 2-3%, with a grace period of one year up to three to four years (tarabin, 1977). in total, by the mid-1980s, the following had been achieved with soviet help: about 300 industrial enterprises built, 155 objects in the agricultural sector, and about 100 educational institutions, including 10 higher and 80 secondary and vocational schools. 480,000 af ricans received professional training in the ussr, more than 150,000 workers and specialists were trained in the construction and operation of objects of cooperation, and more than 80,000 af ricans received soviet diplomas of higher education (koshelev, 1981). the enterprises that were built by the ussr in af rica produced 4.6 million kw of electricity, 4.1 million tons of cast iron, 4.5 million tons of steel, 3 million tons of oil products, 3 million tons of bauxites, and 1620 metal cutting machines per year. the broadest and most diversified assistance was provided to algeria, egypt, and a number of countries in sub-saharan af rica, namely angola, nigeria, ethiopia, the republic of congo, mali and guinea (institute for af rican studies, 1976). after the destruction of the ussr, russianaf rican relations drastically decreased. in 1985, the ussr trade turnover with af rican states amounted to $5.9 billion. in 1995 it fell to $0.98 billion, and in 2000 it grew to just $1.6 billion. this decrease in economic relations was accompanied by a decrease in political relations. during vladimir putin’s first presidential session (1999-2008), the af rican continent was not in the interest of russian foreign policy. during the presidency of dmitry medvedev, russia’s internal and foreign policy was completely subordinated to ensuring the interests of global (external) capital. for example, the russian vote in the un security council on resolutions #1970 and #1973 on the situation in libya led to a $10 billion direct economic loss for russia, not counting the loss of the cancelling of future contracts. president medvedev’s policy towards libya provoked the first and only public clash between putin (who was then prime minister of russia) and medvedev (top news, 2011). during the russia-af rica summit in sochi in october 2019, putin announced a $20 billion debt relief to af rican states. in many instances, the reason for such a relief is in fact an insolvency of states, but libya’s debt had nothing to do with this decision – contrary to most af rican states, libya was russia’s most accurate debt payer. new russian-african policy the revitalisation of russian-af rican relations is in a big part a result of the general change of russia’s position in the world. the sharp aggravation of relations between the west and russia has its cause in russia’s attempts to defend to understand the significance of the russia-africa summit of 2019, it is important to begin by briefly discussing the history of russian-african relations. t h e t h i n k e r60 global its national interests (or the interests of its national capital), after putin’s second presidential session. as a result of these attempts, the west imposed hundreds of different (and illegal) sanctions against russia. relations between the centre states (using the world-systems terminology) and the periphery and semi-periphery states are not based on the principle of equality, but essentially on dictatorships. the destruction of the ussr put russia in – at the best – the semi-periphery. russia’s attempts to claim its interests therefore provoked a fierce reaction f rom the centre (imperialist) states. the aggravation of the relations with the centre states forced russia to change its almost exclusive orientation to the west. in one of his first interviews at the beginning of the 2000s, answering the question of whether he would like to visit af rica, putin answered: “yes, i would love to visit kenya. for safari”. when the orientation to the west failed, putin’s understanding of af rica radically changed. russia’s af rican policy is defined very shortly in the concept of the foreign policy adopted by the decree of president putin in 2016. paragraph 99 of this document states the following: “russia will expand multidimensional interaction with af rican states both in bilateral and multilateral settings by improving political dialogue and promoting mutually beneficial trade and economic ties, stepping up comprehensive cooperation that serves common interests, contribute to preventing regional conflicts and crisis situations, as well as facilitate post-conflict settlement in af rica. promoting partnership ties with the af rican union and sub-regional organizations is an important element of this policy” (the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation, 2016). this statement should be read in the light of inferences based on an analysis of the russian diplomatic practice of the last few years (putin’s second presidential session, beginning in 2012). based on such an analysis, we can conclude that russia’s current policy towards af rica may be defined as total and unconditional support of the af rican position when it is presented as a common position of the au. the minister for foreign affairs, s. lavrov, often uses the famous formula “af rican solutions for af rican problems” to define russian-af rica policy (the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation, 2019). implementation of this policy involved russia going into conflict with the west – this gives us a clear understanding that russia’s involvement is more than simple support of af rica, but rather a principled war for a more just world. some of the first steps towards this policy may be traced back to as early as 2008. for example, the open conflict with the usa at the 5933rd meeting of the un security council (unsc) on 11 july 2008, when russia vetoed the draft resolution on sanctions against zimbabwe. the draft resolution’s sponsors were: australia, belgium, canada, croatia, france, italy, the netherlands, new zealand, uk and usa, as well as two af rican states: liberia and sierra leone. it is interesting to note the division of af rican members of the unsc on the voting: burkina faso voted in favour of the draft and libya and south af rica voted against (united nations security council, 2008). permanent representative of the usa, mr. khalilzad, even threatened russia by saying that “[t]he russian performance here today raises questions about the russian federation’s reliability as a g-8 partner” (united nations security council, 2008). later on, russia was expelled f rom the g-8. interestingly, medvedev – who succeeded putin as president of russia in 2008 – immediately corrected the russian concept of foreign policy. it was amended by the notion that russianaf rican policy is based on “multi-dimensional cooperation”, including on the g-8 platform. after putin’s reinstatement in 2012, the reference to g-8 in the af rican policy section was removed. some af rican states interpreted russia’s position towards af rica as a readiness to defend the continent f rom the west’s aggressive policies. for example, president of sudan, omar al-bashir, during his trip to moscow in november 2017, asked russia to “defend” his country f rom the aggressive policy of the usa (rbc, 2017). a number of the international treaties on military assistance concluded recently between russia and af rican states should be regarded in this context, at least partially. in 2019, several treaties on different types of military assistance between russia and af rican states entered into force – namely, with the drc, zimbabwe, rwanda, sudan and the central af rican republic. several af rican countries with terrorist activities found themselves in an unusual 61v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 global situation when they were denied arms on the western market, but were able to get ammunition f rom russia. an example of russia’s readiness to go into direct conflict with the west by defending af rican interests was its position on the af rican union request to the un security council for the deferral of the cases against kenyan government leaders in the international criminal court (united nations security council, 2013). the request was supported by seven states, including the russian federation, while all eight western permanent members and their allies abstained (thus rejecting the au request). the representative of the russian federation in the unsc was diplomatic but unequivocally clear on the position of the west: “af rican countries presented very compelling arguments. indeed, at such a critical time for kenya, when the military contingent of that country is playing a key role in combating terrorism in somalia, and when kenya itself has become a target for terrorist attacks, the democratically elected president and deputy president of that country should be able to remain in their country and resolve the pressing tasks faced by their government” (security council report, 2013). it is important to add that, several years later, these so-called “kenyan cases” at the icc all collapsed when the prosecutor accepted the fact of no evidence against the president and vice-president of kenya. it is important to note how russia supported the common af rican position on the international criminal court (icc). russia acted jointly with af rican states to implement the “withdrawal strategy f rom the international criminal court”, adopted by the af rican union in 2017. this strategy included the withdrawal of member countries f rom the icc statute. the peculiarity of this decision is of a dual nature. on the one hand, a withdrawal of this nature should legally be carried out individually (based on article 127 of the icc statute), but – on the other hand – politically, this withdrawal should be implemented collectively, that is, coordinated in time. this duality makes it particularly difficult to enforce this decision, because f rom the point of view of international law, the withdrawal procedure is the same for all states, but f rom the point of view of national law, the procedure is different. for example, the republic of burundi ensured the international law part of the withdrawal procedure, together with its parliament, effectively finalising the whole process. the republic of south af rica carried out the withdrawal procedure without the participation of parliament. this approach was recognized by the supreme court of appeal of south af rica as not compliant with the constitution, significantly slowing down the process of withdrawal (international criminal court, 2019). a few short comments here: firstly, it seems that the judgment of the supreme court of appeal is not convincing enough, because it is based not on specific legal norms, but on assumptions. nevertheless, the conclusion that the non-participation of the parliament in the procedure for withdrawing f rom the icc statute is “unconstitutional” looks like an excessive exaggeration. the country’s constitution does not contain direct requirements on the participation of parliament in the procedure for withdrawing f rom an international treaty in general and the icc statute in particular. secondly, doubts arise about the legality of the court decision on this issue. according to the principle of separation of powers, each branch – particularly the judiciary – must act strictly within its competence. thus, the very fact of a legal assessment of the court in relation to the actions of the government within its exclusive powers to implement foreign policy may raise questions about the court acting ultra vires. it was at this very time, when the practical implementation of the au “withdrawal strategy” began, that russia announced its own withdrawal f rom the icc statute. legally speaking, russia did not withdraw f rom the treaty, but revoked its signature. using the words of the vienna convention of the law of treaties, russia “made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty” (art.18). it was at this very time, when the practical implementation of the au “withdrawal strategy” began, that russia announced its own withdrawal from the icc statute. legally speaking, russia did not withdraw from the treaty, but revoked its signature. t h e t h i n k e r62 global in addition, the russian federation also supported individual af rican states that were under attack by the icc. when in 2015, the south af rican government refused to implement the icc judge’s order to arrest the president of the sudan, the icc threatened to report south af rica to the un security council. at that time, russia supported south af rica in the un security council, by confirming that the legal position of the south af rican government (not the judiciary) was correct. the russia-africa summit in sochi the sochi summit of 23-24 october 2019 was a culmination of the year’s events of the revitalisation of russian-af rican cooperation. one of the biggest events in that chain of events was an annual meeting of the af rican export-import bank’s (af reximbank) shareholders. moscow’s choice was unusual, because this was just the second case in the history of the bank when such a meeting was held outside of af rica. af reximbank was established in 1993, and its founders are the states of af rica (today – 51, i.e. almost all the countries of the continent). af reximbank’s shareholders include governments, central banks, regional economic organisations, international financial institutions, and export credit agencies. in december 2017, the russian export centre acquired a stake in af reximbank and became its third largest shareholder among non-af rican financial institutions and organisations. russia’s biggest banks (sky export centre, sberbank and vnesheconombank) allocated an amount of 5 billion euros for financing russian exports to af rica. russia participated in the meeting of shareholders at the level of then prime minister d. medvedev. it should also be noted that, in september 2019, russia initiated the special un security council meeting on af rica at the level of foreign ministers. at this meeting, the russian minister for foreign affairs, s. lavrov, said: “nevertheless, since then af rican states have continued to face serious challenges to their sovereignty… af ricans themselves, at the recently held meeting of the af rican union peace and security council dedicated to foreign military presence on the continent, condemned foreign military interference in the continent’s affairs and appealed for foreign partners of af rica to respect regional initiatives. russia provides assistance to uphold peace and security in af rica in accordance with international law, including the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states enshrined in the charter of the united nations, and only with the agreement of host countries. such assistance is aimed at building countries’ own capacities to deal with crises” (united nations security council, 2019). the summit and economic forum in sochi received the highest level of representation f rom af rican leaders. all af rican states were present at the summit. 48 states were represented by the head of states and government. only a few countries were represented by persons of a different rank, and in these cases, there were perfectly valid reasons for this. for example, the delegation of the republic of burundi was headed not by president p. nkurunziza, but by the second vice president of the country, h.e. joseph butore, who spent many years in russia (where he graduated and defended his ph.d.) and obviously was the most reasonable representative at such a meeting. another important feature of the summit was the participation of the leaders of the seven largest af rican regional organizations: af rican union, the southern af rican development community (sadc), maghreb union of nations, big five sahel (g5 sahel), economic community of central af rican states, economic community of west af rican states and finally, the east af rican community. the leaders of these organisations participated in the meetings of heads of states, but also had a separate session with the russian president. attention is drawn to the conclusion of an agreement between the af rican union and the eurasian economic union (eaeu). it should be noted that the all-af rican free trade agreement attention is drawn to the conclusion of an agreement between the african union and the eurasian economic union (eaeu). it should be noted that the all-african free trade agreement came into force a few weeks ago, in which all countries of the continent participated. 63v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 global came into force a few weeks ago, in which all countries of the continent participated. this provides unique opportunities for agreements on the principle of “integration association with integration association” and on the principle of “integration association separate states”. an agreement on the creation of a f ree-trade zone between the eaeu and egypt is approaching. the agenda of the summit included economic integration, the problems of doing russian business in af rica, cooperation in the field of education, exploration, projects in the oil and gas and nuclear industries, security on the continent, ensuring economic sovereignty and many more. one of the most impressive examples of the best practices of russian-af rican cooperation presented at the forum was the russian industrial zone in egypt. this zone includes an area of 525 hectares in the east port said area of the suez canal economic zone, exploited jointly by governments, government agencies and private business. the project has no analogues in terms of state investment and the mechanism is being created to support the withdrawal of interested companies in foreign markets. framework agreements have already been concluded with 25 resident companies working in the field of biochemistry and fertilizers, building materials and metal structures, composite materials, agricultural machinery, electrical and oil and gas equipment, port equipment, and so on. tax incentives and preferences will apply for companies, customs duties on exports and imports, staff costs and the payment of passage through the suez canal. there is the possibility of 100% repatriation of the proceeds, while there will be no requirements regarding the presence of an egyptian partner another big issue discussed at the summit and forum was the development of the energy sector, especially nuclear energy. the largest russian energy project in af rica is again in egypt. the nuclear power plant in the city of ed-dabaa off the coast of the mediterranean sea, near alexandria, will have four power units, with a capacity of 1.2 thousand mw each. there are still a lot of problems to resolve. in absolute terms, the trade turnover between russia and af rica is still low: a little more than $ 20 billion in 2018 (the ministry of economic development of the russian federation, 2018). hence, af rican markets occupy an extremely insignificant place for russia, at just about 2%. moreover, 7080% of trade with the af rican continent falls on the countries of north af rica. the same applies to the dynamics of development. according to the agreement concluded with egypt this year, russia will invest $12 billion (2019-2014) in the industrial f reedom zone. in af rican countries south of the sahara, a quarter of the 50% of trade comes f rom only four countries: south af rica, angola, nigeria and côte d’ivoire. in absolute terms, this is $3.5 billion (2017) – which is so far negligible. at the same time, growth over the past decade has more than tripled. the trade turnover structure is also not diverse. food, agricultural products and raw materials account for a quarter of russian exports and for nearly 65% of imports. fuel and products of its distillation make up 25%, and mineral products about 8%. high-tech goods, primarily machinery, equipment and transport, make up only 0.7% of exports and 1.9% of imports. the only exception here is the arms trade. about a third (27%) of tropical af rica’s imports of weapons come f rom russia. another problem with the russian-af rican cooperation is trade imbalance. for example, russian exports account for 99% of its trade with sudan. in 2018, trade between russia and sudan amounted to $510 million, while more than 80% of russian exports ($417 million) are cereals. despite the fact that af rican countries are waiting for russian investment, so far there are very few instances of this. there are, however, some positive examples. for instance, the russian company alrosa announced its intention to invest between $500 and $700 million in a new diamond field in angola. conclusion the change in russia’s af rican policy has been drastic. the russia-af rica summit and economic forum demonstrated the return of russian interests in af rican countries. this, however, will be accompanied with challenges. the very idea of holding a summit was subjected to a fierce attack f rom the western mass media. the foreign ministry spokesperson maria zakharova addressed this in an official statement: “we t h e t h i n k e r64 global understand that this is being orchestrated by someone. i would like to address the us media: you cannot allow yourselves to be used like this. we have a complete picture of what is going on. we have the impression that officials of respective agencies in washington are resorting to desperate attempts to discredit russia’s policy in af rica using media outlets and government-related ngos. this is being done specially and directly on the eve of the summit. news agencies and so-called “experts” are now routinely blaming russia for any transgression, in this case with regard to the af rican continent – for supporting the “wrong” regimes by supplying them with arms and military equipment, for interference in elections, and for corruption. a narrative is being pushed through that moscow is “attempting to hammer together an anti-west f ront to smear the positive role of the us and its allies.” this is an example of a quote that the world audience is being offered with respect to the russia-af rica summit in sochi. one has to ask: why? in view of such awkward attempts to manipulate public opinion, washington is apparently af raid that the russia-af rica summit will strengthen russia’s trade, economic, political and diplomatic relations with the countries of this continent, including those that the us sees as its backyard, unaware of the fact that the nations of the region can select partners by themselves. i believe it is time to admit that neocolonial approaches, attempts to impose their will on sovereign states, are being rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world community. most af rican nations support a multipolar system of international relations and are quite capable of determining their own future” (the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation, 2019). with such fierce resistance f rom those who still consider af rican countries as operating within their sphere of influence, the return of russian-af rican cooperation will be a difficult task. but russia has something that the west does not have: a real model of relations with af rica, based on principles of equality and mutual respect, together with the experience of its real implementation during the time of the ussr. in the case that the new era in russian-af rican relations will be based on that model, we can expect that the new dawn will be successful. ■ references davidson, a. filatova, i. gorodnov, v. and johns, s., (eds.) 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(1981). soviet-af rican cooperation: results and prospects. soviet-af rican scientific and political conference for peace and social progress. moscow: institute for af rican studies, pp. 11-12 international criminal court, (2019). statement by deputy-minister of justice and constitutional development of the republic of south af rica at the 19th assembly of the icc statute state parties, 2-7 december 2019. international criminal court [online]. available at: https://asp.icc-cpi.int/ iccdocs/asp_docs/asp18/gd.sou.2.12.pdf peters, a. (2017). introduction. a century after the russian revolution: its legacy in international law. journal of the history of international law, volume 19: issue 2 (may 2017), pp. 133-146 [online]. available at: https:// brill.com/view/journals/jhil/19/2/jhil.19.issue-2.xml?language=en rbc, (2017). sudan leader at a meeting with putin asked for protection f rom the united states [in russian]. rbc [online]. available at: https:// www.rbc.ru/politics/23/11/2017/5a16b2779a79479f26366fb4 security council report, (2013). un documents: s/pv.7060. security council report [online]. available at: https://www.securitycouncilreport. org/un-documents/document/spv7060.php the ministry of economic development of the russian federation, (2018). the results of foreign economic activity of russia in 2018 [in russian]. the ministry of economic development of the russian federation [online]. available at: http://economy.gov.ru the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation, (2016). foreign policy concept of the russian federation (approved by president of the russian federation vladimir putin on november 30, 2016). the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation [online]. available at: https:// www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/official_documents/-/asset_publisher/ cptickb6bz29/content/id/2542248 the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation, (2019). foreign minister sergey lavrov’s remarks at russia-af rica economic conference, moscow, june 20, 2019. the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation [online]. available at: https://www.mid.ru/en/af rikanskieorganizacii/-/asset_publisher/0vp3hqocprg5/content/id/3692774 the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation, (2019). briefing by foreign ministry spokesperson m. zakharova, moscow, october 17, 2019. the ministry of foreign affairs of the russian federation [online]. available at: https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/ cknonkje02bw/content/id/3856722#5 top news, (2011). medvedev publicly pulled putin [in russian]. top news [online]. available at: http://www.topnews.ru/news_id_41504.html united nations security council, (2008). australia, belgium, canada, croatia, france, italy, liberia, netherlands, new zealand, sierra leone, united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and united states of america: draft resolution. united nations security council [online]. available at: https://undocs.org/en/s/2008/447 united nations security council, (2008). unsc 5933rd meeting. united nations security council [online]. available at: https://undocs.org/en/s/ pv.5933 united nations security council, (2013). identical letters dated 21 october 2013 f rom the permanent representative of kenya to the united nations addressed to the secretary-general and the president of the security council. united nations security council [online]. available at: https:// www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7b65bfcf9b-6d27-4e9c-8cd3cf6e4ff96ff9%7d/s_2013_624.pdf united nations security council, (2019). unsc 8627th meeting. united nations security council [online]. available at: https://undocs.org/en/s/ pv.8627 71v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition darkness pass a nocturn by stacy hardy | peer reviewed in the title for his most recent book, out of the dark night (2021), achille mbembe echoes aimé césaire, who describes the postcolony as an enervated landscape, seen and felt ‘at the end of the small hours.’ from this liminal time-space—betwixt what césaire calls ‘the strand of dreams and the senseless awakening’—mbembe rejects both nihilistic suspicion (toward language, identity, meaning), and the false oases of scientific-epistemological certainty. threading their twilight perspectives through the nocturnal lens of édouard glissant’s opacity, andrew culp’s ‘dark deleuze,’ jason mohaghegh’s philosophy of the afterdark, fred moten’s fugitivity, and more, i explore night as a third route beyond the tabulations of masochistic skepticism and sadistic truth. working between fact and fiction, autobiography and critical theory, i delve into the fascinating paradoxes of nocturnal experiences through the tactics of some of its most dynamic practitioners, those post-apartheid artists, writers, and musicians who reject both the glaring fallacies of rainbowism and the self-defeating nihilism of afro-pessimism; those who keep strange hours and navigate the hidden potentialities of the after-dark: the thief, the runaway, the dreamer, the drunkard, the insomniac, the revolutionary, the prophet, the madwoman, the sorcerer, and the trickster.  ‘night opens i enter night shuts i don’t leave’ ― alejandra pizarnik, the galloping hour: french poems 72 night opens i enter night shuts i don’t leave ― alejandra pizarnik, 2018 dark night babe toss and turn the clouds above you make the sober go drunk ― isabella motadinyane, 2016 in the title for his most recent book in translation, out of the dark night: essays on decolonization (2021), achille mbembe echoes aimé césaire, who, in notebook of a return to the native land, describes the postcolony as enervated landscape seen and felt ‘at the end of the small hours’1 (césaire, arnold and eshleman, 2013). from this liminal time-space betwixt and between night and day, ‘the beach of dreams and the insane awakening’ (césaire, arnold and eshleman, 2013: 3), mbembe rejects both nihilistic suspicion (toward language, identity, meaning) and the false oases of scientific-epistemological certainty. césaire’s gloaming recalls the hour of the guillotine as well as the concluding line of apollinaire’s ‘zone’ (apollinaire and padgett, 2015), ‘soleil cou coupé’, which he borrowed for the title of one of his own collections (translated by eshleman as ‘solar throat slashed’ [césaire, arnold and eshleman, 2011]). as césaire’s epic poem progresses, the emphatic repetition of the line acquires an unsettling urgency. the promised dawn, the relief of morning, never arrives. instead, we remain suspended in eternal night. for césaire, and mbembe after him, this prolonged nocturn opens up a time-space of shifting, slipping, dislocations and hidden emissions – a time of violence and upheaval, yes, but also one of revolutionary possibility. through the force of language and image, darkness begins to suggest a subversive impulse; an insurgent negativity that i propose we need to summon and seize against a contemporary world characterised by compulsory happiness, decentralised control, and overexposure. at a time when black studies has been institutionalised, ‘black lives matter’ is a t-shirt and decolonisation is official university policy, and against the urgent interest and over-exposure of black art – ‘black lives, black bodies, black portraiture’ (jamal, 2021) – i propose that we must, to paraphrase fred moten, ‘refuse what has been refused to us’2 (moten, 2013: 242) and return to the night. ‘the long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity,’ writes mark fisher (2009: 80). he goes on to suggest that the very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalism means that even a ‘glimmer’ of alternative possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. in order to perceive this glimmer, however, we require darkness. as pier paolo pasolini teaches us in his 1975 essay, ‘where have all the fireflies gone?’, written against fascist foreclosure and its attack on the imagination, it’s very easy to make fireflies disappear: just turn on a strong-enough light. the converse is also true: to make fireflies and their embodiment of hope reappear, all we have to do is render to the night its powers of potential, of latency. all we have to do is accept the night, in order to access its darkness. simultaneously, the reappearing fireflies make the night itself appear, as the visual space through which precious signals come to us. this paper is precisely such an attempt, an experiment in turning out the lights and inviting the darkness. silently, then, the fireflies might send us their pulsations, their luminous emissions. are they secret messages? distress signals? love letters? make no mistake, choosing the night, its shades and shadows, is perilous. as ashraf jamal’s insomniac narrator in the title story f rom his 2002 collection the shades reminds us, night is bloodthirsty, it is a hawk, ‘silently swooping, plucking day f rom the sky with its talons’: ‘he looks through the window. the red earth of the driveway is turning black. no stars, only glittering talons, plucking, stitching, forming its patchwork of black… there are maleficents abroad. beasts of prey. they come like fate, without reason, without pretext. this is south af rica where the night is red. ribbons of blood like a kite’s f rayed tail cutting through the black. ink in the brain. blood too.’ (jamal, 2002: 2) t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 73 rereading this passage, i’m immediately struck by the uncanny3 semblance between jamal’s hawk and nicholas hlobo’s now infamous sculpture, ‘iimpundulu zonke ziyandilandela’4. constructed f rom black rubber inner tubing and an animal skull, and trailing f rayed tail of multicoloured ribbons that cut through the black, hlobo’s ‘lightning bird’ is a seducer, a deceiver, a messenger. prophetic and blasphemous, intertextual, and hybrid in form, it presents a revisioning of history through the motif of divine descent. like pasolini’s fireflies, and the glistening talons of jamal’s hawk, ‘iimpundulu zonke ziyandilandela’ is both a harbinger of dark forces and unspoken celestial mysteries. it reminds us that to return to the night is always a ‘fatal wager’5. one must stare into what one already realises intuitively as a paradoxical object: night is where horror thrives, but also passion and infatuation; night conceals things, but things are also said to ‘come out at night’; we are caught offguard by a sudden rustle of wings, a flash of talons, while also welcoming the safety of its dark feathered cloak. as jamal’s insomniac characters know only too well, even night’s love child, sleep, provides no respite, bringing dreams and nightmares to the vulnerable slumberer. fortunately, we have excellent guides on this journey to the end of the night6, a handful of its most fascinating practitioners: namely, those artists and writers who have chosen to forsake the welllit glare of the white cube and the f rigid sterility of white monopoly capital, in favour of the darkest passages and most dangerous alleyways7. figures who keep strange hours and navigate the different potentialities of nocturnal experience – both of terror and enchantment, destruction and magic: the criminal (fugitive, thief, dealer, prowler); the wanderer (nomad, sojourner, sleepwalker); the revolutionary (rebel, insurgent); the lunatic (madman/woman, maniac); the outsider (exile, stranger, misanthrope); the dreamer (utopian, visionary, romantic)8. the revolutionary ‘my blackness cuts up the light / the light cuts up my blackness.’ it’s 2 a.m. and lesego rampolokeng’s unmistaken voice floats over the speakers, staining the darkness of these times with a fierce guided by the light. simultaneously razor sharp and guttersunk, mesmeric and exilic, rampolokeng’s prose and poetry have consistently, over the past half century, decentred and defied subjectivity and an identity politics that’s tied to the dominant order of national, ideological, and stereotypical blackness. ‘the light descends and strikes / to the heart of the night / dusk around my head / the night,’ rampolokeng continues on ‘blackness and light’, a recording f rom his album bantu rejex (a half century album) created with warrick sony (rampolokeng and sony, 2017). it’s a voice that is solely entwined with a nocturnal tongue, the ultimate language of destabilization, amplified by warrick sony’s dark, illbient dub beats. refusing to sing the bright hymns of the age, or to compromise his vision for commercial acceptance, rampolokeng’s dark tones exhilarate, infect, inflame. like a postcolonial aimé césaire or deep south tchicaya u tam’si, he is a poet who exudes radiance even as night falls in his poems. an insurgent poet, a rebel, and revolutionary, he rages against oppression and the damage wrought on the black body in our contemporary world. night, as iranian theorist jason bahbak mohaghegh tells in his ‘philosophy of the after-dark’, promises a revolution against the archetypal. it overthrows the ‘dominant hierarchies and universal myths’ in favour of the ‘beautiful disarray of the masquerade or bonfire’ (mohaghegh, 2019). and rampolokeng is its most seditious son. in his mouth, language is both a revolutionary tool and a device to conjure a new world that transcends the one we know. polyvocal, intertextual, and hybrid in form, his many books – spanning jazz-infused, linguistically experimental, f ree verse, aphoristic f ragments, and lyrical prose narratives – are a call to arms, a reminder to stay vigilant and wakeful throughout; to keep watch while others close their eyes. significantly, rampolokeng’s revolutionary stance extends beyond the page. unlike the rest of us, content to rail against white-washed visions of blackness, while happily supping at the well-lit altar of capitalism, he has continually chosen the dark path of true rebellion, courting the night as one of the revolutionaries’ most powerful allies. like frantz fanon and steve biko before him, he knows that genuine revolution is v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition t h e t h i n k e r74 necessarily fugitive and violently negative. his skin is scarred with war wounds f rom previous battles. from another time, under different light, at a different angle of looking. his whole face is sculpted. his eyes are deep set. he shakes his head. laughs then stops too suddenly, says, look at his fingers, the police smashed my hands. everything crooked. a piece of paper, ripped in three. edges curling, the writing is red. i can’t read it. the lines are claw marks, they tear up the page. he has an unlit cigarette hanging off his lips. he can’t find the lighter. it is buried somewhere in the wreckage of the house: loose papers handscrawled; books with covers torn and missing – all of them, pages sunk in yellow and words eroded f rom being fingered and fingered again. later, he collects up a pile – the antipeople by sony labou tansi, marechera’s black sunlight, a monograph on dumile feni, the madman and the medusa by tchicaya tam’si, alex la guma’s a walk in the night, a worn copy of staff rider magazine open to a page of artwork by fikile magadlela – and forges an impromptu syllabus for his regular night school. having been thrown out of rhodes university for being too outspoken, too black, rampolokeng has taken his teaching underground. like senegalese writer and film director sembène ousmane, who saw cinema as cours du soir or ‘evening classes,’ (nyampeta, 2019) informed by the traditions of orality, sensuality and conviviality, rampolokeng is forging a new pedagogy of the oppressed: a carrion call for a future generation of dark outsiders to master night’s formulas and learn its conceptual-experiential relations to time, space, fear, nothingness, desire, death, forgetting, enigma, solitude, secrecy, monstrosity, and the body. the outsider if any south af rican artist is worthy of the mantle outsider, it’s dolla sapeta. a prolific painter and a poet, working in diverse media, and across forms, sapeta’s work seldom makes it to the podiums of conferences such as this. nor is it exhibited in the galleries that feature contemporary south af rican art. it’s simply too township, too black for the elite art scene; yet also too dissonant and ugly for the commercial ‘township’ market. as sapeta writes in his debut poetry collection skeptical erections: every day i wear judgment on my way to work at the home affairs department where i am found dancing inside a gumboot flooded by the blankness of my conscience and remain armed with nothingness i stink that too (sapeta, 2019: 9) the stink sapeta is referring to permeates his work. his electric poems burn and reek, ‘snitch and guzzle’ (sapeta, 2019: 11), seduce and jeer. they bend language and lore and strain against dominant discourse to painstakingly document the township as nocturnal space permeated by the ‘cadmium stink of meat’ and populated by ‘men without tongues’, ‘f rustrated prostitutes’, starving dogs, and ‘voluptuously throbbing bodies’ (sapeta, 2019: 15–19). similarly, his painting has ceaselessly documented the township as an outside in, an inside out. it is where one fathoms otherwise, the time-space of the visionary, the imaginary, the unreal, the unknown, the elsewhere, the outside, and the emergent. beauty here is the experience of the limit, an autonomy beyond that of life itself; beauty that can be discerned in the ugly and the scarred, the dysfunctional and the erotic, the derelict and the obsessive. his new body of painted works, collectively titled the meat eaters, exudes a similar thick stench. foregrounding the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood, it is both a critique of capitalism and consumption, and a joyous celebration of black bodily desires and pleasures. if any south african artist is worthy of the mantle outsider, it’s dolla sapeta. a prolific painter and a poet, working in diverse media, and across forms, sapeta’s work seldom makes it to the podiums of conferences such as this. nor is it exhibited in the galleries that feature contemporary south african art. it’s simply too township, too black for the elite art scene; yet also too dissonant and ugly for the commercial ‘township’ market. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 75 here the body itself, the sacred human body, its cock and tongue and fingers, heartbeat and lungs, is no more than flesh, a machine constructed by a dead god to murder and shit. flesh grown f rom other flesh, blood and come, bloodshed and consumption, carcasses slick with filth and skin, wild matted hair, the f rozen grin of a smiley. it continues, even in the still night, even in a universe silent and asleep, the creatures, perhaps their souls, spirits, spasming, eating, shitting and baying. the shriek of awareness, and howl of death9, the glimmer of a blade against a throat. it is true, what they say, ‘at night all blood is black’.10 from this bleeding, this blending and bending, an art of resistance emerges, ever at odds with imperialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and xenophobia, while challenging and rethinking prevailing notions of otherness. the wanderer few figures of the night are as enigmatic as the nighttraveller, those who master patterns of nocturnal movement and intricately choreograph their ‘infiltrations or escapes’ (mohaghegh, 2019) around the hours of oblivion. while the revolutionary seeks to overthrow the dominant hierarchies and universal myths in favour of the beautiful disarray, and while the outsider fathoms otherwise, seeking out the shadows, the unreal, the unknown, the elsewhere, the night traveller deliberately defies a motive or destination. against tradition, structure, reason, and systemic orders of the mind, the nocturnal flâneur is inescapably tied to discourses of chaos, chance, obscurity, and f ragmentation. david koloane is our guide here. while many of his paintings portray the city during the day, his vision is always nocturnal in that it is simply not invested in time; it stilt-stalks over it, or makes its own time. travelling in what jazz musician herbie tsoaeli called ‘cycle in circles’ or ‘in the meantime’ (tsoaeli, 2020), koloane’s city is always viewed f rom the perspective of the afterdark. all his works engage the mysteries of encounter, wanderlust, rootedness, the slippery lines between object and subject, and our uncertain place in a startling world. tracing trajectories more insinuating and twisted than the straight line into the heart of darkness that is the unrequited death wish of an undead urbane west, he challenges easy division between night and day. significantly, it’s only in koloane’s many paintings overtly set at night (his street and township dogs series, as well as his ‘mgodoyi’ series) that time seems to stop. or maybe we move outside of time completely, out into another realm? as fred moten tells it, ‘we wanted to be outside…the sacrality of aeration… of unbounded…of outness itself…our intention…is that the undecidable local of light/sky/shadow/air is precisely what is at stake/issue…outness…outside ness…if not outsider ness…it is the outdoors…that which resists enclosure’ (moten and hartman, 2016). the lunatic tracy rose has long been dubbed the ‘madwoman’ of south af rican art. but if she is indeed this, she does not suffer f rom any of the fashionable contemporary disorders brought to us by dr freud and the psychoanalytic vicious circle – depression, anxiety, self-destructive behaviour, disorders of identity, etc. rather, she is the maniac – the one disorder radically side-lined by psychoanalysis. in a fascinating reading, mohaghegh makes the claim that psychoanalysis turned away f rom mania or rather turned the maniac away because he/she decentres the subject (mohaghegh, 2021). unlike depression, anxiety, etc. – which focus inwards, which foreground ‘me, me me’ – the maniac looks outward into the world, fixating and obsessing. wracked by ‘accelerated speed’ (racing thoughts); ‘elevation of mood’ (expansiveness, insatiability, playfulness, energetic gesturing, agitation); ‘hyper-sensitivity’ (arousal, provocation, immanent triggers); ‘hyper-expressiveness’ (overflowing language); ‘sleeplessness’ (ultra-vigilance, concentration, temporal imbalance); ‘risk taking’ (impulsiveness, recklessness, destructive pleasure-seeking), the maniac is a destabilizing force (mohaghegh, 2019). through her multiple performances, rose enacts an obsessive mania, deliberately courting entrancement, excess, and delirium to rewrite femininity and reckon with colonialism, all while guiding us toward the mythic possibilities of creation: how constellations are formed f rom the pits of our stomachs and the darkness of our mouths. and how involuntary, how compulsive, and v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 76 how merciless the relationship between artist and subject can be. her performative practice and multiple personas have seen her art interpreted as exploring identity, but if rose does engage identity, it is to shatter rather than affirm it. and if rose’s work is personal and confessional, what she is confessing is not a set of personal problems: it is a fatal disappointment with the world at large. her work is less a self-exposure than a self-evisceration. these are not brooding laments but bricks hurled at empires, at the art world, at any pre-packaged lie that parades itself as the only available truth. rose’s feminism is profound and complicated. ecstatic and erotic, its truth is both the deep wound against the black female body and the ‘fuck it’ that follows. the thief in a world where thievery has been commercialised and institutionalised via both colonialism and capitalism, the thief is a f raught figure. but unlike those who perpetually practice daylight robbery – the gallerists, curators, funders, etc. – the nocturnal thief embraces larceny, not as an act or action, but as a practice and a way of life, born of techniques of cunning, camouflage, dissimulation, decryption, secretion, and dark allegiance. the nocturnal thief – the trickster, the highwayman, the pirate, the vigilante – robs his audience of reassuring truths. it’s fela kuti’s ‘authority stealing’: ‘you be thief [i no be thief]’ (1980). it’s johannes phokela stealing f rom thieves and then reselling the spoils back to those same thieves. it’s nolan oswald dennis lifting methodologies and language f rom other fields (astrology, physics, cosmography, and jazz) and turning them to his own use11. it’s also robin rhode, not just for drawing a car then stealing it, but also for how in performing this, he steals reality out f rom under our feet. it’s the last night i spent together with robin in cape town before he flew back to europe. a shitty bar in salt river. how he draws a picture of my heart on a serviette, then pockets it and walks out the door. carless and heartbroken, i take a taxi home. over the speaker tupac sings, ‘sweet lady, dear mama…don’t cha know we love ya?’ as we pass the place where someone did the tupac graffiti. it is gone now. the wall where tupac’s face once rose defiant is stripped clean, painted white. the area is part of the city redevelopment initiative. all that remains is a hastily scrawled tag: ‘one settler one bullet. viva tupac.’ but on the streets, it’s not me who is dying. the taxi lurches, turns right to take a short cut. we cross under the overpass. i close my eyes, suddenly exhausted. the road goes on and on. the path keeps forking, splitting like an endless atom, splitting like a lip against a fist, like the sky, the sun breaking through the clouds. the day cleaving into night. the dreamer in an era of extinctions, including the extinction of hope, dreamers are perhaps night’s most precarious figures. they are our fireflies, those artists whose tiny lights both incarnate the night and its limitless possibilities, and offer a glimmer of the dawn to come. those artists who dare to dream and whose dreams are too often extinguished by a brutal system. they are the many many f riends and comrades i’ve lost over the past two decades. writer k. sello duiker who understood both the quiet violence of dreams12 and their necessity; artist unathi sigenu whose drawing traces the f ragile moment when joy bleeds into suffering13 and vice versa; photographer thabiso sekgala who captured the beauty and horror of lived experience. it is to them that this paper is dedicated. it is saturday night. the city is pulsing and somewhere a piano is playing, a jazzy knell tolling a structure of sadness into the tonality of joy and laughter. again, i’m back there, the night moses molelekwa died; strangled his girlfriend then himself. since then i have had a thousand conversations on why he did it. a friend says, maybe we can read his suicide as an act of defiance, a refusal not an abdication? i don’t know how moses has come up in the conversation. we are sitting in some hipster club in cape town. the music is trip hop. i nod my head slowly but really it is a default gesture, more about keeping time with the beats than agreeing. the truth is, no one knows what happened the night that moses died. nothing can explain it except what transpires in the moment, that split second when everything shudders and life passes into darkness14. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 77 notes 1. arnold and eshleman’s translation of ‘au bout du petit matin,’ an antillean creole expression for the low-lit time between night and morning. 2. or, as pasolini says it: ‘refusal has always been an essential gesture. think only of the saints, the hermits, but also of the intellectuals. the few who have made history were the ones who said no, not the courtiers or the servants of the cardinals.’ (colombo, 2006) 3. sigmund freud allegedly conceived of his concept of the uncanny while walking the dark streets of vienna at night (see freud, 2003 [1919]). 4. often incorrectly dubbed a ‘dragon’, hlobo’s giant flying lightning bird is part of collector jochen zeitz’s personal collection and is on permanent display at zeitz museum of contemporary art af rica. 5. see ‘night as fatal wager’ in mohaghegh, 2019. 6. a reference to louis-ferdinand céline’s journey to the end of the night (céline and manheim, 2006). 7. the congolese poet and artist sinzo aanza perfectly captures this spirit in a recent facebook post he tagged me in about defying the pandemic curfew in the congo: a police officer: you are 30 minutes late for the curfew! me: i am the city poet! the policeman: give a coffee and go home! me: i am the poet of this city! the policeman: daddy do you want to sleep at the police station? another policeman: besides the jeeps rarely pass here to take the people we have arrested, you will spend the night with us, you will sleep in the dust of the sidewalk... i advise you to give even a thousand f rancs and we leave you go… me: i patrol the pulsations of the city in the silence of the night, i am the poet of it all, you yourselves the city police are subjects of my poetic addictions. the first policeman: leave him, it must be a student who has lost his mind, how do you want us to keep our heads in the schools of this city where nothing is happening because everyone is running behind the money? 8. this formulation owes a huge debt to the catalogue of various ‘figures’ of the night in mohaghegh, 2019. 9. or is it the night that howls, as poet isabella motadinyane suggests in her poem ‘my bruised soul’: ‘my night shrieks/shock the neighbours’ (2016: 19). 10. from the title of david diop’s novel, at night all blood is black (diop and moschovakis, 2021). 11. this strategy, felix guattari suggests in ‘the idea-thief’, forges linkages and assemblages, i.e. between singularities within a particular field and into a range of components and fields in other conceptual territories, transversally (guattari, lotringer, wiener, and wittman, 2009). 12. drawn f rom his second novel, the quiet violence of dreams (duiker, 2001). 13. see jean-christophe lanquetin’s obituary ‘all i can say for now’ (lanquetin, 2017). 14. listen to darkness pass – solo piano (molelekwa, 2004). references aanza. s. (n.d.). home [facebook page]. facebook [online]. available at: www.facebook.com/csinzo apollinaire, g. and padgett, r. (2015). zone. new york: new york review books. césaire, a., arnold, a. j., and eshleman, c. (2011). solar throat slashed. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press. ———. (2013). the original 1939 notebook of a return to the native land. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press. céline, l. and manheim, r. (2006). journey to the end of the v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 78 night. new york: new directions. colombo, f. (2006). ‘we are all in danger: the last interview with pier paolo pasolini.’ left curve; oakland, 30: 65–68. diop, d. and moschovakis, a. (2021). at night all blood is black. london: pushkin press. duiker, k.s. (2001). the quiet violence of dreams. cape town: kwela books. fisher, m. (2009). capitalist realism: is there no alternative? winchester: zero books. freud, s. (2003 [1919]). the uncanny. london: penguin books. guattari, f., lotringer, s., wiener, c., and wittman, e. (2009). soft subversions. los angeles, ca: semiotext(e). jamal, a. (2002). the shades. pietermaritzburg: brevitas publishers. ———. (2021). ‘black self, letter of invitation’, black self, nirox foundation, 5–7 november. kuti, f. (1980). authority stealing. [cd] knitting factory records. lanquetin, j. (2017). ‘all i can say for now’. chimurenga chronic [online]. available at: www.chimurengachronic.co.za/all-i-can-sayfor-now mbembe, a. (2021). out of the dark night. new york: columbia university press. mohaghegh, j. (2019). omnicide. [ebook]. cambridge, m.a: urbanomic/sequence press. ———. (2021). night: a philosophy of the after-dark. [ebook]. winchester, u.k: john hunt publishing. ———. (2021). ‘joseph mohaghegh on manic behaviour.’ youtube/ the new centre for research and practice [online]. available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gytn4bfdvpi molelekwa, m. (2004). darkness pass – solo piano. [cd] melt. motadinyane, i. (2016). complete poems. makhanda: deep south books. moten, f. (2013). ‘the subprime and the beautiful.’ af rican identities, 11(2). moten, f. and hartman, s. (2016). ‘the black outdoors at duke university’. youtube/duke franklin humanities institute [online] available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_tuz6dybrc nyampeta, c. (2019). école du soir (the evening academy). new york: sculpture center. pasolini, p. (1975). ‘where have all the fireflies gone?’ [online] gramsci in the world [online]. available at: www.gramsciintheworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/pasolini-where-have-all-thefireflies-gone.pdf pizarnik, a. (2018). the galloping hour: french poems. new york: new directions. rampolokeng, l. and sony, w. (2017). bantu rejex. kalahari surfers. sapeta, d. (2019). skeptical erections. makhanda: deep south books. tsoaeli, h. (2020). cycle in circles. cape town: youngblood gallery. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 17 special edition the enigma of the banning of mandela’s image by abel mputing | peer reviewed v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract often, we look at images and try to determine how and why they came into being and what they mean in our immediate presentness. and to lock their meaning and interpretation indelibly to the contemporaneous conditions of their making. but the more we look at them overtimein their afterlifethe more they reveal themselves to us anew; the more they solicit us on different levels than our initial impulsive reaction to them. and the more we discover their deep-seated significations that were not immediately evident in our ‘first looking.’ significations that invoke in our imaginations that which is left unsaid about them. that is where the enigma of the banning of mandela’s image lies. it lies in how its duplicitous representation rendered it as an art historical subject. as such, this essay seeks to examine why this image matters now as art as never before. 18 special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 repurposed as a mirror that reflects the adverse effects of the history of censorship on human liberties; the right to enunciate one’s oppositional positions: to think and to critique without fear of censor or censure. a retrospection that accentuates the late bishop desmond tutu’s critical observation on history that shares kinship with the dialogic disposition of this book: ‘we learn f rom history what we don’t learn f rom history’. but also, or more fundamentally, this cover-image affirms the centrality of the visual to the culture of criticism which was arbitrarily and violently suppressed by the apartheid regime. most significantly, this essay recognises that the foregrounding of the ethical and moral inscriptions of this image is but one inevitable way of looking at it. but its overarching claim is that there are other multiple ways of looking at it that are left unsaid. that constitute its afterlife and that impel new ways of thinking about and of looking at this historical image as a productive rather than a reflective space. ways of looking that urge the viewer to unveil other urgencies that can transfigure its fixation to a f rame that locks it to a singular interpretation. it is the ‘pictorial turn’ of the afterlife of this image that will occasion its reading and interpretation in this essay. one induces the notion of its afterlife because the banning of mandela’s image by the apartheid regime has, over time, turned it into an iconographic object. this afforded it a privilege of embracing multiple forms of creative processes and artistic practices of various cultural epochs while in exile. and this has in the process transmogrified it into various forms and styles that engendered it with multiple meanings and interpretations that unveiled the precariousness of its reality status. forms and styles whose imaginative cachets can be located within art criticism. that is precisely where the cultural cachet and the enigma of the banning of mandela’s image lies. to say that is to say there is a myriad of other ways of looking at this photo-graphic image’s visual vocabularies that demand that one pays attention to the particularity of the particular characters of its pictorial elements that cannot be generalised or simply read in unison. simply because their material structures have their own experiential and existential ’knowing robs us of wonder.’ – chinua achebe what is it that we are made to look at in this image and with what effect? one’s response to this question will be determined by the viewing experience that one brings to bear and the context within which one geminates his/her reading of this image. as we know, images assume different meanings in different contexts. when mandela’s censored image was first published in the 1980s in the weekly mail it, in line with its censorship code by the apartheid regime, avoided showing the objective likeliness of mandela’s identity. because he was regarded as the protagonist of the black liberation struggle. as such, the chief enemy of the apartheid state. provoking any semblance of an empirical relationship between mandela’s image and its spectators was regarded as treason. as a result, mandela, invoking barthes’ notion of stadium, ‘ceased to register a singular face of someone who lived his life as an autonomous subject.’ he, instead, signified the collective experience of the oppressed south af rican black majority and a particular moment in its human history. it is this iconographic inscription that fixated this image wholly to the socio-historical conditions of its making. in 2018, it re-emerged transfigured into a coverimage of bryan trabold’s book rhetoric of resistance, which turned its pictorial vision into a miscegenation of a graphic echo of mandela’s face layered with an equally graphic canvas of prints, fonts, motifs of themes, headlines, by-lines and disclaimers that constitute a visual binary of written and spoken words that blur its already ref rained exactitude as if to nullify if not to curtail even further the remaining pleasure of looking at it. it is this ‘border-reaching’ dichotomy: its transmutation of words and image into a creation of a form of a new picturehood: photo-and-graphic image that inverts what we know this historical image to be. and that’s what renders it a dialogic proposition with dialogic dispositions that are, conceptually, at a remove f rom the ones that occasioned the image that was published by the weekly mail decades ago. in keeping with the thematic thread of the title of this book, this transfigured cover-image has been 19 presence that impel the viewer to engage them to begin to understand, in susan sontag’s vein, ‘how it is what it is’. an activity that impels the viewer to engender this image with its aesthetic discrimination to determine how its material structures suspend its judicial allegiance to a singular meaning. how that transmogrifies the historical to unveil the other of itself through these visual reflexes, its less definable style that intertwine creativity and reality with great artistic flair. inscriptions that inscribe the imaginative portraiture premise that underlies the conception of this photo-graphic image. an imaginative portraiture premise the conception of an imaginative portraiture premise in this photo-graphic image is underpinned by, in martha rosler’s vein, its ‘aesthetic-historical moment’. a moment that begins to form when one focuses not necessarily on who is pictured in it, but how. this can be realised if the viewer looks at it and thinks about ‘how the considerations of its sitter are collapsed into those of its form; into its material elements and formal principles’ (rexer) and how they correlate to facilitate the generation of meaning-making mechanisms that have no historical imprints, but manifest in the viewer’s imaginations. this assertion underpinned by the visual registers that are indicative of the fact that mandela’s face in this portrait is not meant to overtly express the emotions of his political mind. for we are not conf ronted by a defiant political face that is clear enough to interpret. instead, we are presented with a face that is as invisible as possible; that is utilised as, using james elkins’ words, ‘the canvas for design and decoration’. a face that is gestured rather than that which is laboured photo-graphically. that is appropriated as a worked artefact: as a cultural object that is tailored for artistic interpretation. that exists not in the realm of the visible, but in the theatre of the viewer’s imaginations. the representation of the sitter as both the subject and object of this portrait is the recurring thematic of this essay. the gnawing question is when does a subject become an object, and an object the subject in portraiture? according to john erith, this happens when ‘the personality and character of the sitter are not allowed to intercede the visual elements of a portrait.’ this visual register constitutes one of the characteristics of an imaginative portraiture. the same can be said that the foregrounding of mandela’s face as the organismic character or a subdued graphic element of this portrait can be postulated as a visual strategy that forbids it f rom obtruding what the visual elements of this portrait seek to register. that is where the artfulness of this portrait lies. it lies in its non-character centric proposition that nudges the viewer to look beyond mandela’s solipsistic existence. to posit his portrait not as a concrete realisation, but as that which represents presentation. as a (re) productive site in which a transfiguration of a new visual language foreign to its historical context can begin to form. these variables that inform this portrait’s experience of being and process of becoming that occasion the reading of this image herald new modes of address that conspire to bypass old, evidential standards of its history and can be perceived as interruptive, interrogative, as the blurring of the limitations of existing boundaries of interpretation if not as a means to call into question the agency of primordial unity and fixity of meaning-making mechanisms (meredith). as a valiant quest to pull, push and stretch them to expose other representational and rhetorical strategies that bring to bear its discontinuities: its rapture and irruptions. it is this structural openness that ordains this portrait as a secular image. that serves as an invitation to the viewer to fantasise in its imaginative space. to provoke looking and critical reading; to subject it to its own monologues and epigraphs, to its own subjectivities. special edition the conception of an imaginative portraiture premise in this photo-graphic image is underpinned by, in martha rosler’s vein, its ‘aesthetic-historical moment’. a moment that begins to form when one focuses not necessarily on who is pictured in it, but how. v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 peer review 20 t h e t h i n k e r special edition historical figure and its momentous moment in south af rican history as an abstraction. by its capability to make mandela flinch as he becomes impersonal and other before the viewer’s eyes. comprehending that is crucial. if the viewer fails to envision that, it would have failed to comprehend one of the most imaginative investments of this portrait. imaginative investments that uphold this photographic image’s cultural worth and its status as an aesthetic object that draws the viewer’s sensory registers to the charm of its sublimity. to its awe. that herald a marked break with the documentary concepts that always already portray the black body as nothing more than that which represents a history of its human condition that is in a state of perpetual deferment. that mirrors moments of its vulnerability and that privileges its colonial ethnic biographies at the expense of its own subjective experiences. tamar garb historicises the ‘primordial fixity’ that informs this entrenched viewing experience of the black body in her book fictions and figures: contemporary south af rican photography (2011). garb writes: ‘from its earliest inception, photography in south af rica has depicted people. and it has filtered their representation through three dominant categories of representation: ethnography, documentary and portraiture, each carrying with it institutional and cultural associations. frequently referenced is the anthropological and ethnographical past that has provided the conceptual f ramework through which af rica’s people have routinely and repeatedly been pictured.’ contrary to the agencies of these practices, this enquiry employs gestural registers to break these spells of filters of black figuration that seem to have an eternal infatuation with the affliction of its wound. or is the black body forever invested in its pathology? does it have a space, a room to wiggle to say what has been left unsaid about itself? or is it forbidden the creative licence to rethink its own thinking, to reinterpret its own interpretation, to re-represent its own representation, to rewrite its own histories, to rediscover its own discontinuities? one wonders. the urge to rethink thinking instigated by chinua achebe’s disapproval of the knowledge that is the to embellish it with the syntax, diction, accent, tone and tenor of its own vernacular language. in fact, to do more than just that – to also philosophise and aestheticize it. to, ultimately, make its feelings feel. to invoke the multiple sensory registers of this portrait is to invoke the imaginations of a critical reader capable of deciphering its divergent propositions and meanings thereof. because as t.s. elliot attests: ‘no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.’ the indefinite disposition of this portrait attests to that. to the field of vision that does not f rame or compartmentalise its viewing experience to privilege a certain meaning at the expense of others. but instead, it impels the viewer to vouch for its own preferred interpretation to determine what is it that it is made to look at and with what effect. this is what renders this portrait a creation of a form of abstraction; that which we will not be able to fully respond to. the possibility of contemplating mandela as both the subject and object of this portrait – as a representation of a tenuous relationship between the real and imaginative reality – serves to show that there are many other lives of this image that encourage new thinking that implores us to reread and reposition it anew beyond its primordial impulses; to unchain it f rom its singular source of meaning. it is only after the attainment of this ideal that achebe’s claim – ‘knowing robs us of wonder’ – can make our feelings feel. knowing robs us of wonder wonder is a thematic carried further in this portrait by the duplicitous forms of expression invested in the sitter’s veiled gaze that flirt rather deceitfully with the viewer as if implying, in susan bright’s words, ‘what you see is not what you get and what you get is not what you see.’ this portrait’s invocation of this inconspicuous play between what is revealed and what is disguised is a ploy to refute the tendency to place the viewer of black portraiture in a position of the ‘empirical knowledge’ that achebe forewarned us about. a refutation of the threat it imposes to critical thinking; to imaginations. to the postulation of new aesthetic fictions and fantasies that underlie the subjectivities of the black body that have been conveniently overlooked throughout history. the feeling of wonder: of amazement and admiration is evinced by this portrait’s ability to postulate this t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 21 product of the tyranny of intellectual consensus that robs us of wonder is meant to posit aesthetics as the tent-pole of our common and collective humanity; a salvation of the culture of critical thinking innate in visual culture. who better to caution us against the threat of the tyranny of intellectual consensus to critical thinking than nietzsche: if you are a philosopher, consensus does not always make you happy. the consensus sapientium – the agreement of the wise – might be evidence of the untruth. the fact that everybody seems to agree about something isn’t always proof that we are right, it may do us good to think about the principles, the values, and ideals that underlie our agreement, not just to make the consensus more intellectually secured, but also to explore consequences we have not noticed (appiah, 2001: 36). the sequential concurrence of stimulus and response fermenting the thought processes of this essay that belies the contiguity of this image represents its marginal contribution to this endeavour. an endeavour that offers the viewer a reprieve to redeem, if not to reconfigure and reconsider, its blind allegiance to the authorised meaning and interpretation and received knowledge of this portrait. not out of spite, but in pursuit of something divine: something more admirable that exists apart and beyond its historical adulteration. that posits it not as a concrete historical realisation but as a ‘shadow trap’ if not, using ashraf jamal’s words, ‘an aesthetics fiction.’ a shadow trap the invocation of ‘a shadow trap’ in this portrait is premised on the echo of the shadow that disfigures the objective likeness of the sitter. instead of being represented with a speaking face that one can relate and identify with in a human and realistic way. this portrait presents the viewer with an echo of a face as a filter of its figuration. and what the viewer is left with ultimately is a void of ‘a shadow trap’ that, borrowing from rexer, ‘mirrors that which it does not show’. the visual descriptor of a ‘shadow trap’ was introduced to south african photographic practice by santu mofokeng. he enunciated its conceptual premise in his seminal portrait, eyes wide shut. most fundamentally, through its visual strategy that elevates the tenuous relationship between the literal and the figurative. this abstraction was valorised by patricia hayes in her essay, the violence is in the knowing. hayes writes: ‘there is a strong thematic in this portrait about things not being what they appear, achieved mostly through a lack of sharpness, blurring or of using exactitude to blur the very identity of things.’ hayes’s account of eyes wide shut hinges on the sitter’s gestural gaze: on its dynamic entanglement between seeing and imagining; between mindedness and absent-mindedness; between meditation and daydreaming. the viewer may have imagined the representation of the presence of absence, but not in the way that mofokeng (pre)figured it in this black and white portrait. similarly, in mandela’s portraiture the notion of ‘a shadow trap’ is foregrounded by his sealed-off consciousness that acts like a human mask that simultaneously reveals and conceals the emotions of his mind. mirianne hirsch elucidates the peculiarities of this representational strategy in portraiture: ‘as the sitter poses, the sitter assumes masks; as we read portraits, we project particular masks, particular ideological f rames onto the image.’ the interpretation of these gestural ambiguities in this portrait rely on the viewer’s ability to come up with its own bodily metaphors; its own fantasies to peel off or to turn the veil that echoes the sitter’s identity into account. these filters of figuration attest to the fact that there is a way of looking at this image as that which represents representation. that which is infinitely variable. of the photo-graphic sitter that exists apart f rom the homogenous whole to which it belongs. that is prefigured as an illusion; as that which exists in the figment of the viewer’s imaginations. mandela’s portrait and mohau modisakeng’s conception of self, as, using ashraf jamal’s abstract descriptor – a ‘vapour or husk’ – alludes to the notion of an echo of a human shadow that provocatively turned our gaze to a creation of a form of the sitter that is a mysticism; a fliting illusion. a gaze that renders this portrait a haunted space. there is certainly a certain kind of haunting to which the viewer of this portrait is subjected. this haunting is foregrounded by, plying harrison’s words, ‘the precedent that its representation provides for a continued engagement in the context of the visible, v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 22 special edition with that which is contingently excluded f rom being seen.’ by the affect of the sitter that seemingly reappears and disappears before the viewer’s eyes. whose poetic gestations disavow its representation as a concrete realisation. it is this dialogic disposition inherent in this portrait that enunciates it as an impossible testimony. that is, in tagg’s words: ‘less than what we want and more than we desire, never adequate to our questions or to our demands, it hands us what we were not seeking and may have preferred to avoid. inadequate and overwhelming compensation, impossible testimony.’ a poignant appraisal that alludes to what constitutes, in my opinion, the viewing experience of this portrait. a portrait that nullifies its own reading; that betrays the very idea of making it mean(ingful), or even before its meaning gets comprehended in the viewer’s mind. because instead of concrete particularity, it emphasises its ambiguous specificity. the suspension of the sitter’s face in this portrait and its replacement with its echo echoes the affect of its ambiguous specificity; of the sitter that is trafficked as a fliting gesture of a ‘shadow trap’. this goes to show that, in d jibri mambety’s words, ‘visuals have no fixed roles, we give them orders to fulfil.’ similarly, the reading of this portrait is determined not by a singular experience, but by the sensory registers and multiple exigencies of various artistic and creative processes and contexts, situations and periods of life whose accumulative effects bring to bear the precariousness of the reality status of its gaze. despite the irrefutable historical imprints that occasion this portrait, the postulations that foreground its reading as, plying harrison’s words, ‘a false consciousness in a space of consciousness’, it demonstrates the capacity to evoke other meaningmaking mechanisms which don’t rely on the imprints of its historical origin, but on those that are manifest in the viewer’s imaginations. rexer captures succinctly the vein of this thought when he claims that ‘other images always solicit us on many levels, never make so insistent a claim and often deliberately fight against it.’ it is these perplexing formulations and contingent propositions that shift and change, and of a visual proposition that is never wholly manifest that makes it impossible to confer a singular meaning to it. rexer explicates the vein of this thought more eloquently. he writes: ‘our tendency is to make something of an image, to try to say immediately without thorough reflection, thorough aesthetic discrimination what it means and how it works and why it was made. images are more disjunctive than we often thought them to be, and often frustrate our impulses. other kinds of images always solicit us on many levels, never make so insistent a claim and often deliberately fight against it.’ this analysis endeavoured to show this image’s capability to epitomise a reading that is receptive to unauthorised engagements that are impossible to seal. a conjecture that can be construed as a strategic decomposition of its linear and idealised interpretation. those who continue to speak of this photo-graphic image in a one-dimensional manner, may need to adopt new imaginative interpretations and aesthetic discriminations in order to comprehend the principles of organisation that are at play in it. principles that purchase heavily on what cannot be seen, but imagined, what can’t be secured intellectually, but felt. this is what makes this photograph, which solicits the viewer on different levels, a visual proposition that is beyond what some always already expect it to be: a representation of a historical record. this assertion constitutes the thread of the rhetorical strategy of this essay. and that’s where the crux of its critique and cultural cachet lies. this analysis endeavoured to show this image’s capability to epitomise a reading that is receptive to unauthorised engagements that are impossible to seal. a conjecture that can be construed as a strategic decomposition of its linear and idealised interpretation. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 image-making ultimately, the overarching endeavour of this analysis is to posit this portrait not as a reflective, but a productive space that represents image-making. that – like any form of visual art – prioritises sight. that urges the viewer to engage it visually and photographically; in order to, using michael fried’s words, ‘respond to it punctually, in the moment of viewing, to its internal complexities as a whole, in particular the carefully engineered structures of its gaze.’ to determine how the organisation of elements within the boundaries of its f rame interact with each other to create an image. and to make its meticulous process of picturing – of alignment and manipulation of colour, space, written and spoken words as visible forms of its expression – mean. to say that is to bear testament to the fact that there is a way of representing this portrait as a creation of a form of a visual that subscribes to art criticism. that is capable of suspending its historical account even if momentarily. for, according to nigel whiteley, the valuations of a historical portrait are ‘often projected as a given and often they are neither discussed nor explained visually.’ and, more often than not, a historical portrait serves a social or an expressed political purpose. the same can’t be said about the reading of this portrait in this enquiry. herein one utilises a dialogic analysis to advance it as, to borrow jae emerling expression, ‘an aesthetic experience that exists apart, without purpose, all but beyond history.’ therein lies its artfulness. because it is claimed that the purpose of art is to be purposeless. because it is that which we will never fully respond to. indeed. that said, the enigmatic lure of this portrait is its capability to defer the roots of its origins even if momentarily. thanks to its censure, it managed to acquire methods of interpretation that are foreign to the condition of its inception. that subjected it to duplicitous, f ragmented and abstract filters of figuration and forms of expression that have no allegiance to fixed interpretations. but that mutate at the speed of thought; at the speed of the figment of imaginations. out of its prolonged metamorphosis and hiatus, mandela’s censored image has come out of the cold of censorship to be idealised. to embrace the warmth of human thought. the f reedom it engendered. to rediscover its creative voice and tell its stories that have been left unsaid. and to be eulogized for its unyielding patriotism, instead. to be extolled for enriching our visual culture and its criticism. for reconciling with its nemesis. for showing us the colour of our collective future. for being many things to many – to both its detractors and admirers alike. but most of all, for instigating, in bailey and hall’s words, an ‘aesthetic unrest’ that occasions its reading in this enquiry that runs counter to the affliction of the pathology of its history. an ‘aesthetic unrest’ which affords it new representational spaces, and instills in it new visual impulses and idioms that hypothesize it as an interpreter of the image and culture of an age. most significantly, it is the compendium of duplicities of bodily metaphors, of illusions and fantasies embedded in it that serve as proof that ‘a practice exists within a discourse and yet it can transform it.’ emerling’s testament is the tent pole of the thesis of this analysis. indeed, it is a known fact that this portrait is an infamous creation of south af rica’s tempestuous history, but its postulation in this inquiry has managed to subvert its detestable strictures to unveil the ‘other’ of itself that we are yet to be accustomed to. references: achebe, c. (1998). another af rica. new york: doubleday. baetens, j. (2007). ‘photography: the question of interdisciplinarity.’ in: photography theory: art seminar. j. elkins, ed. new york: routledge. 51–53. bailey, d and hall, s. (2003). ‘the vertigo of displacement.’ in: photography theory: art seminar. j. elkins, ed. new york: routledge. 380–386. barthes, r. (1997). image. music. text. new york: hill and wang. ———. (2003). ‘rhetoric of the image.’ in: photography theory: art seminar. j. elkins, ed. new york: routledge. 114–125. ———. (2009). ‘race and reproduction in camera lucida.’ in: photography: theoretical snapshots. j. long, a. noble & e. welch, eds. new york: routledge. 98–111. barnes, m. (2007). figures and fictions: contemporary south af rican photography. london: v&a publishing. 7–9. bright, s. (2011). art photography now. uk: thames & hudson. d’alleva, a. (2006). how to write art history. london: laurence king publishing ltd. elkins, j. (1996). the object stares: on the nature of seeing. new york: a harvest book. ———. (1999). pictures of the body: pain and metamorphosis. california: stanford university press. ———. (2007). photography theory. new york: routledge. ———. (2008). six stories f rom the end of representation: images in 23 special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 24 special edition paintings, photography, astronomy, microscopy, particle physics, and quantum mechanics, 1998–2000. california: stanford university press. emerling, j. (2012). photography: history and theory. new york: routledge. english, d. (2007). how to see a work of art in total darkness. london: the mit press. fried, m. (1987). realism, writing, disfiguration. chicago: the university of chicago press. ———. (2008). why photography matters as art as never before. new haven: yale university press. foucault. m. (1972). the archaeology of knowledge and the discourse of language. britain: tavistock publications limited. garb, t. (2011). figures and fictions: contemporary south af rican photography. london: v&a publishing. hall, s. (2009). af rica writes back: metafiction, gender, sexuality. usa: suny press. hanson, a. (1977). manet and the modern tradition. new haven: yale university press. hayes, p. (2009). ‘santu mofokeng, photographs: the violence is in the knowing.’ history and theory, 48: 34–51. hirsch, m. (1997). family frames: photography, narrative and postmemory. massachusetts: harvard university press. jamal, a. (2017). in the world: essays on contemporary south af rican art. skira editore spa: italy. ———. (2021). strange cargo: essays on art. skira editore spa: italy. lutz, c. and collins, j. (2003). ‘the photograph as an intersection of gazes: the example of national geographic.’ in: the photography reader. l. wells, ed. new york: routledge. 354–375. mambety, d. (1991). ‘interview with d jibril diop mambety by simon njami.’ revue noire [online]. available at: https://www.revuenoire. com/en/blowing-in-the-wind/ maholy-naggy, l. (2009). the edge of vision: the rise of abstraction in photography. new york: aperture foundation. mofokeng, s. (2009). ‘santu mofokeng, photographs: the violence is in the knowing.’ history and theory, 48: 34–51. ———. (2011). figures and fictions: contemporary south af rican photography. london: v&a publishing. ———. (2012). chasing shadows: thirty years of photographic essays. johannesburg: wits art museum. reid, a. (1969). meaning in the arts. humanities press: new york. rexer, l. (2009). the edge of vision: the rise of abstraction in photography. new york: aperture foundation. shore, s. (2007). the nature of photographs. new york: phaidon press inc. sontag, s. (1999). ‘the reader of the lost art: visuality and particularity in art criticism.’ in: interpreting visual culture: explorations in the hermeneutics of vision. l. heywood & b. sandywell, eds. london: routledge. sturken, m. and cartwright, l. (2009). practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. united kingdom: oxford university press. szarkowski, j. (2003). ‘introduction to photographer’s eye.’ in: the photography reader. l. wells, ed. new york: routledge. 97–103. tagg, j. (2012). photography: history and theory. new york: routledge. wells, l. (1997). photography: a critical introduction. london: routledge. whiteley, n. (1999). ‘the reader of the lost art: visuality and particularity in art criticism.’ in: interpreting visual culture: explorations in the hermeneutics of vision. l. heywood & b. sandywell, eds. london: routledge. 99–122. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 7v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 t he republic of south af rica and the kingdom of sweden are often said to share a special relationship. this relationship, as anna-mart van wyk’s article in this special issue illustrates, is firmly rooted in sweden’s support for the anti-apartheid movement. since then, both south af rica and sweden, and indeed the world as a whole, have experienced significant political, economic, and social changes. the bilateral relationship between south af rica and sweden has grown since the former’s transition to democracy on the 27th of april 1994. to this end, south af rica and sweden enjoy a bi-national commission and a total of 22 bilateral agreements1 (dirco, 2022). in addition to these milestones, innovative initiatives have been established in areas of mutual concern. chief examples in this regard include the south af rica-sweden university forum (sasuf)2 and the cape town-stockholm connect initiative3, which seek to stimulate collaboration in higher education and business and technology respectively. there have also been developments in our cultural exchanges in recent years. one such example was the facilitation of the sweden-south af rica live connection: digitally yours campaign (hereafter the digitally yours by sven botha opinion guest editor’s introduction reinvigorating south africa-sweden relations: politics, economics, and society 8 opinion campaign) which sought to keep both countries connected virtually during the covid-19 pandemic. the digitally yours campaign ran f rom the 4th of april 2020 until the 2nd of may 2020 and hosted a number of virtual exchanges4 whereby both swedish and south af rican artists participated in roundtable discussions and cultural performances in the areas of fashion, poetry, and music (embassy of sweden in pretoria, 2020). despite these encouraging and innovative developments occurring in the bilateral relationship between south af rica and sweden, scholarly appetite on the subject of south af rica-sweden relations remains scant as the majority of the scholarship has restricted itself to the pre-1994 relationship (magnusson, 1974; sellström, 1999; sellström, 2002a; sellström, 2002b; coetzee, 2020; glover, 2021; coetzee, 2021). in response to this reality, two key initiatives have been implemented, namely: the student essay contest on south af rica-sweden relations and the publication of this double special issue on south af rica-sweden relations. the latter undertaking took place in 2022 and afforded senior or leaving undergraduate students (3rd and 4th year students) f rom any discipline the opportunity to submit an essay of no more than 3,000 words in one of five categories, namely: gender issues, cultural issues, environmental issues, academic/knowledge exchange, and science and technology. within the context of their preferred category, participating students were asked to consider how south af rica and sweden could advance their bilateral exchanges in innovative and collaborative ways. in the end, over 30 submissions were received. the essays were judged by a panel of 14 academics (seven f rom each country) and the winners within each category were hosted by the swedish ambassador, h.e håkan juholt, at his residence in pretoria in october 2022. this project was jointly hosted by the faculty of humanities at the university of johannesburg, the sasuf network, and the embassy of sweden in south af rica with a triangular objective: to foster closer ties between south af rican and swedish students, to foster closer ties between south af rican and swedish academics, and to create awareness for contemporary south af rica-sweden relations. building upon the momentum of the essay contest, this double special issue sought to elicit contributions f rom academics and practitioners f rom both countries that explain and assess the various aspects of south af rica-sweden relations. matters of historical solidarity, trade, political cooperation within the united nations security council, arts and culture, and higher education are all addressed across the double special issue. in addition to traditional assessments of bilateral relations, this double special issue further contributes to the discourse on south af rica-sweden relations by featuring contributions that compare key social and political issues evident in both states. this allows for the emergence of unique insights which could be used to brainstorm ways in which south af rica and sweden could further expand upon their bilateral exchanges. articles comparing compliance with good international citizenship as well as responses to mass migration and active citizenship (on the domestic level) are included in the special issue. this project acknowledges that nordic states other than sweden have contributed to south af rica’s dispensation and have also actively sought firm bilateral relations with south af rica. to this end, an article exploring the prospects for the emergence of a strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordic bloc wraps up the double special issue. finally, given that the special issue’s means of assessing bilateral relations includes both international and domestic issues, the guest editor pens a concluding article in the second half of this special issue introducing a new analytical f ramework t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 despite these encouraging and innovative developments occurring in the bilateral relationship between south africa and sweden, scholarly appetite on the subject of south africa-sweden relations remains scant as the majority of the scholarship has restricted itself to the pre-1994 relationship 9 for the assessing of bilateral relations between states within the international system. the key findings and common trends f rom across the double special issue will also be reflected upon in this concluding contribution. the facilitation of both the essay contest and the double special issues has laid the ground work for the exploration of further cooperation between students, practitioners, and academics f rom both south af rica and sweden. the tireless efforts of various colleagues f rom across both projects is herein duly acknowledged and deeply appreciated. for the essay contest a special vote of thanks goes to the panel of judges, the sasuf team at upsala university, the department of politics and international relations and the faculty of humanities at the university of johannesburg, and the embassy of sweden in pretoria. for the special issue, much gratitude goes to the erudite contributors, the peer reviewers, and the thinker’s editorial and production teams. the collective efforts made by colleagues f rom across both projects have gone a considerable way to furthering intellectual interest in south af rica-sweden relations. notes 1. this total includes three joint agreements between south af rica and the wider nordic region. 2. sasuf is a bilateral network of 40 universities across sweden and south af rica aimed at promoting exchanges in education, research, and innovation. refer to the article by sven botha and helin bäckman kartal in the next edition of this special issue to learn more about how sasuf has become a leading driver of knowledge diplomacy between both countries. 3. the cape town-stockholm connect initiative is a bilateral platform tasked with connecting the cities of cape town and stockholm under the banner of technological innovation and cooperation. for more information, visit: www.siliconcape.com/cape-townstockholm-connect-csc/ 4. these exchanges are still available to view online for f ree via the embassy of sweden’s facebook page. for more information, please refer to the following link: www.facebook.com/swedeninsa/videos references coetzee, w.s. (2020). ‘doing research on “sensitive topics”: studying the sweden-south arms deal.’ scientia militaria, 48(2): 65–84. coetzee, w.s. (2021). ‘sweden’s weapons exports paradox.’ in: a. de bengy puyvallée and k. bjørkdahl, eds. do-gooders at the end of aid: scandinavian humanitarianism in the twenty-first century. cambridge: cambridge university press. department of international relations and cooperation (dirco). (2022). ‘south african treaty register’. dirco [online]. available at: treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtwwpd/textbase/treatywebsearch.htm embassy of sweden in pretoria. (2020). ‘embassy of sweden launches digital stage for cultural exchange amid covid-19.’ sweden abroad [online]. availabe at: www.swedenabroad.se/es/embajada/south-africa-pretoria/current/news/embassy-of-sweden-launches-digital-stage-for-cultural-exchange-amid-covid-19/ glover, n. (2021). ‘marketing internationalism in an era of globalisation – the swedish-south african partnership week, november 1999.’ culture unbound: journal of current cultural research, 13(1): 41–65. magnusson, a. (1974). ‘swedish investments in south africa, research report no. 23.’ the scandinavian institute of african studies [online]. available at: www.files. ethz.ch/isn/97129/23.pdf sellström, t. (1999). sweden and national liberation in southern africa, vol. 1: formation of a popular opinion, 1950-1970. uppsala: nordic africa institute. sellström, t. (2002a). liberation in southern africa: regional and swedish voices, 2nd ed. stockholm: elanders gotab. sellström, t. (2002b). liberation in southern africa, vol. ii: solidarity and assistance, 1970–1994. uppsala: nordic africa institute. v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion https://www.siliconcape.com/cape-town-stockholm-connect-csc/ https://www.siliconcape.com/cape-town-stockholm-connect-csc/ https://www.facebook.com/swedeninsa/videos https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/textbase/treatywebsearch.htm https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/textbase/treatywebsearch.htm https://www.swedenabroad.se/es/embajada/south-africa-pretoria/current/news/embassy-of-sweden-launches-digital-stage-for-cultural-exchange-amid-covid-19/ https://www.swedenabroad.se/es/embajada/south-africa-pretoria/current/news/embassy-of-sweden-launches-digital-stage-for-cultural-exchange-amid-covid-19/ https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/97129/23.pdf https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/97129/23.pdf note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel ashraf jamal is a research associate in the visual identities in art and design research centre, university of johannesburg (uj). he is the co-author of art in south af rica: the future present (1996) and co-editor of indian ocean studies: social, cultural, and political perspectives (2010). jamal is also the author of in the world: essays on contemporary south af rican art (2017); predicaments of culture in south af rica (2005), love themes for the wilderness (1996), and the award-winning short f iction, the shades (2002). jamal’s latest book, strange cargo: essays on art, was published by skira in 2022. sven christian is a writer, editor, and curator. in 2022, he was appointed curator of the villalegodi centre for sculpture at nirox sculpture park. he is the editor of ashraf jamal’s strange cargo: essays on art (2022); and co-editor of coral bijoux: dreams as r-evolution (2020); why should i hesitate: putting drawings to work (2019); and five bhobh: painting at the end of an era (2018). he holds an ma in contemporary curatorial practices f rom the university of the witwatersrand, which focused on the curation of dumile feni’s scroll. the accompanying project, ‘you wouldn’t know god if he spat in your eye: impressions f rom dumile feni’s scroll’ was published through ellipses: journal of creative research. his work has also been published by the garage journal, and oncurating, amongst others. uvusi nkomo is a writer, educator, musician, media practitioner, and political-cultural organiser based in cape town, south af rica. uvusi is the founder and researcher at iliso magazine. phumzile nombuso twala is a writer and independent arts practitioner. an independent curators international (ici) alumnus, her research interests are in heritage and the intersection between community engagement and museum practice. she is developing an interdisciplinary praxis based on this. as a practitioner, she has been aff iliated with funda community college in soweto, through the creative arts incubator programme, and has been actively developing social interventions through soweto museums. she is completing a ba honours degree in history of art at the university of the witwatersrand (wits), and is a recipient of both the 2020 department of arts and culture (dac) heritage-related studies bursary and the 2020 robben island museum bursary. hlonipha mokoena eceived her ph.d. f rom the university of cape town in 2005. she is currently an associate professor and researcher at wiser (wits institute for social and economic research) at the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. her articles have been published in: journal of natal and zulu history; journal of religion in af rica; journal of southern af rican studies; ufahamu: a journal of af rican studies; interventions: international journal of postcolonial studies; image & text and critical arts. phokeng setai is a doctoral fellow at the centre t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 for humanities research, university of the western cape. he investigates the socio-political dynamics that constitute the landscape of contemporary af rican cultural production. his vision is to develop radical pan-af rican methodologies for the advancement of black studies, and to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary f rameworks in the expanded af rican cultural landscape. setai’s passion for archiving is evident in his enthusiasm for vinyl record collecting and his bent for book and art connoisseurship. he is a self-confessed foodie and football lover. nkgopoleng moloi is an arts writer based in cape town, south af rica. her work has been featured in artthrob, elephant magazine, the british journal of photography and post (the museum of modern art’s online resource), among others. thulile gamedze is a johannesburg-based writer and otherwise undisciplined practitioner working between images, text, and history. her work is moved by the pedagogical, social, and creative potential of radical queer positions and black consciousness politics. she has an m.phil in fine art f rom the university of cape town, and has published extensively for international art publications, including documenta 14, the 10th berlin biennale, and iterations of recontres’ de bamako, as well as for local platforms like mail & guardian and artthrob. she has also published in academic journals radical philosophy and south atlantic quarterly (as one of two parts of ‘gamedze and gamedze’) and has a forthcoming diagrammed essay in march journal’s issue on ‘black ecologies.’ stacy hardy is a writer, an editor with pan af rican collective chimurenga, and a lecturer in creative writing at uckar. her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications and a collection of her short f iction, because the night, was published in 2015. she regularly collaborates with angolan composer victor gama on multimedia works that have been performed around the world and her experimental performance piece, “museum of lungs,” created together with laila soliman, neo muyanga, and nancy mounir, toured globally. she is a research fellow at chicago university and is currently working on a research and performance-based collaborative endeavour exploring biographies and geographies of breath. she is also the librettist for a new opera which won the prestigious fedora-generali prize for opera 2020 and will premier at festival d’aixen-provence, france in 2022. abel mputing holds a masters of arts in fine art and an honours degree in history f rom the university of cape town. before that he was a f reelance arts writer for various south af rican national newspapers. and a columnist for top of the times, a weekly arts supplement of cape times. he lectured on part-time basis a module on south af rican art narratives at michaelis school of fine art and was also enlisted as a research fellow at the centre for curating the archive, uct. he is interested in south af rican art history with a special emphasis on south af rican documentary and art photography with particular reference to the black body, its archival record and the contemporary artistic practices thereof. david mann is an award-winning writer, editor and arts journalist f rom johannesburg. his reviews, essays and journalism have been published in the mail&guardian, artformes, business day, sunday times, daily maverick, arttimes, the con mag, artthrob and more, and his f iction and creative nonf iction have appeared in afreada, the kalahari review, itch creative journal, sunday times books, new contrast and imbiza journal (forthcoming). nolan stevens has had careers as an independent curator, art teacher , as well as an award-winning artist and arts writer. his written work has been published ina wide range of renowned print and online arts publications both locally and internationally. stevens’ subject of interest interrogates the complexities surrounding modern day af ro-urban life. contributors to this edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel editors: lisa otto university of johannesburg lisa otto is a senior researcher with the nrfsarchi chair in af rican diplomacy and foreign policy at the university of johannesburg and is joint editor in chief of the journal af rican security review. she holds a phd in political studies f rom the university of johannesburg and a ma in international peace and security f rom king’s college london. she has specialised in af rican issues, particularly those related to conflict and security as well as foreign affairs and diplomacy. her research interests have largely revolved around non-traditional threats to security, where she has developed specif ic expertise in maritime security. robyn williams university of johannesburg robyn williams is a phd candidate with the department of politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg and is a researcher at the dsi/nrf sarchi chair in transformative innovation, the fourth industrial revolution and sustainable development. she holds a ma in politics f rom the university of johannesburg, titled the implications of the fourth industrial revolution on the theory and practice of diplomacy. her research explores the implications of new and advancing technologies, prompted by the 4ir, on diplomacy and international relations at large. other research interests include af rican development through advanced technologies and collaborative efforts and south af rican diplomacy. robyn’s doctoral studies explores the possibilities of south af rican diplomacy in the context of 4ir. authors: patrick bond teaches political economy and political ecology at the university of johannesburg department of sociology. his most recent (co-edited) book is brics and resistance in af rica (london, zed books, 2019), and a forthcoming work is extreme uneven development: financial volatility, deep capitalist crisis and super-exploitation in south af rica and the world (london, palgrave macmillan). andy carolin is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at the university of johannesburg. he is the author of a monograph titled postapartheid same-sex sexualities: restless identities in literary and visual culture, which was published by routledge in 2021. he has a phd in english literature, and his work is located broadly within south af rican cultural studies. his research focuses on the intersections between race, gender, sexuality and history in south v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 af rican literature and f ilm. he has also published on theories of transnationalism, as well as the history of the anti-apartheid movement. he holds a y rating f rom the national research foundation (nrf). temitope fagunwa, phd. is a marxist historian with a central focus on af rican economic history in the department of history and international studies, osun state university. as a budding social justice activist and epistemic-decolonizer, temitope has been involved in the organization of several conferences and symposiums under the aegis of the pan-af rikan consciousness renaissance (pacor). temitope has contributed papers and chapters in reputable journals and books, respectively. samantha layton-matthews is reading for her masters in political science with the department of politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg. her research explores the signif icance of f ictional literature in politics and its role and value in advancing the tenets of democracy and in harnessing cultural diversity. she is also exploring politics and literature as a point of advocacy in the af rican context. samantha’s background lies in training and development, where she has worked in a variety of industries. her key focus areas are in identifying critical needs, designing and implementing development programmes to support practical skills and developing capacity building initiatives. some of the key programmes include: entrepreneurial development, building emotional intelligence, constructive leadership, marketing, environmental waste management, innovation, creativity, and change management. chris landsberg is professor and sarchi chair of af rican diplomacy and foreign policy at the university of johannesburg (uj), co-director of the centre for af rican diplomacy and leadership and senior associate at the uj school of leadership. he is former head of politics at uj. landsberg holds was educated at rau (now university of johannesburg); rhodes; and oxford, and holds mphil and dphil international relations degrees (oxon). he studied as a rhodes scholar at oxford, and is a former hamburg scholar at stanford university. previously he was director at the centre for policy studies, and cofounder and former co-director of the centre for af rica’s international relations at wits tshilidzi marwala, phd, is vice-chancellor and principal as well as professor (faculty of engineering and the built environment) at the university of johannesburg. in 2018 he was appointed deputy chairperson of the presidential commission on the 4ir (pc4ir) by president cyril ramaphosa. in 2021 he was also appointed to the 4ir task force in namibia by president haig geingob. he has published more than 20 books on ai, machine rationality, and economics among others. with dr bhaso ndzendze, he has co-authored the book artif icial intelligence and emerging technologies in international relations (world scientif ic press) and the forthcoming artif icial intelligence and international relations theories (palgrave macmillan). they also have a joint column on technology and foreign policy in ubuntu magazine ran by the national department of international relations and cooperation. mmabatho mongae is a phd candidate at the university of the witwatersrand. she holds an ma in international relations. her main research interests are in comparative political economy, governance, democracy, and quantitative research. she is currently a sessional lecturer and teaching assistant at wits. xichavo alecia ndlovu is a lecturer in the department of political studies at the university of cape town. ndlovu’s research and teaching interests are in comparative and international political economy. her current research focuses on political accountability and development in af rica’s resource-rich economies. bhaso ndzendze, phd, is head of department (politics and international relations) and head of unit (4ir and digital policy research unit) at the university of johannesburg. with prof tshilidzi marwala, he has co-authored two books, artif icial intelligence and emerging technologies in contributors to this edition t h e t h i n k e r international relations (world scientif ic press) and the forthcoming artif icial intelligence and international relations theories (palgrave macmillan). they also have a joint column on technology and foreign policy in ubuntu magazine ran by the national department of international relations and cooperation. his other book and journal contributions focus on trade, democracy and opportunity cost theory. he has over 50 publications in total. orcid id: 0000-0003-4825-0837. zama ngwane is a foreign service off icer at the department of international relations and cooperation. she is currently assigned to the embassy of south af rica in washington, dc. she received her ma in international relations f rom the university of the witwatersrand and is a business student at the university of illinois. lisa otto is a senior researcher with the nrfsarchi chair in af rican diplomacy and foreign policy at the university of johannesburg and is joint editor in chief of the journal af rican security review. she holds a phd in political studies f rom the university of johannesburg and a ma in international peace and security f rom king’s college london. she has specialised in af rican issues, particularly those related to conflict and security as well as foreign affairs and diplomacy. her research interests have largely revolved around non-traditional threats to security, where she has developed specif ic expertise in maritime security. dominique e. uwizeyimana holds the position of full professor in the school of public management, governance and public policy (pmgpp) at the university of johannesburg. he is an nrf-rated researcher who specialises in public policy, programme and project implementation and evaluation. anthoni van nieuwkerk holds a phd in international relations f rom the university of the witwatersrand. anthoni is based at the wits school of governance, where he participates in peace and security studies. he publishes regularly on aspects of af rican security. he coordinates a network of southern af rican academics and security sector practitioners, is a senior research associate at good governance af rica, and serves as editorial board member of several accredited journals. robyn williams is a phd candidate with the department of politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg and is a researcher at the dsi/nrf sarchi chair in transformative innovation, the fourth industrial revolution and sustainable development. she holds a ma in politics f rom the university of johannesburg, titled the implications of the fourth industrial revolution on the theory and practice of diplomacy. her research explores the implications of new and advancing technologies, prompted by the 4ir, on diplomacy and international relations at large. other research interests include af rican development through advanced technologies and collaborative efforts and south af rican diplomacy. robyn’s doctoral studies explores the possibilities of south af rican diplomacy in the context of 4ir. adrian d. van breda is a professor of social work at the university of johannesburg, the head of the department of social work and community development at uj, and rector of the anglican parish of st stephens in lyttelton, pretoria. his research focus is resilience: the holistic ways in which systems – including families, organisations and youth – navigate through adversity towards better-than-expected outcomes. he has benef ited f rom the executive coaching of vasintha pather and grown as a leader through interaction with the colleagues in his department. contributors to this edition v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 t h e t h i n k e r4 pan-african a group of eminent scientists, including the late physicist stephen hawking, notoriously claimed that: “success in creating artificial intelligence (ai) would be the biggest event in human history. unfortunately, it might also be the last" (hawkings et al., 2014). remarks such as these often conjure up dystopian visions of killer robots enslaving humanity, or the redundancy of flesh-and-bone beings in a digitally sentient world. either way, such notions distort ai’s contemporary and subtle threats. artificial intelligence may pose substantial long-term risks, but an existential threat is preceded by an ethical one – risk resides not only in the future but also in the present. like their global peers, af rican policymakers need to consider the ethical challenges of ai. if they fail to do so, the continent is more likely to be a victim than a victor of the technologies underlying the so-called fourth industrial revolution (4ir). in this article, i will provide an introduction to ai and its impact, with a brief exploration of ai’s major ethical themes, along with a more detailed discussion of machine bias. i will then outline some of the measures that governments and other stakeholders are taking towards ai-ethics. finally, i will conclude with some suggestions for how af rican stakeholders can strengthen ai's ethical governance. a brave new digital world artificial intelligence is a key component of the 4ir – the latter defined as a merging of technologies that blur the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres – building on the digitally-driven third industrial revolution (schwab, 2016). until recently, the digital revolution has relied on human beings to create software and analyse data, but recent advances in ai have recast this process (kissinger, schmidt and huttenlocher, 2019). experts argue that ai is best understood as a ubiquitous, general purpose technology – similar to electricity – that stretches over multiple by emile ormond the ghost in the machine © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m the ethical risks of ai 5v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african domains (burgess, 2018). that is, ai (and its most popular subset, machine learning) is potentially applicable to any area that currently requires human cognition. the reach of the 4ir, and ai in particular, is foreseen to stretch across the globe and eventually affect all sectors and professions (schwab, 2016). current notable examples of ai include apple and amazon's voice-operated personal assistants, facebook and twitter’s personalised news feeds, and google and tesla's autonomous-driving vehicles (marr, 2018). outside of the technology sector, ai is used by firms for recruitment and performance management, by insurance companies to set rates, by banks to adjudicate loans and by health practitioners for diagnoses (ananny, 2017; easen, 2018). the use of ai is not limited to the tertiary sector; it can also be used in the primary sector – for instance, in the management of cattle herds in south af rica (gavaza, 2019). studies have claimed that ai could serve as a catalyst for wide-spread economic growth due to, inter alia, productivity gains and spin-off industries. globally, ai technology could stimulate a doubling of growth rates (schoeman et al., 2017). pundits predict that ai will see a strong uptake within af rica in coming years (hao, 2019; snow, 2019). in south af rica, the use of ai technologies could result in a two-fold increase in economic growth and boost company profitability by an average of 38% by 2035 (schoeman et al., 2017). for now, however, ai’s use remains relatively nascent in af rica. a 2019 study in south af rica found that only 13% of corporates currently use ai technology; of the rest, 21% plan to do so within the next 12-24 months (goldstuck, 2019). furthermore, 99% indicated that they understand the benefit of ai and will need to use it at some point in the future (smith, 2019). clear and present danger “the real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.” – b.f. skinner (psychologist, philosopher) while ai has tremendous potential, it also presents significant challenges for organisations and authorities, particularly in the realm of ethics. many af rican states are still grappling with the moral, social and economic consequences of the second and third industrial revolutions (knottcraig, 2018; oosthuizen, 2019), and the gravity of this situation is exacerbated by policymakers who lack an understanding of ai technology and its vast potential impact (stone et al., 2016; royakkers et al., 2018). artificial intelligence has already played a central role in many prominent cases of ethical failure. a widely-known example is that of cambridge analytica, a data analytics firm that used machine learning, fuelled by illicitly gathered social media data, to influence us voters in the 2016 presidential election (cadwalladr and graham-harrison, 2018). another example is the compas system, which is used by us courts to help assess the likelihood of a defendant becoming a recidivist. the system was found to systematically discriminate against non-white racial groups (angwin et al., 2016). there are multiple less-publicised and more subtle examples that illustrate how ethical shortcomings in ai can be harmful to individuals and organisations, including inf ringements on laws and legal rights (campolo et al., 2017; fagella, 2018; whittake et al., 2018; larsson et al., 2019; tufecki, 2019). after an extensive review of relevant literature , i identified six key areas related to ai’s near-term potential ethical impacts on the social world. these six areas can be divided into three nonmutually exclusive tranches. the first is related to risk inherent to the nature of ai (accountability, bias and transparency), the second links to the i reviewed major academic databases, such as ebscohost, using the following search string, adapted f rom larsson et al. (2019): ‘("artificial intelligence" or "machine learning" or "deep learning" or "autonomous systems" or "pattern recognition" or "image recognition" or "natural language processing" or "robotics" or "image analytics" or "big data" or "data mining" or "computer vision" or "predictive analytics") and ("ethic*" or "moral*" or "normative" or "legal*" or "machine bias" or "algorithmic governance" or "social norm*" or "accountability" or "social bias")’. the date range was 1 january 2015 to 30 july 2019. experts argue that ai is best understood as a ubiquitous, general purpose technology – similar to electricity – that stretches over multiple domains (burgess, 2018). that is, ai (and its most popular subset, machine learning) is potentially applicable to any area that currently requires human cognition. t h e t h i n k e r6 pan-african real or perceived consequences of ai (autonomy and socio-economic risk), and the final tranche is related to the potential maleficent use of ai. these risks are not limited to ai, as they are also present to a lesser or greater degree in ancillary fields such as data science (marivate and moorosi, 2018). i have not included the ethical aspects of data management – ownership, consent and privacy – as these may be exacerbated by ai, but would be present even without it (taddeo and floridi, 2018). firstly, accountability relates to the intrinsic purpose of ai, which is to recreate aspects of human intelligence. consequently, ai challenges the traditional moral and jurisprudence paradigms that assign agency exclusively to human beings (davey, 2017; tegmark, 2018). secondly, ai – especially if fuelled through machine learning ¬– has also been accused of perpetuating socioeconomic bias through outputs (e.g. through recommendations and decisions) that are based on biased data (anderson, 2018; larsson et al., 2019). thirdly, due to ai’s complex algorithm, transparency is compromised by the so-called “black box” phenomena – where the output of the system is unknown to even the system’s designers or administrators (etzioni and etzioni, 2016; pavaloiu and klose, 2017). fourthly, human self-determination is threatened by increasingly ubiquitous ai systems that openly, but often inconspicuously, shape people’s choices and actions (taddeo and floridi, 2018). this includes, for instance, the search engine algorithm that determines what results one sees. fifthly, there have been predictions that the widescale adoption of ai will disrupt the global labour market and result in large-scale job losses and the entrenchment of inequality (bossman, 2016; miailhe and hodes, 2017; green, 2018). lastly, like most other technology, ai can be abused by a range of legitimate and illegitimate actors. for instance, in the recent past, ai has been used to distort information for political ends (jurkiewicz, 2018). while each of the aforementioned issues is fertile ground for much deeper discussion, i will now focus on discussing the issue of bias, which is especially concerning within the af rican context. discriminating machines bias in computer systems can be described as systematic and unfair discrimination against certain individuals or groups (donovan et al., 2018; smith and neupane, 2018). in other words, bias deepens and entrenches existing social inequality and results in ai’s benefits being unequally spread amongst different groups across and within countries (stone et al., 2016; kaye, 2018). it is important to understand that data is the food that ai algorithms feast upon. the availability of large data sets is a key prerequisite of most forms of ai. the problem, however, is that data collection mostly occurs in the west and in china, while there is a data shortage in africa (microsoft, 2018; marwala, 2019). the result is that the bulk of collected data does not accurately reflect the african experience, which means that many algorithms may not be properly tailored to the characteristics of local populations (mahomed, 2018). an example of this table 1. near-term ethical challenges of ai tranche 1 – intrinsic 1. accountability it is unclear who is accountable for the outputs of ai. 2. bias shortcomings of algorithms and/or data entrench and exacerbate bias. 3. transparency ai systems operate as a “black box”, with little ability to understand or verify outputs. tranche 2 – consequence 4. autonomy loss of autonomy in human decision-making, deference and acceptance of ai systems to make decisions affecting humans. 5. socio-economic risks ai will result in job losses, and will entrench/ exacerbate income and resource inequality. tranche 3 – utilisation 6. maleficence ai can be used by illicit actors for nefarious purposes, including by criminals, terrorists and repressive state machinery. source: author’s own 7v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african problem can be seen in image recognition software that struggles to identify human faces with dark tones or erroneously labels black people as gorillas (ananny and crawford, 2018). bias in ai systems can take multiple forms but can be divided into systemand data-level bias (anderson, 2018; kaye, 2018; larsson et al., 2019). system-level bias is present in several conditions. firstly, it occurs when developers allow ai systems to confuse correlation with causation (anderson, 2018) – for example, if a system determines a lowincome earner’s credit score by using the scores of his or her f riends. the individual, who may otherwise be in a good financial position, would receive an undesirable score simply because his associates have credit issues. secondly, systemlevel bias can occur if the system includes parameters for known proxies (anderson, 2018; pasquale, 2018) – for instance, education, income and area of residence are common proxies for race, especially in south af rica, a country with a socio-economic legacy of segregation. lastly, at a structural level, the creators select which applications get developed and what features these applications will have (smith and neupane, 2018; larsson et al., 2019). in other words, ai systems are not neutral or impartial systems, but rather are inadvertently value-laden products of those who created them (campolo et al., 2017). as data scientist cathy o’neil pointedly put it: “algorithms are opinions embedded in code” (2017). data-level bias also presents itself in several related ways. firstly, any bias present in historical data, which is used to identify patterns, is merely reproduced in the output (kirkpatrick, 2016; microsoft, 2018). for instance, a system advising on university admissions, which is trained on historical data, will make recommendations related to the university’s alumni (anderson, 2018). secondly, bias can occur when the input data is not representative of the target population (anderson, 2018). for instance, when facial recognition software, which was trained primarily with a data set of caucasians, is used to recognise faces of various races (pasquale, 2018). thirdly, bias often presents itself when data is poorly selected (anderson, 2018) – for instance, if a navigation application only provides directions for a motor vehicle and fails to include other options such as public transport and walking, which are options likely to be used by lower-income groups. lastly, there is the danger of bias when data is outdated, incomplete or incorrect. it follows that the output of a system will be inaccurate if input data is not current, comprehensive and accurate (ibe, 2018; smith and neupane, 2018). the impact of bias in ai systems is exacerbated by the fact that they are often used with the goal of balancing or correcting bias in the decisions made by humans (donovan et al., 2018). moreover, people generally have a misplaced confidence that digital systems operate fairly and in an unbiased manner (smith and neupane, 2018; larsson et al., 2019). often people are not even aware that bias has taken place, given that ai systems run as a silent background process (noble, 2018). the reality, however, is that many systems codify existing biases or inadvertently introduce new ones (donovan et al., 2018). it is worth pointing out that bias is not always problematic; in fact, there are situations were one may want to encourage “legitimate bias” in a system’s output. an example of this would be an ai hiring recommendation system that is calibrated to promote affirmative action. it could be argued that such bias is fair and socially desirable. however, these are normative concepts that need to be clearly defined by the parameters of the system and require consensus for what this practically entails, as programming social values is problematic due to their abstract nature (coeckelbergh, 2019; roff, 2019). the salient point is that ai is a product of human design and data, and therefore is not immune to the underlying – and often biased – values, beliefs and practices of the social world. where angels fear to tread “the danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like it is important to understand that data is the food that ai algorithms feast upon. the availability of large data sets is a key prerequisite of most forms of ai. the problem, however, is that data collection mostly occurs in the west and in china, while there is a data shortage in africa (microsoft, 2018; marwala, 2019). t h e t h i n k e r8 computers.” – sydney j. harris ( journalist, author) encouragingly, there appears to be a growing awareness of the ethical challenges presented by ai. measures to address these include calls for adopting a multidisciplinary approach to ai, establishing an international legal regime and governments crafting strategic plans that address ethical issues. there is an appeal at an overarching level for the ai f raternity to broaden its influence and considerations beyond its computer science and statistics origins in order to understand the technology’s ethical facets (agrafioti, 2018). the appeal is that ai needs to be approached and researched in a multidisciplinary manner, which will allow for a better holistic understanding and perspective on ai (crawford and calo, 2016; cath, 2018; dignum, 2018; whittake et al., 2018; coeckelbergh, 2019; larsson et al., 2019). the social facets and impact of ai need to be better understood, as it touches on many different aspects of societal existence, including commerce, economics, law, philosophy, psychology, sociology and politics (cummings et al., 2018). this approach is exemplified by the fairness, accountability and transparency (fat) focus in the development and utilisation of socio-technical systems. there are multiple calls for an international, legally-sanctioned approach to the governance of ai (underwood, 2017; anderson, 2018; groth, nitzberg and esposito, 2018; jurkiewicz, 2018; kaye, 2018; medhora, 2018; raso et al., 2018; royakkers et al., 2018; pielemeier, 2019). the implicit assumption in this view is that the boundary-less nature, broad scope and impact of ai means that a global approach is necessary to adequately address its ethical and legal dimensions. this would provide a range of rights, responsibilities and sanctions for ai’s stakeholders, including consumers, companies, governments and international organisations. this internationalist approach broadly consists of two views: firstly, the use or extension of current instruments and, secondly, the creation of new ones. the first and most popular view is to utilise existing international legal f rameworks. the current human rights legal f rameworks – exemplified by the un universal declaration of human rights – provide agreed norms to assess and address ai’s impact, as well as a shared language and architecture for convening, deliberating and enforcing an international legal regime (anderson, 2018; kaye, 2018; medhora, 2018; raso et al., 2018; pielemeier, 2019). the benefit of this is that the statutes are already in existence and have broad consensus. however, the impact, implementation and respect of human rights regimes have long been questioned (langford, 2018). the second view is that exemplar legislation on digital technologies should be expanded. for instance, it has been suggested that the eu’s widely-praised general data protec¬tion regulation (gdpr) legislation, governing the use of big data, should be extended to account for ai and should be adopted in other legal territories (jurkiewicz, 2018; coeckelbergh, 2019). several western governments have in recent years released ai white papers or strategic plans that also focus on ethical challenges (coeckelbergh, 2019). this includes canada, the eu, france, the uk and the us. however, developing countries – with the notable exceptions of china and india – have overwhelmingly not produced similar plans. there have, however, been green shoots. for instance, in early 2019, south af rican president cyril ramaphosa appointed a 4ir presidential commission to devise a national action plan. while positive, the commission’s mandate does not explicitly include the consideration of ethical issues (ndabeni-abrahams, 2019). codes necessary but insufficient a range of organisations, stretching across the private and public sphere, have drafted a plethora of ethical values and principles to guide the development and use of ai (algorithm watch, 2019; winfield, 2019a), with claims that there are more than 70 publicly available sets of ethical principles and f rameworks (morley et al., 2019). the ethical codes vary in tone, language and style, but in terms of substance are mostly in agreement, pan-african encouragingly, there appears to be a growing awareness of the ethical challenges presented by ai. measures to address these include calls for adopting a multidisciplinary approach to ai, establishing an international legal regime and governments crafting strategic plans that address ethical issues. 9v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 with a sizeable overlap. the documents broadly envision a human-centred view of ai, which sees the technology as having great potential that needs to be managed closely to limit its drawbacks and risks. similarly, the underlying principles and values are largely aligned. for instance, floridi et al. (2018) provide a synthesis of six ai-ethics documents and identify the following core underlying principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice and explicability. scholars have praised the ethical codes as a necessary but insufficient step towards ethical ai. moreover, there is little evidence to suggest that these codes have gained much traction in practice (campolo et al., 2017; winfield and jirotka, 2018; morley et al., 2019; winfield, 2019b). companies, in particular, are accused of (intentionally or not) using these codes for “ethics washing” – where the ai industry’s ethics codes and practices are used to rebut the need for external regulation (wagner, 2018). this has raised concerns that these ethics codes are little more than virtue signalling, which provides the appearance of ethical vigilance but lacks institutional f rameworks or structures to promote, monitor and manage ethics (vincent, 2019). relatedly, greene, hoff mann and stark (2019) noted, in a study analysing the content of the codes, that ai ethical codes are “technologically deterministic”. in other words, these codes presuppose the desirability and utility of the technology and consequently limit the ethical dialogue on ai f rom the outset. quo vadis? where does this leave african governments and other stakeholders who want to harness the economic power of ai while also mitigating its risks? there are no simple solutions to the complex and dynamic ethical challenges raised by ai and other facets of the 4ir. there are, however, a handful of measures that stakeholders should consider: • educate societal shapers – i.e. state and corporate policymakers – to be au fait with ai. while an in-depth technical grasp is not necessary, there needs to be an understanding of the technological drivers and the risks these entail. • formulate policy that accounts for unique pan-african t h e t h i n k e r10 af rican conditions, as opposed to merely importing policy f rom elsewhere. this means that the focus should not just be on making ai more ethical but, more fundamentally, on questioning whether ai is appropriate or desirable in certain social domains. • create a consolidated af rican union policy position on ai – a prerequisite being national policies among the majority of member states. af rican countries will be better able to influence and set requirements for ai firms if they are unified and have standardised requirements. • institute standing, cross-governmental ai-working groups to integrate the technology throughout state machinery and policy. artificial intelligence cannot only be the purview of a cohort of officials in one or two departments. • introduce legislation and industry incentives to encourage the protection and fair collection, storage and use of data in ai. this could build on existing laws, such as south af rica’s existing protection of personal information (popi) act. • appoint a digital ambassador to engage directly with technology companies. several countries, most notably denmark, have diplomatic staff who focus exclusively on technological actors. in conclusion, there is a pressing need for the continent to formulate policy, build formal structures and create policymaker capacity to understand, monitor and shape the evolving ethical risks associated with ai in a pro-active and dynamic manner. while hawking and his peers were rightly concerned with ai’s long-term impact, af ricans should not overlook its more immediate challenges. ■ references agrafioti, f. 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(2018). ethical governance is essential to building trust in robotics and ai systems. philosophical transactions a: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 376(2133), p. 19 [online]. available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2018.0085. pan-african 7v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract this paper offers a critical auto-ethnographic account about navigating entry into the academy as an emerging woman academic. in this paper, i reflect on the multiple intersecting positions i inhabit to draw attention to the tensions often experienced by black women in the academy. i also allude to tensions inherent in being a psychologist and an academic. the paper aims to bring to the fore the dynamics that perpetuate black women academics’ sense of nonbelonging, voicelessness, and stagnation. through my narrative, i critically discuss the concepts of time, space, temporality, emotion, and gender within the academic environment and how these elements intersect to shape experience. i make partial reference to feminist thought and critical psychology to drive the conversation about structural issues that persist within the academy that result in the feeling of dis-ease. i also argue that perhaps this dis-ease is the starting point for us to look at what is happening and move towards a radical or reimagined academy. through this process, i recognised how i became violently silent and disillusioned but emerged hopeful that constant processes of confrontation such as this will eventually create a home for us by nokulunga shabalala | peer reviewed p e e r r e v i e w what is happening here? an auto-ethnographic account of an emerging woman academic’s entry into the academy in south africa 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction research on the experiences of black women in higher education in south af rica is not new. many have written about how race and gender intersect to shape this experience and the extent to which black women academics feel at home or out of place in the academy (khunou, 2019; kiguwa, 2019; maseti, 2018). this paper offers a critical auto-ethnographic account of my entry into the academy. i reflect on my positionality as an emerging academic and the intersects of race, age, gender, academic rank and my professional identity as a clinical psychologist. i reflect on feelings of self-doubt and anxiety, and i attempt to process what these feelings do. i also attempt to contextualise this by discussing the relentless demands of the job. these demands include research and the teaching and administrative responsibilities that are shouldered by academics (bamberg et al., 2021). bamberg et al. highlight how these demands are ‘non-negotiable and are intimately tied to individual career identities and a sense of self-worth’ (2021: 190). this seems to create a sense of competition and a never-ending race for survival (bamberg et al., 2021). this critical auto-ethnography aims to unpack, through my story, some of the structural dynamics of academia, which have historically marginalised black women. it also interrogates how some day-today experiences of race and gender, compounded by stereotypical ideas of black women, create precariousness and anxiety (kiguwa, 2019). so, this paper serves as a conf rontation of sorts. i know that i have to straddle a fine line when conf ronting dynamics that need to shift; this tentativeness regarding conf rontation is something we are taught to err on the side of in psychology training. being too aggressive with conf rontation may evoke a defensive response in those who may not find resonance in my story. they may glaze over with boredom, tired of black people’s moaning (eddo-lodge, 2018). on the other hand, not conf ronting the status quo at all – remaining silent – is equally problematic and can lead to collusion. collusion, in this instance, maintains the dis-ease as the marginalised person’s problem. authors such as griffin (2012), khunou (2019) and kiguwa (2019) call for resistance and speaking back. my inclination as a psychologist is to exercise caution in speaking up against particular discomforts; this may be where some of the tension lies. the critical in critical auto-ethnography (holman jones, 2016: 229) critical auto-ethnography (ca) as an approach allows me to speak out against traditions of silence. this methodology brings to the fore the complicated and dialectical nature of lived experiences (boylorn and orbe, 2014; parker, 2014). offering my life in this way is an exposing process that presents my ‘messiness’ to be possibly scrutinised and criticised, but i hope that it is also understood (todd, 2021). this form of inquiry falls within feminist and other emancipatory research approaches, where the idea is for one to be f ree to say the unsayable (griff in, 2012). it also allows for a detailed description of an individualised experience and, by extension, opens up the possibility for assumptions to be made about the experiences of a particular group (boylorn and orbe, 2014; gough, 2015; shabalala, 2018). this kind of reflection on experience, as parker (2014) highlights, is essential for qualitative inquiry in psychology. he further highlights that reflecting on experience is important because the academy constitutes a strange balance between secrecy and transparency (parker, 2014). in other words, this paper attempts to draw attention to hidden affective experiences within the academy that are often experienced in a cycle of silence enforced by feelings of shame. this silence is often accompanied by the mandate of accountability embedded in the ‘audit culture’ of the neoliberal university (parker, 2014). baatjes et al. (2011: 139) argue that higher education in south af rica (with its history of enforcing racial capitalism) now perpetuates a market-oriented, neoliberal ideology that ultimately reinforces inequality. i also draw on a number of theoretical resources, namely critical psychology, marxism and feminism. holman jones (2016) argues that theory and storytelling exist in a reciprocal relationship where one influences the other, and theory helps us think through and discuss our experiences. similarly, parker (2014: 251) argues the following: t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 9 when it is most tempting to go with what you know, with your immediate impression of what you are up against, it is most important to use theoretical f rameworks to interpret it. then it is more important than ever to locate what is happening here, to you, in broader context, to conceptualise what is going on. the first attempt at this is stating upf ront that i, and by extension, this paper, take a political position with the understanding that a lot of what i choose to do and not do is constituted by this political position. in other words, a recognition that i can affect and be affected, especially in my capacity as an academic, an educator and a psychologist. one rationale for this is that despite the efforts towards transformation within higher education in south af rica and seeing more black women within the academy, fewer black women occupy senior and management positions (porter et al., 2020). there are also subtler inequalities that persist within the academy due to coloniality1 (shabalala, 2019; swartz et al., 2009). these inequalities also influence how we work and, more importantly, how we talk about our experiences within this context (shabalala, 2019). martin and mirraboopa (2003) have equally argued that this form of reflexivity allows for the integrity of identity during the research process while decolonising western research methodologies. as i previously alluded to, the multiple positions i occupy also require this political stance, particularly as a south af rican psychologist. in psychology, for many years, the political has been treated as an addendum, or an add-on to psychology, which is problematic (parker, 2014). discovering tensions inherent in occupying the academy as a point of departure, i will discuss the idea of taking up space as an emerging black woman academic and the difficulty i have had in navigating this space. i will start off by telling a story of how things started in 2019. i entered academia in january of that year, and throughout the beginning of the first semester, i wondered if i had made the right decision. i often went back and forth struggling with my professional identity. i wondered if i could successfully balance being an academic and a clinician, as it has often felt that the two have been treated as separate streams of psychology. at that point, it felt like i did not belong in the intense environment that the academic space presents. the pace was also something i did not anticipate as a new academic. the number of outcomes to be met at a given time seemed unachievable. it felt like there was not enough time to settle into my new role and fully understand the space i was occupying. the symptoms of imposter syndrome – feelings of incompetence and thoughts of being ‘caught out’ – were increasingly present. within the first few months in my new position, i was allocated a master’s student to supervise for their minor dissertation. i was terrified because i had never supervised before, and i had not received the handbook to research supervision (if one ever existed). i tried to remember the type of feedback my research supervisor gave me during my master’s and phd, attempting to recreate that in the room, but i quickly remembered that i am not a distinguished professor. it was new territory; i had to reconcile that i had to develop a new skill and do it quickly because there was and still is no time for me to do otherwise. this made me very uncomfortable – the idea of learning as i go and virtually acquiring supervision skills by osmosis. reflecting on the supervision process is not what i intend to focus on now, but through the supervision process (with me being the supervisor), i have had to endure most of the growing pains. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 as a point of departure, i will discuss the idea of taking up space as an emerging black woman academic and the difficulty i have had in navigating this space. ...i often went back and forth struggling with my professional identity. i wondered if i could successfully balance being an academic and a clinician p e e r r e v i e w 10 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the student and i worked together and submitted the research proposal for internal review, and the reviews were dismal. as an unsure academic and supervisor, i found it very difficult not to take the reviews personally. the shame i sat with felt almost tangible. not only did it feel like a direct reflection of me being in the wrong space and/or perhaps at the wrong time. it also felt as if i did not have enough time to take it personally because i was responsible to my student, and it counted as a research output for the year. there were also limited opportunities (perhaps also of my own making) to express just how much i was struggling and the emotional toll this took on me. so, i enlisted support. one of my colleagues told me how they started running and likened it to the transition into academia in my quest for support and validation. they told me about how painful their first run was; they did not understand why people subjected themselves to such masochism. eventually, they grew to enjoy it, and now running is a part of who they are. central to their story was the theme of academia being marked by a few bad reviews and rejections that one needs to breathe through and, eventually, find one’s pace. i started getting the sense that the ‘breathing through’ and the metabolising of the feelings that accompany these bad reviews had to be done in one’s own time and not discussed publicly. while i am aware of how young i am in academia, this has me thinking about the extent to which there is enough time to process things (both positive and negative) and ultimately find a comfortable pace at which to feel at home in the job (luvalo, 2019; maseti, 2018). there are, of course, multiple reasons why feeling at home or a sense of belonging seem like a point of conflict for a young black woman. one of these reasons relates directly to traditions embedded in coloniality and how that impedes the transformation agenda (ratele, 2018; shabalala, 2019). the other links back to the idea of the imposter i spoke of earlier or, put differently, the outsider-within position (collins, 1986 as cited in porter et al., 2020). this ‘inside but on the periphery’ position often necessitates that black women academics employ a number of coping strategies in order to stay strong, resilient and carry on (porter et al., 2020). i unpack this rhetoric of a strong black woman and its ties to coloniality later. i will now turn back to the story to illustrate how the intersection of identity creates precariousness in me. while my assuming an academic position occurred in 2019, i have been married to academics for many years. this relationship started with my long journey through psychology and the years spent courting the field. at the tail-end of my phd, i felt like i had successfully (albeit uncomfortably) navigated my studies and entered academia. what has left me feeling some ‘typ’a way’ (shabalala, 2018) this time is that suddenly i am no longer 20-something, and i had no idea where the time had gone. i had focused almost exclusively on my relationship with academia, and, after graduating, my phd was greeted with congratulations f rom my family. they were also sure to tell me that they were praying for me to now find a husband, get married, and have children – a reminder that career success for a woman is never really fulfilled unless it is matched by marriage and children. as thabo msibi (2011) has similarly noted, despite my family’s joy over completing the doctorate, they were worried, and i now had to be worried too. another issue of time, space and pace had suddenly crept into my life as a young black woman academic: marriage, children, and a compatible partner; when are you? i felt a strong sense of f rustration because, in my mind, a 30-year-old man who is a qualified clinical psychologist, holds a phd, and occupies an academic post is seen as promising within academia and society. as a woman with a similar profile, i am ‘overqualified and high-maintenance’, as the catholic priest jokingly pointed out at my god-child’s baptism. in academia, for women, it is the feeling of needing to sacrifice one thing for the other – something i will come back to discuss. as the new year started in 2020, i thought the worst was behind me, and i could now better prepare for the year ahead of me. however, no amount of preparation could have alleviated the impact of what then followed. the world health organisation (who) announced that covid-19 infections had reached pandemic status (landa, zhou and marongwe, 2021). the south af rican government subsequently declared a national state of disaster under the disaster management act of 2002, and a national lockdown was initiated (landa, zhou and marongwe, 2021). this had consequences for teaching as we moved f rom p e e r r e v i e w contact learning (which was not permitted under the hard lockdown) to the online space. as a parttime clinician in private practice, it meant that i was also negotiating how to move my practice onto the online space. the lockdown period meant that i was restricted to my home for months. the lockdown meant that my home space was also my workspace, where i taught f rom, supervised f rom, saw patients f rom, and where i spent my 30th birthday alone. the period of march 2020 through to july 2020 was arguably the most difficult for me. it was the first real instance that the worry expressed by my loved ones became my worry, as the isolation (that i once thought i preferred) turned into loneliness. i realised how much i had been functioning in a silo only after this massive global pause was initiated. time was a strange thing to negotiate; it stood still but moved at the same time – it felt like i had all the time in the world and none at the same time. and, unlike most colleagues, i did not have the interrupting sounds of pets, husbands or other proof of life in the background as i unmuted my mic during microsoft team meetings. as a result, some colleagues assumed that i had more time, and it seemed like my time was being taken for granted. this meant that i would be one of the people approached to provide relief or cover where others asked for relief. managing my work and being collegial enough to cover others assumed that i had time in abundance. there was a heavy price to being conscientious, reliable and collegial because, at times, it felt exploitative. concerns were raised about how people were balancing work demands, student needs and home life. most of the time, it seemed to me that there was more of an awareness of people who had to balance having their children at home while having to attend to work every day; then there was the occasional, ‘oh lunga, you live alone, right? how have you been coping?’. there were also moments of being expected to sit in meetings over weekends (which drew my attention to being contracted to fulfil work responsibilities over weekends), which embodies the masculine ‘ideal academic’ and the idea of constant availability (ivancheva, lynch and keating, 2019). the rationale was that these pressing meetings that had to take place on weekends resulted f rom the covid situation we found ourselves in (which is very accurate), but on the other hand, perhaps all covid has done is to highlight problematic cultures or traditions that already existed (ratele, 2018). when i spoke up about the inability to find time and space to think and therefore write (in other words, be productive) because of these expectations, one senior academic responded, ‘why didn’t you say no?’. i do not recall having much of a response, but, in retrospect, i imagine feeling, as i often do now, that i had very limited choice. there are a few things i want to reflect on here. the first being the position of precariousness that i mentioned earlier – a nervous condition – which is ultimately always the condition of native or black people, especially women (sartre, 1961). ivancheva, lynch and keating (2019) discuss two types of precarity in academia: labour-led and care-led precarity, and that both forms of precarity demand a sacrifice. negotiating this new space as an emerging woman academic sometimes leads me to an existential crossroad where there seems to be pressure to choose one extreme. on the one hand, i may choose to pursue visibility through research rankings and publications and spend all my time doing that while my biological clock ticks away. in this manner, embracing the more masculine ideal. on the other hand, i may choose to forego visibility, actively contributing to knowledge, and getting promoted for a semblance of balance and ‘life goals’ for less financial gain and the possibility of being stuck in the trenches of heavy teaching loads (ivancheva, lynch and keating, 2019). this conflict creates in me (a black body; a woman) a ‘neurosis introduced and maintained by [coloniality] with [my] consent’ (sartre, 1961: liv). what sometimes feels worse is that it seems that one has to be violently silent about these decisions and temporal changes within the academy, which causes alienation and competition (pillay, 2016). and in some ways, it’s the same silence that then implicitly validates these archaic processes. the other reflection relates to the ‘strong black woman’ trope and how that interacts with violent silence. i want to do this by going back to the question posed by my senior, ‘why didn’t you say no?’. in the first instance, the question presumes that i am complicit in the creation of my suffering, and this nervous condition is of my making. in retrospect, the 11v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 12 answer is, ‘it just seems natural, and you just carry on’, as the protagonist, nyasha, explains in nervous conditions (dangaremba, 1988: 119). parker (2014) argues that ‘carrying on’ is perhaps a way to protect and convince oneself that things are as they ‘ought to be’. to further unpack this, the carrying on may also be linked to the notion of a strong black woman who is thick-skinned and does what needs to be done, irrespective of the consequences to herself. consider the following quote f rom the american series, ‘harlem’ (2020: lines 2–7): in comparison to white femininity, which is valued for beauty, vulnerability, and maternal softness. black women have been valued for their labor, both literally and figuratively. a strong black woman suppresses her emotions, never letting anyone see her sweat… being labelled a strong black woman is a rite of passage. she is resilient, independent, and capable. but what if she isn’t? the problematic nature of this idea, dayo (2021) argues, is that it tends to deprive black women of vulnerability and forces them into a stoicism that can be read as them being without emotion (kiguwa, 2019). thus, they can be relied upon to carry on as the labour force but not necessarily move up in rank. them creating noise or speaking of dissatisfaction may lead to the labelling of them as emotional or angry (dayo, 2021), which limits their productivity and thus progression. my inability to say no and not being able to question certain things is connected to not wanting to be labelled as angry or bitter, and thus i remain silent. this experience may also be compounded by functioning in a system that pushes productivity over recognition of personhood (richards, mapumulo and swartz, 2018), one that is riddled with unf reedoms and has yet to radically transform itself through reimagination (ratele, 2018; wilson-strydom, 2018). this brings me back to the discussion of the academy. there are two aspects that i want to draw attention to. the first is the affective experience of the academy and the politics of time and how these function within the neoliberal space. chronopolitics, temporality and affect in academia in this section, i focus on the politics of time, or what felt (2017) terms ‘chronopolitics’. i further reflect on the temporal structures that influence experience. i then briefly touch on the idea of time as a commodity and its impact. time is considered neutral; however, the moment we start asking questions about pace and whose time matters within the academy, it lends itself to how time is political (or chronopolitics) and issues of temporality within the academy (shahjahan, 2019). felt defines chronopolitics as ‘the politics of time governing academic knowledge generation, epistemic entities, and academic lives and careers’ (2017: 54). chronopolitics and the neoliberal academy berg and seeber (2016) highlight that the nature of academic work, while flexible, is never really finished: they argue that the flexible nature of our hours is a definite privilege, but also caution that this could easily translate into us working all the time. over the past year, what has occupied my mind is whether i had measurable things to show for the time spent. i felt i needed to show that the department made a good decision in hiring me and that i was productive. more recently, i have felt a different conflict with time – one that is associated with my exhaustion. towards the end of 2021, i experienced extreme fatigue and burnout, but this conflict came when i had to sit with my manager during the final performance appraisal for the year. as my manager, she was privy to just how much i was teaching and how much effort i had put into the professional training programme. she i focus on the politics of time, or what felt (2017) terms ‘chronopolitics’. i further reflect on the temporal structures that influence experience. i then briefly touch on the idea of time as a commodity and its impact. time is considered neutral; however, the moment we start asking questions about pace and whose time matters within the academy, it lends itself to how time is political (or chronopolitics) and issues of temporality within the academy t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 13 had also often reflected to me that she recognised how much work i was putting in during the time that ought to have been down-time. the unfortunate position she seemed to be put in was, on the one hand, empathically understanding and responding to my exhaustion, while on the other needing to drive the promotion agenda and emphasise the need for me to spend more time on what counts as productivity – or doing the emotional dirty work, as parker (2014: 261) puts it. my performance review showed that i had failed to meet a particular key performance indicator, which is producing a publication, which meant that i had underperformed despite my exhaustion and exceeding in other areas. this further brewed resentment in me as emails circulated showing how people were publishing, and it reminded me of the colloquial saying ‘we have the same 24 hours’, but do we? the further consequence of my lack of ‘real’ productivity meant that there are particular incentives that i continue to miss out on. the academy has become a place for neoliberal capitalist endeavours that promote competition, in this instance in single-authored publications – as illustrated by the department of higher education and training’s (dhet) subsidy system for publications (tomaselli, 2018). these ways of incentivising academics place a higher value on individual work than collaborative thinking, writing, and teaching. the effects of such a system are that, to academics, particularly emerging academics, these goals can appear unattainable and thus continue to serve to make us feel that we do not belong, or render us alienated. this job demands a particular skill set – teaching, curriculum development, supervision, and writing for publication. these skills did not necessarily form part of my formal education and professional training, hence my feeling of not belonging and being overwhelmed when i was assigned my first supervisee. nevertheless, despite my feeling illequipped, i had to navigate the responsibilities because that is the job. this process of navigation draws attention to temporality and the academy. shahjahan (2020) refers to temporality as the ways in which we process and make meaning of everyday changes. these changes can be physical, biological, or emotional (isaacs, 2020). part of the discussion then becomes one of how (if at all) we respond to temporal changes within the academy, and questioning whether the time to do so exists. these changes cannot necessarily be separated f rom inherent structural and power dynamics. as such, we cannot separate time, politics, and power issues. shahjahan (2020) discusses how issues of power manifest within the academy by looking at the connection between it and everyday affective states. he argues that looking at such a connection allows us to delve deeper into ‘the micropolitics of power operating in the “psychic life”’ of working within higher education (2020: 786). these micropolitics lead to the tendency to self-monitor, compare and compete (shahjahan, 2020). the other consequence is the feeling of alienation. it also seems like time does a weird shapeshifting and is affected by politics to become a commodity in the neoliberal university. as such, it becomes an important resource that can be competed for. an example of this may be how things like buying out teaching (for casual workers to offer some teaching relief) are negotiated. senior, mainly professor level, academics can buy this teaching out to focus on research because they usually hold substantial research grants to do so. feelings of being stuck, despondent and anxious then result for me, as on the one hand, i am desperate to get to that point where i can buy time, but it often feels like i do not have the time to collect incentives to do so. understanding affect and its politics: am i just being emotional? i now do a quick turn to emotions and affect. this may be an important exercise because my agenda with this paper is to conceptualise why i do what i do (the personal) and engage with the questions, ‘what is going on?’ and ‘what do my emotions do?’ (the political). moreover, where they – the personal and political – come into contact; a process of becoming, according to massumi (1995). ott (2017) highlights that affect scholarship is vast and that defining the term ‘affect’ has somewhat been contentious (see massumi, 1995; tomkins, 2008; wetherall, 2012). therefore, i adopt the perspective of affect as practice (wetherall, 2012) as it allows for the critical investigation into and conceptualisation of the unsayable, as canham (2017) notes. he further highlights the argument that affect is not prepersonal or pre-political (see hemmings, 2005). this links to ahmed’s (2014) approach to studying and v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 14 understanding affect as a movement that mediates everyday life. in this paper i have reflected on my positionality and the intersecting realities of race, gender, and age that pull together and shape my not feeling at home within the academy (luvalo, 2019; maseti, 2018). i have also argued that my positionality and feeling a sense of precariousness within the academy have perpetuated a neurosis or nervous condition in me. as i describe these affective shifts within me, i am also cognisant of canham’s (2017) cautioning against using terms that pathologise the black affective experience. while i have consciously used neurosis to describe most of my emotional experience, i accept canham’s (2017) cautioning, as black emotionality is often the site of becoming or mobilising change. for example, canham (2017) argues that black rage is agency, and whether one decides to expel or harbour it, it is daily work against racial and gendered inf ringements in order to survive. while rage can be destructive, it is necessary to embody for the purposes of resistance and transformation. this work is also often tiring, disheartening and slow (canham, 2017), bringing to life biko’s (1979) argument about transformation being a slow process. it takes an emotional toll, but the alternative, ‘deep acting’, is not ideal either. it results in the death of identity, which ultimately happens in and benefits the neoliberal academy (parker, 2014). deep acting would mean carrying on – not asking questions and not expressing my discomfort and many other complex feelings i tend to sit with. this process eats away at my identity, especially because the neoliberal academy praises and promotes the masculine, white supremacist ideal, which is not me. concluding thoughts: have i said too much? i’m careful not to go too far, trying not to offend. is this self-protection or ‘double consciousness’? (bishop, 2021: 369) much like my other work, i always find wrapping things up nicely difficult, especially given the complexity of what i am trying to engage in. it is complicated and political, and i am very scared that i will offend, so one does tend to be careful not to go too far or rock the boat. what started as reflections on what i was feeling in 2019 when i entered academia has evolved into a deep dive into investigating what is happening in the academy in south af rica through my personal experience. as usual, it is never my intention to essentialise experience, but i also do not think it is fair nor useful to reduce the experience to just a ‘me thing’. a problem that just needs to be taken to therapy, and all will be well. while that may also be accurate – the need for therapy that is – i am not interested in inhabiting a false consciousness that often protects many of our colleagues f rom feeling these affective shifts (parker, 2014). despite the very strong words i have had for describing the academy and my experience of discomfort and dis-ease, i hope that the academy becomes a place i can call home for many years to come. i do plan to grow and get promoted. i also recognise the naivety with which i entered the academy. having seen women who look like me – some referenced in this paper – who had made it, i thought to myself, ‘black girl, it is possible!’. however, somewhere down the line, i thought, ‘not for me, clearly!’. i thought i was doing something wrong. this brought about panic and arresting helplessness – bouts of depression in some instances. i thought i had to process all this emotion on my own and be sure to bite my tongue (griffin, 2012) until i started writing and putting what i was feeling on paper. this reflective process made me acutely aware of the politics entrenched in academia, and i could start separating what was my responsibility to hold and what was not. through this critical auto-ethnography, i also found the f reedom to2 start being and discovering my professional identity within academia – the f reedom to reimagine. however, this is my process. much still needs to be done. the academy, in many ways, reflects greater sociopolitical realities, which is why it is political, despite its attempts at moving away f rom them. the difficulty, as i have tried to show in this paper, and as ratele (2015) argues, is that the academy’s structure does not allow for ‘deep transformation’. this is especially true when there seems to be a continuous focus on merely ‘bringing the poor, blacks, women, queers, and disabled’ without a reimagining of what an inclusive academy can look like beyond transformation by numbers (ratele, 2015). if misrecognition and unf reedoms persist as a result of coloniality, then some of the issues highlighted in this paper will t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 15 persist. how do we create an environment that has a focus on humility (kiguwa, 2019) for academics and, ultimately, the students? what is going on? what do we need to remedy? do we know? part of the issue is that we treat concepts like ‘transformation’ and ‘decoloniality’ as buzzwords and tick box exercises and do not have honest conversations about what these things can radically look like. notes 1. a way in which inequalities are reproduced in contemporary south af rica as remnants of our segregationist past (shabalala, 2019). 2. see dladla’s (2017) conversation about the f reedom f rom vs. the f reedom to. references ahmed, s. 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(2018). ‘is university transformation about assimilation into slightly tweaked traditions?’ in: r. pattman and r. carolissen (eds.). transforming transformation in research and teaching at south af rican universities. stellenbosch: af rican sun media, 51–72. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 16 richards, r., mapumulo, b. and swartz, l. (2018). ‘‘silence is violence’: claiming voice for disability in higher education transformation.’ in: r. pattman and r. carolissen (eds.). transforming transformation in research and teaching at south af rican universities. stellenbosch: af rican sun media, 321–335. sartre, j. (1961). ‘preface.’ in: f. fanon (2004). the wretched of the earth. grove press: new york, xliii–lxii. shabalala, n. (2018). ‘feeling some typ’a way: a young black woman’s journey through education.’ south af rican journal of higher education, 32(4): 215–288. shabalala, n. (2019). the experience of black medical specialists in training at two medical schools in the western cape  (doctoral dissertation, stellenbosch: stellenbosch university). shahjahan, r.a. (2020). ‘on ‘being for others’: time and shame in the neoliberal academy.’ journal of education policy, 35(6): 785–811. swartz, l., rohleder, p., bozalek, v., carolissen, r., leibowitz, b. and nicholls, l. (2009). ‘your mind is the battlefield: south af rican trainee health workers engage with the past.’ social work education, 28(5): 488–501. todd, j.d. (2021). ‘experiencing and embodying anxiety in spaces of academia and social research.’ gender, place & culture, 28(4): 475–496. tomaselli, k.g. (2018). ‘perverse incentives and political economy of south af rican academic journal publishing.’ south af rican journal of science, 114(11/12): 1–6. tomkins, s.s. (2008). affect imagery consciousness: the complete edition. new york: springer. wetherell, m. (2012). affect and emotion: a new social science understanding. los angeles, ca: sage. wilson-strydom, m. (2018). ‘transformation as freedom: conf ronting “unf reedoms” in students’ lives.’ in r. pattman and r. carolissen (eds.). transforming transformation in research and teaching at south af rican universities. stellenbosch: af rican sun media, 33–50. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 45 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract julius nyerere, the first president of tanzania, is known as the ‘mwalimu’ (the great teacher) for his roles and expansive thinking about the liberation of af rica. while he belongs to an older generation of politicians, it is opportune to reflect on his philosophical contributions at a time of extreme poverty and inequality in developing countries, and as af rica largely takes a backseat on the russia-ukraine war. nyerere’s contributions tend to be forgotten, due to little contemporary academic work on his thoughts, criticism of his ujamaa socialist policies, and ‘nyererephilia’ (love/sentimentalism for nyerere). this nyererephilia remarkably persists even 61 years into tanzanian independence. this paper uses excerpts f rom the vast archive of nyerere’s speeches to reflect on how he subversively defined the global south to implement af rican socialism, an economy based on interconnectedness and compassion, and a belief that af rica has to be concerned with foreign affairs. in his time, he was seized with grand questions like self-reliance, educational reform, international debt and global inequality, nuclear weapons, non-alignment, af rican independence, and af rican unity. a contemporary vision for conf ronting contemporary questions could lean on his conception of the global south. in nyerere’s view, the global south was not the underdeveloped world but was the ‘third world’, which meant the third vision/way/subjectivity. this ‘way’ can only be practiced through unity, otherwise the small states of the global south are weak states that cannot participate as equals in the global system. by prolific s. mataruse african socialism, the economy of affection, and a concern for foreign affairs: julius nyerere’s enduring definition of the global south 46 this resulted in the colonised reversing the argument, pointing out that they had a culture, and should be accepted as human and cultural persons, as defined in af rican humanism. re-organising the racially determined social stratifications was important to resolve racial strife, otherwise ‘as long as one community has a monopoly of political power and uses that power not only to prevent the other communities f rom having any share in political power, but also to keep those other communities in a state of social and economic inferiority, any talk of social and economic advancement of the other communities as a solution to racial conflict is hypocritical and stupid’ (nyerere, 1969b: 23–9). af rican socialism was the core idea put forward: a philosophy which advocated for the caring of fellow humanity, as was the practice in traditional af rican communal life, rather than another marxist recipe. nyerere (1969a: 162–71) stated that: in a socialist state it is the attitude of mind, and not the rigid adherence to a standard political pattern, which is needed to ensure that the people care for each other’s welfare… in the individual, as in society, it is an attitude of mind which distinguishes the socialist f rom the nonsocialist. it has nothing to do with the possession or non-possession of wealth… the man who uses wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows is a capitalist… we must… regain our former attitude of mind – our traditional af rican socialism and apply it to the new societies we are building today… af rican socialism as defined as such differed f rom that in the west or east. for nyerere (1969a: 162–71): ‘ujamaa’, then, or ‘familyhood’, describes our socialism. it is opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man; it is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism which seeks to build its happy society on a philosophy of inevitable conflict between man and man. we in af rica have no more need to be converted to socialism than v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction many have a simplistic view of the third world or the global south, but not nyerere. he profoundly said: ‘i have claimed the third world does exist and has a meaning which can be used for the betterment of the masses of the poor people’ (1982: 440). the meaning was embedded in a deeply philosophical and practical rationale highlighted in this paper. i write this paper in order to bring out the role of tanzania and nyerere in conceptualising and fighting for the liberation of southern af rica and the third world, and in order to push us to think about how we can perpetuate our legacies as af rica. this paper carefully reads nyerere’s speeches and writings as a methodology in order to bring out his positive view of the terms ‘third world’ and ‘global south’. it is a story that shows the unselfishness of a country and its leadership to pursue the liberation of other countries at a great cost to its economy and a physical danger to its society. when one examines their sacrifices, one may ask: how can they be recognised, those who gave it their all, who put on hold several agendas as their assistance to others took a toll on them? one way of giving back is retelling and relearning f rom their love in order to understand their active efforts to end their own poverty and that of others. african socialism is not marxism what ideas of f reedom and economic development existed in af rica before marxism and capitalism – the two paths that apparently lay open for newlyindependent states in af rica? maintaining the colonial state structure under black leadership would mean reproducing colonial structures of group, class, and race alienation. in other words, are af ricans capable of developing their own political thought or ideas about f reedom outside of these two paths? in the face of colonialism’s oppression, many felt that the vision of a future society could only be a collective effort of popular struggle. socialism came closest to this ideal. however, the conditions in af rica would not allow for socialism along the same lines as elsewhere. tanzania chose to go with a definition of socialism rooted in af rican culture. nyerere called this ‘af rican socialism’. this kind of response was important since european ‘colonization of af rica was justified in terms of the cultural inferiority of the af ricans or the nonexistence of af rican culture’ (mutiso and rohio, 1987). 47 we have of being ‘taught’ democracy. both are rooted in our own past – in the traditional society which produced us. modern af rican socialism can draw f rom its traditional heritage the recognition of ‘society’ as an extension of the basic family unit. the extension of af rican socialism was elastic enough to cover all oppressed persons: but it can no longer confine the idea of the social family within the limits of the tribe, nor, indeed, of the nation. for no true af rican socialist can look at a line drawn on a map and say ‘the people on this side of that line are my brothers, but those who happen to live on the other side of it can have no claim on me’; every individual on this continent is his brother. it was in the struggle to break the grip of colonialism that we learnt the need for unity. we came to recognize that the same socialist attitude of mind which, in the tribal days, gave to every individual the security that comes of belonging to a widely extended family, must be preserved within the still wider society of the nation. but we should not stop there. our recognition of the family to which we all belong must be extended yet further – beyond the tribe, the community, the nation, or even the continent – to embrace the whole society of mankind. (nyerere, 1969a: 162–71). af rican socialism was therefore the social innovation, political thought, and action that sought to change through collectivisation and self-reliance, without using marxist blueprints, the material conditions of a people who had been exploited and colonised for so long. after attaining independence in 1961, tanzania remained a poor country with many exploited peasants and workers. this prompted nyerere and others in 1967 to radically shift to af rican socialism through the 5 february 1967 arusha declaration. the caribbean philosopher c. l. r james would describe socialism and self-reliance, the core ideas of the arusha declaration, as the highest stage of af rican resistance (shivji, 2009). this built on and subverted nkrumah’s (1965) declaration of neo-colonialism as the last stage of imperialism, and lenin’s (1916) contention that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. af rican socialism urged a different approach to money, wealth accumulation, and distribution. nyerere (1962: 204–208) argued that wealthy individuals should not be separated f rom the purpose of banishing poverty otherwise ‘there develops a ruthless competition between individuals; each person tries to get more wealth, simply so that he will have more power, and more prestige, than his fellows. wealth becomes an instrument of domination, a means of humiliating other people. the very basis of socialism is the rejection of this use of wealth. and within socialist countries personal wealth is not, and should not be, a symbol of power or prestige; it is used to banish poverty.’ the arusha declaration is a document that announces tanzania’s adoption of socialism and self-reliance by attacking the idea that a moneyed outsider will solve development and political problems. it calls on people to value hard work, to learn f rom peasants, and to prioritise rural development. urbanisation was seen as disruptive of the precolonial lifestyle. the aim, rather, was to try to recreate the precolonial. a major way of doing this was to move people out of the city through a process called ‘villagization’, under which about 2,500 collective settlements were created and 10 million people forced to move. this resulted in displacements, which led to a lot of criticism that eventually culminated in the end of villagization in 1985 when nyerere resigned (komba, 1995). what nyerere identified as the basis of his political thought, af rican socialism or ujamaa ‘familyhood’, forms the basis of what hyden called the economy of affection. hyden (1983: 2) identified an economy t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w after attaining independence in 1961, tanzania remained a poor country with many exploited peasants and workers. this prompted nyerere and others in 1967 to radically shift to african socialism through the 5 february 1967 arusha declaration. the caribbean philosopher c. l. r james would describe socialism and self-reliance, the core ideas of the arusha declaration, as the highest stage of african resistance 48v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w of affection, a term he used to describe a ‘network of support, communications and interaction among structurally defined groups connected by blood, kin, community or other affinities, for example, religion. it links together in a systematic fashion a variety of discrete economic and social units which in other regards may be autonomous.’ this network serves to ensure human survival, social maintenance, and development. these networks of interdependence and communal care had been supposedly captured by capitalism. peasant economies in southern af rica, including in tanzania, had not yet been captured and thus remained un-proletarianized. this gave the peasants the option to benefit f rom both the market system and the abundant land in the peasant system. waters (1992: 166) notes that the ‘peasant mode of subsistence is strong and likely to persist parallel to the capitalist/monetised economy as long as arable land is available at little cost. this is why relations between kin, family, and tribal networks are more important for hyden than descriptions of emerging class and forms of industrialised production.’ the uncaptured peasants were seen as possessing the transformative character that would push af rica forward. a related key area of af rican socialism that nyerere saw as a critical matter was educational reform. he believed that educational transformation was central in the post-colonial reconstruction (nyerere, 1976). education had to deliver liberating skills based on the understanding that people make themselves and cannot be liberated by another. education was thus key in the expansion of consciousness over self, environment, and society. it was key to fighting disease, ignorance, and dependency. nyerere’s educational reform vision was to create a scholar practitioner with the right attitude to support a policy for education and self-reliance. education was tied to social action. in this regard, ‘education has to increase man’s physical and mental f reedom’ (nyerere, 1976). in nyerere’s view, ‘education is not a way of escaping poverty. it is a way of fighting it’ (nyerere, 1976). the colonial education was linked to a slave mentality since colonisation was seen as an attack on the mind, such that personal and physical aspects of development cannot be separated. the entire education system had to be re-organised. the education system was designed to move away f rom attitudes that promote inequality and subservience. nyerere strongly condemned what he called the ‘disease of acquisitive society’ f rom tawney (1918), the tendency to wealth accumulation, which was promoted by western education. the colonial education system was modelled after the british system but ‘with even heavier emphasis on subservient attitudes and on white-collar skills. inevitably, too, it was based on the assumptions of a colonialist and capitalist society. it emphasized the individualistic instincts of mankind, instead of his cooperative instincts’ (nyerere, 1967: 267–90). the intention was ‘to create a socialist society which is based on three principles: equality and respect for human dignity; sharing of the resources which are produced by our efforts; work by everyone and exploitation by none’ (nyerere, 1967: 267–90). nyerere argued that schools and colleges should ‘become communities – and communities which practice the precept of self-reliance. the teachers, workers, and pupils must be the members of a social unit in the same way as parents, relatives, and children are a family social unit’ (nyerere, 1967: 267–90). he saw no ‘reason why students at such institutions [university/post-secondary level] should not be required as part of their degree or professional training, to spend at least part of their vacations contributing to the society in a manner related to their studies’ (nyerere, 1967: 267–90). these are very important ideas in educational theory or what freire (2020) called ‘the pedagogy of the oppressed’. these ideas remain relevant in explaining af rica’s quest to address skills and capacity deficits. tanzania’s efforts to dismantle colonial and neocolonial social and economic structures and to reconstruct new ones along af rican lines under julius nyerere present important lessons for af rica. it can be noted that ‘the pursuit of socialism became a mixture of policy thrusts, institutional change, attempts to gain control over resources, trial and error corrections of a vast number of projects, and efforts to muddle through the confusion of concrete situations’ (resnick, 1981: 137). extraordinary achievements in popular participation after the 1967 arusha declaration clashed with emergent class interests, resulting in class conflicts that were not fully defined or dealt with. entrepreneurs emerged, gained wealth, and acquired power – while also entrenching workers’ and peasants’ poverty. the contradictions in the kujitegemea (‘let us do it by ourselves’) reveal the difficulties of changing a social and economic structure. yet amidst these challenges, tanzania adopted a towering independent 49 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w approach to af rica and third world issues. the power of af rican socialism and the economy of affection became evident when nyerere died and people cried in tanzania. he had stepped down f rom presidential office in 1985 and died in 1999. citizens openly cried in the streets because they characterised his rulership with compassion, assisting the poor, and strong values of dignity, self-reliance, unity, and f reedom. even after abandoning af rican socialism, the limits of this system became evident to nyerere f rom his analysis of the skewed nature of international trade and economics. just as mkandawire (2003) in proposing a developmental state in af rica notes the effects of the bretton woods institutions’ prescriptions in producing negative economic indicators after colonisation, nyerere (1999) in an interview with ikaweba bunting notes: ‘in 1988 tanzania’s per-capita income was $280. now, in 1998, it is $140. so, i asked the world bank people what went wrong. because for the last ten years tanzania has been signing on the dotted line and doing everything the imf and the world bank wanted’. nyerere (1962: 204–208) had warned that ‘as we are emerging successfully f rom the first ‘scramble for af rica’ so we are entering a new phase… but its purpose will be the same – to get control of our continent’ through exploiting differences between formerly colonised groups and the perpetuation of an unequal global order. in his view, ‘karl marx’s doctrine that there is an inevitable clash between the rich and the poor is just as applicable internationally as it is within nation states’ (nyerere, 1962: 204–208). the poverty of af rican nations was maintained by the principle of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. nyerere (1972) argued that ‘wealth produces wealth, and poverty, poverty… the poverty of the poor is a function of the rich. each time he buys a loaf of bread a starving man contributes to the wealth of a baker who already lives in luxury’. being producers of primary commodities and having little industrialisation meant that ‘on the world market we sell cheap and buy dear… the result is that the prices of our imports go up continually and our prices remain the same or even go down’ (nyerere, 1972). breaking f rom poverty could not be achieved through anything else other than altering the structure of international trade. this could not be done through more aid since ‘charity, however well meaning, is no way out of the present appalling poverty in the world. the poverty of the underdeveloped world is as much a function of the world economic organization as it is of anything else; and that cannot be changed by a developing country’s commitment to socialism’ (nyerere, 1972). if this was the case, what was the solution for af rica and the rest of the global south? unity as the solution nyerere proposed unity amongst poor states as a solution against powerful countries. he would differ with kwame nkrumah on how to achieve this unity: ‘i tried to get east af rica to unite before independence. when we failed in this, i was wary about kwame’s continental approach. we corresponded profusely on this. kwame said my idea of ‘regionalisation’ was only balkanisation on a larger scale’ (nyerere, 1999). shivji (2009) believes nyerere came to pan-af ricanism through nationalism. nkrumah started f rom panaf ricanism under the influence of the early panaf ricanist conferences and individuals like george padmore and w. e. b. dubois. nyerere linked af rican socialism to nationalism. the nationalist impulse was interpreted by nyerere (1999) as supposedly different in af rica: ‘the role of af rican nationalism is different – or should be different – f rom the nationalism of the past. we must use the af rican national states as an instrument for the reunification of af rica, and not allow our enemies to use them as tools for dividing af rica. af rican nationalism is meaningless, is anachronistic, and is dangerous, if it is not at the same time pan-af ricanism’ (nyerere, 1999). extending and agreeing with this explanation, shivji (2009) cautions the poverty of the underdeveloped world is as much a function of the world economic organization as it is of anything else; and that cannot be changed by a developing countr y’s commitment to socialism’ (nyerere, 1972). if this was the case, what was the solution for africa and the rest of the global south? 50v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w that pan-af ricanism is older than nationalism. given the adverse international economic structures, af rican unification was seen by nyerere as a goal to be worked towards to achieve full self-determination and to overcome poverty. unity was a key aspect of both domestic policy and foreign policy, for it was argued that ‘[w]ithout unity there is no future for af rica’ and ‘[u]nity will not make us rich but it will make it difficult for af rica to be disregarded’ (nyerere, 1997). nyerere contended that ‘it is not enough to be technically f ree, to have a parliament and a president and ministers. it is also necessary to have real power to stand on your own feet and follow your own interests. it is necessary to have an economy which is sufficiently balanced, stable and large to promote and sustain its own growth, and to withstand shock waves f rom other parts of the world. in other words, af rica wishes to have the political strength to prevent other powers using her for their own ends, and it wishes to have the economic strength to justify and support a modern economy’ (nyerere, 1965). shivji (2009) sums up nyerere’s ideas of af rican unity as being defined by three aspects: identity, the nonviability of small states, and sovereignty. the af rican identity connects af rica over any other identity; small af rican states cannot be viable (economically, politically, and socially); and sovereignty (the ability to make decisions) could not be practiced by tiny states on a global platform of powerful countries. nyerere has been criticised for looking at unity through the agency of the state and not the people, specifically through a one-party state (neocosmos, 2017). shivji (2009) also points out that this dissonance in nyerere’s thought is largely because he was a philosopher king, both a man of principle and a man of practice. for example, mamdani (2013) thinks forced villagization was necessary, while neocosmos (2017: 292) notes that ‘popular narratives were not given a chance to develop possibilities for a different politics; national subjectivities that exceeded the representation of the nation enunciated by tanu were simply silenced’. the contradiction was that individual f reedom and reconstructing the colonial state had to be achieved through the state. in 1964, nyerere would declare at the oau that colonial borders were inviolable, while he would go on to spend the rest of his life arguing for the destruction of colonial borders. these contradictions were perhaps necessary in maintaining a consistent and practical principle of af rican unity and f reedom. recognising his critics, nyerere said: ‘i am pragmatic because i lead a government. you cannot lead a government as a bishop or as a professor. when you lead a government, you have to achieve results, you have to do things’ (nyerere, 1979: 21 –22). ujamaa (familyhood) and umoja (f reedom) were the principal twin policies of nyerere’s tanzania. the effect of their implementation was not always positive. rooted in his unique conceptualisation of af rican socialism, nyerere saw unity – emanating f rom the principle of collective responsibility – as an important part of af rican liberation, defence, and imperative for participating in the international system. he thought ‘the requirements of af rican unity – the purposes of it – necessitate the establishment of a new international entity to replace the present small international entities which now exist in our continent. until we have achieved that we shall not be f ree f rom fear of the rest of the world. a continent-wide state, single and individual, must be established, which cannot be broken up again because it is one unit and not a collection of units’ (nyerere, 1965). disunity meant that each af rican state is so ‘weak in isolation with relation to the outside world that we compete with each other, without unity economic growth would be delayed. economic unity should lead to political unity’ (nyerere, 1965). if the threat to af rica were external, he was clear: ‘in relation to the outside world there must be just one authority in af rica’ (nyerere, 1965). this one authority could be called various names: all-af rican government, united nations of af rica, the united states of af rica, or another name. it was nyerere’s (1968) argument that ‘no nation has the right to make decisions for another nation; no people for another’. from understanding nyerere’s conception of af rican socialism, it was apparent that a mission beyond the borders was inevitable (msabaha, 1995). af rica’s need to involve itself in international affairs emanated f rom both the expansive nature of its socialism and its historical circumstances, such that the independence of tanzania was intricately bound with the independence of af rica. nyerere went on to demonstrate and live the international or communal dimension of af rican socialism on the international stage. he insisted that af rica should have a say in grand questions of nuclear weapons, climate change, and international trade because the world was interconnected. nyerere’s af rican socialism enabled 51 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w him to understand the meaning of nuclear weapons in an interconnected world and he urged the global south to take interest in this issue (nyerere et al., 1976). he wrote a letter to the commonwealth challenging south af rica’s membership and, as a result, apartheid south af rica decided to leave the commonwealth. he went on to support f reedom fighters in south af rica for 30 years f rom 1963 until 1994 when south af rica obtained its f reedom. he did the same for namibia f rom 1968 to their f reedom in 1990 (saul, 2002). he was a leading advocate for the formation in 1963 of the organisation of af rican unity (oau) and the oau liberation committee. when ian smith of southern rhodesia unilaterally declared independence f rom the u.k. in 1965, nyerere through the oau called all member states to break ties with southern rhodesia. he argued that the honour of af rica was at stake and that af rica had a responsibility to uphold the oau resolution, if not as a continental body then as individual states (nyerere, 1965). he became a strong critic of both udi and britain (martin and johnson, 1981). in the lusaka manifesto of 1968, he elaborated on the reasons for armed struggle. he was the first chair of the front-line states in 1976 and organised the 1976 rhodesia conference between the warring sides in southern rhodesia as part of talks to majority rule (martin and johnson, 1981). he supported several militant groups in af rica like the anc f rom south af rica, mpla f rom angola, frelimo f rom mozambique, and zanu/zapu f rom zimbabwe. he also supported academics like the guyanese scholar walter rodney who found a safe haven f rom which he wrote the famous book how europe underdeveloped af rica (1972) (bly, 1985). in 1978 and 1979, in an economically devastating war for tanzania, nyerere invaded uganda and removed idi amin who was destabilising east af rica. such decisions were not easy ones. he had also unpopularly indicated his intentions to militarily intervene in rhodesia (coggins, 2014; swoyer et al., 2011). nyerere was also broker in several crises, such as in rwanda and burundi. as more states joined the un, he was at the foref ront in pushing for the reform of the un and organising the af rican position on un reform which has come to be known as the ezulwini consensus (abdulai, 2010). nyerere was also a very active member of the nonaligned movement (nam), an intercontinental formal position which decided to not take sides between the west and the east in the cold war (sathyamurthy, 1981). he was critical at the 1968 conference of heads of state or government of non-aligned countries. nam was the middle way, the peaceful third way which also saw colonialism as an aff ront to its founding ethos. at the 1986 nam conference in harare, the south commission was established. this has eventually become the south centre in geneva and focuses on challenging global inequality and debt (pratt, 1999). over 120 states (containing half of the world’s population) have become part of nam (novaković, 2021). nam’s relevance has been questioned on the basis that it promotes an outdated agenda of non-alignment in an age without alliances (keethaponcalan, 2016). one indicator is the decreasing head of state attendance at nam meetings. unfortunately, as the impacts of the 2022 russia–ukraine war have shown, such an approach is limited and reflects a lack of concern for international affairs and understanding of the global political economy (lopes, 2022). the international economic structures that maintain af rican poverty still persist. now more than ever, continued concerted solidarity is important. as cold war tensions resurface and justifications for grand strategic military deployments seem necessary, the unity of nations in the global south could help not only fight poverty, but also serve as a defence against external security threats. small af rican states are arguably not even full states, but rather powerless ‘statelets’ in the face of powerful countries and neoliberalism. af rica has been warned of the possibility of being colonised again if it does not unite (lumumba, 2021; mheta, 2019). unity based nyerere was also a very active member of the non-aligned movement (nam), an intercontinental formal position which decided to not take sides between the west and the east in the cold war (sathyamurthy, 1981). he was critical at the 1968 conference of heads of state or government of non-aligned countries. nam was the middle way, the peaceful third way which also saw colonialism as an affront to its founding ethos. 52v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w on af rican socialism presents a possible solution to poverty and insecurity in the global south. conclusion julius nyerere’s formative influence in af rican socialism, foreign policy, unity, and ideation in the global south is important. his other nickname was ‘baba wa taifa’ (‘father of the nation’) in recognition of his role in birthing the independence of tanzania. this name could also signify his concern for foreign affairs as a logical outgrowth of a certain approach to interpreting human f reedom, national independence, and human development (nyerere, 1997; 1969). his commitment to fighting disease, ignorance, and poverty serves as an example in understanding and approaching common issues plaguing the global south. he defined the third world and global south as positive concepts. the global south was more than a geographical location or the exploited. it had a meaning ‘which can be used for the betterment of the masses of the poor people’ (nyerere, 1982: 440). instead of a pejorative and derogatory understanding of the ‘third world’, he defined the first world and second world as the ways of the west and the east, in no particular order of importance. the third world was, for him, another way of seeing things and he urged third world countries to understand that they did not only have to look at the other two ways (nyerere, 1982). this perspective had its basis in an ethical foundation: ‘that while many of nyerere’s policy initiatives failed, they rested on an ethical foundation and on an understanding of the challenges which tanzania faced, which were vastly more insightful than anything offered by his critics. an increasing number of students in af rican development are belatedly coming to recognize this truth. perhaps, in contrast to them, ordinary tanzanians have always recognized it’ (pratt, 2002: 40). tanzania will forever hold a cherished place in the history of af rica in general and in the history of southern af rica in particular. tanzania was selfless in providing military bases and training camps to launch the af rican liberation struggle and the frontline states. the great af rican stories of young people who trekked their way to various camps in tanzania make up so many heroic tales woven into the fabric of af rican national construction. these include namibians in the south west af rica people’s organisation (swapo), south af rica’s af rican national congress paramilitary wing umkhonto we sizwe (mk) cadres, and zimbabwean liberation fighters – all of whom have fond memories of kwango and morogoro military training camps in tanzania (msabaha, 1995). but perhaps the most difficult thing that tanzania did, and also the most important for us as academics, was to provide thought leadership. this is the significance of the mwalimu – the great teacher – not only as nyerere but also as the able artisan, statesman, and intellectual. the concept of af rican socialism is important to af rican knowledge and continues to be relevant as a decolonial epistemology. it is relevant as we seek new ways of ending poverty and international insecurity. it is also relevant to new modes of learning and teaching in af rica and the global south. from dodoma and dar es salaam, ideas of panaf ricanism reverberating f rom ghana under nkrumah found capable interpreters and interlocutors in the people of tanzania. they did not take their independence lightly, as it came much earlier than the rest of af rica. they approached their independence with intellectual zeal, deciding to tackle the broad questions of the day even beyond their borders. they resisted the temptation of simply mimicking marxism or other -isms, but instead went deeper to innovate f rom af rican culture and ways of life and to re-member the psyche of a dismembered people (to use ngūgī wa thiong’o’s 2009 term). they began to theorise the liberation of af rica and the global south in a very practical sense. amidst this liberation diplomacy, great social innovations in development, democracy, and politics were conducted. we look at tanzania’s willingness to tear down the ruinous and oppressive past with a keen eye. we look at tanzania to learn what it is to innovate and not fear innovation. we look to tanzanian independence to see what to do with f reedom and independence. this paper has shown that while the temptation may be to celebrate nyerere only, the best way is to contextualise him within a community tradition and leadership role. his true legacy lies in demonstrating the interconnectivity of people and nations beyond narrow definitions of colonial borders and economic depravity. nyerere was extraordinary in his capacity to combine action with deliberation. this enabled him to explain, interpret, and predict patterns of politics and economics working for and 53 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w against the global south. against great odds facing the global south, nyerere (2019) said: ‘my warning to my people is directed at both ends. never be complacent. can’t you do better. couldn’t you do better. but don’t be so self-critical that you despair. despair is the unforgivable sin. there is still a long way to go but we have 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(1999). ‘julius nyerere: reflections on the legacy of his socialism.’ canadian journal of african studies/la revue canadienne des études africaines, 33(1): 136–152. sathyamurthy, t.v. (1981). ‘tanzania’s role in international relations and non-alignment: an interpretive essay.’ genève-afrique/geneva-africa, 19(2). saul, j s. (2002). ‘julius nyerere and the theory and practice of (un)democratic socialism in africa.’ the legacies of julius nyerere. ed. david a. mcdonald and eunice njeri sahle. trenton, nj: africa world press. shivji, i. (2009). ‘pan-africanism in nyerere’s thought: being both king and philosopher.’ pambazuka [online]. available at: www.pambazuka.org/pan-africanism/ pan-africanism-mwalimu-nyerere%e2%80%99s-thought swoyer, s., capstone, h. and taylor, s. (2011). kwame nkrumah and julius nyerere: independence, leadership, and legacy. washington, dc: washington research library consortium/aladinrc, 1–44. tawney, r. h. (1918). the sickness of an acquisitive society. ‎university of michigan library: london. wa thiong’o, n. (2009). re-membering africa. nairobi: east african educational publishers. waters, t. (1992). ‘a cultural analysis of the economy of affection and the uncaptured peasantry in tanzania.’ the journal of modern african studies, 30(1): 163–175. 103 book review: contemporary campus life: transformation, manic managerialism and academentia – by keyan g. tomaselli [2021. bestred (hsrc). 244pp. isbn 978-1-928246-26-8] by donal p. mccracken culture v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 104 t h e t h i n k e r it is with a certain hesitation that one opens a new book about the work experience written by a former colleague. flicking nervously to the index i am relieved to see my name is not mentioned, only moments later to be mortified on flicking through his 244-page apologia to see my name up in lights. so, we shall start with a shoddy index. that and the 1970s drab brown cover do not speak well for a good read. then the acknowledgements contain this ominous paragraph: ‘these chapters are constituted and rewritten from columns published in ukzndabaonline, with others from ukzntouch, subtext, wits review, the sunday times and some other published and original materials. the first of these he wrote as the griot, the oral storyteller of african communities. the chapters have been edited, updated and the original ideas elaborated on and offered here in essay form, rather than as columns.’ so, the 1970s are pushed back to the 1950s when in south africa the common if quaintly outdated practice of selected published columns actually sold books. a quarter of a century ago i recall advising a celebrated journalist and broadcaster not to even think of such a retrograde step. and yet, like some remarkable madcap grand design, tomaselli has succeeded where others have failed. the book is a success. contemporary campus life: transformation, manic managerialism and academentia is a cry of anguish against the scourge of 21st-century university managerialism, where lip service is paid to clever window dressing, endless numbing box-ticking and to, at times, sinister bean-counting, all packaged in aspirational tones which brooks opposition — producing a pastiche of former soviet exuberance where ‘this month 300 happy workers produced 400 new tractors.’ the result of this sustained and intellectually suicidal approach, not just in south africa, has been that the professoriate have been relegated to a tame and minor role in universities leading in turn to their too often abrogating their sacred trust and entering their offices, closing their collective doors, and, in the words of the statesman william pitt, ‘tending their own gardens’. i had another colleague once who gained a commonwealth scholarship and went to edinburgh university to study for his doctorate under the eminent and daunting historian d.b. horn (1901–1969). on entering the great man’s wood-panelled study the cantankerous scot asked what his research topic was. this was a study of an 18th-century scottish nobleman and diplomat (not a topic that would land one a tutorship in a south african university these days). when informed, he merely said, ‘well, laddie, you know where the archive is in high street, then go there.’ and that was the sum total of his supervision. though tomaselli is noted as a meticulous supervisor, one suspects that he is not unsympathetic to the notion of selfhelp and minimal administration. apart from efficiently and effectively running his own postgraduate unit for several decades, he certainly avoided the managerial rat race, and as such cannot be accused of hypocrisy in this peroration against mammon and byzantinism in the academy. and being at heart a theorist it is difficult to question the logic within this volume, even if the word academentia somewhat sticks in the gullet. but, unlike most of my students, tomaselli realises that there is a nexus between theory and reality, and where, as arthur quiller-couch eloquently enunciated, the imperative for the faculty of action is subordinated to the faculty of knowledge. and that is the point of the book. the system just does not work, or at least if it does, it should not be called a university. there was a time when much of the mining industry in south africa was run (after the days of the enigmatic and now unpopular mr rhodes) by historians. fat hope of that happening in this age of tunnel-focused education and manic managerialism. in the idea of a university, published in 1854, cardinal newman speaks of ‘the deficiencies and the irregularities of knowledge’ within leadership and ‘the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which they exhibit’. what he would have written about such leadership in 2021 one shudders to think. in a deceptively mild and humorous manner, tomaselli’s book systematically dissects the mindset which dominates university management practices and beliefs, and which is now self-generating and promoting. it is focused on south africa, but it is a universal tale of bowing the knee to rankings; the mystical god science who employs all its worshippers; political and cultural correctness (though the index being so poor i cannot definitively promise to his use of the phrase); and the regimented and monitored office regime. it is a well-written book in somewhat satirical vein, which also flows well and makes a convincing point – one, sadly, which i fear will have no impact on the juggernaut which has relegated intellectualism (as distinct from popularism) in universities to a tame and minor role. culture 25 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract this paper probes the impact of colonial designs in the fabrication of native subjectivities, which eventuated in toxic political identities that would later undermine the post-colonial nationalist project. african history was shaped by three discursive periods: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. the colonisation period deformed, distorted and adulterated africa’s pre-colonial cultural landscape—its sense of selfhood. african nationalism was a response to this ontologically debilitated condition of african personhood resulting from the violence of self-serving european colonial modernity, which created a structured subjugation of the african ‘other.’ african colonial elites at once defined and epitomised various forms of african nationalism against european incursion. however, these african modernisers failed to grasp the historicity of such enduringly baneful identity politics, and were thereby often themselves cast into the vortex of social contradictions reflective of this history. mamdani made this observation when he stated that in kick-starting the nation-building project after independence, post-colonial elites turned their backs on the history of colonialism and thus on their own history. instead, they modelled their political imagination on the modern european state, the result being the nationalist dream was imposed on the reality of colonially imposed fragmentation, leading to new rounds of nation-building by ethnic cleansing. consequently, african nationalism has invariably spread across large swathes of postcolonial africa as it degenerated into odious ethnonationalism and chauvinism. only through a deeper historical understanding of these colonial processes of african political identification can an we begin to understand how this once glorious african nationalism regressed into a dystopian one. this article draws on history to dissect this legacy of subjective forms of african self-understanding. by tlhabane mokhine dan motaung p e e r r e v i e w the african nationalist idea of africa 26 special edition v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction and context ‘for the nation to live, the tribe must die’---samora machel our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. martin luther king jr. this paper probes the impact of european colonial designs on the fabrication of native subjectivities, which eventuated in toxic political identities that would later undermine the post-colonial nationalist project among af rican nations. af rican history has been shaped by three discursive periods: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. the colonial period deformed, distorted and altered af rica’s pre-colonial cultural landscape its sense of selfhood. af rican nationalism was a response to this ontologically debilitated condition of af rican personhood, resulting f rom the violence of self-serving european colonial modernity, which created the structured subjugation of the af rican ‘other’ (masilela, 2013). af rican independence movements at once defined and epitomised various forms of af rican nationalism in its tstruggle to rid af rica of oppression and find passageways into the af rican future. however, quite often, these af rican modernisers, comprising both nationalists and intelligentsia1, failed to grasp the historicity of enduringly problematic identity politics, and were, thereby, often themselves cast into the vortex of social contradictions reflective of this history. mamdani observes that “in kick-starting the nation-building project after independence, postcolonial elites turned their backs on the history of colonialism and thus on their own history. instead, they modelled their political imagination on the modern european state, the result being the nationalist dream was imposed on the reality of colonially imposed f ragmentation, leading to new rounds of nationbuilding by ethnic cleansing” (2021: 15). consequently, 1 ntongela masilela (2013) refers to the early african intelligentsia which illuminated african responses to european colonial modernity in intellectual, artistic and cultural terms as the ‘new african movement’, i.e., individuals armed with modern european education who set out to ‘master the complexity of european modernity with the intent of subverting it to a form of modernity that would emerge from the democratic imperatives of african history’ (2013:xiii-xv). across colonial and post-colonial africa, this was not necessarily philosophically monolithic grouping, as their disposition to european hegemony differed according within countries, as the case of congo-zaire shows (see the section entitled ‘the failure to decolonise the congo’ below ). af rican nationalism has generally spread across large swathes of post-colonial af rica where it degenerated into odious ethno-nationalism and chauvinism. in this regard, a deeper historical understanding of these colonial processes in af rican political identification reveals how a once productive af rican nationalism regressed into a dystopian one. this study therefore draws on history to dissect the injurious legacy of europe on subjective forms of af rican self-understandings. it largely relies on mamdani’s ( in martin and west, 1999; 1996; 2013; 2021) study of european colonialism’s strategies of both direct rule and indirect rule, which was weaponised to deconstruct and reconstitute af rican societies along ethnic lines. mamdani’s study is useful in showing the causal link between the impact of colonialism in remoulding af rican societies, later post-colonial instability and the f ragmentation manifested in insidious political identities. nation building, ‘the creation and consolidation of political and national identity in former colonies or imperial provinces’ (erikson, 1994: 3) could not come into its own under these antithetical conditions, immersed as they were in the invidious, harmful history of colonial identity formations. following on the f ractious effects of the politics of toxic social identities wrought on post-colonial af rica by colonialism’s indirect rule and perpetuated by the post-colonial nation-state, nationalism was structurally undermined as af rican nation-states wrestled with the all-too violent political animosities embedded in this history of ethnic politics. what once were coherent af rican forms of national selfconsciousness soon deteriorated into pernicious forms of ethno-nationalism, as diverse social identities created by colonial designs staked a claim in the new order. mamdani (2021) argues that this type of identity politics was spawned by the failure on the part of the af rican independence movement to ‘decolonise the political’. by decolonising the political mamdani means, upsetting the permanent majority and minority identities that define the contours of the nation state. the idea of the nation-state naturalises majority and minorities identities, justifying their permanence (2021: 19). p e e r r e v i e w 27 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 in essence, decolonising the political refers to the process of dismantling the colonial legacy of exclusion based on social identities and their replacement with a reconstituted, all-inclusive, egalitarian political community driven by a cohesive, superordinate national vision which transcends the contours of ethnicity. another formulation would be creating the nonnational state; a state not tethered to ethnic identities but driven by political processes. decolonising the political equates to depoliticising racial and tribal practices, without seeking to extirpate cultural difference. cultural difference, or ethnicity, existed before colonialism and formed the af rican human landscape. it was only when colonialism politicised it by way of reification for purposes of ‘divide and rule’ that cultural difference was politically toxified (mamdani, 2021). in this environment of ‘tribally’-orientated permanent majority and minority populations, post-colonial af rica remained locked up in selfconsuming, regressive cycle of political violence2 that impeded political unity and social coherence. with the atrophying of post-colonial af rican nationalism, pan-af ricanism was ‘deoxygenated’. it could not be otherwise. pan-af ricanism could not stand on 2 in line with his core argument on this front, mamdani differentiates between two types of violence: ‘criminal violence’ and ‘political violence’. his thesis is that what is normally thought of as criminal violence in post-colonial societies is actually political violence whereby excluded groups fight for belonging. therefore, solution to post-colonial violence (sudan; nigeria; kenya etc) is not to criminalise it but to see it as a political expression of a group’s longing for membership. its own two feet without nationalist underpinnings since it was the progeny of the former. as falola (2001) shows, nationalism gave birth to pan-af ricanism, pan-af ricanism radicalised nationalism, and both combined to contribute to the fall of the european empires in af rica. as the empires were crumbling, nationalism and pan-af ricanism appeared to be separating and nationalism itself was in retreat (2001: 98). pan-af ricanism cleaves to the historical selfconsciousness of global af rica; it encapsulates both continental af rica and af ricans in the diaspora. adebajo (2020) defines pan-af ricanism as: the efforts to promote the political, socioeconomic and cultural unity, emancipation and self-reliance of af rica and its diaspora. the concept of pan-af ricanism developed amid the sweltering oppression of slavery in the caribbean and the americas, and was transported back to af rica by its students who went to study in the us and europe (2020: 4). once pan-af ricanism philosophy landed on the af rican continent it became an ontological project of af rican nationalism3, serving as a contrastive vision and antidote to the smothering oppression of global europe. to that extent, the growth and durability of pan-af ricanism on the af rican continent became contingent on the sustainability of nationalism as a political force. how the post-colonial af rican politics fared would therefore determine whether a panaf rican vision survived as a coherent, continental force capable of galvanising af rican unity. 3 unlike european nationalism, african nationalism was an imposed response to conditions of external domination, which response had the aggregate effect of turning africans into the subjects of history (masilela: 2013). the ideological evolution of african nationalism stemmed from the lived reality of colonialism. african nationalism in this reactive vein was far more sustainable than its postcolonial iteration which had to re-define its ontological legitimacy within the context of power in the face of which it fell apart due to inherited fabricated ethnic identities which the architects of nationalism failed to transcend through an allinclusive vision. ironically, post-independence nationalism took on the ethnoconnotation which harked back to the beginning of european nationalism. in this sense, nationalism referred to ‘the belief that ‘the nation’ is the central principle of political organization (heywood, 1992:143). if the ‘tribe’ substitutes ‘the nation’ in the preceding sentence the parallels are clear. despite its complex evolution in its european home soil, european nationalism became ‘imagined communities’ (anderson, 1983: 6) while in africa it remained reified identity frozen in time as it served political purposes. p e e r r e v i e w in essence, decolonising the political refers to the process of dismantling the colonial legacy of exclusion based on social identities and their replacement with a reconstituted, allinclusive, egalitarian political community driven by a cohesive, superordinate national vision which transcends the contours of ethnicity. 28v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 identity politics and the global political economy the spectre of a post-colonial af rican failure of nation-building is comprehensible within the broader context of the history of neo-colonialism, to which newly-f reed af rican states are invariably subjected (gutkind and wallerstein, 1975; olukoshi and laakso, 1996; mafeje, in nabudere, 2011). attributing the vulnerable post-colonial condition of af rica to the asymmetric global trade, archie mafeje argues that ‘being a direct product not simply of colonialism but of pervasive global capitalism, af rican economies (with the exception of south af rica), unlike any other regions in the world, had suffered total vertical integration into the global system’ (in nabudere, 2011: 57). gutkind and wallerstein (1976) advance the same argument about the ‘subordination of the continent to the economic and political needs and objectives of the major western powers’ (1976: 7). olukoshi and laakso (1996) conclude that both individual and group identity crisis, which unfold in post-colonial af rica do so against the background of these domestic and international macro-conditions shaping the political environment. this identity crisis is therefore compounded by ‘deepening social inequality/f ragmentation, the weakened administrative and policy apparatuses, of the state, the decline of the ideologies of communism and anticommunism that dominated the cold war years, and the accelerating process of globalisation…’ (1996: 5). in view of these broader global, socio-economic currents, this article does not seek to reduce the debilitated post-colonial af rican condition to a monocausal paradigm centred around identity politics. olukoshi and laakso maintain that ‘the tendency to regard ethnic/religious pluralism as essentially incompatible with the goal of nationbuilding is grossly mistaken and ought to be jettisoned in the quest for a more solid basis on which to build national unity in af rican countries’ (1996: 5). as the foregoing explications demonstrate, the causes of af rican under-development are far more complex, even though, as this article maintains, identity politics remain the common denominator. to be sure, toxic identities have often taken more forms than just the ethnic, just as overlaps of these adversarial identities have not been unusual. for example, in post-colonial af rica these overlaps are typified by the case of ‘sudan and chad, (muslim/arab north, christian/ animist south) and nigeria (muslim and hausa north, yoruba southwest, ibo southeast)’ (hobsbawm, 1990: 154). the failure of post-colonial politics invariably leads to the flaring up of hidebound and atavistic forms of ethno-nationalism, with dire socio-political consequences for the newly independent state. for his part, vail maintains that, the nationalist message before and immediately after the end of colonialism was that the new dispensation would result in improvements and much increased welfare benefits. unfortunately, this progress has not occurred, and instead the nation state’s administrative structures have faltered and shrivelled (1989: 17). aborted af rican nationalism is therefore not only the function of the af rican leaderships’ failure in historical imaginings, but also the upshot of the bleak state of the political economy. under desolate socio-economic conditions, social contradictions are sharpened with ethnic hostilities accentuated by the scramble for scarce resources. mamdani illustrates that by saying, extreme violence in the postcolonial condition is very often nationalistic violence, as ethnic groups, organised as separate tribal units under colonialism, vie for privileged access to public goods (2021: 21). such has been the crisis of the nation-state in af rica in the wake of the adverse state of the international and national political economy, coupled with reified ethnic politics. the af rican confidential (as cited in olukishi and laakso, 1996: 8) once boldly stated that ‘there are signs everywhere that the era of nationstate is fading…the awkward marriage of the ‘nation’ in the sense of an ethnic coalition and the state as the principal source of political authority is coming under pressure f rom above and below’ (6 january 1995). instead of flourishing after defeating external conquests, af rican nationalist configurations quite often tend to succumb to the legacy of the exogenous ruination as the local political leadership misconceives the remedial response to the afflictions of politicised identities. in turn, these residual colonial effects wilt af rica’s post-colonial nationalist self-consciousness, thereby undermining its national unity. p e e r r e v i e w 29 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 from direct rule to indirect rule the af rican independence movement’s espousal of the nation-state, for all its innate inimicality to the af rican political community, turned out to be a tragic flaw for national cohesion. dissimilarly, the evolution of the nation-state in europe occurred under congenial conditions. in its european historical habitat, ‘nationalism stresses the cultural similarity of its adherents and, by definition, its relationship to the state. a nationalist holds that political boundaries should be coterminous with cultural boundaries’ (gellner, 1983, in eriksen, 1994: 10). in europe the evolution of the nation-state was therefore an organic process which eventuated into wholesomeness, despite challenges. to the contrary, the notion of the nation-state as an extraneous colonial imposition ended in degenerate af rican states. on a subjective level, this failure is ascribable to the failure of af rican nationalists and the intelligentsia to interrogate the historicity of the post-colonial moment. according to wamba-dia-wamba, ‘the national question refers to how the global form of social existence, characterising the relationship of society to its environment, is historically or politically arrived at’ (in olukoshi and laakso, 1996: 154). dia-wamba delineates a dual conception of the national question, splitting it into objective and subjective conditions in terms of which there is, an objective side where the nation-state refers to the complete subordination of the national question to the state, i.e., the state as creator and organiser of the nation, and a subjective aspect involving a subjective capacity in which the common people (les gens), independently of the state, constitute a national subjectivity or national community serving as reference for political solidarity and action’ (in olukushi and laakso, 1996: 154). for dia-wamba, a state can come into being in either one of the two ways above. he emphasises that the subjective process of nation-state formation ‘calls for real transformation of the colonial state to make it democratic/representative and capable of empowering people against foreign domination’ (in olukushi and laakso, 1996: 155). af rican state formation under colonial domination instantiates the process of the objective conditions of state formation. thus, the af rican nation-state incarnates inherent incommensurabilities. inversely, the inability to decolonise the political means that most post-colonial af rican nations cannot rise up to dia-wamba’s subjective condition for the national question. colonialism assumed two modes of political domination in af rica direct rule and indirect rule (mamdani, 1996; 2013; 2021). mamdani (in martin and west) reasons that the legitimation of both direct rule and indirect rule came about in response to the question: ‘how can a tiny and foreign minority rule over an indigenous majority?’ (1999: 189). to this end, colonial conquest had to introduce innovations for purposes of self-preservation. direct rule was the initially preferred colonial strategy in terms of which the colonialists sought to replace af rican modes of being with european cultural forms. it was ‘centralised despotism’ which ‘involved a comprehensive sway of institutions: the appropriation of land, the destruction of communal autonomy, and the defeat and dispersal of tribal populations’ (mamdani, 1996: 17). direct rule excluded f rom its definition of citizenship those individuals it deemed beyond the pale of ‘civilisation’. this was emphatically captured by the british colonial secretary’s pronouncement in 1849 that authorities would brook only that version of customary law that is not ‘repugnant to the general principles of humanity, recognised throughout the whole civilised world’ (mamdani, 2021: 146). its other side was the nonrecognition of the ‘native’ institutions” (in martin and west, 1999: 189-190). christian european culture was the gold standard of citizenship. it embraced the idea of equality for all who met the threshold of european standards. this is best captured by cecil rhodes’ call for ‘equal rights for all civilised men’ (walshe, 1971). mamdani concludes that, thus did the europeans turn to the colonies and seek to build the avatar of modernity; the nation state, as it existed in europe. the french called this the ‘mission civilisatrice’ which was anglicised as the ‘civilising mission’ (mamdani, 2021: 2). so why did direct rule shift to indirect rule? mamdani (2013) explains this shift by what he calls ‘the crisis of empire’ in the second half of the nineteenth century. p e e r r e v i e w 30v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 in brief, his explanation says that ‘the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a crisis of empire at both ends, india and jamaica, starting with the 1857 uprising in india, known as the sepoy mutiny, and closing with morant bay in jamaica in 1865’ (mamdani, 2013: 8). this crisis of empire convinced the colonial theoreticians that direct rule’s mission of civilising the natives and ‘its project of assimilation aimed at colonised elites’ had failed (2013: 45-46). because of this force of circumstances, the british apostles of empire began to shift their focus f rom direct rule to indirect rule. the abiding rationale for indirect rule was that it was preserving the traditions and custom of the natives. its main tenet was to ‘manage difference’, by institutionalising it ‘in both the polity and society’ (mamdani, 2013: 2). under indirect rule, peasant communities were reproduced within the context of a spatial and institutional autonomy. the tribal leadership was either selectively reconstituted as the hierarchy of the local state or freshly imposed where none had existed, as in ‘stateless societies’. here political inequality went alongside civil inequality. both were grounded in legal dualism (mamdani, 1996: 17). what made indirect rule an attractive proposition was the fact that it held out the prospect of emphasising, reproducing and even creating cultural distinctions between the natives themselves (mamdani, 2013). its distinguishing feature was a concern with ordinary people and not just the indigenous elites. ultimately, indirect rule was an ingenious method that enabled colonial authorities to be in charge without ever impinging on the consciousness of the ruled, since it retained indigenous institutions of governance, albeit in a re-purposed form (myers, 2008). with the establishment of indirect rule after 1858, af ricans were reconstituted culturally, socially and historically; in essence, their ‘colonial subjectivity’ was invented (mamdani, 2013: 44). mamdani reminds us that, “unlike what is commonly thought, native does not designate a condition that is original and authentic. rather… the native is the creation of the colonial state: colonised, the native is pinned down, localised, thrown out of civilisation as an outcast, confined to custom, and then defined as a its product’ (2013: 2-3). in other words, self-conceptions of being native are the upshot of invented colonial subjectivity. in this effort to create native subjectivity for the colonialised, historical writing, census-taking, and law-making fostered new subjectivities by creating for the colonised a new past, altering their status in the present, and anticipating for them futures that otherwise would never have come to pass. colonisers wrote european race theories and perverted variations on local history into the histories of the colonised peoples, making european categories of race and tribe appear local and natural (mamdani, 2021: 12) over generations, these constructed subjectivities entrench themselves, taking on a life of their own by the strengthening of historical f rames of reference, in which ethnic collective memory resides4. the colonial ‘states not only attempt to provide their citizens with official accounts of the past, but they also seek to control the particular way such accounts are used’, as well as having access to alternative versions (wertsch, in seixas, 2004: 50). as stated above, history, culture and the official archive were instrumentalised to falsify historical identities, 4 seixas refers to this collective memory as ‘individual and collective understandings of the past, the cognitive and cultural factors that shape those understandings, as well as the relations of historical understandings to those of the present and the future’ (2004, ed: 10). mamdani reminds us that, “unlike what is commonly thought, native does not designate a condition that is original and authentic. rather… the native is the creation of the colonial state: colonised, the native is pinned down, localised, thrown out of civilisation as an outcast, confined to custom, and then defined as a its product’ (2013: 2-3). p e e r r e v i e w 31 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 thereby inculcating ‘false historical consciousness’. it is exactly this self-contained, primordial sentiment implanted during the colonial era, which will grow centrifugal with time in order to antagonise the nation-state and its nationalist ideology after the dissolution of the formal colonial order. sensitivity to this historicity or the nation-state and an attendant, appropriate response would have enabled national independence movements to re-image political categories which could circumvent the boobytraps of ethnic identity. in this way progressive anticolonial nationalism could have transcended the repercussion of the machinations, distortions and falsifications of indirect rule. yet, this is precisely the self-same trap that the indigenous political class and intelligentsia fell into. at an epistemic level, this inherited colonial order posed a monumental challenge to the apostles of the nationalist project in terms of their understanding of the colonial problematic. mamdani argues that the only condition in which the post-colonial state could qualify as having decolonised the political is when it has transformed both the civil law (racial relations) and the customary law (tribal relations) by reimagining more inclusive political communities. eliminating both these colonially created domains implies the eradication of material privilege as a function of politicised identities based on the idea of a nation-state. as it turned out, the project of decolonising the political, to create conditions that could facilitate the sustainability of a universal postcolonial nationalism, ran aground as the national independence movement failed the most critical test of building democratic citizenship and national unity or, in mamdani’s formulation, in decolonising the political. decolonising the political: exorcising the colonial ghost to reiterate the central contention of this study as articulated by mamdani (2021; 2013), the task of decolonising the political refers to the imperative to dismantle both the spheres of civil law and customary law, which were legally sanctioned domains of political dominance in which the political architecture of colonialism was constituted. it is an exercise which centres on the nonnational state which cleaves to the political process as the centre of gravity. the two domains of tribe and race represented the hierarchisation of political identity, where identity conferred benefits within the context of a ‘homeland’, or on the grounds of native and non-native. civil law represented a category of dual political identities in which individuals considered ‘settlers’ enjoyed the rights of citizenship while those considered native or tribal (ethnic af ricans) were legally excluded. customary law was a form of decentralised despotism in which people considered tribes were ‘sub-divided into territorial homelands and made subject to separate legal regimes’ under the authority of chiefs, often imposed or created ex nihilo (mamdani, 2013). the south af rican negotiated settlement, according to mamdani (2021), succeeded in overcoming the institutionalised segregation of civil law by depoliticising racial identity. for af rica at large, reconstituting both domains into a new non-nation state, transcending the logic of identity politics, would have devitalised the source of national f ragmentation while laying the foundations for a national unity within democratic politics. as it turned out, af rica did not follow the same logic of subverting the historical heritage of the toxic identity politics in forging the national question. post-independence, af rican politics were shaped by both the national intelligentsia, concerned about reconstructing the history of the new state, and the political class, whose main objective revolved on the building of ‘common citizenship as the basis of a common sovereignty’ (mamdani, 2013: 85). both processes were ultimately about nation-building but could not succeed due to misapprehending the task of political transformation. across the af rican continent, there emerged differences in how the post-independent state was to be re-organised and reconstituted to meet this key objective of state-building (mamdani, 1996). some states retained the substance of a bifurcated state, while others instituted reform by consolidating the myriad customary laws into one national iteration applicable across the board, thereby, by default perpetuating despotism by reviving this throw-back (mamdani, 1996). to varying degrees, both cases led to perverted consequences including military coups and secessionist threats, as happened in sudan, ghana, nigeria, kenya, uganda, congo-zaire and many other countries. p e e r r e v i e w 32v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 tribe and political identity mamdani’s delineation of the problematic of the term ‘tribe’ is that it does not refer so much to ‘the ethnic group as in a cluster of culturally unique people but to political identification with the ethnic group’ (2021: 14). his exhortation to decolonise the political is motivated by this historicised reality. when samora machel’s mozambique proclaimed that ‘for the nation to live, the tribe must die’, it meant that all the inherited political identifications affixed to ethnicity should be cleansed so that a national state could emerge (ibid). af rica’s political class and intelligentsia stand guilty before the bar of history for the cardinal political sin of revitalising the colonial project of homogenising the political community in the mistaken belief that they were building national unity. national unity built on the foundations of inherited political despotism and ethnic identity has turned out to be a recipe for disaster. erikson states that ‘national identities are constituted in relation to others; the very idea of the nation presupposes that there are other nations, or at least other peoples, who are not members of the nation (1994: 134). this conception of nationhood is intrinsically exclusionary. the failure to decolonise the political in congozaire employing the concept of the national question to analyse the ethnic history of the modern-day democratic republic of the congo, dia-wamba uncovers similar causes for the miscarriage of the post-colonial state as expounded by mamdani (in olukoshi and laaskso, 1996). focusing on the postcolonial conditions of the then zaire, dia-wamba illustrates the effects of colonially induced political identities on the emergence of post-colonial polity and its resultant nationalist project. he insists that zaire-congo had never really undergone qualitative transformation f rom colonial construction to a subjectively new nation-state reflecting the true aspirations of the people; in fact, he argues, the only change was the departure of the belgian rules (in olukushi and laakso, 1996: 154). this would mean that since its independence in 1960, until at least the 1990s, congo-zaire’s only underwent cosmic changes. dia-wamba puts the blame for the collapse of postcolonial zaire squarely at the door of a group called the zairean national tribaliste (ibid). the main flaw in this politics of this post-colonial grouping, as diawamba puts it, is that they “tried to rule in the name of an ‘abstract state of unity’ (premised on a colonially created territorial unity) incarnated by the legacy of the colonial state and a programme of ‘nationbuilding’ f rom above” (in olukushi and laakso, 1996: 155). their aim was to ‘af ricanise’ their political legacy on the false assumption that it could be a genuine nation-state project (ibid). this ruling elite also conflated the notion of the ‘abstract national state unity’ with the image of the ‘father of the nation’, the leader of the national independence movement, joseph-désiré mobutu (ibid). it was more like the history of the french leader, louis xiv, who is reputed to have said ‘l’etat c’est a moi’ (‘i am the state’).  consequently, the congozairean state was rendered brittle and vulnerable by the counter-visions of those who sought to exterminate belgian colonial vestiges, including its material privileges for designated groups. under such combustible political relations, what nationalist project had catapulted the independence movement to power, dissolved into nothingness. furthermore, the history of congo-zaire saw constitutionalism becoming a fig leaf to conceal the power grab of the ethnicised elites, the national tribaliste, and in effect therefore justifying ‘a onesided, unilateral approach to tackling the national question: a national minority-based state, incarnated in one person, oppressing the majority of the people on the basis of class, ethnicity, or nationality’ (in olukushi and laakso, 1996: 156). in this regard, the constitution of the country became a sham, subjected to and reflecting the arbitrary personal power of the leader of the party to whom all else were subordinated. in turn, a hierarchy of political identities was perpetuated. the failure of decolonising the political in sudan and south sudan like the congo-zaire, both republics of sudan and south sudan botched their post-colonial transformation to the extent that they retained the poisoned chalice in the form of colonially fabricated p e e r r e v i e w 33 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 identities as the basis for the post-colonial state. in other words, the two countries valorised the notion of the nation-state as constructed by european colonialism by retaining politicised notions of race and tribe in the post-colonial state. in the case of the republic of sudan, both south (wrongly described as ‘af rican’) and the north (wrongly described as ‘arab’) internalised british colonial ethnic ascriptions in the post-colonial era (mamdani, 2021). these dual, territorialised identities f ractured the national imaginary along identity lines, congealing racialised hostilities which led to the secession of south sudan. south sudan has in turn suffered a bloody ethnic conflict which destabilised the country, threating to tear it asunder. the two main ethnic communities in south sudan are the dinka and the nuer, both of whom had co-existed peacefully in pre-colonial times (mamdani, 2021). their current inter-ethnic violence is traceable to the post-independence fighting over resources within the context of f rozen social identities (mamdani, 2021). however, they had also internalised imposed political identities on what was but cultural diversity. according to mamdani, ‘whoever rules which means whoever has enough guns and money to maintain a loyal fighting force can funnel cash, real estate, jobs, business opportunities, contracts, and protection to his own ethnic group’ (2021: 196). colonial modernity is the root cause of this chronic rivalry. as in other colonies, ‘after the british took over in the early twentieth century, the politicised ethnic boundaries, reconstituting cultural difference as tribal difference. the inheritors of this colonial mentality govern as the british did, not as their ancestors did’ (mamdani, 2021: 196). re-imagining post-colonial africa: the imperative to decolonise the political the cases of the republics of sudan and south sudan, as well as modern-day democratic republic of the congo, lend credence to the conclusion that the post-colonial af rican state, as presently constituted, is locked in a failed template with no epistemological warrants in af rica’s history. the case of the two republics of the sudan demonstrate the failures of the national state shaped by the colonial imagination. drawing on marxism, mamdani argues for the case of ‘epistemological revolution, whereby the very consciousness of being, the vocabulary in which we understand the world around us, is transformed’ (2021: 32). it is all very well to defeat colonial domination powered by nationalist discourse; yet, it is quite another thing to build the post-colonial nation where resources are shared not on the basis of ethnic affinities but rather on the basis of inclusive, democratic citizenship. dia wamba makes almost similar suggestions as mamdani to extricate congo-zaire, and by extension, the af rican continent, f rom its ethnic quagmire. diawamba’s contention is that ‘the only democratic state is a state of the people of all walks of life’ (in olukoshi and laakso, 1996: 164). like mamdani, he warns against ethnic or religious parochialism, which excludes those defined outside the group. referring to the volatility of post-colonial ethnic hostility, hobsbawm too, has noted that ‘the internal situation of states is unstable in which power rests with a single hegemonic community…’, which was the case in sudan, south sudan, congo-zaire and many other independent af rican states (1990: 154). most critical is his admonition that the issue is not just about recognising and moving away f rom the position of acknowledgement of the existence of multiple ethnic identities. in other words, ‘the state must not be a simple composition or expression (reflection) of this multiplicity; it must transcend it with new categories’ (ibid). this act of transcending the multiplicity of in other words, the two countries valorised the notion of the nationstate as constructed by european colonialism by retaining politicised notions of race and tribe in the post-colonial state. in the case of the republic of sudan, both south (wrongly described as ‘african’) and the north (wrongly described as ‘arab’) internalised british colonial ethnic ascriptions in the post-colonial era (mamdani, 2021). p e e r r e v i e w 34v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 ethnic identities with new categories is consistent with mamdani’s political vision of decolonising the political. preceding the exercise of decolonising the political is the imperative to historicise current af rican political modernity. underscoring the imperative to transcend the ethnic identities with a new category, mamdani highlights that ‘the right to citizenship is the mother of all rights, yet’, he laments, ‘all nationstates, post-colonial and otherwise, ensure that access to it is controversial, thereby fostering membershiporiented grievances’ (2021: 334). further reinforcing the forcefulness of mamdani’s thesis, dia-wamba insists that the new categories which provide the underpinnings of such new conceptions of the post-colonial af rican state ‘must not be derived f rom the social being which may be cultural, linguistic, religious, professional, etc’ (in olukoshi and laakso, 1996: 164). both mamdani’s and dia-wamba’s shared proposition assumes cardinal importance when seen through the prism of the impact of colonial history in shaping the selfunderstandings of the colonised subject. scholars have warned against undermining the extent of the entrenchment of colonially invented identities. for example, zegeye (2001 ed.) has cited a study by gibson and gouws which cogently showed that south af ricans still identified themselves along ethnic and racial lines. zegeye notes that ‘ontological commitments or identities point to how an individual or group is structured in terms of practical historical being’ (2001 : 14). in other words, historically constituted identities tend to be ineradicable. this means if a post-colonial state is defined as a nation-state, it is likely not only to legitimate ethnic consciousness but to perpetuate it, thereby posing an existential threat to the state in turn. conclusion employing the historiography of mamdani, this article has argued that the primary architects of af rican post-colonial modernity have failed the litmus test of decolonising the political; they have failed in the construction of an independent state by not abandoning the european heritage of the nationstate and in its place re-thinking an all-inclusive, democratic and united non-national state model. this would not have meant the abolition of cultural difference. it means depoliticising cultural differences by transcending them, thereby excluding the undercurrent of f ractious ethnic identities f rom the construction of the state itself. in fact, persistent ethno-nationalist feelings in the post-colonial social landscape beg the question of what happened to the pan-ethnic consciousness that propelled the anti-colonial (anti-apartheid struggle)? often, with a few exception such as the republic of sudan, f ree af rican nations dismantle the domain of racialised politics which constituted the mainspring of colonial order but fail to do the same in the tribal domain. at most, they impose homogeneity on the tribal terrain, with the result that contradictions erupt into inter-tribal conflagrations, perpetuating national divisions with irreparable harm to the nationalist vision. the cases of sudan, south sudan and congozaire are among prime examples of post-colonial societies whose aborted transformations throw up a pandora’s box of whose collision rent asunder the ideal of af rican nationalism which, at a national level, is a building block for the construction and sustainability of pan-af ricanism. references adebajo, a. 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(eds.) challenges to the nation-state in africa. nordiska afrikainstitutet, uppsala wesrtsch, j.h. 2004. specific narratives and schematic narratives templates. in seixas, p. 2004. theorising historical consciousness. toronto buffalo. london zegeye, a.(ed) 2001. social identities in the new south africa after apartheid. kwela books. cape town p e e r r e v i e w 63 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract despite the human rights principles established in south africa’s constitution, there have been recurrent waves of xenophobia throughout the country’s history. foreigners who live in south africa have been perceived as the victims of xenophobia and south africans as the perpetrators. this paper aims to problematise the usage of the ‘ubuntu’ ideology as a utopian african ethic to promote ‘universal’ african humanism. it seems that apartheid’s heritage, which produced the present-day south africa in which these xenophobic events occur, is often overlooked when south africans are characterised as xenophobic and in need of ubuntu salvation. the study makes the case that colonial and political issues, which continue to have an impact on high levels of poverty and unemployment, should be considered as ongoing contributors to xenophobia. several anti-immigration organisations have emerged as discussion points in the country. this study will only concentrate on one of these: operation dudula. this paper critically examines the reasons why operation dudula is continuing to expand despite protests from civil society organisations. this paper demonstrates, via media stories, how the media primarily portrays the organisation as vigilante that vex ubuntu and african unification. the paper makes the claim that marginalised south africans are ‘native foreigners’, as opposed to simply perpetrators, drawing on neocosmos’ idea of native foreigners. instead of being considered as a problem that needs ubuntu’s salvation, the paper argues that anti-immigrant organisations should be understood as a sign of unsolved colonial and political problems that need to be addressed. by zama mthombeni xenophobia in south africa: problematising ubuntu as an ethical response 64v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w following the march, numerous additional antiimmigrant organisations bearing the name dudula or a version of it, including the distinct alexandra dudula movement, were founded. this strengthened their popularity and operation dudula was expanded to durban in kwazulu natal in april 2022 (bornman, 2021). the initiative shut down all the food stalls maintained by foreign nationals who were unable to produce the necessary paperwork for conducting business or a current passport (bornman, 2021). several scholars have analysed the phenomenon of xenophobia. according to adebisi (2017), xenophobia has historically posed a problem for social relationships and co-habitation. the word ‘xenophobia’ has its origins in the greek terms xenos (‘stranger’ or ‘guest’) and phobos (‘flight’ or ‘fear’) (adebisi, 2017). the term describes an aversion towards different ancestries, races, or skin tones. according to fayomi et al. (2015), xenophobia in this sense refers to the fear or hate of foreigners living in an individual’s country. however, for some scholars it also includes assault and violent conf rontations against foreigners who are residents of the country, going beyond simple statements of rage, hatred, or dislike (adebisi and agagu, 2017). saleh (2015) broadens this concept by defining xenophobia as a strong hatred or disdain for someone due to their national origin. according to gordon (2015), discussions in south af rica about xenophobia generally focus on or are equated to violence. there are other ways that anti-immigrant sentiment could manifest itself, even if xenophobic violence is a vital component of any study of xenophobia on the af rican continent (gordon, 2015). furthermore, there is no clear connection between xenophobia and antiimmigrant violence, as prejudice towards immigrants is not a direct source of violence (gordon, 2015). this view of xenophobia coincides with that of phiri who believes that the conceptualisation of xenophobia needs to be reconsidered. xenophobia needs to be separated f rom violence because it is not every xenophobic sentiment that translates into violence (phiri, 2021). a definite dichotomy between south af ricans as perpetrators and immigrants as victims is drawn in the literature on xenophobia. the perpetrators of genuine violent crimes have been characterised as introduction the prevalence of xenophobia is rising throughout all of af rica’s nations. in southern af rica, discrimination against foreigners is on the rise f rom kenya to the maghreb (fayomi et al., 2015). however, crush (2008) asserts that after the continent’s independence, discrimination based on the idea of being ‘nonnative’ has persisted throughout af rica and was codified during colonialism. one of the most recent manifestations of restricted ideas of citizenship, which have existed in af rica for two centuries, is contemporary xenophobia (fayomi et al., 2015). since the country’s transition to democracy in 1994, south af rica has seen a rise in xenophobia. the extraordinary influx of primarily af rican immigrants in search of greener pastures is linked to the rising xenophobia in south af rica (ogunnubi and amusan, 2018). due to the perception that south af rica has a favourable economic, political, and social climate, af rican citizens seeking better pastures find the country to be quite alluring (akinola, 2018). insidious and violent xenophobic attacks against foreign people living in the country, which have resulted in fatalities and the wanton destruction of property primarily owned by af rican citizens, are evidence that south af ricans are not fully comfortable with the presence of foreigners (ogunnubi and aja, 2022). approximately 121 nigerians were slain in south af rica between 2016 and 2018 because of xenophobic prejudice and discrimination (ogunnowo and joshua, 2019). since the 1990s, there have been numerous instances of xenophobic crimes. in 2018, more than 60 foreign people were killed in the nation, making the situation worse (bishogo, 2020). in june 2021, south af rica was introduced to ‘operation dudula’, a purportedly patriotic campaign established to address issues of crime, a lack of jobs, and poor health services allegedly caused by an influx of illegal immigrants (myeni, 2022). dudula, which is an isizulu word meaning ‘to force out’ or ‘knock down’ alludes to the movement’s objective of expelling immigrants. operation dudula has been labelled a xenophobic vigilante group (myeni, 2022). the group led their first march through soweto on june 16 2021, with a focus on immigrant informal traders and those they believed to be involved in international drug trafficking (bornman, 2021). 65 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 vigilante organisations executing senseless atrocities. this paper offers an alternative perspective and explanation of xenophobia in south af rica rather than attempting to refute these views. the introduction to xenophobia in south af rica is covered in the first subsection, which then examines ubuntu as a problematic f ramework for understanding and addressing xenophobia. the essay then provides a critical analysis of how operation dudula has been portrayed in the media as a vigilante group. to convey a contrasting viewpoint, it demonstrates how south af ricans can also be perceived as victims. overview of xenophobia in south africa south af rica is a destination for immigrants of all racial backgrounds and origins, including asians, americans, europeans, and australians. all regions of south af rica have experienced xenophobic violence and incidents date back to 1994 (valji, 2003). south af rica is a desirable destination due to its high level of growth and technological advancement, which accounts for the significant influx of immigrants and foreign travellers (dauda et al., 2018). indeed, a big lure for immigrants is the wealth of opportunities and the structure of the south af rican economy. the nation’s long-term colonial presence promoted rapid development and set it on the route to industrial development (tella, 2016). this led to a surge of people seeking refuge f rom political regulations, conflict, poverty, and economic issues. in 2015, a survey by the un high commissioner for refugees found that more than 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers resided in south af rica (unhcr rosa, 2015). each year, 60,000– 80,000 people are anticipated to request asylum in the country. due to this influx of foreigners, numerous xenophobic assaults have been recorded, with most attacks occurring in gauteng province (johannesburg, soweto, alexandra). some of the causes of antipathy towards immigrants by south af ricans are the perceptions that foreigners are to blame for the unemployment rate, high crime rate, and drug-related violence (dauda et al., 2018; ogunnubi and amusan, 2018). table 1 shows documented xenophobic incidents by province between 1994–2018. it shows that xenophobic incidents have taken place in all provinces in varying degrees. gauteng is the leading province, and it is therefore not a surprise that operation dudula is alleged to have started in gauteng and then spread to other provinces (myeni, 2022). table 1: xenophobic incidents by province (1994–2018) province number of incidents gauteng 212 western cape 111 kwazulu natal 67 limpopo 40 eastern cape 33 mpumalanga 22 northwest 20 free state 19 northern cape 5 source: (bbc, 2019) crush and pendleton (2007: 64) used the national immigration policy survey (nips) as a research tool to understand south af rican citizens’ attitudes toward foreigners and migration. they found that people in southern af rica tended to overestimate the number of foreigners living there and tended to view immigration as ‘a problem rather than an opportunity’. evidence f rom the southern af rican migration project (samp) survey literature demonstrates that anti-immigrant sentiment is common in botswana, namibia, and especially south af rica. the project uses 2007 public opinion poll data f rom pew’s global attitudes project (miller, 2012 observed a similar conclusion). south af ricans were found to be most favourable towards the results of the samp study, however, also demonstrated that prejudice towards immigrants in south africa crosses racial, gender, and class divides. according to further samp findings, xenophobic sentiments are far more prevalent among white people than among black people. xenophobia is also more prevalent among poor, working class, and wealthy people as opposed to the middle class. the entire report concluded that the majority of citizens share sentiments of xenophobia towards other africans. p e e r r e v i e w 66v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 immigration limits, as compared with the inhabitants of other countries (crush et al., 2008). south af ricans, however, do not view immigrants as a single group. to better understand xenophobic ideas in south af rica, questions concerning immigrants f rom other countries were posed in the 2006 samp study on views about immigration. the results showed that south af ricans viewed immigrants f rom europe and north america more favourably than those f rom af rica (crush et al., 2008). according to public opinion statistics f rom samp on south af rica, the majority of south af ricans believe that immigrants cause unemployment and deplete the country’s economic resources (crush and pendleton, 2007: 71–72; crush et al., 2008: 29– 30). the results of the samp study, however, also demonstrated that prejudice towards immigrants in south af rica crosses racial, gender, and class divides. according to further samp findings, xenophobic sentiments are far more prevalent among white people than among black people. xenophobia is also more prevalent among poor, working class, and wealthy people as opposed to the middle class. the entire report concluded that the majority of citizens share sentiments of xenophobia towards other af ricans. du toit and kortze (2011: 182–188) corroborated this conclusion by finding that attitudes in favour of restricted immigration were widespread throughout the nation’s various socio-demographic groups. in other words, sentiments were the same amongst the wealthy and the poor, the employed or the unemployed, and black and white population groups. to better understand the factors related to the wards where the 2008 anti-immigrant riots occurred, fauvelle-aymar and segatti (2012) undertook a study. debunking theories that solely focus on economic factors as the causes of xenophobic violence, it was discovered that neither unemployment nor absolute poverty played a significant role. problematising ubuntu as a conceptual framework for understanding xenophobia according to af rican scholars, the solution may not ultimately be based on a range of external ideologies and institutional interventions, given that most of these efforts have failed the af rican people (obioha and okaneme, 2017). eleojo (2014) emphasises how pointless it is to classify af rican issues and thought processes using western concepts. this raises concerns about the use of ubuntu as a catch-all solution to address xenophobia, particularly in south af rica. while i recognise the moral importance of ubuntu as a philosophy rooted in af rican humanism, i also recognise its importance in bridging different af rican civilisations. ubuntu, i contend, has been exploited to moralise south af ricans while neglecting the underlying problems that lead to recurrent acts of xenophobia. ubuntu’s core principle is the honouring and respect of each person’s dignity, regardless of differences in race or culture. ubuntu promotes kindness, generosity, compassion, and a peaceful co-existence with one’s neighbours and the wider community (nussbaum, 2003; kaungu, 2021). for many generations, the principle of ubuntu and the way of life it encourages have served to maintain af rican communities in south af rica and throughout af rica (eliastam, 2015; kaungu, 2021). due to the resonances of ubuntu in other af rican nations, supporters feel that this concept should form the basis for af rican unity (eleojo, 2014). expecting such unity with other af rican communities while the structure of black south af rican society has not been unified strikes me as a bit unrealistic. this research considers additional social, political, and economic elements and demonstrates how just applying ubuntu to be a moral judge of xenophobia does not resolve concerns. af rican philosophies are admirable because they provide af rican communities with a moral code; this paper does not dismiss them as unimportant. however, these philosophies insinuate that south af ricans are forced to adhere to a borderless af rican mentality because of ubuntu’s blind application, as if other nations were doing the same. ubuntu appears to be advocating a religious or utopian af rican ethic that chooses to ignore the existential context of difficult issues like xenophobia in south af rica. methodology this article will place a strong emphasis on qualitative data f rom south af ricans as seen in news articles and videos. i investigate how people who use opinion articles and internet media based on qualitative empirical evidence feed the narrative that operation dudula is a thorn in destabilising oneness and ubuntu. table 2 documents the primary data source which is made up of 14 news stories that were published p e e r r e v i e w 67 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 between june 2021 and june 2022. i chose to focus on news clips published during this time f rame because the first operation dudula march was held in soweto in june 2021. documentation of operation dudula is still ongoing. for the purposes of this study, it is enough to cover news clips that emerged in june 2021–june 2022. these news reports discuss events that led to the maturation of the xenophobic attacks that happened under operation dudula (note in table 2). pseudonyms have been employed, much like in the news clips, to shield interviewees’ identities. operation dudula as an enhancer of xenophobic attacks? review from the data i will reflect on operation dudula in this section utilising primarily secondary data as support. the analysis’ key findings show that operation dudula is viewed as a contributor to the recent xenophobic violence in south africa. table 2: list of news clips articles reviewed 1. africa news. (2022). ‘south africa: anti-immigration movement ‘operation dudula’ launched in durban.’ africa news [online]. available at: www.africanews.com/2022/04/10/south-africa-anti-immigration-movement-operation-dudulalaunched-in-durban/ 2. fihlani, p. (2022). ‘dudula: how south african anger has focused on foreigners.’ bbc news [online]. available at: www. bbc.com/news/world-africa-60698374 3. bishogo, c. (2020). ‘xenophobia in south africa.’ harvard human rights [online]. available at: www.harvardhumanrights. com/xenophobia-in-south-africa 4. bornman, j. (2021). ‘operation dudula pushes ahead with hateful politics.’ new frame [online]. available at: www. newframe.com/operation-dudula-pushes-ahead-with-hateful-politics/ 5. evans, j. (2022). ‘operation dudula brings its campaign against foreign nationals to cape town.’ news24 [online]. available at: www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/operation-dudula-brings-its-campaign-against-foreign-nationalsto-cape-town-20220514 6. enca. (2022). ‘operation dudula let the law take its course.’ enca news [online]. available at: www.enca.com/news/ operation-dudula-watch-let-law-take-its-course-dlamini 7. mafata, m. (2022). ‘immigrant traders in gauteng fear for their safety after threats of xenophobic attacks.’ news24 [online]. available at: www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/immigrant-traders-in-gauteng-fear-for-their-safety-afterthreats-of-xenophobic-attacks-20220202 8. madia, t. (2022). ‘ramaphosa calls operation dudula a vigilante force, says anc can’t support them.’ eyewitness news [online]. available at: www.ewn.co.za/2022/04/04/ramaphosa-calls-operation-dudula-a-vigilante-force-says-anc-can-tsupport-them 9. makwakwa, t. and dlamini, t. (2022). ‘operation dudula: migrants trading at shops fear outbreak of xenophobia, lament unprovoked attacks as threat still looms large.’ iol news [online]. available at: www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/kwazulunatal/operation-dudula-migrants-trading-at-shops-fear-outbreak-of-xenophobia-lament-unprovoked-%e2%80%a61/7 10. mncube, p. (2022). ‘operation dudula: when deep-seated frustration meets prejudice and weak leadership.’ daily maverick [online]. available at: www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-04-20-operation-dudula-when-deep-seatedfrustration-meets-prejudice-and-weak-leadership/ 11. myeni, t. (2022). ‘what is operation dudula, south africa’s anti-migration vigilante?’ aljazeera [online]. available at: www. aljazeera.com/features/2022/4/8/what-is-operation-dudula-s-africas-anti-immigration-vigilante 12. peralta, e. (2022). ‘a movement gains force to put south africans first and to drive migrants out.’ npr news [online]. available at: www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103445432/south-africa-anti-immigrant-operation-dudula 13. sibanda, n. (2022). ‘operation dudula is a symptom of unresolved colonial and political issues.’ mail & guardian [online]. available at: www.mg.co.za/opinion/2022-06-12-operation-dudula-is-a-symptom-of-unresolved-colonial-and-politicalissues/ 14. wrougton, l. (2022). ‘vigilantes and violence have migrants in south africa scared for their lives.’ the washington post [online]. available at: www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/05/south-africa-operation-dudula-immigration/ p e e r r e v i e w 68v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 operation dudula is seen as a symptom of unresolved colonial and political issues in the country. the all-truck drivers forum, which campaigns for all truck drivers operating in the country to be south af rican, guarded the maponya mall in soweto when the campaign’s focus shifted f rom the call to protect shops f rom the f rantic looting in some areas of kwazulu-natal and gauteng in july 2021 (evans, 2022). shortly after, the operation’s chair (mr. nhlanhla lux) made the announcement that any new businesses would first need to go through his organisation to ensure that south af rican stores and spaza shops were formed in soweto (myeni, 2022). anxiety over operation dudula’s focus on foreigners and the possibility for bigotry quickly replaced the joy of defending companies during raids. in an interview with enca, operation dudula’s deputy chairperson, dan radebe, stated that the organisation also encouraged its members to sign up as police reservists to contribute to crime prevention (enca, 2022). the operation dudula campaign is heavily debated in south af rica as some feel that it is an af rophobia campaign, spreading xenophobic tendencies under the banner of putting south af ricans first. in his reflection on the existence of the organisation and its spread in the western cape, ricardo mckenzie shares his sentiments: ricardo mckenzie, a member of the western cape provincial assembly for the da, disapproved of the march’s message and claimed that the organisation was a part of a concerning trend of xenophobia and af rophobia that is spreading throughout south af rica. (evans, 2022) the sentiments shared above by mckenzie regarding operation dudula resemble those expressed by the south af rican president. during the af rican national congress (anc) conference that took place in mpumalanga in april 2022, president ramaphosa described operation dudula as a ‘vigilante-like force’ (madia, 2022). ramaphosa further argued: ‘we cannot support a vigilante-type-of move against a group of people and particularly targeting them as foreign nationals because what we are doing then is just to divide our people on the af rican continent.’ (madia, 2022) ramaphosa’s opinions differ f rom those of anc national spokesperson, pule mabe, who supported communities that fought unlawful activity in an interview with the mail & guardian. a divisive campaign in johannesburg spearheaded by operation dudula has targeted foreign nationals. one of the organisation’s objections is that it is challenging to find unlawful foreign nationals who have been charged with crimes because they are not recorded in any south af rican databases. they contend that immigrants are displacing south af ricans f rom their jobs and fuelling criminality in various parts of the nation. the members of operation dudula, on the other hand, believe that they are not acting in a xenophobic manner, but rather are upholding the law, which they claim the government is not doing. one of the group members explained their dedication to law enforcement as follows: ‘so, the issues are that people are coming into the country and they are not documented, and the government is doing nothing about it, and it’s difficult to find them when they commit a crime. we just need our departments to enforce the laws that are there, because these laws are not enforced.’ – zandile dabula, national secretary for operation dudula. (af rica news, 2022) p e e r r e v i e w organisations like operation dudula arguably point to the possibility that anti-immigrant sentiment is rooted in poverty. it is important to acknowledge the social, economic, political, legal, cultural, and psychological ramifications of these recurrent black-on-black persecutions (sibanda, 2022). this paper contends that it is idealist to believe that ubuntu alone can effectively combat these socio-economic and political ramifications. 69 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w according to operation dudula, their goal is purportedly to persuade the south af rican government to act against illegal immigrants and those who are allegedly involved in criminal activity (ndaba, 2022). on paper, this appears to be the reason for the organisation’s origin, composition, and behaviour. however, to purport is to suggest or assert that something is true without providing any supporting evidence. this is the key issue at hand, and the reason why operation dudula is so plagued with rumours and contradictions. putting south africans first operation dudula is purportedly centred around putting south af ricans first in terms of job security and owning local businesses such as spaza shops in the townships. the organisation contends that the south af rican government is failing to emancipate them f rom the indecent living conditions that they are subjected to. according to the organisation’s secretary, minimising the influx of illegal immigrants will supposedly help to reduce crimes incited by immigrants (myeni, 2022). the organisation’s campaign gives the idea that it is af rophobic. however, another possible view is that operation dudula represents an outcry seeking genuine economic equity for historically disenf ranchised black south af ricans. the organisation’s efforts are mostly focused on underprivileged black citizens living in townships and shacks (ndaba, 2022). black south af ricans long for social and economic reform, rather than persecution. ndaba (2022) claims that operation dudula’s intentions are blatantly anti-af rican and xenophobic. however, another possible perspective is that the organisation’s efforts represent an outcry of f rustration by people whose economic conditions have been repeatedly ignored by the government. the state’s inability to address societal issues is arguably one of the reasons why operation dudula and other groups of a similar nature exist. this study contends that this is a view that is hardly considered when discussing xenophobic violence in south af rica. xenophobia has been denounced throughout af rica, especially given how common it is in south af rica due to af ricanisation (ogunnubi and amusan, 2018). charles onunaigu, director of china studies, claims that the attacks were a response to the unmet expectations of common citizens f rom the anc-led post-apartheid south af rican government (ogunnubi, and aja, 2022). however, only a small number of elites in af rica have benefitted f rom the anti-colonial struggle. therefore, regular people are expressing their resentment in various ways, including these attacks (odoh, 2019). akinola (2018) and fayomi et al. (2015) argue that these tendencies are the result of a mix of social-political influences, some of which are overt and others which are more quietly present. it is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate a specific cause of xenophobia in south af rica. high rates of poverty and unemployment, inefficient immigration restrictions, provocative remarks made by the media and government authorities, and negative perceptions of nigerians as a people are some examples of these triggers (akinola, 2018; fayomi et al., 2015). whilst acknowledging that the issue at hand is not just moral degeneration by poor south af ricans, this paper finds it important that the response to xenophobia should not just be an effort to moralise south af ricans, but rather to address the socio-political influences of xenophobic attacks. should ubuntu be an ethical response to xenophobia in south africa? organisations like operation dudula arguably point to the possibility that anti-immigrant sentiment is rooted in poverty. it is important to acknowledge the social, economic, political, legal, cultural, and psychological ramifications of these recurrent blackon-black persecutions (sibanda, 2022). this paper contends that it is idealist to believe that ubuntu alone can effectively combat these socio-economic and political ramifications. i acknowledge that ubuntu advocates for universal af rican humanism and teaches us to appreciate and value people for who they are, regardless of their social, political, or cultural backgrounds. however, i argue that one must problematise the blind application of this philosophy to the south af rican context, whilst ignoring the country’s existential circumstances. i do not endorse the tactics used by operation dudula. rather, my interest lies in showing that there is more to these recurring xenophobic incidents than meets the eye. as it promotes a ‘universal’ af rican humanism, ubuntu is also problematic as an intellectual theory 70v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w that has the propensity to downplay the significance of geographical boundaries. why should south af rica be forced to adhere to a borderless af rican philosophy if other nations are not also doing so? several authors have written about ubuntu’s untapped potential as a social engineering tool to combat xenophobia in south af rica (landau, ramjathan-keogh, and singh, 2005). however, xenophobia in south af rica is largely triggered by socio-political ills; it is not entirely about general hate towards foreign nationals. it is possible that the motives of anti-immigrant groups like operation dudula emanate f rom the fear of continuously being excluded f rom employment. therefore, i find it problematic when academics and south af rican theologians contend that ‘learning and putting ubuntu’s principles and ideals into practice can challenge and motivate south af ricans to view and treat af rican immigrants differently’ (mnyaka, 2003; koenane, 2013; 2018). shaping the views of south af ricans will not take away the deep-rooted fear they have of foreign nationals taking their jobs. whilst many preach the rhetoric of ‘the rainbow nation’, the ‘new south af rica’, and the country’s progressive constitution, the actual situation on the ground does not attest to these far-fetched ideals. south af rica’s colonial and apartheid legacies persist and reflect the af rican experience. as phiri writes: ‘the post-colonial pattern across the continent follows a trend in which the people are condemned to relatively the same conditions that they suffered during the colonial or apartheid era. even after independence, the situation of the people remains deplorable, despite the change of leadership’ (2020: 88). koenane argues that there have not been any other significant violent incidents in south af rica against other racial or immigrant groups. however, the point of view that ubuntu and other af rican principles should be used to combat af rophobia can be contested (koenane, 2018). scholars such as fanon and mamdani can help us to understand the foundations of xenophobia in south af rica (fanon, 1967; mamdani, 2017). they identify how colonialism intentionally kept the majority of the colonised underprivileged and how this is still maintained. many south af ricans are subjected to economic conditions that are not based on their personal choice, but are rather the result of intentional colonial creations. since such people have nothing to lose, they opt to respond in revolt to these unbecoming living conditions. therefore, this paper contends that it is the colonial situation that is violent. it is possible to argue that those who are cast as ‘perpetrators’ (poor south af ricans) and ‘victims’ (poor foreigners) are in fact all victims and xenophobic behaviour is the direct result of their f rustrations. alternative perspectives on xenophobia: neocosmos’ ‘native foreigner’ conception xenophobia in south af rica has been seen through the lens of violence, but phiri (2021) has extensively argued that not every anti-immigrant sentiment translates into violence. according to phiri (2021), xenophobic attitudes are much more widespread than recorded attacks. it is exclusion based on difference that is central to that definition of xenophobia and violence is one of its consequences. neocosmos says: ‘xenophobia is a discourse concerned with a process of social and political exclusion of some group or population’ (neocosmos, 2006: 15). he further explains that there is another form of exclusion that operates even within borders, but that discriminates or marginalises those who are politically weak. for instance, those who are excluded in this sense might be south af rican citizens who are unable to fully enjoy the rights accorded to south af ricans. this refers to south af rican citizens who are too poor to even afford decent accommodation and instead end up living in informal settlements. these citizens are foreigners in their own country, or are what neocosmos terms ‘native foreigners’. xenophobic attacks have occurred year after year in south af rica since 2008. this shows that little progress has been made in addressing this issue. it is interesting to note that historically and currently under operation dudula, xenophobic violence is conducted by those who could be termed native foreigners: south af ricans who feel excluded and unable to fully enjoy their citizenship rights (neocosmos, 2006; phiri, 2021). whilst media coverage refers to them as ‘vigilante mobs’ who are committing inexplicable atrocities, another possible perspective is that these are south af ricans who are genuinely poor and neglected by the state. whilst trying to deal with their own sense of exclusion, these south af ricans must also contend with how the media portrays immigration issues and how these reports instil fear in the everyday south af rican. the media often speaks of migrants flooding 71 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 south af rica, which gives the impression that south af rica will be full of foreign people and all available opportunities will be taken away. this gives native foreigners the impression that they need to panic when they see an influx of foreigners. the issue of nationalism has been intimately related to xenophobia in south af rica and this has been demonstrated through policies. south af rican political discourse has always portrayed xenophobia as a threat to the unity of south af rica and the rest of af rica because it begets intolerance and disunity. xenophobia is represented as a disease that must be cured in order for ‘the new south af rica’ and the realisation of the af rican renaissance to function in harmony. for this reason, many propose that native foreigners need ubuntu to cure xenophobia. however, i argue that it is unfair to impose ubuntu on this group of native foreigners without considering that the same group has on many occasions expressed dissatisfaction with how the south af rican government rules them. i argue that it is essential to look at both the perpetrators and victims of xenophobia to understand what is happening in south af rica. in the post-apartheid period, many south af ricans are politically recognised but nonetheless remain on the periphery, divorced f rom opportunities that should be accorded to citizens. when these native foreigners revolt against such treatment, they are blamed. oppressors accuse the oppressed of being violent, when in fact the oppressed are reacting to the violence of their oppression (freire, 1993: 38). south af rica has been referred to as the protest capital, but one finds that protests generally take place in areas where violence is expected to take place. most of these protests end up being violent because the masses realise that the country’s rulers choose to either ignore their voices or to lie about the fact that their grievances will be addressed. the protesters want to live in conditions that allow for decent humanity. they are fighting for true citizenship. it is not enough to only be south af rican by citizenship/birth, as this does not guarantee them full participation in their citizenship. these ongoing protests are a plea to regain a humanity which was soiled during the colonial era. the masses have been betrayed by the very people who they thought would contribute to their f reedom. this situation is not unique to south af rica; it can also be observed in most other af rican countries. fanon has illustrated that there is no change between the colonial and apartheid states. the colonial system is inherently violent, and so violence becomes the only means available to the oppressed/the colonised. it is for this reason that i argue that operation dudula should not only be seen as a problem that needs ubuntu redemption, but should rather be seen as a symptom of unresolved colonial and political issues. this is why even foreign nationals quoted in the media express the opinion that this is ‘politics’ rather than merely xenophobia (wroughton, 2022). according to mncube (2022), the government has long been urged to act over the presence of unauthorised foreign nationals in south af rica. however, as the nation struggles with higher rates of unemployment and poverty, the voices of internal discontent have grown louder. despite being one of af rica’s economic powerhouses, south af rica still must conquer internal political issues before it achieves socially fair economic independence (sibanda, 2022). it is time to embrace introspection and to find the political will necessary to conduct discussions with the key parties involved. conclusion this paper has argued for the need to consider xenophobia as related to the internal ramifications of colonialism/apartheid in south af rica. this paper does not advocate for tactics of violence, nor does it seek to exonerate the perpetrators. rather, i have tried to draw attention to the fact that violence has been the i have shown that south africans are not only perpetrators, but are also victims. citizenship cannot be reduced to recognition by political institutions; it must also include full participation in the life of a nation, in a way that allows for decent living and dignified humanity. those who live below the poverty line and in deplorable conditions cannot be called citizens, but are instead ‘native foreigners.’ p e e r r e v i e w 72v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 most travelled avenue that poor south af ricans have used to demand decent humanity and livelihoods. in problematising ubuntu as an ethical response to xenophobia, i argue against the blind application of this philosophy, especially when all south af ricans are simply cast as ‘xenophobic’ with no consideration of their context or circumstances.  to combat the rampant xenophobia in the country, this article contends that it is not enough to tell black af ricans in post-apartheid south af rica to simply embrace the spirit of ubuntu and its principles. this is especially the case when people are continuously subjected to inhumane conditions. using neocosmos’ view on native foreigners, i have shown that south af ricans are not only perpetrators, but are also victims. citizenship cannot be reduced to recognition by political institutions; 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(2019). ‘xenophobic attacks in south africa and nigeria’s foreign policy: rethinking nigeria’s afrocentrism.’ african research review, 7(1): 1–19. phiri, s. (2020). ‘learning to be ‘out of order’: a life of clp and the development of its praxis.’ doctoral thesis: university of kwazulu natal. phiri, s. (2021). ‘south africa and xenophobic violence: a critical analysis of the post–colonial state.’ in: xenophobia, nativism and pan-africanism in 21st–century africa. new york: springer, 137–153. peralta, e. (2022). ‘a movement gains force to put south africans first and to drive migrants out.’ npr news [online]. available at: www.npr. org/2022/06/07/1103445432/south-africa-anti-immigrant-operation-dudula saleh, i. (2015). ‘is it xenophobia in south africa or an international act of prejudice?’ global media journal – african edition, 9(2): 298–313. sibanda, n. (2022). ‘operation dudula is a symptom of unresolved colonial and political issues.’ mail & guardian [online]. available at: www.mg.co.za/opinion/2022-06-12-operation-dudula-is-a-symptom-of-unresolved-colonial-and-political-issues/ tella, o. (2016). ‘understanding xenophobia in south africa: the individual, the state and the international system.’ insight on africa, 8(2): 142–158. the economist. (2016). ‘to the land of good hope: african migrants head south as well as north.’ the economist [online]. available at: www.economist.com/ middle-east-and-africa/2016/03/03/to-the-land-of-good-hope unhcr rosa. (2015). ‘situation update on xenophobic attacks in south africa.’ united nations [online]. available at: www.un.org/youthenvoy/2013/09/office-of-the-unitednations-high-commissioner-for-refugees valji, n. (2003). ‘creating the nation: the rise of violent xenophobia in the new south africa.’ unpublished master’s thesis, york university. south african history online [online]. available at: www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/file%20 uploads%20/riseofviolent.pdf p e e r r e v i e w 49v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the public transport crisis in south africa: through the eyes of the four revolutions abstract debates on the fourth industrial revolution have tended not to focus on the direct relationship between all four technological revolutions and transportation – a crucial element of all technological surges. at the same time, scholarship on transportation has generally ignored the significance of transportation in all the revolutions. this article therefore seeks to strike a balance between these two extremes by showing that all the technological revolutions were also about transportation. in other words, the debates on the technological advances provide scholars, researchers, engineers, and workingclass organisations with the space to foreground transport as an issue requiring special attention, especially in south af rica where the public transport system faces many challenges. critically applying the prism of the four industrial revolutions, the article demonstrates that south af rica lags behind f rom a transport perspective, and still relies on the transportation of the second industrial revolution when other countries are utilising technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. compounding matters is that even transport technologies invented in the 1800s are being stolen and vandalised, and the maintenance of the system is extremely poor. the article then submits that these transport problems may be solved by mobilisation and advocacy led by working-class and poor communities negatively affected by the crisis. p e e r r e v i e w by mondli hlatshwayo | peer reviewed 50 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction despite the ongoing academic and policy debates on the urgent need for south af rica to embrace the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) (xing and marwala, 2017; doorsamy et al., 2020), the reality on the ground is that the transport inf rastructure and the public transport system are nowhere near the conditions forecast as required for the 4ir. the notion of the 4ir as a f ramework for understanding technological surges and development has been questioned by some leading scholars of innovation and development (maharajh, 2019; cooper, 2021). others have gone as far as to argue that the 4ir is a myth created to defocus the marginalised and workers f rom the struggles of the social, economic, and ecological crisis facing the world today (moll, 2021). the periodisation of technological development as four technological revolutions is also contested. in this regard, cooper (2021) claims that the current phase of technological development is the second phase of the third technological revolution, and is characterised by driverless cars, renewable energies, and other advanced technologies. for example, maharajh (2019) indicates that there were five technological waves, starting with water-powered mechanisation in the 1780s to computerisation in the current era. like this article, other scholars are sceptical about the use of 4ir to debate technology and development as south af rica has not even realised the uninterrupted technologies of the second industrial revolution (2ir), such as electricity and public transport (bond, 2020; hlatshwayo, 2021). exacerbating this dire situation is that the transport inf rastructure that is being neglected and destroyed emanates f rom the era of the 2ir which also did not meet the needs of road users and commuters in south af rica. the destruction of the transport inf rastructure in conjunction with the electricity crisis that negatively affects the working of traffic lights, the flow of traffic, and the running of electric trains makes a mockery of the call of the state and state president, cyril ramaphosa, for economic growth and investments in the country (ntingi, 2021). transport, particularly public transport, plays a major role in development and the expansion of economic activities, especially in the developing countries of af rica that continue to face many transportation challenges (adeniran, 2016). the national development plan (ndp) (2013) proposes that south af rica needs to invest in public transport to improve the lives of low-income households by facilitating mobility to enable them to access economic opportunities in various parts of the country (national planning commission [npc], 2013). therefore, the current debates on the 4ir pave the way to discuss the role of transport in south af rica as all four industrial revolutions have had transport as one of their core deliverables. one of the key elements of all four technological revolutions is transportation, which has been disregarded by the scholarship on the 4ir (marwala and xing, 2017; matheba, 2019; rodny-gumede, 2019). another strand in the literature on transport downplays the role of transport in all four revolutions by merely focusing on transport without locating it within the context of the technological revolutions (walters, 2008; luckan, 2022). a concession needs to be made here that a few transport scholars and researchers have discussed and debated transport and mentioned the 4ir (mbatha et al., 2021). both strands of the literature – the 4ir and the transport strand – are significant and help other scholars to understand the four technological revolutions and transport, although this is not done in a manner that demonstrates that the four technological like this article, other scholars are sceptical about the use of 4ir to debate technology and development as south africa has not even realised the uninterrupted technologies of the second industrial revolution (2ir), such as electricity and public transport (bond, 2020; hlatshwayo, 2021). 51v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w revolutions were also explicitly about transport, especially public transport. the first industrial revolution (1ir), transport and coal the 1ir, which roughly began in 1769 and ended in 1870, was driven by coal and steam engines, the textile industries, and iron. later, james watt designed a steam engine that was energy eff icient and widely used by british industries f rom 1776. the cities of manchester and liverpool in england of the 1ir benef itted f rom the coalpowered engine when the steam engine was used as a mode of transport to move goods and people between the two cities. the very f irst public steam railway system was between britain’s stockton and darlington in 1825. steam power of the 1ir enabled the expansion of transportation and the development of rail, sea, and road transportation of goods and people (acerta, 2022). the discovery of diamonds and gold in south af rica in 1867 and 1886, respectively, accelerated industrialisation under british colonial rule. machinery, tools, and equipment used in the 1ir of britain were instrumental in the mining, manufacturing, and transportation sectors of the economy. the process of colonisation and industrialisation in southern af rica was violent and predicated on the mass killings of af ricans and land dispossession – an issue the country is still grappling with to this day (van eck, 1953; callinicos, 1985). the turning of black peasants into proletarians or workers who had to sell their labour power to survive changed the social, political, and economic landscape of south af rica. this means black migrant workers were forced to live in rural areas to work in the industrial cities and towns, such as kimberley and johannesburg when diamonds and gold were discovered and mined. as part of south af rica’s 1ir, the point to durban – the steam train public railway line – was launched in 1860. this was a time lag of 35 years, if we consider that the first steam railway line in britain was completed in 1825 (kirby, 2002). the cape main line that connected kimberley and de aar came after the discovery of diamonds in 1866. in 1890, a six-mile steam railway line between johannesburg and the boksburg coal mines was the first railway line in the then transvaal, which became one of af rica’s economic hubs after the discovery of gold in 1886 (delano, 2014). to show the significance of the steam-driven trains, according to the railway statistics, an annual average of 638,000 af rican migrant workers were transported between 1911 and 1920, while in the period 1921–1930, the number increased to 708,000 (pirie, 1990: 728). moreover, transport in southern af rica connected south af rica and mozambique. the coal-powered trains were the mode of transport used to move migrant workers f rom the eastern part of southern af rica (now called mozambique) to the mines in the cities and towns of south af rica. in his book entitled night trains, van onselen (2021) details the encounters of migrant workers travelling f rom ressano garcia, in mozambique, to the booysens station in johannesburg between 1905 and 1955. the steam trains (later electric trains) carried men who had to work in the mines of south af rica at night. those who were ill and injured due to minework were then transported by the same trains f rom the mines to mozambique, as they were no longer considered to be useful by the mine employers. workers of these privately-owned trains, using tracks owned by the state, were treated like goods and crammed into compartments which violated their dignity as human beings (van onselen, 2021). the 2ir and transport largely led by national corporations of the global north, such as germany’s siemens and bayer, and the usa’s edison electric illuminating company of new york, the 2ir began after the 1870s. in essence, this revolution was comprised of electrification, chemicals, petrol, diesel, electric trains, diesel trains, and the subsequent rising output of petrol and diesel vehicles (cooper, 2011). in the 1890s, rudolf diesel invented an engine that was named after him, paving the way for the elimination of steamdriven engines in the railways. by the 1930s, the latter replaced steam trains in europe and in the usa on a massive scale. economically, the diesel engines were efficient (bryant, 1969). the first electric passenger train was launched by the german inventor, werner von siemens, in berlin in 1879. visitors attending the berlin industrial 52 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w exposition on may 31, 1879, were astonished to see a locomotive pass by without any smoke or steam. unbeknownst to them, they were witnessing a ground-breaking technological innovation of the 19th century, the electric railway, which in its various forms – trams, subways, or high-speed trains – would come to dominate public transport (hebestreit, 2022: 1). given that the colonies in southern af rica were dependent on the transportation technologies of the global north, it took south af rica 45 years to have her first electric train, and that was after long economic and political processes. the formation of the union of south af rica in 1910 paved the way for further industrialisation in south af rica and the formation of state-owned national corporations that pioneered industrialisation and development. this included the formation of the iron and steel corporation, a state-owned steel company, and the electricity supply commission (eskom), a national electricity generation and supply state company, in 1924. in the same year, the first electric train moved between ladysmith and chieveley in what is now known as kwazulu-natal, facilitating the massive expansion of the railway networks connecting various economic nodes of southern af rica (hlatshwayo, 2021). subsequently, diesel-electric driven trains were introduced in south af rica in 1939 and transported goods and people (paxton and bourne, 1985). 2ir, ford and fordism pivotal to the discussion on 2ir is the contribution henry ford made to manufacturing, especially transport. in 1903, he founded his ford motor company, and half a decade later, its model t was produced. due to the high demand for the vehicle, ford introduced fordism – a production method based on the assembly line – characterised by standardised, sequenced production processes and mass production. fordism was later adopted by manufacturers of other products globally, demonstrating that transportation, such as the production of motor vehicles by ford, had far reaching implications not only in transportation but in other industries as well (history.com editors, 2020). using similar principles for manufacturing cars, ford began manufacturing buses for transporting the public in 1937 (johnson, 1977). 2ir, apartheid and transport diesel-driven buses became a common mode of transport in south af rica f rom the 1940s. the first political activity of the former president nelson mandela was the alexandra mass march against bus fare increase and the bus boycott of 1943 (khosa, 1995; walters, 2008). during apartheid, buses and trains were designed to move black workers f rom the overcrowded townships, often called ‘dormitories’, to their far away workplaces. the train stations in the towns and cities were clearly segregated with markings such as ‘europeans only’ or ‘whites only’ (pirie, 1990). besides the buses, another mode of transport that evolved in the period of the 2ir was the minibus taxis. fobosi (2021) reports that in the 1930s, natalspruit, on the east rand, had valiants, chevrolets, and other sedan vehicles with permits allowing them to ferry a limited number of black passengers f rom the black townships to town. apartheid law, which limited the business activities of black people and controlled their movement through the pass system, made it impossible for the emergence of a black-owned and successful transportation system until the 1970s. however, f rom the late 1970s to the 1980s, the minibus taxi industry was deregulated, becoming a dominant mode of transport in the 1990s. the growth of the black-owned taxi industry was accompanied by what is disappointing of the public transport system in south africa is that the state has not embraced the technologies of the 3ir fully to improve the conditions of the poor and working-class people. consequently, the benefits of icts enjoyed by other people in the world who use public transport have not been realised by south african passengers. 53v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w violence and killings caused by competition for lucrative taxi routes. the third industrial revolution (3ir) and its implications for transport beginning in 1969, the 3ir was engineered by the increased usage of electronics, information and communication technologies (icts), and computers. in 1969, the us department of defence developed systems that are used for internet communication today. facebook was launched in 2004, marking the beginning of the social media era (metz, 2021). the 3ir led to the use of electronics and computer systems in cars and buses. these informed the drivers of the vehicles of malfunctioning parts, a function that was previously conducted manually by a mechanic. this in turn helped the driver to timeously attend to technical problems to avoid breakdown and other mechanical failures. another example is the use of the global navigation system (gps), smartphones, and online banking – all tools of the 3ir – which have made traveling by bus, trains, aeroplanes, and taxis easier for passengers who live in areas that have developed and sophisticated transport systems (jurgen, 1986). what is disappointing of the public transport system in south af rica is that the state has not embraced the technologies of the 3ir fully to improve the conditions of the poor and workingclass people. consequently, the benefits of icts enjoyed by other people in the world who use public transport have not been realised by south af rican passengers. according to pertsovsky (2017), the metrorail of the western cape region has not used icts to enhance the traveling experiences of commuters. in fact, riana scott, head of marketing and communication at metrorail western cape region, commented: ‘the primary reasons for delays are old and obsolete technology as a result of decades of disinvestment in rail and perpetual vandalism’ (cited in pertsovsky, 2017: 1). however, the private bus system that connects the towns and cities uses the internet, making it easier for passengers to make bookings at their convenience. another blow for passengers using a bus system called autopax passenger services (soc) ltd was when this state company was put under business rescue in 2021 due to mismanagement. the company was struggling to pay salaries for its close to 1,000 employees, crippling its services. previously known as transtate and translux, this service was safe and comfortable for passengers, and also used the internet for bookings and to advertise its services (autopax, 2022; koka, 2021). for taxis, there were attempts to introduce 3ir technologies, such as smart card systems, so that cash could be centrally collected in some taxi ranks in gauteng. however, this system collapsed because taxi drivers did not have cash at hand to cover their daily expenses. also, it compelled them to declare their exact earnings to the taxi owners. normally less would be declared so that they could pocket the difference. following bloodshed and the death of 15 passengers, this system was discontinued. violence, intimidation, and taxi wars characterise the taxi industry in south af rica, in which countless numbers have lost their lives since the 1980s. the safety of commuters is another concern for passengers and the general public. for instance, in 2020, taxis accounted for close to 20% of major collisions, although they only represented 16% of vehicles using south af rican roads (vegter, 2020). measures to reform and modernise the taxi industry have failed. for example, in 2006, a taxi recapitalisation programme was introduced by the state to ensure that modernised and safer taxis were on the roads to minimise road carnage. another concern was that passengers had to sit comfortably in a taxi, because the existing taxi tended to be very uncomfortable and overloaded with limited space. in 2018, 72,653 old taxis were scrapped and the state paid r4,4 billion as a scrapping allowance. however, many of these old taxis were returning to the road illegally, undermining the very purpose of the recapitalisation programme (raseroka, 2019). the above facts regarding public transport in south af rica indicate that the 3ir is phantastic as the south af rican transport system has not adopted icts to enable it to function effectively and efficiently. the technology is very old and tends to be dysfunctional; vandalism, theft, corruption, lack of investments, and mismanagement within the transport system hinder the introduction of key elements of the 3ir that would have improved the conditions of transport users. 54 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w the 4ir and transport the 4ir commenced in 2008, and relies on artificial intelligence, the internet of things, sophisticated robots, 3-dimensional (3-d) printing, block chain bullet trains, and cloud technology. all these technologies have revolutionised production in profound ways. the modes of transport for this revolution are bullet trains, self-driving trucks, and cars travelling faster than the speed of aeroplanes (lanzetti et al., 2021). table 1: world’s fastest trains (source: wallach, 2021) the table above shows that in 2021, japan had a bullet train with a speed of 602 km/h. however, japan faces tough competition f rom china, which has the largest speed train network in the world (wallach, 2021). a method that enables trains to run on the rails without touching the steel of the track but supported and controlled by the magnetic field is called the magnetic levitation (maglev) whose origins date back to the early 1900s. this method has been developed over the years, making it possible to have bullet trains today (graduateway, 2017). south af rica’s failed transport revolution inspired by the 4ir, during his state of the nation (sona) address in 2019, president ramaphosa exclaimed: ‘we should imagine a country where a bullet train passes through johannesburg as it travels to musina and it stops in buffalo city on the way f rom ethekwini to here in cape town’ (staff writer, 2020: 1). however, there is a huge disjuncture between what ramaphosa said about bullet trains as one of the key modes of transport and the actual reality of public transport in south af rica (bbc, 2019). below, i demonstrate this point further. the gautrain, a train system operating in the north of gauteng, was launched in 2010, just before south af rica’s hosting of the fifa world cup. the highest speed of the train is 180 km per hour – making it to be the slowest train when compared to the fastest trains in the world (see table 1 above; jennings, 2015). the train links johannesburg, pretoria, and or tambo international airport. there are also buses that take passengers f rom the train stations to their workplaces in areas where the gautrain operates (uys, 2021). one of the biggest challenges with the gautrain is that it does not reach workingclass areas that desperately need public transport. it is also unaffordable for working-class people who earn meagre wages or the unemployed (thomas, 2013). in 2022, a trip f rom park station in johannesburg to hatfield in pretoria cost between r70 and r148, which is much higher than the minimum wage of r23.19/ hour by more than sixfold (republic of south af rica [rsa]: department of employment and labour, 2022; rome2rio, 2022). however, there is a plan to extend the gautrain to soweto, a black area in the south of johannesburg. this would add 150 kilometres of world’s fastest trains country speed record l0 series maglev japan 374 mph (602 km/h) crrc qingdao sifang 2021 maglev* china 373 mph (600 km/h) tgv pos france 357 mph (575 km/h) crh380a hexie china 302 mph (486 km/h) shanghai maglev china 268 mph (431 km/h) hemu-430x south korea 262 mph (422 km/h) fuxing hao cr400af china 260 mph (418 km/h) frecciarossa 1000 italy 245 mph (394 km/h) 55v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w railway tracks to the 80-kilometre network (prinsloo and henderson, 2020). just before the world cup in 2010, the rea vaya bus rapid transit (brt) system was introduced between soweto and johannesburg in 2007. some bus lines were added later, and there is a plan to expand the service to other black townships. the bus system seeks to integrate and link the metrorail system, a gauteng local train network, and the gautrain. however, users of the system have serious complaints about the function of the service. also, president ramaphosa understands the transport crisis or the failed transport revolution, because in 2019, during his participation in the electoral campaign of the af rican national congress (anc), he was stuck in a train for three hours on his way to bosman train station in tshwane (mnukwa, 2020). from a survey conducted by a university of johannesburg (uj) research team with 16,000 daily users it was found that approximately 46% considered the price of the rea vaya system to be fair. evidently, the majority of the users were dissatisfied with the pricing of the service. there were also concerns raised about the lateness, reliability, and overload of the rea vaya system (lengana et al., 2018). like the rea vaya brt, the myciti brt was initiated by the city of cape town to transport hosts during the world cup in 2010. although the routes are in predominantly white areas, there are attempts to build bus stations in some of the black townships, such as mitchells plain and khayelitsha. the biggest weakness of the service is that it does not reach big, black townships such as gugulethu, nyanga, and the rest of the cape flats (myciti, 2022). the problems of the brt systems are exacerbated by the poorly run metrorail system. in 2021, vandalism of the metrorail system, cable theft, and the general destruction of the train inf rastructure in cape town and the surrounding areas compounded the transport crisis in cape town. a more recent challenge is the cutting of critical fibre optic cables resulting in major delays in operations (petersen, 2021). transport minister, fikile mbalula, blamed the vandalism and theft on the lockdown which began in march 2020. the lack of security on the train lines, at the train stations, and the general rail inf rastructure were cited by action sa, a new political party, as reasons for the damage and general collapse of inf rastructure (bhengu, 2022). the complete destruction of train stations, such as the kliptown station, took place during the covid-19 lockdown in 2020. other stations and railway lines, such as park station, kempton park, elandsfontein, and others, were destroyed by thieves and vandals (chothia, 2020). after the destruction and theft of the metrorail inf rastructure, which included rails and cables, only two lines out of 34 were operating using diesel-powered trains. subsequent to that, 300 security guards were hired to protect the metrorail line in gauteng (burroughs, 2020). furthermore, prasa, a state-owned company responsible for short and long-distance public trains, had no train service linking the cities and towns for the whole year due to cable theft, vandalism, and other forms of destruction during the lockdown periods between 2020 and 2021. towards the end of 2021, prasa announced that some services were to resume. however, no detailed plan was announced to respond to the inefficiency of the rail system, which included extreme lack of reliability and poor integration of icts within the system (ash, 2021; emeran, 2013). in delivering a report on the state of prasa last year, the company’s chief executive officer (ceo) commented that years of sabotage the problems of the brt systems are exacerbated by the poorly run metrorail system. in 2021, vandalism of the metrorail system, cable theft, and the general destruction of the train infrastructure in cape town and the surrounding areas compounded the transport crisis in cape town. a more recent challenge is the cutting of critical fibre optic cables resulting in major delays in operations 56 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w and vandalism have cost prasa more than r4 billion, of which more than a quarter was incurred during lockdown (omarjee, 2021). while passengers in the global north, some parts of asia, and other parts of the world are accessing public transport that is relatively reliable and affordable and that could be regarded as part of the 4ir, public transport in south af rica remains a curse that has been exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. the failed transport revolution was further confirmed by the release of travel statistics by statistics south af rica (statssa) in 2020. about 17,4 million south af ricans walked to their destinations. the taxis are the largest mode of transport used by 10,7 million people; this is followed by 6,3 million people who used cars or trucks as drivers. trains were not a popular mode of transport, except in the western cape and gauteng where 1,6% and 1,5% of household members use this mode of transport, respectively. the survey also reports: ‘train passengers have higher dissatisfaction rates, with the exception of fares, while taxi and bus passengers are particularly dissatisfied with facilities at taxi rank or bus stop, the behaviour of the taxi/bus drivers’ (statssa, 2021: 1). poor access to transport has negative consequences for passengers, drivers, and other road users. proper public transport enhances one’s quality of life as it minimises stress caused by delays in public transport. it also assists in arriving on time at school, university, or at work, which improves productivity. in 2021, numbeo, a company that monitors the cost of living globally, ranked south af rica as the 15th most traffic congested country in the world and reported that south af rican passengers spend 39.39 minutes extra per commute in traffic (numbeo, 2022). on a more positive note, it appears as if platform workers using smartphones have managed to fill what can be regarded as ‘the transport gap’, albeit in the cities and affluent areas. about 30,000 workers in south af rica are involved in various forms of e-hailing platform work (iol, 2021). relying on smartphones regulated by algorithms and gps, which is built upon the sophisticated work of albert einstein, platform workers are able to process and deliver food orders and other goods to customers who would normally have to drive and collect these items themselves. furthermore, passengers can be moved around using the same platforms f rom shopping centres to their homes, for instance. the platforms are owned by uber, bolt, and others – and the workers pay in order to be able to use them (giddy, 2019). it can be argued that this is the only technological innovation that has been witnessed in south af rica in the phase of 4ir. the general failure to realise transportation in south af rica, especially in the context of the debates about 4ir, require some explanation. transport and leadership crises cronin (2006) writes about how the current transport challenges date back to the dark days of apartheid that entailed having black-working class areas in the outskirts of the cities, towns, and areas of economic activities surrounded by road networks and railway tracks. however, in post-apartheid south af rica, cronin (2006) concedes that the building of new houses for the black majority in areas that are far away f rom the urban centres and where people work has entrenched the apartheid geography and exacerbated the transport crisis. the failure of the south af rican state and its agents to deliver was not preordained. in other words, south af rica is a well-resourced and well-endowed country with an abundance of mineral resources. it is thus not a poor country. however, the policy choices made by the current leadership of the country since 1994 have deepened the social and economic divide. furthermore, the ongoing corruption has also diverted the resources that were supposed to be used to build the transport inf rastructure to individual leaders of the ruling party and their networks. states and sub-states, such as china, taiwan, hong kong, singapore, malaysia, mauritius, and south korea, were all colonised, but have been able to invest in research and development, enabling them to develop transport systems that are reliable and affordable (goldin, 2019). therefore, the transport crisis in south af rica is, in large part, a result of poor leadership of the state where the government has failed to mobilise resources to maintain the transport system inherited f rom the apartheid regime and to develop a new system of transport that subverts the apartheid geography that removed the working class and the poor f rom economic zones. 57v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w responses to the failed transport revolution sociologically and politically speaking, one cannot write any balanced narrative of the failed transport revolution in south af rica without examining the role played by various social agents and actors capable of shaping public transport policy and action, especially in the context where there is public and academic discourse on the need for south af rica to move towards the 4ir when the country has not even begun to use the transport technologies of the 2ir to move people around. the state and its various agencies are supposed to maintain the road, rail and transport inf rastructure, which includes traffic lights. however, potholes, dysfunctional traffic lights, traffic congestions, traffic lights and cable theft, road accidents and fatalities seem to occur on a regular basis. the transport crisis is exacerbated by the lack of investment to improve the road and transport inf rastructure. in 2022, mbalula addressed the road construction and maintenance indaba, highlighting that about r75 billion needs to be invested over the next five years to prevent the decay of the country’s roads. mbalula further stated that the total paved and gravel network at provincial level is 184,816 km; the biggest problem is that 40% of this network has reached its life cycle. according to mbalula, about eight tenths of the road network has surpassed its 20-year life cycle (cokayne, 2022). the state has intensified the transport crisis through alleged cases of corruption and incompetence. for example, before 2015 prasa planned to spend r7 billion (about r3.5 billion paid in 2015) to purchase trains which were too tall for the country’s railway system (open secrets, 2021). the alleged corruption in prasa, which also controls metrorail, must have had a direct impact on the passenger rail system. the national travel survey published in 2021 revealed that: ‘the number of people who regularly used trains dropped by 80% since 2013…the average time of a trip on a train has increased by 45% over the past eight years to 107 minutes’ (cited in daniel, 2021: 1). one of the reasons that the working class and poor communities have very poor access to public transport is because their organisations, such as trade unions and community structures, are extremely weak and unable to pressurise the state sufficiently to promote access to safe and reliable public transport. however, there are attempts by organisations like the #unitebehind, a coalition of organisations formed in 2017 seeking to use protests and the law to struggle for accessible, safe transport for the working class, particularly women and children. the organisation also uses the tools of the 3ir, such as facebook, the internet, and whatsapp to achieve its aims (#unitebehind, 2017: 1). conclusion as shown in this article, numerous countries, including japan, china, germany, singapore, hong kong, and many others are enjoying sophisticated public transport systems that enable workers, students, the general public, and tourists to f reely move around the cities and towns (pallavi, 2019). these countries have what can be regarded as 4ir transport systems with functional bullet trains and other complex transport systems, while south af rica faces its own ‘dark age’ with no end in sight. these aforementioned countries have viable and expansive national systems of innovation that have developed, adopted, and advanced their technological and economic paradigms. they are enjoying the benefits of endogeneity and progressive systems of innovation with adequate public and private expenditures in research and development consistently over long histories. numerous countries, including japan, china, germany, singapore, hong kong, and many others are enjoying sophisticated public transport systems that enable workers, students, the general public, and tourists to freely move around the cities and towns (pallavi, 2019). these countries have what can be regarded as 4ir transport systems with functional bullet trains and other complex transport systems, while south africa faces its own ‘dark age’ with no end in sight. 58 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w however, south af rica is unable to even deliver the transport technology of the 2ir in the form of electric trains and diesel buses to move people efficiently around its towns and cities. the national travel survey of 2020 indicates that south af rican commuters are abandoning the trains because they are extremely unreliable and inefficient, causing them to be late for work and school. instead, unsafe taxis are the dominant mode of transport (daniel, 2021). it appears as if attempts to reform transport for the better require organising civil society structures, such as #unitebehind, around concrete demands that include additional investment in safe public transport and transport inf rastructure. in the context of decay, potholes, vandalism, and cable theft, localised community organising and vigilance is the only possible solution that can help improve public transport in south af rica. commuter associations are another possible organisational response that can help commuters negotiate fares with the train, bus, and taxi authorities. taxi violence and general lawlessness associated with the taxi industry require a state that can use its powers to protect commuters, especially women and children using this mode of transport. to sum up the points made in this article, public transport and its current crisis has entrenched racial and class inequity in south af rica because the black population in the townships and rural areas do not have access to quality public transport – even after 28 years of democracy. vandalism, theft of transport inf rastructure, and the lack of adequate investment in public transport are most likely to entrench inequality with regard to access to transport. acknowledgements the research on which this article is based was funded by the national  institute for the humanities and the social sciences (nihss) and the chinese academy of social sciences (cass). however,  the views  expressed in the article are not those of the funders.  references acerta. 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(2017). ‘implications of the fourth industrial age on higher education’. the thinker, 73: 10–15. 29v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african what does the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) portend for the future of political organising and mobilising? as “a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds...a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things, 3d printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies…” (mcginnis, 2018), the 4ir is primarily concerned with the inchoate transformation of the production of goods and services, resulting from the application of a new wave of technological innovations. definitions such as these cement the narrow idea that the 4ir is principally about industry, when in reality it is a revolution that goes beyond economic activity concerned with the manufacturing of goods and services. the fusion of advances in technological innovations has implications for how we construct space, and – perhaps most importantly – how we organise society. while research on the implications of the 4ir on businesses is surging, there is little on its impact on political organisations, especially as it pertains to mobilisation and organising. using the gauteng young communist league of south af rica (yclsa) as an example, this article fills this political organising and mobilising in the age of the fourth industrial revolution by kgabo morifi © s to ck .a d o b e .c o m gauteng young communist league a reflection on the of south africa t h e t h i n k e r30 pan-african void by demonstrating the ways in which political mobilisation and organisation have been impacted by the 4ir, and offers ideas on how political organisations can sustain their relevance in an age where traditional mobilising and organising methods are fast losing relevance. the 4ir and south africa inevitably, the 4ir has become the mantra of every policy initiative and political event in south af rica. so central is this idea to our current political and economic discourse that the president of the republic, cyril ramaphosa, established a presidential commission to “identify relevant policies, strategies and action plans that will position south af rica as a competitive global player” in the context of the 4ir (the presidency, 2019). while the department of communications, telecommunications and postal services is the coordinator of the government’s 4ir programme, all national departments have – to varying degrees – incorporated it into their work. the south af rican government has also dedicated resources towards research and development, with the 4ir at the centre of initiatives and businesses that are being funded and incentivised through mechanisms such as tax reduction. but while the labour and trade union movements, as well as the political forces of the left, recognise the inevitability and necessity of the march of technological advancement, they have posed various important questions about what the implications of the 4ir will be on labour and the working class if no intervention is made to protect the poor. in its statement at the sixth plenary session of the 14th  national congress central committee, the south af rican communist party (sacp) conceded that new technologies have the possibility to “advance productivity, release humanity f rom repetitive toil, improve living standards, reduce the working day and provide innovative solutions to many developmental and social challenges” (2018). however, the statement also contented that – in the context of capitalistdriven profit maximisation – the competitive struggle for hegemony in the 4ir is likely to widen inequalities, reduce net employment, and relocate value-added production to the major areas of consumption in the developed world. similar arguments have been made by various academics and political commentators evidently, much of the support and criticism of the 4ir centres on industry and the economy. this narrow focus distorts the totality of the impact of 4ir on humanity. more than this, it does not reflect meaningfully on how the 4ir has impacted on the organisation of society, and how this organisation has significant implications for the present and future of south af rica and the global community. the gauteng yclsa provides an important glimpse into how advanced technologies have impacted on the nature of political mobilisation and organising, and how such changes challenge the complexity of political work in our evolving society. political mobilisation and organisation in the context of the 4ir political organisation is a significant feature of south af rica’s apartheid history and, just as significantly, its present reality. our resistance and liberation struggles were anchored on the establishment of national liberation movements that mobilised masses of the oppressed and organised communities into a fighting force against repressive regimes. because of the nature of south af rican society in the apartheid era, as well as the elementary stage of technological advancement at the time, political mobilisation depended largely on personal and physical recruitment and engagement. strategies such as door-to-door campaigning, which are still being used today, were the primary methods of mobilisation. organising was also wholly dependent on political activists making direct personal contact and using physical spaces as assembly points. these mobilisation and organisation strategies entailed significant challenges. the apartheid government instituted various mechanisms to crack down on political organisers, including but not limited to the establishment of legislation the fusion of advances in technological innovations has implications for how we construct space, and – perhaps most importantly – how we organise society. while research on the implications of the 4ir on businesses is surging, there is little on its impact on political organisations. 31v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african attacking the right to assembly, as well as the banning of political organisations. this effectively weakened the capacity of political organisations, but they nonetheless utilised creative means to mobilise people and mount resistance campaigns and initiatives. in post-apartheid south af rica, political organisations continue to utilise these traditional methods of mobilisation and organising. a specific example of this is the yclsa. like all component structures of the mass democratic movement, the yclsa has its roots in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. officially formed in 1922, the yclsa was banned in 1950 (along with the sacp) under the suppression of communism act. after more than five decades of inactivity following this ban, the yclsa was relaunched in 2003 in vanderbijlpark. at this 1st national congress of its re-establishment, the organisation adopted a constitution which would be amended several times. my reflections for this article are based on the latest constitutional amendment. section 6 of the yclsa constitution states that every member, irrespective of position, “must be organised into a branch, cell or other specific unit…and must participate in regular activities of the yclsa”. in terms of duties and responsibilities, members of the organisation are expected to “maintain close ties with the masses of young people, disseminate the views of the yclsa and sacp among them, and consult with them when problems arise, keep the yclsa informed of their views and demands and defend and revolutionise their legitimate interests”. the constitution also outlines a key responsibility towards effective organisation as participating in the “discussion of questions concerning yclsa policies at yclsa meetings and in yclsa publications” (2013). the constitution of the yclsa recognises that members of the organisation must keep close ties to the masses of young people, thereby making allowance for the possible use of advanced technologies in the administration of the organisation’s political work. however, such a possibility is not concretised. in fact, the contention that yclsa members must be organised into branches and other specific units is reflective of traditional political mobilisation and organising. branches, which are basic units of political organisations, are constituted through organising groups of people within the same geographic locales. these are determined by administrative boundaries, which ironically largely continue to resemble the colonial and apartheid legacy of segregated human settlement. herein lies the problem. the 4ir has rendered obsolete the definition of community as people living within the same place. the advance in information communication technologies (icts) has made communication easier and more flexible. the internet of things (iot), a key feature of the 4ir, has further obliterated traditional geo-political boundaries. we live in an age of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals and people that are provided with unique identifiers (uids). we have the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-tocomputer interaction, effectively allowing people who are continents apart to co-exist as if they were living in the same room. in this evolved society, the idea of a branch must necessarily be revisited. ronald lamola, south af rican minister of justice and correctional services, has argued that the various engagements happening on social media platforms such as facebook, twitter and whatsapp are calling for a change in the way that the anc organises. lamola has also pointed out that traditional ways of meeting are withering away, and that this necessitates the organisation devising innovative ways of capturing the imaginations of the people – particularly young people who are deeply invested in the arena of technology (2019). minister lamola is correct. the implications for mobilisation and organising are particularly significant for an organisation like the yclsa, which is devoted to the interests of the young people it seeks to mobilise. research suggests the 4ir has rendered obsolete the definition of community as people living within the same place. the advance in information communication technologies (icts) has made communication easier and more flexible. the internet of things (iot), a key feature of the 4ir, has further obliterated traditional geo-political boundaries. t h e t h i n k e r32 pan-african that the youth are the biggest consumers of technology, and therefore the use of technology should necessarily be a key strategy in mobilising this sector of society. perhaps of greater importance, the use of advanced technology can also address one of the greatest dangers to south af rica’s young democracy: young people’s dissociation f rom voting. a recent report by groundup investigated the reasons why nearly 10 million eligible voters (more than 6 million of whom are youth) did not cast their ballots at the 2019 general elections. dissatisfaction with the lack of service delivery was at the top of the list for most, but the lack of technological flexibility was another contributing factor. one interviewee stated that he did not vote because he needed to be at work on voting day, but that he would have voted if technology had made allowance for him to do so. the discussion around the use of advanced technology for political mobilisation in the context of voting is not new. professor bruce watson, head of the department of information science at stellenbosch university, has argued in the past that south af rica needs to introduce e-voting. stellenbosch university is one of five universities that are part of the centre for artificial intelligence research, a research network which has investigated the role of artificial intelligence (ai) in elections. professor watson contends that ai could increasingly be used to identify voters at polls through facial recognition (omarjee, 2019). additionally, ai could also be used for data analytics to identify any strange patterns in voting outcomes at a voting station. big data could also play a crucial role in elections. the term ‘big data’ refers to analysing, systematically extracting information f rom, and dealing with data sets that are too large or complex for traditional  data-processing application software. predictive analytics could aid us in the development of models that could encourage political engagement amongst people who would otherwise not participate in political processes, thereby strengthening and safeguarding our democratic aspirations and future. however, as cautioned by mashupye maserumule – professor of public affairs at the tshwane university of technology – technology as a tool can optimise voting experience, but should not be conflated with what really makes people vote. maserumule argues that “the reason to vote is a function of consciousness” (2019). in other words, galvanizing youth to vote should entail mapping their social reality. messaging should attract young people, and technology should be used to communicate political messages. technology f rom this point of view can be seen as a means, not an end. this should not be misconstrued as underplaying the role of technology in politics, but rather as an attempt to underscore its significance in influencing political organising and mobilisation. as pointed out earlier, the context for this reflection is the yclsa in gauteng, based on my experience as its provincial secretary. why should gauteng’s yclsa be at the forefront of using technology for political organisation and mobilisation? gauteng is the nerve centre of south af rica’s economy – contributing to a third of the country’s economic output in 2018. according to stats sa, the province’s economy is roughly the same size as that of morocco, if we use nominal gross domestic product (gdp) figures as a comparison. if gauteng were to become its own independent state, it would have the seventh biggest economy on the continent – surpassing regional economic powerhouses such as kenya and tanzania. gauteng’s income per capita surpasses that of nigeria, af rica’s biggest economy and most populous country (stats sa, 2019). gauteng’s economy, however, has transitioned f rom being industry-based to being knowledge-based (as can be said for the rest of south af rica), and therefore cannot be understood without an appreciation of technology and its evolution. the birth of gauteng’s industrial economy can be traced back to the minerals revolution, specifically the discovery of gold at the research suggests that the youth are the biggest consumers of technology, and therefore the use of technology should necessarily be a key strategy in mobilising this sector of society. 33v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african a post-productivist economy is characterised to a great degree by a decline in the primary sector and a growth in the quaternary sector, comprised of industries such as e-commerce, research and development, media, information technology, financial planning and design. this shift in the economy has greatly impacted the construction of space in gauteng. witwatersrand ore fields that straddle the former transvaal and orange free state provinces. the emergence of industry-scale mining that emerged f rom this revolution not only resulted in significant demographic shifts owing to migrant labour, but also to the re-organisation of space. it can be correctly argued that the minerals revolution set parameters for the establishment of colonialand apartheid-era cities in gauteng, which gave birth to the post-apartheid cities in which we negotiate our existence today. but another reality of this revolution is that it introduced new technologies that would ultimately change the nature of the economy and land use. there are two critical points arising from this brief history. firstly, the minerals revolution led to industry-scale mining that necessitated the use of migrant labour. the migrant labour system was the birth of urbanisation in gauteng as we know it today. the yclsa, an organisation that is internationalist in orientation, has the unique opportunity of recruiting in a province that is cosmopolitan, with a demographic make-up that is reflective of a long history of migration. the use of technology can tap into this critical human resource. but such technology must, first and foremost, be cemented as an alternative to traditional forms of mobilising. secondly, it is important to note that the development of inf rastructure was critical to the rapid development of the gauteng economy – a development that continues today. the south af rican economy has transitioned to being knowledge-based, with the economies of urbanised provinces such as gauteng being characterised as post-productivist. a postproductivist economy is characterised to a great degree by a decline in the primary sector and a growth in the quaternary sector, comprised of industries such as e-commerce, research and development, media, information technology, financial planning and design. this shift in the economy has greatly impacted the construction of space in gauteng. the middle-class population that works in the quaternary sector has unique demands in terms of housing, transport and other services. the growth in security in the city’s residential areas is reflective of this. in a province where traditional methods of political mobilisation, such as door-to-door canvassing, are being undermined by security estates and gentrified neighbourhoods, technology is the only option for mobilisation and organising. our work as organisers in the yclsa has indicated that in a province like gauteng, so advanced in its economy and its technologies, political mobilisation must evolve if the organisation is to maintain relevance. more innovative use of technologies – including but not limited to information technologies, big data and iot – must be explored, or we run the risk of not just being left behind by the young people we seek to mobilise, but being rendered an extraneous organisation. we are grappling with this reality with the full awareness that technology is a means to optimise political processes. however, we must also bear in mind that it cannot be used to abdicate our political responsibility to map social realities and galvanize young people into political participation. ■ references lamola, r. (2019). unpublished keynote address delivered at the ‘impact of 4ir on the economy’ political seminar hosted by the af rican national congress (anc) regional executive committee (rec), johannesburg, 25th november 2019. maserumule, m. (2019). where is our youth being led? the star late edition [online]. available at: https://www.pressreader.com/south-af rica/the-starsouth-af rica-late-edition/20190621/281921659574208 (accessed?) mcginnis, d. (2018). what is the fourth industrial revolution? salesforce blog [online]. available at: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2018/12/ what-is-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-4ir.html omarjee, l. (2019). e-voting: which countries use it, where has it failed and why? fin24 [online]. available at: https://www.fin24.com/economy/evoting-which-countries-use-it-where-has-it-failed-and-why-20190510 sacp, (2018). statement of the sixth plenary session of the sacp 14th national congress central committee. polity [online]. available at: https://www.polity. org.za/article/sacp-statement-of-the-sixth-plenary-session-of-the-sacp14th-national-congress-central-committee-2018-11-26 stats sa, (2019). if south af rica’s provinces were independent states. department of statistics, south af rica [online]. available at: http://www. statssa.gov.za/?p=11092 the presidency, (2019). president appoints commission on fourth industrial revolution. the presidency of the republic of south af rica [online]. available at: http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/ president-appoints-commission-fourth-industrial-revolution yclsa, (2013). yclsa constitution and code of conduct, as amended at the 2nd national council, 25-28 july 2013. unisa [online]. available at: https://www.unisa.ac.za/static/myunisa/content/student%20affairs%20 &%20src/documents/ycl%20constitution.pdf 65v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 book review in pursuit of dignity is the unusual autobiography of our erstwhile deputy minister of basic education, mohamed enver surty. the author served in government for twenty five years with distinction, and can be justly proud of a distinguished career both as a lawyer and as a government minister. the autobiography is a staid and prosaic account of the author’s life story and his contribution to the bill of rights, which was successfully embedded in the south af rican constitution, representing the nation’s ideal of a non-sexist, non-racial and just society. by all accounts, he has done sterling work in this regard. mohamed enver surty’s in pursuit of dignity by hussain savant t h e t h i n k e r66 book review surty displays extraordinary emotional intelligence throughout his various careers as a lawyer, politician, and government minister. as a muslim, his faith informs his book and the values that he espouses. there is also no doubt that his behaviour as a lawyer and politician has been shaped by his islamic beliefs. whereas the writer of fiction often transmutes his personal experiences into stories, the writer of autobiography sometimes inevitably transmutes his stories into personal experiences, although this is not true in surty’s case. the notion of “dignity” in the book’s title operates on the existential, the constitutional, and the political levels simultaneously. in the new south af rica, it does not exist in a vacuum and must be understood in terms of its “pursuit”. “pursuit” here refers to the legal attempts to embed this notion of “dignity” in the new constitution. in the chapter entitled “human dignity as a pre-eminent value”, we learn that it was the late dullah omar who recommended the inclusion of “dignity” in the constitution, and that it was surty who advised that “…it would best serve as an overarching value over all rights. it would also be included in the limitation clause and the interpretation clause and in so doing permeate all rights” (2019). surty displays extraordinary emotional intelligence throughout his various careers as a lawyer, politician, and government minister. as a muslim, his faith informs his book and the values that he espouses. there is also no doubt that his behaviour as a lawyer and politician has been shaped by his islamic beliefs. as far as autobiographies go, in pursuit of dignity is a highly original book, with a specifically postmodern narrative technique and structure. whilst surty does not share the postmodern doctrine, the composition of his work leaves no doubt that he has espoused its method. the book’s introduction lays bare both the intention of the work, together with a brief outline of its structure. surty hopes that his “…stories will reach the children of the constitution because they carry the hope of a new world and they are the final arbiters of the legacy that his generation has bequeathed them” (2019). a lawyer by profession, surty also completed an llm in constitutional litigation as well as a postgraduate certificate in higher education. an official description of surty’s career on the south af rican government’s website states that: “he was a member of the management committee of the constitutional assembly and negotiator for the anc on the bill of rights for the period 1994 to 1996.  in parliament, mr surty participated in the following select committees: justice, safety and security, constitutional affairs, and local government and administration” (2020). surty prefers to describe his experiences as “stories”. this is probably his way of not only distancing himself f rom the atheistic postmodern movement, but also of fulfilling a deep desire to become a writer, springing forth f rom his early years. whereas the writer of fiction often transmutes his personal experiences into stories, the writer of autobiography sometimes inevitably transmutes his stories into personal experiences, although this is not true in surty’s case. fiction is occluded in such a case, “mixing memory with desire” (in the famous words of t.s. eliot), as surty struggles to transmit his life story onto the printed page. accordingly, the book is divided into three distinct sections. as surty outlines: “in the first section i reflect on my early learning years – school, university, finding love and the confusion that overtakes the search to understand my place in the world…the second section deals with moments in my career as a lawyer and my participation in civic affairs in my hometown of rustenburg. this formative period did much to prepare me for the gruelling public life made so much easier by the fond embrace of comrades…the third section looks at some of my memorable times in politics, first in the making of the constitution, then in parliament a senator and later chief whip, and finally in the executive as deputy minister and former minister of justice” (2019). it should also be mentioned that surty is a grandson of suliman m. nana, former head of the transvaal indian congress during the 1930s and 67v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 book review surty has therefore not written a straightforward, linear autobiography, but has instead utilised a structure to mirror his consciousness of his life’s events in order to faithfully express the facts that have made up the salient features of his life. 40s. surty is thus the inheritor of an innate political and constitutional talent, of which his amazing grandfather would have been justifiably proud. surty’s narrative plunges into the remote past at the most appropriate and unexpected moments, thus surreptitiously weaving together with delicate artistry the stories of his childhood, youth and manhood, in an artistic attempt to achieve a sense of the unity of a life already lived, without any perceptible hiatuses between the various events of his life. surty has therefore not written a straightforward, linear autobiography, but has instead utilised a structure to mirror his consciousness of his life’s events in order to faithfully express the facts that have made up the salient features of his life. chapter 2 (“swearing in”) provides an excellent example of surty’s narrative technique. in it, surty writes about travelling to cape town with his family, on the occasion of his swearing-in as a newly appointed senator. the transition f rom this past reminiscence to an even deeper past is skilfully executed: “i felt a great sense of relief after i had taken the oath. i was more than ready to take up the new challenge. i was forty and brimming with energy. the chamber was spotless, not even a speck of dust could be seen on the furniture or on the floor…it was then that my mind turned to my childhood years…” (2019) the perception of an absence of dust in the senate chamber makes surty think about his childhood years in “mosenthal, also known as bosspruit…some twenty km north-west of rustenburg”, an area where there was a plenitude of dust (2019). this description is then followed by vivid descriptions of his childhood and early youth which are a delight to read. in section two of the book, we find surty ensconced in his own legal office in the city of rustenburg during the height of the apartheid era, living amongst members of the indian muslim community. here we are provided with three examples of his excellent litigation technique and a strong affirmation of the need for consultation, whether at the pre-trial stage or with members of the then nationalist government. he comes across as a highly skilful and intelligent lawyer and a respected member of his community, without any self-conceit. in these passages he projects humility, self-confidence and dignity, underscoring the title of his book. the book also details how surty managed to persuade the then department of community development to authorise the building of a shopping centre on strategic parts of the rustenburg mosque property, thereby allowing members of the indian community to rent premises that were to be allocated to whites only during the apartheid era. this is reminiscent of similar successes carved out by his maternal grandfather, suliman m. nana, and makes highly interesting reading. surty, like his late grandfather, demonstrates an inability to be flustered. moreover, his great secret as a human being and his success as a writer is the result of his respectful, humble and dignified tone towards whomever he may be addressing. added to this is his uncompromising integrity, as well as his selfconfessed “pragmatism”. the third section of the book deals with his political career, giving readers unique insight into the inner workings of government. as minister of basic education, surty openly declared that outcomes based education (obe) was “dead”. as an alternative, he declared that more emphasis was to be placed on “literacy and numeracy”, as these were the foundational cornerstones of any successful education. he is to be commended for this. he also correctly perceived the philosophical underpinnings of obe, without mentioning the names of the philosophers who had provided the impetus for the movement. for those keen on constitutional law and the inner workings of the south af rican government, this book is an excellent introduction to the confluence of law and politics. ■ references south af rican government, (2020). mohamed enver surty, mr. south af rican government [online]. available at: https://www.gov.za/aboutgovernment/contact-directory/mohamed-enver-surty-mr surty, m. (2019). in pursuit of dignity. johannesburg: national awqaf foundation of south af rica. 10 a new black optimism? abstract for all the opportunistic and/or pathological expressions of black life today, and the celebratory glow which surrounds it, there remains an art that is irreducible to the conflicts of its time, even when it galvanises its urgencies. in this paper i note the exceptionality of henry ossawa tanner, who captured the tenderness and profundity of familial love, and the importance of mutual care—a deep humanitarian seam which ran counter to the racism of the time. i point to the missteps of titus kaphar and kehinde wiley, the ingenuity of kerry james marshall, the sublimity of lynette yiadom boake. finally, and fundamentally, i ask you to reconsider the persistently misunderstood and misperceived south af rican painter nelson makamo. if his children possess an oneiric quality, it is not because they are projected fantasies, but because they are dreams realised in this future-present moment—as treacherous as it is generative. by ashraf jamal | peer reviewed special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 there is no doubt that at this historical moment, contemporary af rican art, and art of the af rican diaspora, has assumed a preeminent place in western taste. it would seem that there is no greater currency in the contemporary art world than black skin. i refer here not only to the content of art – black bodies, black faces – but to the artists who are now lauded. witness the meteoric rise of amoako boafo, the celebratory reappraisal of kerry james marshall, or the iconic stature of zanele muholi – none other than a black madonna. interest is growing rapidly, the market expanding, with black portraiture now also infiltrating the asian market. as to what this new economy signifies, i cannot quite say. i remain unclear and unresolved in my view, though the hyper-visibility of black artists, and black portraiture in particular, is indisputable. a case of reconciliation? a need to right a historical wrong, reboot the art canon, ensure diversity and inclusivity? certainly. for doubtless, we are dealing with a seismic shift in the art world, rather than a mere trend. beneath the exploded view that is black portraiture lies an existential quest to rethink the human. as steve bantu biko declared in i write what i like, af rica would give the world a ‘more human face’ (1987: 47). af rica, and the af rican diaspora, is not the last f rontier of the art world but its f rontline. as such, it is a critical matter of concern, a vital way to rethink the obscenity of colonialism, which persists today. to speak of ‘a new black optimism,’ therefore, is to address the reconfiguration of the black body, while at no point suppressing the complexity of its emergence. art is never a single story, never an innocent representational economy. what especially interests me – in the thicket of contesting strategies and expressions – is the work of artists able to simultaneously embrace and transfigure the burden of black history. in this regard, the painters henry ossawa tanner and nelson makamo are exemplary. it is the stories they tell, the ways in which those visual narratives are put together, that deserve our attention. neither is an exhibitionist, neither is a reactive or aggrieved polemicist. rather, theirs is a subterranean force. what particularly struck me, on encountering their paintings, was their treatment of children who, historically, have suffered profoundly within a western optic and painting tradition. in this regard, it is the painting of black children that assumes centre-stage. i have addressed this matter at greater length in ‘giants’ (2017) and ‘children of the dream’ (2022), in which i wager that the idealisation of children is all too often accompanied by perversity, certainly in their rearing in the west. the repressive cliché, ‘children should be seen and not heard,’ is but one of many aspects of systemic cruelty. clear delineations of space, power, and the body (which either possesses rights or does not), are central to systemic control. tracking systemic oppression f rom the 18th century onwards, michel foucault notes: ‘schools serve the same functions as prisons and mental institutions – to define, classify, control, and regulate people’ (saneei, 2018). this is also the case regarding systemic racism. by foregrounding the corruptive treatment of all those deemed other – children, blacks, the insane and criminal – we begin to see the neurotic power required to standardise normalcy, whiteness, and by extension, the critical role that aesthetics – and a cultural economy more generally – plays in the consolidation of a series of punitive binaries designed to ensure the perverse valorisation and damnation of those who occupy the margins. for if children are routinely abused, they are as routinely exalted and enshrined. this paradoxical damnation of children, and their exploitation as a trope for futurity, reaffirms the insidious nature of adult authority – the child, in the circuitry of human exchange, rendered forever the surrogate, adjunct, oracle, boon, and curse of the adult. that the same can be said for the construction and representation of the black person and body is, if we concur with foucault’s economy of othering, unsurprising. however, as i’ve noted at the outset, we are witnessing a profound ethical shift, a reappraisal of centuries-old economies of systemic oppression. in my search to find wholesome or inspiring depictions of black children in literature and art, i came across two radically contrasting representations: titus kaphar’s enough about you (2016) – provoked by an 18th-century painting of elihu yale, his white cabal, the second duke of devonshire, lord james cavendish, mr tunstal, and ‘an enslaved servant’ – and henry ossawa tanner’s the banjo lesson (1893). both paintings are concerned with the black child, but their renderings – the causes for their becoming – signal a forked path that we cannot ignore. kaphar’s painting is more reaction than inspiration, a rerouting and hijacking of a colonial painting in which white sovereignty is the focal point, amplified against the 11 special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 12 image of an enchained black child. kaphar merely inverts this relationship. he repaints the white cabal, then crumples the canvas, rendering the self-aggrandising white presence proportionately indiscernible, while the black child, lost in a shadow world, assumes centre-stage. this is the received, politically correct reading. however, in kaphar’s reactive assault whiteness retains its grip, thereby challenging the integrity of the manoeuvre. the f ramed black boy, his chains replaced by a ruffled collar, requires its foil. we remain trapped in a dialectic in which blackness, to assume self-presence, requires whiteness. this is kaphar’s point. as he observes in his ted talk (2017), white mythology is an inescapable dimension of black being – its doppelgänger – which is why it cannot quite be erased or redacted; why it can only be ‘amended.’ this supposes that art, for kaphar, is legislative – a fairer, more accurate reflection of changing circumstances. that his painting replaced the original at yale university signals the defining mood and ethos of this era – revisionism. however, in my mind, doubt persists: how effective is a strategy that remains reactive and rhetorical? during his ted talk, kaphar paints over a copy of frans hals’ family group in a landscape (c. 1648) with a thin layer of white paint, leaving the black boy unpainted. the lesson he performs is yet another instance of this reactive and polemical strategy, a further redaction, or ‘amendment,’ in which whiteness persists – under erasure – while blackness is viewed as a revelatory story – because of this erasure. it is the inexistence of black life across history that justifiably perturbs kaphar. there are more books on the history of silk, he notes, than on the presence of black people in western painting. of the re-envisioned black boy in enough about you, kaphar remarks that he ‘wanted to find a way to imagine a life…that the historical painting had never made space for in the composition,’ the child’s ‘desires, dreams, family, thoughts, hopes’ (2017). while a reasonable and sound wager, its execution remains, to me at least, a foiled exercise. the child remains a ploy. i say this because kaphar reactively (if justly) chooses to remind us that the indistinction of the black body, the negation of its reality, is not only a historical phenomenon, but achingly current. his decision to rectify an erasure is therefore not only a critique of the past but a contemporary revisionary exercise. however, despite the artist’s desire to humanise his subject, the black child remains a concept-conceit-idea. enough about you may strive to shift the conversation, but, despite its error-stricken celebration, it remains little else. this is not a failing on the part of the artist alone, it is a widely deployed reactive strategy that is ideological and material and, as such, limiting. black portraiture is consumed by this reflexive expression of black self-presence – a presence at a remove, as though gazing upon itself, devoid of a generative essence. as frantz fanon and achille mbembe have never failed to remind us, the black body exists beyond the pale of history, unheeded, unrecognised, and, as ralph ellison reminded us, invisible. the ‘negro’ he writes of in 1952 is ‘anonymous, and hence beyond public concern.’ ‘i am an invisible man,’ ellison resumes, ‘simply because people refuse to see me…when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me’ (2001: xxix). this is kaphar’s grievance. my point, however, is that the strategy he adopts is deficient. consciousness is an inadequate means with which to fill a vacuum. nevertheless, in a culture consumed by consciousness, an artist who alerts us to what we already know and presents a collective problem in a clever package – as predictive activism – will likely triumph. as noted at the outset, today there is a plethora of black success stories, painters in particular who have been globally celebrated because they have black por traiture is consumed by this reflexive expression of black self-presence – a presence at a remove, as though gazing upon itself, devoid of a generative essence. as frantz fanon and achille mbembe have never failed to remind us, the black body exists beyond the pale of histor y, unheeded, unrecognised, and, as ralph ellison reminded us, invisible. special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 13 tapped our guilt and done so through formal means which are pronouncedly decorative. kehinde wiley’s portraits are an obvious example. for all their selfawareness and calculated posturing, they are devoid of life, as ephemeral as the aesthetic they refashion – pop/rococo – though wiley does make claim to realism which, to my mind, is none other than a caricature of a reality affect, and, as such, in this dehumanised time, immensely and misguidedly popular. wiley’s riff on anthony van dyck’s painting – charles i at the hunt (c. 1635) as le roi à la chasse (2006) – typifies this manoeuvre. sarcastically appropriative, it diminishes the tradition it inherits. tongue-in-cheek, it reveals art as pastiche, disguises an existential disconnect with mirthless humour. inversely, one can argue that wiley’s take is a critique of power – in this case, white imperial power. to my mind, however, it lacks (or represses), the flemish artist’s grasp of mortality. van dyck, unlike wiley, was no mere court painter. he understood power’s fallibility, and portraiture’s ability to expose it. this all-too-current vacuity in taste, which i associate with wiley, runs deeper. it signals the taste of our times – the consumerist desire of the body-asobject, a thing of beauty – and, more disturbingly, despite the fetishization of blackness in the arts, the on-going incapacity to sustain a humane grasp of perceived cultural or racial difference. that we insist upon a condition we dub ‘black life’ reveals the grotesquery of a segregated consciousness. if ellison’s insight persists – embodied in the black lives matter movement, in ubiquitous protest signage which reads i am somebody – it is because black people are not seen, not even by black people. this shocking realisation explains the comparative absence of an organic, lived depiction of black life; why it persists as caricature, and why its hysterical self-assertion misses the mark. there are, of course, exceptions to this rule. where wiley spectacularises black life, further amplifying an inessential and anti-essential reality – black life as surplus, as comedic folly, as travesty – kerry james marshall reconciles style, vitalism, and the ordinary. then again, contrast the vacuous glamour of wiley’s work to the portraits painted by lynette yiadom-boakye. if wiley knowingly punctuates the world, yiadom-boakye grasps what eludes most – the urof black life, its humanity. in this regard, it is all the more disturbing to look at wiley’s portrait of yiadom-boakye, in which we see the bespectacled artist, rifle in hand, dead hares all about. it is a funerary and chilling ode to portraiture and landscape painting. ‘we murder to dissect,’ william wordsworth famously remarked in his poem the tables turned (1798). wordsworth’s point? that nature is a greater teacher than books. in the case of wiley, an artist who operates at a troubling remove, nature is little more than an idea and affect, as is the black body. wiley’s is a morbid and posthumous stylisation and vision – simulacral, denatured, fundamentally cauterised, disassociated, alienated, and alienating. john berger echoes this view in his critique of ‘lifeless’ painting which fails to grasp its subject – ‘the result of the painter not having the nerve to get close enough for a collaboration to start. he stays at a copying distance. or, as in mannerist periods like today, he stays at an art-historical distance, playing stylistic tricks which the model knows nothing about’ (2020: 81–82). it seems ironic to me that wiley should choose to paint yiadom-boakye, who is temperamentally wholly unlike him, for she is no mannerist, no pasticheur. rather, after tanner and makamo, yiadom-boakye seeks an idiom that allows for an intimacy that is irreducible to the cognates of systemic oppression, prejudicial projection, or mimicry. theirs is a humanist art, which has received a bad rap in the 20th and 21st centuries, poopooed as a bankrupt enlightenment notion, which it is not. in this nihilistic, pop-driven age, i find it both fascinating and obscene that black power should emerge at the precise moment when white mythology and power exhausts itself. i cannot develop this paradox here, but i will make the following wager: is black portraiture today a pyrrhic victory, and if so, yet another manifestation of a compromised will to life? this is a bleak prognosis. fortunately, there are antidotes – henry ossawa tanner and nelson makamo. painting in the late 19th century, tanner’s expression of black life remains an inspiring anomaly. his paintings of black people defy historical constraints. in this profound regard he is makamo’s progenitor. i make this large claim on a basis that is not technical – they paint differently, tanner’s paintings are more immersive, makamo’s more graphic – but one which is determined by subterranean forces. the link is psychic. in the work of both painters, i discern no irony, no detachment, no dissociated relationship to the body or sensibility. both painters are wholly in the special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 14 world. one painting by tanner in particular struck me as the grail i was looking for, the banjo lesson, painted in 1893. indebted to american realism and french impressionism, the painting began as an illustration for the short story which inspired it, before transforming into a work that is singularly its own. a young black boy sits on the lap of his grandfather, banjo in hand. it is a vision of youth and old-age, the great arc of life. most remarkable, however, is that while tanner’s painting depicts a lesson – be it of youth and old-age, the sanctity of practice, study, duty, love, protection – it does not tell us what to think. unlike kaphar’s self-reflexive morality, or wiley’s blasé irony – both painters still locked within a pathology – tanner liberates the beings he captures. his is an unvarnished tale, f ree of reactive instruction. if, in this revisionist moment, the matter of race is vital in the painting’s assessment, for tanner it was not, or rather, not quite. this is because of the artist’s ambivalent relationship to race as a category for being. ‘in america, i’m henry tanner, negro artist, but in france, i’m “monsieur tanner, l’artiste américaine”’ (khalid, 2020). this split is something tanner could not overcome. that he expresses himself in the third person, at a subjective remove, is telling. tanner explains his approach to the black body as one that is f reed f rom caricature. for him, it is the authenticity of a singular expression that matters. as judith wilson notes, tanner invests his black subjects ‘with a degree of dignity and self-possession that seems extraordinary for the times in which they were painted’ (1992: 40). then, as now, it was far easier to stereotype and commodify blackness – in ways comparable with the diminishment and objectification of women, children, criminals, the insane – because, in doing so, the rationale of those in power, white men, could remain unchecked. as i’ve noted, taking the easy, reactive route has a knock-on effect, because black artists who have inherited a constitutive vacuum unwittingly perform their inexistence in portraits which do little more than dissimulate self-presence. kehinde wiley’s portrait of lynette yiadom-boakye is a case in point. this, however, is not the case in tanner’s banjo lesson. against the dictates of his time, he created one of the most enduring visions of compassion, care, and familial love. immersed in sentiment, it is not sentimental. rather, it expresses a profound lacuna in the historical representation of black life. while an anomalous vision, rare in its honesty and depth and therefore justly celebrated, tanner’s banjo lesson also provides a profound insight into the future. in brief, tanner’s painting, despite being conceived under repressive conditions, emerges as a prophetic marker for the ‘new optimism.’ a century later, this vision is also key to the work of nelson makamo, an artist who, more than any other, has grasped what we fundamentally suppress – the visionary power of childhood. when the filmmaker and director of selma (2014), ava duvernay, was invited to guest edit the february 2019 issue of time magazine, she chose makamo to provide a painting for the cover. if the decision was a canny one, it is because she recognised that the artist is no opportunistic ideologue; that he refuses to treat the black body as something iconic (its idealised inflation the inverse of its caricature); that his understanding of being is irreducible to a historical burden; and that art, to thrive, needs to be f ree f rom bondage. it is this self-same energy that i see in tanner’s painting. the singularity of their respective gifts is best expressed by maya angelou: ‘i’ve learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’ (tunstall, 2014). if feeling is vital, it is because reason cannot overcome our need for human connection. in fact, it is the absence of sentiment and feeling – its dismissal in the name of reason – which has proved damaging. this dismissal is the core of our continued abjection, self-hate, and hatred of others. it is also the root of a cultural phenomenon – black portraiture – which is largely attitudinal and devoid of feeling, none other than a chilling extension and symptom of a gnawing abjection. unchecked and unguided by sentiment, this pain, often disguised as reason, is the foundation for systemic cruelty. it is in this greater context that we must consider the significance and impact of the paintings of tanner and makamo. both can easily fall victim to kenneth clark’s indictment of frans hals, the 17th-century portraitist, as ‘revoltingly cheerful and horribly skilful’ (cumming, 2007). however, time, as it is wont, is changing. from my vantage point, a wileyesque cynicism is on the wane, a kapharesque earnestness de rigueur. however, if tanner and makamo are deserving of our attention it is because their paintings special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 15 live on as a feeling. this was certainly the case with makamo’s time cover. the widespread enthusiasm for makamo’s painting of his bespectacled niece, mapule maoto, has much to do with the sanctity of its subject and the ferocity of its execution. whether or not maoto requires spectacles is by the by, they are a key structural feature which create the distance that affords makamo’s child-subjects their agency and ‘private space’. ‘while we live at a time when division is the norm; when biases and beliefs seem static and immobile… art calls to the optimism within us and beckons us to breathe.’ duvernay’s opening wager in her 2019 time op-ed conveys an irresistible verve and energy. it is against ‘bigotry, poverty, injustice, trauma, trouble’ – against her own ‘feelings of despair and doubt’ – that she sets up a new creative ecology which prioritises ‘hope,’ ‘the proverbial bright side,’ a ‘vital moment’ that comes ‘when we each must understand that the social, political and historical connectedness born of traumatic experiences can and should transform to true…engagement with one another. engagement not steeped in fear and separation, but in shared knowledge, recognition and contentment’ (2019). that said, it is duvernay’s emphasis on art, in the broadest sense, which is the crux. ‘art is worthy of our interrogation and is in fact an antidote for our times’ (2019). the question remains: how does art countermand the narrowness of the time in which it emerges? in makamo’s case, it does so by refusing to succumb to taste, by-passing the political and ideological pressure placed upon it to be representative of the concerns of the time. moreover, it is makamo’s refusal to comply with such dictates – and here he echoes henry ossawa tanner – that enables him to produce a more enduring vision of the sanctity of race and youth as a lived condition, far removed f rom a pathology calculatedly disguised, or any projected idea or fantasy. if makamo’s paintings of black life exude this promise it is because the artist does not succumb to an inherited pathology, insisting that he has personally experienced no psychically disfiguring pain. here i am reminded of koleka putuma’s poem black joy (2017: 13): isn’t it funny that when they ask about black childhood, all they are interested in is our pain. as if the joy-parts were accidental. i write love poems, too. makamo’s paintings are precisely thus – love poems. for him, the ‘joy-parts’ are never ‘accidental’; they are fundamental. that he has become the black posterchild for the black poster-child is the inevitable byproduct of hype, which, in this radically unsettled historical moment, is as ravaged by anxiety as it is hysterically excessive. unsurprisingly, the doubters will see a rockwellian sentimentality in makamo’s faces, while others, attuned to a deeper yet still emergent register, will sense their radicality – a new optimism. while self-absorbed, makamo’s children are wholly in the world. the answer to this disposition lies in an enabling communal inheritance. ‘raised in community, you get to understand community,’ says the artist, who grew up in modimelle, a rural township in limpopo. it is because makamo channels the strength of community that his paintings contain no existential dread, no dissociative complex, no rage or reactive grief. at their core lies the artist’s desire ‘to enlighten, to liberate’1. while it is as yet unclear, we are on the cusp of a new age. as the mexican filmmaker guillermo del toro reminds us in his contribution to the time issue: ‘the most radical and rebellious choice you can make is to special edition ‘while we live at a time when division is the norm; when biases and beliefs seem static and immobile…art calls to the optimism within us and beckons us to breathe.’ duvernay’s opening wager in her 2019 time op-ed conveys an irresistible verve and energy. it is against ‘bigotry, poverty, injustice, trauma, trouble’ – against her own ‘feelings of despair and doubt’ – that she sets up a new creative ecology v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 16 be optimistic’ (2019). it is because we are faced with despair – bigotry, cruelty, hatred – that duvernay, del toro, and makamo have chosen optimism, a choice which, for del toro, is far better than ‘being skeptical by default.’ ‘we seem sophisticated when we say “we don’t believe” and disingenuous when we say “we do”’ (del toro, 2019). this insight reveals the depth of our ironical depravity. in the midst of a global pandemic, and in the face of rising fascism and the threat of a failing neo-liberal democratic vision, it is this newly minted, radical optimism that is slowly and steadily assuming dominance. we see it in the black lives matter and me too movements, in the active desire to rethink social systems and the cultural practice within them, in what nietzsche dubbed a radical transvaluation of values, in what del toro describes as the ‘instinct to inhale while suffocating. our need to declare what ‘needs to be’ in the face of what is’ (2019). for all the opportunistic and/or pathological expressions of black life today, and the celebratory glow which surrounds it, there remains an art that is irreducible to the conflicts of its time, even when it galvanises its urgencies. i have noted the exceptionality of henry ossawa tanner, who captured the tenderness and profundity of familial love, and the importance of mutual care – a deep humanitarian seam which ran counter to the racism of the time. i have pointed to the missteps of titus kaphar and kehinde wiley, alluded to the ingenuity of kerry james marshall and the sublimity of lynette yiadomboakye. finally, and fundamentally, i’ve asked you to reconsider the persistently misunderstood and misperceived south af rican painter, nelson makamo. if his paintings of black children possess an oneiric quality, it is not because they are projected fantasies, but because they are dreams realised in this futurepresent moment – as treacherous and toxic as it is profoundly generative. notes [1] from a conversation with the author. references berger, j. (2020). steps towards a small theory of the visible. london: penguin books. biko, s. (1987 [1978]). i write what i like: a selection of his writings. edited by aelred stubbs c. r. johannesburg/oxford: heinemann. cumming, l. (2007). ‘facial awareness.’ the guardian [online]. available at: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/jun/24/art. del toro, g. (2019). ‘the most radical and rebellious choice you can make is to be optimistic.’ time [online]. available at: www.time. com/5520554/guillermo-del-toro-radical-optimism/. ellison, r. (2001 [1952]). invisible man. london and new york: gardners books. jamal, a. (2017). ‘giants.’ in: in the world: essays on contemporary south af rican art. milan: skira. ———. (2022). ‘children of the dream.’ in: strange cargo: essays on art. edited by sven christian. milan: skira. saneei, s. (2018). ‘opinion: schools act as mental prisons to indoctrinate students.’ reveille [online]. available at: www.lsureveille. com/daily/opinion-schools-act-as-mental-prisons-to-indoctrinatestudents/article_d92a780c-d260-11e8-aef8-cb3d067cb968.html. kaphar, t. (2017). ‘can art amend history?’ ted [online]. available at: www.ted.com/talks/titus_kaphar_can_art_amend_ history?language=en. putuma, k. (2017). collective amnesia. cape town: uhlanga press. wordsworth, w. (2022 [1798]). ‘the tables turned.’ poetry foundation [online]. available at: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45557/thetables-turned khalid, f. (2020). ’henry ossawa tanner, the banjo lesson.’ khan academy [online]. available at: www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ art-1010/american-art-to-wwii/symbolism-america/a/tanner-banjolesson. tunstall, e. (2014). ‘how maya angelou made me feel.’ the conversation [online]. available at: www.theconversation.com/how-maya-angeloumade-me-feel-27328. wilson, j. (1992). ‘lifting the ‘veil’: henry o. tanner’s the banjo lesson and the thankful poor.’ contributions in black studies: a journal of af rican and af ro-american studies, 9(4): 31–54. special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 41 the fourth industrial revolution and the political settlement in south africa’s mining industry abstract l iterature on the advent of 4ir has focused on the disruptive features of 4ir for the workplace and the role 4ir will play in enhancing economic growth and productivity. however, less is written about whether and how 4ir technologies may affect and be affected by the existing political settlement, especially in developing countries like south af rica. we investigate whether and how the adoption of technological advancements associated with 4ir would affect (and be affected by) the political settlements in south af rica’s mining industry. we argue that the displacement of workers can shift the balance of power against organised labour and in favour of mining companies. nonetheless, the impact of 4ir is not predetermined. south af rica’s mining industry is a contested terrain, and the existing political settlement is likely to influence the process, pace, and extent of adopting 4ir technologies. by xichavo alecia ndlovu, zamangwane ngwane, and mmabatho mongae | peer reviewed special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 42 t h e t h i n k e r introduction it is widely acknowledged that technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) may lead to the displacement of workers. the world economic forum (wef) predicts that 75 million jobs may be displaced by 2022. at the same time, technological advancements are expected to create 133 million new roles (schwab, 2018). literature on the advent of 4ir has focused on the disruptive features of 4ir for the workplace and the role 4ir will play in enhancing economic growth and productivity. however, less has been written about whether and how 4ir technologies may affect and be affected by the existing political settlement, especially in developing countries like south af rica. 4ir is broadly described as the era of technological progress fusing the physical, digital, and biological realms. it is also distinguished by its exponential rate of occurrence and by its far-reaching ability to reorganise systems of production, communication, and transport (schwab, 2016: 18). political settlements, on the other hand, describe the distribution of power across relevant organisations (khan, 2018). in this paper, we seek to understand what the adoption of 4ir technologies, and the resulting displacement of workers, could mean for the political settlement in south af rica’s mining industry. we explore the questions of whether and how the adoption of technological advancements associated with 4ir would affect (and be affected by) the political settlements in south af rica’s mining industry. we use the case of south af rica’s mining industry to argue that the wide adoption of technological advancements associated with 4ir has the potential to shift the balance of power in the mining industry. the displacement of workers in the mining industry could weaken trade unions in favour of the already strong mining companies. it would also weaken the alliance between trade unions and the anc government. weakening the alliance has implications for mobilising electoral support nationally and maintaining political power. nonetheless, the impact of 4ir is not predetermined. south af rica’s mining industry is a contested terrain, and the existing political settlement in the mining industry is likely to influence the process, pace, and extent of adopting 4ir technologies. understanding the potential impact of 4ir on the political settlement in south af rica’s mining industry is important for several reasons. first, mining export earnings have contributed to and shaped the country’s economy (antin, 2013). second, the economic rents generated by the industry’s large mining companies have elevated the status of these companies within south af rica’s political-economic landscape, with the distribution of rents triggering contestation (auty, 2006). third, the mining industry is still viewed as an important tool for inclusive economic growth and directly employs half a million people in the context of a 34.4% unemployment rate (stats sa, 2021). the impact of technology on the labour force early views on technology discourse have focused on technological determinism, the idea that changes in technology primarily influence social relations and economic development (heilbroner, 1967). critics of technological determinism argue that the effects of any given technology on society are either mutually reinforcing or depend on how the technology is implemented, as well as on the socio-political context (smith and marx, 1994; scranton, 1995; wajcman, 2002). the advent of 4ir has been littered with literature emphasising the potential impact of 4ir on the labour force. one school of thought relates to the displacement effect of workers by technology. in their seminal paper, autor et al. (2003) argue that technology can displace workers, where workers are engaged in tasks that can be simplified into algorithms for computers to perform (autor et al., 2003: 1322). acemoglu and restrepo (2018), on the other hand, argue that any technological effect on workers depends on the interaction between a ‘displacement effect’ and ‘reinstatement effect’ (acemoglu and restrepo, 2018: 4). the ‘displacement effect’ describes technology taking over work previously done by human labour and the ‘reinstatement effect’ describes the situation where technology creates new tasks where human labour has a comparative advantage over technological applications (acemoglu and restrepo, 2018: 3). as such, they hold that the introduction of technology does not automatically lead to the displacement of workers but rather it is the special focus 43 type and mix of technologies that determines the fate of workers and the re-organisation of the workplace. in 2019, the world bank produced a report, changing nature of work, in which it highlighted two effects of technology on work: changing skills and the emergence of new business models (world bank, 2019: 5). changing skills refers to the increased demand for skilled workers and skills grounded in deep human cognition and lifelong experiences (world bank, 2019: 3–6). such skills include higher-order problem solving, socio-behavioural skills, and predictive adaptability skills such as reasoning (world bank, 2019). the new business model is the creation of new industries and jobs evolving around advanced digital production technologies such as artificial intelligence (ai), robotics, and automation (bughin et al., 2018: 8). the current literature on 4ir takes it as a given that the deployment of technological innovation will be widespread, disrupting the workplace and the role of workers. there lies a gap, however, in the knowledge about how the endogenous features of society, such as the distribution of political or economic power, could shape and be shaped by the impact of 4ir. emphasising the potentially disruptive features of 4ir for workers and the workplace should acknowledge that decisions to adopt any technology should not be left to the logic of the market but must also consider non-market conditions. also, the ‘reinstatement effect’ argument should be approached with caution as any discomfort, even if temporary, to some groups in society can lead to hardship and resistance, especially in developing countries with high unemployment rates (mokyr, 1998). for example, technological innovations may be accompanied by a social response if powerful groups in society do not receive an acceptable distribution of benefits (khan, 2010; frederiksen, 2017). this paper is set out in five parts. the first part evaluates the mining industry’s contribution to employment in south africa. the second part looks at 4ir technology adoption in south africa’s mining industry. the third part defines and describes the political settlement in the mining industry, with an emphasis on four stakeholders: mining companies, the anc-led government, trade unions, and mining communities. the fourth part assesses the potential impact of 4ir on the political settlement and argues that the displacement of workers has the potential to shift the balance of power against organised labour and in favour of mining companies. the paper concludes that the existing political settlement in the mining industry is likely to both be influenced by 4ir, as well as influence the process and extent of the adoption of 4ir technologies. the mining industry’s contribution to employment in south africa south africa is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world and has attracted large foreign investments. it has also created leading global companies such as anglo american, de beers, and goldfields (antin, 2013). the country has over 52 commodities and the worlds’ largest reserves of platinum, manganese, chrome, vanadium, and gold; as well as major coal and iron ore reserves (lane et al., 2015). south africa’s mining industry played a pivotal role in the country’s industrialisation and development. the industry also provided the impetus for the infrastructure that currently supports the more economically significant secondary and tertiary sectors (antin, 2013; hermanus, 2017). the discovery of diamonds in 1867, followed by gold in 1886 on the witwatersrand goldfields, was a turning point in south africa’s political economy that marked the start of the state-led intervention in the recruitment of black labour for the mines (wilson, 2001: 101). the productivity of the mining industry was defined by the employment of cheap black labour from south africa and neighbouring countries. black mineworkers were recruited into physically demanding and dangerous work underground, whilst their white counterparts were organised into skilled secondary roles (mabasa and chinguno, 2018: 304). these in 2019, the world bank produced a report, changing nature of work, in which it highlighted two e� ects of technology on work: changing skills and the emergence of new business models (world bank, 2019: 5). changing skills refers to the increased demand for skilled workers and skills grounded in deep human cognition and lifelong experiences (world bank, 2019: 3–6). special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 44 t h e t h i n k e r features still define the current distribution of power in south africa’s mining industry. the country’s remaining resource base is estimated to be worth over two trillion us dollars, with the platinum group metals (pgms), gold, coal, and iron ore providing the most revenue (antin, 2013; goodman et al., 2019). although the industry is well established, it has several productivity issues. between 2007 and 2017, the industry declined by 4% and mining employment fell from a peak of 518,000 in 2008 to 464,000 in 2017 (goodman et al., 2019). even after experiencing a decline, mining remains an important sector of the economy, contributing between 8% and 10% of south africa’s gdp (vandome and khama, 2021). in recent times, the minerals resources and energy minister, gwede mantashe, has indicated that the mining industry has the potential to contribute 12% to gdp (mantashe, 2021). figure 1 represents the total number of people employed in the mining industry (514,859) by june 2019. employment changes differ by type of mine. the mining of platinum group metal ore employed the largest number of people (198,574; 38,5%), followed by coal and lignite (108,717; 21,1%) and gold and uranium ore (101,993; 19,8%) in 2019 (stats sa, 2019a). in general, employment in the mining industry declined from 538,144 in 2012 to 514,859 in 2019 (a loss of 23,285 jobs) (stats sa, 2019b). the decline in the industry and resulting unemployment are due to several factors, including: ageing mines, deeper mineral ore deposits, and declining mineral grades (goodman et al., 2019). the industry is also facing a dual challenge of high price volatility and high currency volatility. other factors include labour unrest, debates on resource nationalism, higher than inflation wages, escalating energy costs (f rom the electricity provider eskom), inf rastructural bottlenecks, and skills shortages which are driving up the cost of production (antin, 2013). another concern is the growth of renewable energy sources and increasing disinvestment f rom fossil fuels. 4ir technology adoption in south af rica’s mining industry 4ir was popularised by wef chief executive, klaus schwab, in 2016. 4ir is best understood as four broad domains encompassing biotechnology, nanotechnology, new materials technology, and advanced digital production (adp) technology (unido, 2019: 3). within mining, digital technologies are already being utilised in the identification of new reserve ores, enhancing efficiency in extraction activities and the maintenance of sites as well as greening a historically ‘dirty’ industry (bughin et al., 2018: 22). figure 1: employment in the mining industry, 2012–2019 [source: stats sa mining industry report no. 20-01-03, table c, 2019] special focus 45 the world economic forum (wef) white paper on digital transformation in the mining industry highlights the four themes which will characterise the digital transformation of the mine (world economic forum, 2017: 10). figure 2: themes in the digital transformation of mining south africa’s mines are less mechanised, a limitation that should intensify the need for digital transformation (goodman et al., 2019). south africa’s mining industry has had a mixed response to digital transformation. amongst the reasons for the variance is the fact that south africa’s mines are amongst some of the deepest in the world with complex ore bodies, therefore placing limits on the ability to digitise and automate immediately (goodman et al., 2019). another key obstacle is the shortage of a highly-skilled local workforce. south africa had an average progress score of 29.9% for digital skills among the active population for 2019 and 2020 (schwan and zahidi, 2020). two separate surveys of south african mining executives revealed that mining companies were making significant investments into new mining technologies, with a focus on frontline technologies such as augmented and virtual reality (ar/vr), ai and automation (croeser et al., 2020; evans et al., 2021). whilst these frontline technologies are enablers of remote work, enhance worker safety and reduce operational costs, they do not maximise the intelligence of 4ir technologies. technologies such as advanced analytics, machine learning, and advanced analytics allow for human and computersupported analysis, interpretation of data insights and facilitate responsive decision-making (croeser et al., 2020: 8). south af rican mines are investing less in latter technologies. evans et al. (2021) also reveal that 69% of south african mines understand the need for digital transformation and have made investments into specific task-related innovations; however, most of their activities remain in the planning phase (evans et al., 2021: 9). gold fields and anglo american have developed digital transformation strategies and are actively investing in the research and development to realise these. in 2018, gold fields presented their mine of the future which emphasised the establishment of digital culture as the precursor to a digital transformation (bardien, 2018). anglo american has also developed plans for their future smart mining™ aimed at integrating advanced technologies, digitalisation, and environmental sustainability [illustration adapted f rom wef white paper on digital transformation initiative: mining and metals, 2017.] special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 46 t h e t h i n k e r principles to mechanise their mining practices (anglo american, 2021). kumba iron ore, majority-owned by anglo american, is amongst south africa’s largest pit mines. in 2014, it implemented a technology roadmap to improve mine safety and productivity, extend the lifespan of its two mines, and increase shareholder value (anglo american, 2015: 45). their technology roadmap strategy was segmented into three horizons, spanning eight years. under the first horizon (2015–2018), the group’s kolomela mine was fitted with an automated drill that enabled remote mine drilling (cornish, 2016). this new technology improved safety onsite by removing operators from the drilling site and shifting work to a controlling computer screen (cornish, 2016). the mine has also reported improvements in ‘drilling efficiency and drill hole quality, and [aims] to reduce drilling costs by 15%’ (cornish, 2016). exarro’s belfast coal mine in mpumalanga is south africa’s first fully digital mine. the mine was completed in 2019 and boasts, as its key technology, the digital twin simulation (mining review, 2021). digital twin technology duplicates physical mining infrastructure into a virtual simulation, allowing managers to view mining activities live, effect requisite decisions, and increase productivity (mining review, 2021). exarro has committed to hiring locals throughout its construction phase and to investing over $20 million in developing indirect mining business opportunities. however, it is unclear if the mine will create many jobs for local miners, given that its operating activities are highly technical. south africa’s mining industry has generally been slow to adopt digital transformation; however, mining companies consider 4ir technological advancements in their operations and strategic plans. hitherto, south africa’s foray into digital transformation is limited to frontline technologies that complement the work of mine workers without displacing them, and there has been less implementation of advanced analytics technologies. the political settlement in south africa’s mining industry the political settlements framework the definition of political settlements has evolved from a narrow focus on explicit peace bargains and pacts between elites, to a broader analysis of how organisational and political power is organised, maintained, and exercised (cf. di john and putzel, 2009; jones, elgin-cossart and esberg, 2012; behuria, buur, and gray, 2017; khan, 2018; kelsall, 2020). in the latter approach, the concept is commonly defined as ‘a combination of power and institutions that is mutually compatible and also sustainable in terms of economic and political viability’ (khan, 2010: 4). in this paper, political settlements describe the distribution of power across the main stakeholders in the mining industry. the distribution of power is ‘the relative holding power of different groups and organisations contesting the distribution of resources’ (khan, 2010: 1). the source of holding power can be income and wealth. holding power can also be based on the historically-rooted capabilities of groups to mobilise and organise using various resources, such as ideologies, identity politics, and other cleavages (khan, 2018: 645). powerful groups or organisations need to have the capacity to engage and survive conflicts and impose costs on others whilst absorbing the costs imposed on them (khan, 2010). although the distribution of power can be relatively stable and reproduced over time, incremental and disruptive changes to the political settlement can occur. autonomous processes such as new technologies, political mobilisations, and economic opportunities can shift the distribution of power in society (khan, 2018). these processes may also trigger new mobilisations by affected groups that can reverse, modify, or embed the changes. that is, if any excluded groups have sufficient power, they can, through their ability to contest, obstruct and oppose rules, undermine the adoption of technologies or associated policies (frederiksen, 2017; khan, 2018). khan’s argument is also consistent with political economy approaches to technological change. according to mokyr (1998), decisions to adopt any technology are not only left to the logic of the market. technology innovations will likely be resisted by those who stand to lose through non-market mechanisms, such as labour strikes (mokyr, 1998). it is not always straightforward to identify the losers and the magnitude of their loss or to determine the outright winners. however, if powerful groups in society do not get an acceptable distribution of benefits from the technology adoption, they will resist it (mokyr, 1998). from this explanation, it is evident special focus 47 why maintaining political stability or preventing violent conflict by sustaining the dominance of powerful groups may take priority over inclusive development policies. the political settlement in south africa’s mining industry the political settlement in south africa’s mining industry, by and large, mimics the national political settlement. the mining industry is predominantly white and foreignowned (netshitendze, 2018). south africa’s transition to democracy in 1994 involved a lot of compromises that reflected the strength of big businesses at the expense of redistribution and inclusion (mondliwa and roberts, 2018: 2). at the end of apartheid, large businesses in south africa successfully lobbied the government against implementing structural changes that would shift the balance of economic power. thus, the political settlement reached in 1994, and the resulting institutional arrangements, entrenched the market power of large companies (mondliwa and roberts, 2018). figure 3, adapted from lane et al., 2015, identifies actors considered to be key in the current political settlement of the mining industry. these actors formed part of ‘operation mining phakisa’, a multi-stakeholder process created in 2015 to address the crisis in mining (letsoala, 2007; hermanus, 2017). figure 3: mining constituents mining companies, the anc-led government and organised labour groups (trade unions) are key actors with bargaining power and strong incentives to influence policy processes in the mining industry. mining communities are a stakeholder group; however, they are discussed to a lesser extent because they are less coherent, and their bargaining power is much more challenging to determine. assessing the relative distribution of power is generally a challenging task, but historical evidence and mobilisation activities provide important clues for the relative power of the different constituents in the mining industry (khan, 2018). rent distribution and changing labour dynamics are key to the political settlement in the mining industry (frederiksen, 2017). the main challenge is balancing the often-conflicting interests of the key players in the settlement to ensure that mines are productive and profitable while sharing the benefits with the rest of society. business: mining companies and their shareholders south af rica’s mining industry is facing significant economic, financial, and operational challenges, as well as a competitive global environment. these challenges are compounded by concerns about the factional divisions within the anc’s leadership (vandome and khama, 2021). resource nationalism debates, falling commodity prices, labour unrests, rising demands by the government for increased rents and revenue f rom mining are some of the challenges facing the companies (lane et al., 2015). companies must grapple with the annual ‘strike season’ where unions and mine workers make demands for increased wages (mostly above inflation) and improved employment conditions. thus far, mines are perceived to not be doing enough to benefit society (lane et al., 2015). the mines need to retain a ‘social license to operate’ while grappling with various challenges such as changing government, community, and labour expectations. mining companies constantly face demands f rom the government, compounded by local community demands, about the role that mining should play in national development. mining companies have, during these demands, exercised their power to protect their interests through divestiture and legally challenging legislature. for example, mining companies took the department of minerals resources and energy special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 48 t h e t h i n k e r to court over the application of the ownership rule of the mining charter (who owns whom, 2020). anglogold ashanti sold the mponeng gold mine in 2020 to focus on more profitable geographies, while anglo american moved away f rom thermal coal operations considering global pressure to reduce carbon emissions (vandome and khama, 2021). in general, mining companies in south af rica desire digital transformation; however, they struggle to get buy-in for the transformation because they are a major employer (manuell, 2021). from the business perspective, digitalisation and automation will ‘cut operation costs, increase safety and boost productivity without shedding jobs’ because profitable mines tend to expand and create new jobs (manuell, 2021). the anc government the government has mainly positioned itself as a custodian and has been concerned with maximising revenue from mining through its various policy instruments. it is also battling years of worsening socioeconomic conditions and ill-prepared public institutions in the face of civil strife. south africa’s government often faces internal challenges where the multiple arms of government are not aligned and have policy inconsistencies. most importantly, the government has to deal with the role of organised labour in the alliance. at the same time, the government is under pressure from communities for not delivering basic services or using resource revenues as a vehicle for achieving development (lane et al., 2015). most worrying is corruption allegations against the minister of mineral resources and energy, gwede mantashe, who is also an ally of the current president cyril ramaphosa (vandome and khama, 2021). under apartheid, mining companies operated with little to no restrictions, and they had no responsibilities towards the health of workers, mining communities, and reducing environmental degradation (leonard, 2018: 2). in the new dispensation, the government has power and leverage through the mineral and petroleum resources development act 2002 (act no.28 of 2002), a law aimed at redressing historical socio-economic inequalities and ensuring the meaningful participation of historically disadvantaged persons in the sector (minerals and petroleum resources development act, 2002). the act empowers the minister to develop a broad-based black economic empowerment charter as a regulatory instrument for the industry. the controversial mining charter gives open-ended power to the minister to make discretionary arrangements (mining charter, 2018). the charter has been a point of contention by mining companies and communities. it took two years, multiple drafts, and a court case before it was approved by both the government and the mining industry (dehm, 2019). despite the various accountability instruments, the mining industry continues to be criticised for its lack of corporate social responsibility and violation of mining restrictions. examples include lonmin’s failure to adhere to environmental laws and permits and af rican rainbow mineral starting mining activities without environmental authorisation on at least seven occasions (dasnois, 2015). also, there are no specific mechanisms in the mining charter to prevent the adoption of labour displacing technology, even though one of the objectives of the charter is to advance employment and produce a skilled workforce to meet the demands of modern industry (mining charter, 2018). president cyril ramaphosa has taken 4ir seriously. he appointed members of a presidential commission on the 4ir to recommend policies and strategies that would position south africa as a competitive player in the digital space (phakathi, 2019). the commission reported that south africa has not fully benefited from previous industrial revolutions, and that failure to respond to the technological changes associated with 4ir would threaten the country’s industries and the well-being of its people. the commission recommended that the country’s 4ir strategy should focus on investing in human capital development, technology infrastructure, and ict (presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution, 2020). the commission’s report notes that digital technologies have the potential to enhance productivity in mining and that the emphasis should be on renewable energy, robots, and electric vehicles to reach climatesmart mining. although the report does not estimate the potential job losses or gains in mining that would result from adopting 4ir technologies, it acknowledges that the labour force is a key cause for concern. the report also acknowledges that there are ideological special focus 49 tensions that exist regarding redistribution and growth, especially since there is already a low growth rate, high unemployment, and job losses in several sectors such as mining (presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution, 2020). finally, whilst the initiative is commendable, the committee’s recommendations do not provide a practical strategy for immediate implementation to address the realities and challenges we are already facing. organised labour president ramaphosa often refers to a ‘social compact’ between government, business, and labour. this compact has thus far been dominated by organised labour and has marginalised many, causing numerous labour unrests (vandome and khama, 2021). organised labour has historically played an important role in south af rica’s mining industry and transition to democracy (buhlungu et al., 2008). the successful unionisation of black workers under the national union of mineworkers in 1982 was a significant gain not only for worker rights but the broader political struggle for non-racialism in south af rica. post-apartheid, unions have continued to play an important role in south af rica’s democracy, supported by the country’s progressive labour legislation which makes provisions for centralised bargaining (buhlungu et al., 2008). organised labour is usually concerned with increasing its membership and being able to influence government policy. losing support, through job losses, is thus a great concern. organised labour also has a role to play in the governing alliance, and thus their quest is to continuously fight for relevance (lane et al., 2015). khan (2018) argues that the only way we can understand the distribution of power in society is to look at its history and how organisations have mobilised and won or lost power in the past. the national union of mineworkers (num) has been at the foref ront of labour representation and often uses mass strikes to achieve its goals. it organised the first legal strike by black mineworkers in 1984, following a decline of global commodity prices which later resulted in 60% of the workers losing their jobs within a decade (antin, 2013). the 2012 marikana massacre, where violent protests led to the death of 34 miners, is an example that made visible the violent conflict over the distribution of rents in the mining industry. these protests erupted after negotiations over a substantial wage increase between protesting mineworkers and lonmin (a multinational platinum producer) collapsed (antin, 2013). the marikana tragedy was not primarily associated with num, which is a close ally of the anc, but rather its rival union, the association of mineworkers and construction union (amcu). amcu has threatened the monopoly of num and has become the largest union in platinum mining (antin, 2013). amcu’s rise was facilitated by the perception among mineworkers that num had become too strongly allied with the government. another key example of the mobilising power of unions is the 2014 labour strike in the platinum industry. the strike occurred over wage disputes and dissatisfaction with working conditions. it affected the three largest platinum producers, as well as the global platinum supply chain (bohlmann et al., 2014). the strikes lasted for five months and only found resolution when mining companies reached an agreement with the main unions. it was the largest and most expensive strike in the country’s history (bohlmann et al., 2014). more recent examples include num members organising a six-week strike at gold fields’ south deep mine, which cost the company r6 million (approximately us$370 000) per day. the strike, which ended in december 2018, began after the company announced plans to retrench 1,100 employees. amcu also organised a five-month strike, which ended in april 2019, over wage disputes at sibanye-stillwater’s gold mines (who owns whom, 2020). again, in 2019, amplats reinstated president ramaphosa often refers to a ‘social compact’ between government, business, and labour. this compact has thus far been dominated by organised labour and has marginalised many, causing numerous labour unrests (vandome and khama, 2021). organised labour has historically played an important role in south africa’s mining industry and transition to democracy (buhlungu et al., 2008). special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 50 t h e t h i n k e r 643 employees who had taken part in a three-week unprotected strike at the mototolo mine in limpopo. the company reinstated the workers after an agreement was reached with the general industrial workers union of south af rica (giwusa) (who owns whom, 2020). these are some significant examples of the holding power of unions in south af rica. organised labour has recognised that digitalising mines is taking place globally and within south africa. labour seems to understand this in the context of the modernisation of older mines and addressing safety concerns for mine workers. this was expressed in an august 2019 joint parliamentary committee meeting of mineral resources and energy with trade union stakeholders. trade unions agreed that technology was a critical input into the modernisation and enhanced productivity of mines and mine safety, but that this intervention must be for the overall benefit of workers (parliamentary monitoring group, 2019). the challenge, however, is that trade unions do not seem to be deeply engaged in pro-active responses to address any potential worker and workplace disruption resulting from the modernisation of mining. in an analysis of trade union responses to technologically-driven changes in south af rica’s manufacturing industry, hlatshwayo finds that trade unions have not seriously considered the potential impact of 4ir technologies on labour as a cause for deeper inquiry or research (2017: 101). in general, hlatshwayo views organised labour as being reactive to the technology changes taking effect in the workplace and that unions are engaging with what has already been implemented by mine executives, rather than shaping which technologies should be implemented and the preparation of workers for these transitions. mining communities communities living near mines or relocated by mining companies usually benefit the least from the industry. mining communities contest the imposition of externalities, and these contests are usually resisted by national-level elites (frederiksen, 2017). yet, community influence is difficult to determine, especially since mining companies border many communities. it is equally challenging to identify key actors in the communities. mining companies have been criticised for mostly engaging with traditional and communal authorities, further undermining the representation of communities (dehm, 2019). frederiksen (2017) argues that mines tend to focus their energy and investments on stakeholders that are most likely to affect them and that projects and resources are usually targeted to local elites with the understanding that they will trickle down to communities. the potential impact of 4ir on the political settlement in south africa’s mining industry the government, labour, business and community organisations use the national economic development and labour council (nedlac) as a vehicle to negotiate and facilitate consensus on economic, labour, and development issues facing south africa. nedlac’s 2019 report on the futures of work in south africa concludes that 4ir is a given, that production could happen without people, and that due to a lack of appropriate skills, the labour force in south africa could be replaced by robots and be automated (nedlac, 2019). the previous section on the political settlement in south africa’s mining industry showed that the three main stakeholders are aware of 4ir and agree that it will impact south africa’s socio-economic context. thus, the question of whether 4ir will impact society is irrefutable for all stakeholders. the question, needing further elaboration, is how technological advancements associated with 4ir would affect (and be affected by) the political settlements in south africa’s mining industry. the application of digital transformation has resulted in greater productivity in some developed nations. in sweden, the application of new technology has not resulted in job losses (johansson, 2021: 20). in australia, automation technology is predicted to displace 40,000 f rontline mining jobs whilst creating 69,000 new jobs (nera and mets ignited, 2019). nedlac’s 2019 report highlights a set of scenarios about what work could look like in south af rica in 2030. in the worst-case scenario, termed the ‘dead-end’, businesses would have made minimal investments in skills development but would adopt new technologies to remain profitable and protect their interests. organised labour would have focused on protecting existing jobs and organising strikes. the government would have focused on maintaining votes and would not have put measures to mitigate the negative outcomes of technology (nedlac, 2019). special focus 51 the worst-case scenario is consistent with khan’s (2018) argument that in developing contexts, the most powerful organisations often have interests that constrain broad-based growth (khan, 2018: 646). in the best-case scenario, business, government, and labour would cooperate for the benefit of society. the skills gap would be closed, labour would be augmented by 4ir, and production would increase. in the short run, jobs would be lost. however, in the long-term, increased production would create new jobs. though the impacts of technologies associated with 4ir will only fully unfold if these technologies are adopted widely, a description of the existing political settlement in the mining industry provides clues for a likely outcome. if the track record of union action is anything to go by—protracted and at times violent strikes that cost companies millions—then the result is likely to be more complex than any scenario could predict or capture. in south af rica, digitisation is expected to create about 4.5 million jobs across many sectors and displace 3.3 million existing jobs by 2030 (magwentshu et al., 2019: 4). in the mining industry, it is estimated that there could be a net loss of 87,000 jobs and that 20 percent of the mining industry would be automated by 2030 (magwentshu et al., 2019: 4). in the context of south af rica’s high unemployment, the projected job loss of 17% of the total number (514,859) employed in the industry in less than a decade is significant. the job loss would be significantly more than the 23,285 or 4.42% experienced between 2012 and 2019. if the trade unions accept the ‘short-term’ loss, as highlighted in the best-case scenario, there could be a shift in the distribution of power in the mining industry. previous disruptions that range f rom price and exchange rate volatility and labour protests have not shifted the distribution of power, and thus the political settlement. the displacement of a large number of workers in the mining industry could weaken trade unions in favour of the mining companies. it would also weaken the alliance between trade unions and the anc government. given the slow growth rate and decrease in employment in the mining industry over time, it is reasonable to conclude that unions have been weakened and that their influence is waning. however, the role of organised labour in the technology transitions taking place in the mining industry, especially as it relates to workers, remains critical. the importance of this has been recently highlighted in the inclusion of trade unions, such as amcu and num, into the department of science and innovation and the mineral’s council of south af rica initiative titled the mandela mining precinct (mmp). the mmp aims to improve and modernise the mining industry through research, planning, and cooperation between stakeholders (mahomed, 2021). organised labour also has an important role to play in the governing tripartite alliance, and must continuously fight for relevance (lane at al., 2015). the dominance of num has been eroded by amcu, bringing a spotlight to the tripartite alliance. the various strikes have demonstrated the holding power of amcu, as its protracted strikes imposed serious costs to the mining industry. as such, the political settlement in the mining industry is evolving, and any disruptions or potential job losses will exacerbate the already existing tensions at the expense of the ruling alliance. a weakened alliance would have implications for mobilising electoral support nationally and maintaining political order in the country. according to khan (2010), a political settlement needs to be sustainable in terms of economic and political viability, and herein lies the dilemma. the existing settlement in the mining industry has thus far been politically viable; however, the industry is not growing. south african miners find themselves at a critical juncture, needing to accelerate the adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies to remain sustainable. miners are confronted with the realities of an industry in decline, international competition, and the constant tension between equity and economic efficiency (frederiksen, 2017). the existing political settlement is made up of actors with varied and often conflicting preferences. tensions remain between mining companies, government, workers and host communities around job creation, decent wages, good working conditions, and environmental protection. and although 4ir is predicted to provide opportunities to improve worker health and safety, and reduce the environmental impact of mining activities, fundamental changes in the mining industry will not be seamless. the brutal disputes between labour unions, the threat of escalating mass protests, excessive wage demands, and previous calls for the nationalisation of mines have special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 52 t h e t h i n k e r hurt the industry in recent years. the tripartite alliance has yet to propose a convincing policy agenda for the mining industry, but any major crisis in south af rica’s mining industry poses a great risk for the economy and the urgent need for inclusive development. also, a further loss in employment resulting f rom mining digitalisation would go against what the tripartite alliance stands for in principle, which is redress for past injustices and transformation of both the mining industry and national economy towards inclusive growth and development. a loss in employment also contradicts one of the objectives of the minerals and petroleum resources development act, which is to promote employment and advance the social and economic welfare of all south af ricans. it is likely that while the technologies associated with 4ir would certainly benefit south africa’s declining mining industry, the speed and degree of adopting these technologies may depend on the existing settlement being able to reproduce itself without excluding organised labour. there are still major opportunities that lie ahead as the industry has untapped reserves. yet, the politics of the mining industry are likely to remain complex and heated, with continuing costs from the policy uncertainty (butler, 2013). the main stakeholders can and have exercised agency, but the outcomes of their agency are limited by how flexible the structure of the political settlement is. companies surveyed in the 2020 future of jobs report from the wef identified several barriers to the adoption of new technologies in the mining industry, such as the skills gaps in the local labour market, lack of flexibility of the regulatory framework, and a lack of interest among the leadership (schwab and zahidi, 2020). the nature of the political settlement in south africa, and the mining industry, may have profound consequences for the process of 4ir technology adoption, and who benefits as a result. since political losers can be a barrier to technology adoption (acemoglu and robinson, 2000), changes in the political settlement in the mining industry as a result of 4ir are likely to be incremental over long periods instead of sudden and disruptive as some would advocate (khan, 2018). thus, the impact of 4ir is not predetermined, it must be part of a vision shared by all, including the workforce that would operate the new technology and those who may be potentially displaced and excluded by it (mondliwa and roberts, 2018). conclusion south af rica’s mining landscape is deeply complex and its actors are often at odds when it comes to the issue of 4ir and the modernisation of mines, insofar as it impacts employment. the adoption of 4ir technologies in south af rica’s mines has been slow, owing to the deep and difficult geology of the country’s mines and the relative expense of modernising. this notwithstanding, mines are mechanising, as highlighted in the billions of investments being made by south af rica’s mining executives, and through the creation of new digital mines such as exarro. at this pace, however, it may be too early to conclude the effects of 4ir technologies on employment and workplace trends. it is possible that 4ir technologies may not diffuse widely or the technologies adopted would involve more reinstatement rather than a displacement of workers. what is evident, however, is that south af rica’s mining industry is a contested terrain; organised labour can mobilise massively and wield violence through protest which hits at the economic bottom-line of mining companies. equally, however, if south af rica’s organised labour does not sufficiently start to interact with the realities of 4ir’s transformative technologies proactively, it may cede its influence. to the extent that 4ir technologies affect employment and worker stability, there may be resistance palpable enough to disrupt the implementation of such technologies. the global roll-out of 4ir technologies alone and promises of enhanced productivity and south africa’s mining landscape is deeply complex and its actors are often at odds when it comes to the issue of 4ir and the modernisation of mines, insofar as it impacts employment. the adoption of 4ir technologies in south africa’s mines has been slow, owing to the deep and difficu geology of the country’s mines and the relative expense of modernising. special focus 53 market efficiencies is not enough to determine its adoption by societies. rather, the endogenous features of society such as the political-economic climate need to be included within this discussion. in the context of south af rica, the existing political settlement in the mining industry is likely to be influenced by 4ir, but also to influence the process and extent of adopting 4ir technologies. the effects of technological 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(2017). ‘white paper: digital transformation initiative mining and metals industry.’ world economic forum [online]. available at: https://reports.weforum.org/digital-transformation/wp-content/blogs.dir/94/ mp/files/pages/files/wef-dti-mining-and-metals-white-paper.pdf special focus 53v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 global introduction the us electoral cycle is one of the most closely watched political events in the twenty-first century. indeed, in each successive year, new records are broken for expenditures on advertising by the campaigns. the digital sphere has become the main arena in which the various campaigns reach out to potential voters. by one 2019 estimate, “spending for political ads will reach $10 billion, an increase of 59% f rom the 2016 election year when an estimated $6.3 billion was spent. this represents a potential 16.5% of total local broadcast tv advertising revenue for 2020. digital media is forecast for 21% of political ads, cable tv 14% and radio nearly 5%” (adgate, 2019). this disproportional share for digital spending is indicative of what scholars have termed as the rise of computational politics, defined by one study as “the application of digital targeted-marketing technologies to election campaigns” (chester and montgomery, 2017: 1). modern political campaigns, in the us and elsewhere, rely on the toolbox and data offered by technology corporations such as facebook and google, which are leaders in the online advertising industry. as explained by wakabayashi googling the us electoral cycle, 2004-2016 south african insights by bhaso ndzendze t h e t h i n k e r54 global and goldmacher: “the campaigns have been able to cater different messages for potential voters based on signals such as political leanings, what articles they have read, what videos they have watched and what things they have searched for. instead of blanketing an entire city with a costly tv spot, the so-called microtargeting of political ads has become controversial because it allows advertisers to seek out specific voters and perhaps avoid broader scrutiny of their messages” (2019). in the wake of this, in october 2019, twitter made the announcement that it would ban all political advertising from its platform. in turn, twitter’s decision was widely interpreted as a response to the controversy caused by facebook when it refused to de-platform a reportedly false video issued by the trump campaign accusing a family member of a democratic candidate of improper business conduct in ukraine (wakabayashi and goldmacher, 2019). twitter’s decision also led to google’s own decision to do the same in november 2019. many of these studies thus look at the us elections f rom within the us domestic context. among internationally-minded studies, the interest is on the role of international dynamics on the actions of incumbents during the electoral cycle. for example, chiozza (2015: 3) “assesses whether us presidents’ major responses in international crises reflect the variability in audience costs in an analysis of 66 international crises between 1937 and 2006”. the conclusion is that tying-hand commitment strategies (i.e., the creation of audience costs (potentially unpopular decisions) that will suffer after the fact if they fail to commit to the threat or commitment made (fearon, 1997: 68)) were most preferred when presidential elections were approaching. this indicates that foreign policy is designed with re-electability in mind, lest unpopular foreign policy decisions lead to negative repercussions and loss of political office (chiozza 2015: 3). the same findings on the foreign policy-electoral cycle nexus were identified by gadarian (2010). gadarian’s paper makes use of data over the 1980-2004 period to demonstrate that opposing political candidates in the us system are faced with different incentives for mentioning foreign policy during their campaigns. the paper effectively illustrates that american voters connect their own views on foreign policy when evaluating republican candidates, while a lack or presence of similarity in foreign policy views has no impact in their evaluations of democratic party candidates. additionally, gadarian’s paper proves that during times of external threat, us voters tend to not only be inclined towards hawkish candidates/ incumbents, but are even more likely to severely punish candidates who are perceived as holding dovish positions (gadarian, 2010: 1046). in this regard, in 2016, cnn conducted interviews with 10 journalists f rom outside the us “for their take on the race so far, and what their country might be hoping for in america’s next president”. analysing the responses, i note them to be mostly split between pro-democrat (canada, south af rica, iran and japan) and neutral (united kingdom, venezuela, israel, and lebanon), with only two international journalists expressing indifference (india) and pro-republican sentiment (russia) (cnn, 2016: january 29). among the participants was south af rican journalist and noted editor of some leading national newspapers, ferial haffajee, whose contribution centred on the probability of a trump victory: “donald trump? after barack obama? for those south af ricans paying attention at this point in the u.s. presidential race, the primary campaign has prompted furrowed eyebrows. indeed, the word “incredulous” best describes the response here to trump’s howl-a-minute, holler-a-minute, horror-a-minute bid to become the republican nominee” (haffajee in cnn, 2016). she further expands, noting that: “now the same country that elected obama seems to be toying with the idea of electing a comb-over king who doesn’t seem to like muslims and mexicans very much, leaving some here to wonder what he feels about black americans and af ricans” (haffajee in cnn, 2016). if subsequent pew numbers are any indication, this may indeed be the case, as postelection approvals in south af rica declined with in the wake of this, in october 2019, twitter made the announcement that it would ban all political advertising from its platform. in turn, twitter’s decision was widely interpreted as a response to the controversy caused by facebook when it refused to de-platform a reportedly false video issued by the trump campaign accusing a family member of a democratic candidate of improper business conduct in ukraine. 55v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 global the election of donald trump. the second section is a breakdown of the methodology utilised in the article, as well as the electoral cycles of the us. the third section concludes the article, highlighting some areas for further research based on the findings. methods this article traces google queries in south af rica over the 2004-2016 period for american presidential f rontrunners, eventual winners and incumbents. within-country differences are also noted in this regard; the data will be broken into geographical concentrations, with the magnitude of each american candidate’s google searches ranked by south af rican provinces. simultaneous worldwide google searches will be used as a control group for each search trend per candidate to note whether interest in each candidate was on par, below, or above the global average. importantly, this is a generative study and as such no proposal of cause-and-effect relations is made in this article. rather, findings will generate working hypotheses and areas for further study. election cycles in the us american presidential elections occur every four years and are dominated by two parties: the democratic and republican parties. with the system dominated by the two parties, their nomination contests can begin a year prior to the national election. two of the party conventions of the election cycles took place in july of each year (i.e., 2004 and 2016), whereas in 2008, the parties had conventions in august (democratic national convention [dnc]) and september (republican national convention [rnc]). in 2012, the rnc was held in august and the dnc was held in september. upon the parties nominating their candidates (along with their vice-presidential running mates), the party-to-party contest runs f rom their party conventions until the first tuesday of november, which is the election day. as such, the dataset will capture and compare data for the electoral years f rom january to december of each year (i.e. 10 months prior to the election and one month after). findings all data utilised in this article is obtained f rom google trends, a publicly available dataset of worldwide google searches since 1 january 2004. all charts were generated by the author f rom sorted data. the google trends data are values that are calculated on an index that places scores f rom 0 to 100, “where 100 is the location with the most popularity as a f raction of total searches in that location, a value of 50 indicates a location which is half as popular” (google, 2020). importantly, a score of ‘0’ indicates a location where there was not enough data for this term. the timeline for both variables is 2004 to 2019. south af rican searches for us presidential candidates in 2004, the south af rican population searched for the republican incumbent and eventual winner george w. bush throughout the year. whilst the democratic nominee john kerry surpassed bush in march of 2004 when they declined, google searches for bush in south af rica subsequently grew between april and july. in the decline in august, searches for bush still outweighed those of kerry. google searches for bush subsequently grew to new peaks in september, october and november respectively, before subsequently declining in december of that year. noticeably, searches for both candidates reached their peak in november. south af rica’s search f requency for george w. bush during november was above the worldwide average, although the worldwide average search for john kerry was above south af rica’s in the same month. the majority of the searches occurred most in the north west province and the least in the gauteng province. bush’s share of searches was highest in north t h e t h i n k e r56 west (100%), and lowest in kwazulu-natal (kzn) province (at 60%, to kerry’s 40%). in 2008, south af rican google searches were overwhelmingly for barack obama, the eventual winner of the election, though below the worldwide average until november, the month of the election which was once again the global peak. the majority of the searches for the candidates occurred most in the gauteng province and least in the northern cape (nc) province. barack obama’s share of searches was highest in free state (100%), and lowest in the eastern cape (ec) province (at 97%, to mccain’s 3%). in 2012, south af rican google searches were once again tilted towards barack obama, who was running for re-election, though the search f requency was now lower than the worldwide average. this diminished search f requency was also true of november, with the worldwide average outperforming south af rica’s by a difference of 10 points. worldwide searches for mitt romney were consistently higher than south af rican searches for mitt romney, with searches for romney outranking south af rican searches for obama in october 2012. this marks the only incident in the dataset in which a search for an unsuccessful candidate outranked the south af rican searches for barack obama. the majority of the searches for the candidates in 2012 occurred most in the gauteng province and least in the northern cape province. barack obama’s share of searches was highest in the nc province (100%), and lowest in the western cape (wc) province (at 96%, to romney’s 4%). in 2016, south af rican online searches for donald trump outranked those of hillary clinton for the entire course of the year. south af rican searches for either candidate were below the worldwide average. searches for both candidates peaked in november, though searches for donald trump matched the worldwide average, whilst searches for hillary clinton were below the worldwide average. the majority of the searches for the candidates in 2016 occurred most in the wc province and least in the fs province. donald trump’s share of searches was highest in the wc province (100%), and lowest in the fs province (at 91%, to clinton’s 9%). conclusion the paper has generated some insights in terms of the search trends of american presidential f rontrunners in south af rica, using the worldwide search average as a control group. most notably, all individual candidates who were the most global 57v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 searched were the ones who went on to win the election. nonetheless, there persist some areas for further research. given variations in searches across the two countries, questions arise as to the causes of these. do searches by either side act as proxies for forms of asymmetry, for example? more precisely, can we read into them notions of cultural hegemony, digital inequality, soft power, or diasporas on either side? perhaps a combination of these may be at play. perhaps none. importantly, this need not coincide with traditional understandings of western preponderance as in these online dimensions, the global south can, as in no other sphere, exhibit patterns of some sovereignty. yet, some scholars can read into the very ubiquity of google as the preferred engine of the majority of the world as a sign of us dominance. nonetheless, the modulation of search results to local geographies indicates that the relationship between google and the consumer base outside the us is not unidirectional and its terms of operation are not dictated by the multinational corporation (nahai, 2012). at the same time, within-country differences in search patterns also showcases the level of splintering of interest that should challenge any notion of homogeneity in south af rican political perceptions of the united states. ■ references: adgate, b. 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https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2fm%2f04509v,%2f m%2f0n_8q8r [accessed 18 jan. 2020] south af rican f rontrunner party leader searches, 2019 (us). 2020. available at: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=us&q=%2fm%2 f04509v,%2fm%2f0n_8q8r [accessed 18 jan. 2020] global 96 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 book review reviewed by mandla j. radebe book review 97 t he writing of south af rican history has been contentious, mainly due to the exclusion of the majority af rican people whose past achievements have often been ignored or treated contemptuously. various tendencies in the writing of this history sought to dispute af ricans’ claim to south af rica. the af rikaner tendency, for example, portrayed af ricans as not being indigenous to this country (theal, 1897). on the other hand, the liberal tradition considered south af rica as constituting a single nation with white people making up the core while black people in general, and af ricans in particular, had to be integrated on the basis of meeting particular standards (nxumalo, 1992). this latter point is precisely what makes a brief history of south africa an important intervention. in this book, pampallis and bailey introduce the reader to a broad sweep of south african history, from the earliest times until the mandela presidency. while the book employs both a narrative chronology and thematic chapters, what is useful about this book is that it encourages critical thinking about key events that shaped the history of the country. this is done by, inter alia, portraying the agency of the oppressed majority in resisting colonialism and apartheid. this explains the emergence of political, social and trade union movements and their role in the liberation struggle. early societies pampallis and bailey introduce us to the part of our history which has seldom been told owing to our history of colonisation. in a fascinating fashion, they stretch our minds and knowledge to the seventeenth-century societies of southern af rica and reflect on the san as the first inhabitants of the region. without being presumptuous in their argument that ‘early modern humans were present in southern af rica over 100 000 years ago’, they concede that ‘owing to a lack of evidence, we know very little about these early residents’ (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 18). the arrival of the bantu-language speakers who were farmers is another dimension that is often misrepresented. the expansion of the early bantu-language speakers southwards f rom eastern af rica (the great lakes region) and western af rica (probably around angola) debunks the revisionist notion presented by colonialist historians such as theal (1897), which later became the basis of the ideology of the likes of hendrik verwoerd. theal’s writings had become part of the foundation of the af rikaner ideology which racist politicians like verwoerd relied upon to advance a baseless notion that ‘af ricans had no right to claim the whole of south af rican territory as belonging to them’ (nxumalo, 1992: 15). a brief history of south af rica dispels this notion by pointing out that ‘the earliest farmers settled around the kruger national park, eswatini and mozambique in about ad 250. settlements spread south along the coast of kwazulu-natal over the next 500 years. by ad 700 some farmers had settled as far south as modernday east london’ (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 20). linked to this is the period between 1700 and 1800 which witnessed political changes among the sotho– tswana and nguni groups. this is yet another epoch that has been misconstrued deliberately. pampallis and bailey describe this ‘state formation in southern af rica’ and the accompanying social, political and economic instability. how we understand and interpret this period of upheaval, known as the mfecane or the difaqane, is critical for understanding our present which is transmitted f rom the past. the book navigates various contentious issues such as the emergence of larger states such as the zulu, sotho and ndebele kingdoms and their existence in the context of various kingdoms such as the gaza, swazi and pedi kingdoms. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the writing of south african history has been contentious, mainly due to the exclusion of the majority african people whose past achievements have often been ignored or treated contemptuously. various tendencies in the writing of this history sought to dispute africans’ claim to south africa. book review 98 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 how exactly these kingdoms co-existed and the sources of various conflicts are some of the crucial elements that this book unpacks. the political economy of this epoch included competition for the control of trade routes such as the one that ‘ran f rom the portuguese colonial trading ports in the northwest (angola) and on the east coast (mozambique) to the upper marico district’ – parts of our history that are seldom spoken about (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 33). for many, our history began with the arrival of the european settlers in 1652. by the time the colonists and raiders expanded f rom the cape colony by moving towards the north in the early 1800s, the af rican kingdoms had been in existence for centuries in this country. the resistance struggles before and after the gold rush this colonial expansion and the brave af rican wars of resistance are discussed within a proper context of the history of south af rica. fundamentally, the af ricans, despite being technologically disadvantaged due to their reliance on primitive weaponry, were no walk over. various books about the heroism of the af ricans during this period have emerged in recent times, albeit insufficiently. a brief history of south af rica is also useful in this regard. the khoe and san responded to the cape colonial expansion and hence the first khoe–dutch war is reported to have taken place in ‘1659 and lasted about a year’ (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 38). again, the war between the trekboers and the xhosa people is located in the context of the co-existence that the xhosas had sought to foster, similar to their absorption of the san, khoe, thembu and bhaca people. however, it was the economic rivalry that led to the fights. the colonial expansion and the resistance beyond the cape colony is presented in an easy-to-understand style and language that portrays the agency and innovation of af ricans. nevertheless, there are numerous nuances in the south af rican story. the book does not miss this crucial aspect. many af rican communities regarded the boers as just another group in competition for land and cattle, and in some instances ‘af rican leaders sometimes allied with the boers, or the british, in order to defeat a common enemy.’ the fights of chief moroka ii of the rolong with mzilikazi is one case in point. nevertheless, even in such alliances, the perceived racial supremacy of the voortrekkers, who ‘saw themselves as racially superior’, is palpable (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 41). the heroics of the af rican kingdoms and their different responses to colonial expansion, such as the basotho under king moshoeshoe in the land across the orange river and the zulu kingdom under various zulu kings across natal, are presented. this is done in the context of various developments such as the indentured labour of indians in natal. the defeat of mzilikazi, together with treaties and agreements with the more powerful kingdoms to the north and east, such as those of the swazi and pedi, lay the basis for our understanding for future developments in south af rica. in fact, the liberation struggle cannot be fully understood outside of this background. south af rica’s history would be incomplete without unpacking the discovery of diamonds in kimberley and the gold rush in johannesburg 20 years later. it was on the back of these mining activities that south af rica became the largest industrialised economy on the af rican continent (venter et al., 2012). the gold mines in particular not only brought about development, employment and wealth, but also, as durand (2012) argues, ‘the most devastating war in the history of south af rica, civil unrest, economical inequality, social uprooting, pollution, negative health impacts and ecological destruction.’ the presentation of aspects such as the control of the mining industry and the wealth it created, the role of mine workers and racial dimensions, and fundamentally the impact of the mineral revolution in south af rica are therefore all critical. indeed, history does not proceed along a straight line but has twists and turns as witnessed in numerous events of our past such as the angloboer relations which led to the war and the union of south af rica. inevitably, these developments led to new forms of resistance including the formation of early black political organisations. the emergence of these modern political organisations in the late nineteenth century such as imbumba yama af rika, the native electoral association and the native educational association in what is now the eastern cape, provides us with insights to nascent modern resistance in south af rica (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 67). it was in this environment that the south book review 99v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 af rican native national congress, the forerunner of the af rican national congress, was formed. of course, developments such as the natives land act of 1913 and the world wars, make for complex and fascinating reading. in the context of the spikes of the recent protest action in the country and the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic, the discussion of the postwar years, which ventures into issues such as the spanish flu and strikes, connects our past with the present. similarities between the spanish flu and covid-19 are striking in that both are transmitted through respiratory droplets, are highly contagious, and have no definitive cure (lyngdoh, 2020). these linkages between the past and present are useful in our context as we seek to resolve the national question by building a non-racist, non-sexist, democratic country. a brief history of south af rica is replete with information such as the economic crisis of the 1930s, the emergence of the national party (np), its rise to power in 1948 and the establishment of apartheid. the initial resistance to apartheid and the revival of the mass movement after the liberation movement had been weakened during the economic boom period of the early 1960s is an important part of our recent history and is useful to understand. the revival of the mass movement in particular, as characterised inter alia by the rise of the student movement and black consciousness in the universities, the reemergence of worker resistance as witnessed in the 1973 durban strikes, the independence of the portuguese colonies of mozambique and angola in 1975 and the broader political development in southern af rica, bantu education and the uprising of 16 june 1976, and the bantustans are some of the important aspects of understanding our history. freedom and democracy when the apartheid regime came under severe internal and external pressures, a negotiated settlement emerged as a solution. the processes leading towards negotiations – including the secret talks, overtures to release mandela, the emergence of f.w. de klerk as the new np leader, and the ultimate release of political prisoners and unbanning of political organisations – are crucial elements in comprehending our negotiated settlement. therefore, how south af rica’s democratic breakthrough came about can only be understood by reading this part of our history. the convention for a democratic south af rica (codesa) process, which paved the way for the 1994 elections and the eventual rise of mandela to power, constitutes the last part of the narrative section of a brief history. with the first democratic government in power, a new constitution was drafted and eventually adopted in 1996. in discussing mandela’s legacy, the question of the constitution often crops up. of course, other areas like the building of new institutions of democracy, the expansion and transformation of the social inf rastructure, the promotion of reconciliation through the truth and reconciliation commission, and the economy remain pertinent. however, it is in dealing with the economy in relation to mandela’s legacy that the book could have done more. although, it is mentioned that post-1994 the reconstruction and development programme (rdp) was jettisoned for the growth, employment and redistribution (gear) programme, the impact of this ideological shift cannot be discussed in one short paragraph. of course, the authors do not proffer to be experts on policy analysis; nevertheless, the historical process leading to gear could have been better articulated. the second part of a brief history of south africa presents themes in south african history, and i found this most valuable. among the themes presented is ‘the south african economy’, which traces the various economic sectors in south africa at different times and their influence in bringing about changes in south africa’s politics and society. book review 100t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 moreover, the folly of the 1996 class project is being exposed daily through our intractable socioeconomic problems. particularly, the sacp and congress of south af rican trade unions  (cosatu) were vocal on the policy and issued numerous documents. for example, the macro-economic research group (merg) released a document in december 1993 whose ideological orientation differed to that of gear. among the salient features of this document was its focus on the importance of rdp. this history is crucial if future generations are to learn f rom some of the mistakes f rom the past. themes in south af rican history the second part of a brief history of south af rica presents themes in south af rican history, and i found this most valuable. among the themes presented is ‘the south af rican economy’, which traces the various economic sectors in south af rica at different times and their influence in bringing about changes in south af rica’s politics and society. these sectors include subsistence agriculture which, for centuries, was the backbone of the south af rican economy; mining and commercial farming, which became the two dominant sectors after the discovery of diamonds in the late 1860s and gold in the mid-1880s; and manufacturing linked to the mining boom. the economic shifts of the 1970s linked to the rise of the financial and services sectors is another important aspect of our economic history. a retelling of south af rica’s history would be incomplete without a discussion of the bantustans. the book presents a detailed logic behind this sham self-determination project of the national party. it correctly posits that the ‘bantustans helped the apartheid government to extend its control over the movement and labour of the af rican population’ (pampallis and bailey, 2021: 202). this is certainly not how apartheid presented this initiative. having presented a detailed and compelling history of the system, including the decline of the bantustans due to, inter alia, protests against them, it would have been useful for the book to connect the current provincial system to bantustans. there is no doubt that there are continuities of the bantustan logic in the democratic period which have perpetuated backward tendencies like tribalism. the theme on ‘the history of schooling in south af rica’ is laden with inequalities as the result of our past. when discussing this theme, it is palpable that the authors are at their strength. it is not surprising, taking into account their backgrounds. the themes on ‘poverty and inequality’, ‘life under apartheid: urban and rural experiences’, ‘women’s struggles’, ‘the trade union movement’, ‘south af rica’s constitutions’ and ‘international solidarity against apartheid’ are also important, and are more understandable after the scene of our history has been set in the first part of the book. in reality, these are not accidents of history but constructed realities that the af rican working class in particular must contend with as part of their daily lived experiences. it is credit to the authors for including such aspects as part of our history, for poverty and inequality, for example, form part of the south af rican landscape. concluding thoughts while the book does not pretend to present a comprehensive history of south af rica, a more nuanced and detailed discussion in relation to personal and organisational ideologies could have been presented more sharply. more importantly, not just in relation to the mandela legacy but various aspects of the book, one would have expected to encounter something new given the praxis of the authors. nevertheless, this does not detract f rom the book’s attempt to present an accurate version of our historical past. such books are imperative in shaping our damaged collective historical consciousness that has been affected by centuries of distortions of the history, particularly of the black majority. the authors must be commended for their efforts in successfully condensing an extensive historical period in a narrative of just over 300 pages. a brief history of south af rica is a useful guide for everyone interested in understanding our past. as to be expected of a book written by seasoned educators, it is a text that will come in handy for both formal and non-formal adult education purposes. however, its strength also lies in its usefulness as complementary material for history teaching in schools (including an appendix of text engagement activities for learners) and, fundamentally, in political education circles. educators and trainers will find the book a useful tool that is likely to expand their book review 101 v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 own knowledge, particularly because each chapter points readers to a range of further readings with a variety of historical interpretations; it also provides questions for group discussion. *mandla j. radebe is an author and associate professor in the university of johannesburg’s department of strategic communication. references cronin, j. (2021). ‘book review: tom lodge’s red road to freedom.’ af rican communist, 205, second & third quarters: 79–97. durand, j. f. (2012). ‘the impact of gold mining on the witwatersrand on the rivers and karst system of gauteng and north west province, south af rica.’ journal of af rican earth sciences, 68: 24–43. krippner g. ‘the financialization of the american economy.’ socioeconomic review 3, no 2, 2005: 173–208. doi:10.1093/ser/mwi008. lyngdoh, m. (2020). ‘the parallels between covid-19 and the spanish flu of 1918.’ int. j. community med. public health, 7(11): 4687–4689. nxumalo, j.m. (1990). ‘patriotism and positivity what sa needs now.’ the cape times, 13 november. nxumalo, j.m. (1992). ‘the national question in the writing of south af rican history: a critical survey of some major tendencies.’ front cover. jabulani. pampallis, j. and bailey, m. (2021). a brief history of south af rica: from the earliest times to the mandela presidency. johannesburg: jacana. venter, a. d., beukes, j. p., van zyl, p. g., tiitta, p., josipovic, m., pienaar, j. j., and kulmala, m. (2012). ‘an air quality assessment in the industrialised western bushveld igneous complex, south af rica.’ south af rican journal of science, 108(9): 1–10. theal, g. m. (1897). records of the cape colony. (vol. 1). government of the cape colony. book review 65 special edition colour, abstraction and fantastic sunsets by nkgopoleng moloi | peer reviewed v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 this essay provides a study of colour as a dematerialised object through which to consider blackness and art making. i ask how colour has been employed by black artists as a critical component of their practices, proposing that a critical study of colour can help us understand how black artists navigate the art landscape and create spaces of imagination, possibility, and life for themselves.  foregrounded by darby english’s book, 1971: a year in the life of color (2016), i consider alma thomas’ a fantastic sunset (1970), david koloane’s mgodoyi iii (1993), and various exhibitions by serge alain nitegeka. although rooted in black studies, i also consider british artist marlow moss’ painting composition in yellow, black and white (1949). here i’m interested in how colour can be used to expand notions of intersectional identities through a queering approach.  colour is read as an effective tool of creation, resistance, and refusal. through this text i consider fred moten’s riff on fannie lou hamer, ‘refuse what has been refused to you,’ as a potential approach and method, while considering colour as a method of refusal. that is to say, what does it mean when black artists gravitate towards or away from a certain colour? how are these choices influenced by what they have been refused and what they choose to refuse? 66 special edition ‘i have made many discoveries in my painting career but i do not think i have made a more exciting discovery than that of colour.’ — george pemba, diary entry, 1987 (hudleston, 1996: 81). fully emerging in the 1950s, abstract art brought with it the abandonment of the figure – the figure had been demoted…seemingly only to be resurrected today through an intense multiplication of images of black bodies, particularly in photography and in painting. as a result of the current proliferation of the figure one has to wonder: why are there so many images of black life being drawn, painted and photographed at this moment? are these depictions pointing to a reckoning with the demands of black people globally, or is the figure simply being co-opted by the market? a perverse consumption that does nothing but perpetuate harmful structures of power that have rendered black life fungible? within this context, abstraction and colour seem once again like interesting modes of creation through which opacity, fugitivity, nuance and refusal can be articulated. as i meditate on enduring systems of control and the ways in which we might be able to dismantle them, or at least subvert them, i return to a phrase that was offered to me a few months ago: refuse what has been refused to you – a term popularised by poet and theorist fred moten. at the time, i did not fully comprehend what these words meant, at least cognitively, but i felt them to be true. deep in my belly, i felt a resonance that drew me towards this new modality in the quest to live f ree of oppressive structures. my crudely oversimplified model of refusal is enumerated: 1) refusal in time (refusing today what was denied to you yesterday). 2) double/overt refusal (refusing the refusal and claiming for yourself what the world has decided to deny you). each of these feels useful in different contexts, when considering how best to respond to systems of control, the art market, and capitalism more broadly. through this text, i’m interested in the potential for colour and abstraction to function as modes of refusal in the age of intense consumption of the black figure. the colour blue ‘we call on all plastic artists to use the color blue, for it has great potential in showing internal dimensions and depths – in other words, it has the ability to create a crystalist vision. it is currently the clearest embodiment of crystalism within the color spectrum. we must stress that the human ability to see internal dimensions in the color blue is not merely the result of a conditional reflex specific to the blueness of the sea and the sky.’ — the crystalist manifesto, 1976. i begin with the crystalist’s appeal (through the 1976 crystalist manifesto) for artists to use the colour blue. conceived in sudan, the crystalists ‘understood appearance and perception of solid objects to be mere suggestions rather than [actual] denotations; and embraced an unorthodox materialism based upon mutual contradiction’ (lenssen, 2018). committed to inventions and new directions in art, the crystalists believed the colour blue to possess ‘the greatest potential in showing internal dimensions and depth.’ colour, of course, is visual perception deriving f rom the stimulation of photoreceptor cells through electromagnetic radiation. colour is wavelengths of light or the absorption of light. and light is time – travelling at the speed of light, fasterthan-light travel, light-speed travel, 299,792,458 meters per second! just as there are multiple times, there are multiple experiences of the ‘same’ colour and so even as we speak of blue, or red, or orange… we are speaking of a multiplicity of blues, of reds, and of oranges depending on the number of viewers. this understanding of colour and the impossibility of its reduction to a singular experience points to humanity’s innate ability to experience things differently and still be able to find common ground. this reading of colour is indeed optimistic, hopeful, and instructive. this text seeks to deconstruct and analyse how colour has been employed by black artists as a critical component of their artistic practice, drawing attention to a deep investment in colour as both object and method. i propose that a critical study of colour is useful in understanding the ways in which black artists have been able to navigate the art landscape t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 67 special edition and create spaces of imagination, possibility, and life for themselves. the study of colour as object is part of a larger investigation into various methods of creation employed by black contemporary artists, against a backdrop of an art market and art world that was not made for them. colour is read as an effective tool of creation but also of artistic resistance and refusal. through this text, i am considering the quote ‘refuse what has been refused to you’1 as a potential approach to making. that is to say: what does it mean when black artists gravitate towards or away f rom a certain colour? how are these choices influenced by what they have been refused and what they choose to refuse? this examination of colour, travels alongside the use of abstraction not merely as an aesthetic choice but as a strategy to render things opaque and complex. in her seminal text, ‘the anarchy of colored girls assembled in a riotous manner’, writer and scholar saidiya hartman introduces us to esther brown, a wayward coloured girl with no social constraints (see okeowo, 2020). esther brown – ungovernable, riotous, an embodiment of anarchy – refused what she was given and got ready to be f ree. hartman writes: ‘esther brown never pulled a soapbox onto the corner of 135th street and lenox avenue to make a speech about autonomy, the global reach of the color line, involuntary servitude, f ree motherhood, or the promise of a future world, but she well understood that the desire to move as she wanted was nothing short of treason. she knew firsthand that the offense most punished by the state was trying to live f ree.’ (hartman, 2018) even as she understood the dangers of reaching towards f reedom, esther continued to live on her own terms. she refused what she was given and lived only on what she needed. taking instruction f rom esther and thinking with her on varying notions of what it means to be f ree, one could read refusal in the works of black artists who choose not to participate in representational exchanges of black life or who choose to do so in interesting ways. like esther brown did, what would it mean for black artists to refuse the assignment of representing themselves? what other modes of creation and making become possible? in refusing to hold on to their own image (own nothing) and refusing what the canon is giving (its old white masters and its violent erasures), could black artists begin to move towards ‘a kind of f reedom’? refusing man’s inhumanity towards man through fantastic sunsets ‘color painting was a loosely arranged formalism that accommodated many painters’ fervent exploration of hue, depth, density, texture, shape, and color relations’ capacity to mutually inform pictorial structures.’ — darby english, 2016 born in 1891, alma thomas was an american painter and teacher. considered a brilliant colourist by her contemporaries, her practice is characterised by abstract forms articulated through the bold use of colour. the first graduate of howard university’s art department, she was one of the earliest black modernist painters of the 20th century. created in 1970, eight years before her death at 87, a fantastic sunset is a 121 x 121 cm acrylic painting. colours are painted next to each other, creating circles that morph into a smaller circle resembling a very bright, very hot sun. the work is a study in colour theory and is demonstrative of the artist’s philosophies on colour. in her autobiographical writings, she is cited as saying: ‘color is life, and light is the mother of color.’ she goes on to elaborate: ‘the use of color in my paintings is of paramount importance to the study of colour as object is part of a larger investigation into various methods of creation employed by black contemporary artists, against a backdrop of an art market and art world that was not made for them. colour is read as an effective tool of creation but also of artistic resistance and refusal. v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 68 me. through color i have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness in my painting rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.’ here, we see thomas locating her practice outside of what she refers to as ‘man’s inhumanity to man’, which can be read as the oppressive structures of racism, classism, and sexism. although her paintings seem apolitical when considered purely f rom an aesthetic view, thomas’ writings stretch their meaning to speak of resistance and refusal of man’s inhumanity towards her. for tina campt – a black feminist theorist and a member of the practicing refusal collective –refusal is not just a simple act of opposition or resistance, but a fundamental renunciation of terms of impossibility defining certain subjects. for the sudanese crystalists, refusal came in the form of pleasure (see lenssen, 2018). pleasure was considered the sole measurement of man’s essence, functioning as both a means and an end, as time as well as space and direction – containing the multiplicity and duality of truth. if the goal was ‘trying to live f ree’, then pleasure was the manner through which to achieve it. i think of pleasure as joy. it is this joy that i am reading in alma thomas’ fantastic sunsets – because refusal can also be gentle and warm. but of course, refusal is also an insurgency. it is also an insurrection. recalcitrance. disorder. withdrawal. an errant path. oftentimes, acts of refusal are small, unseizable and repeated over time. in an essay entitled ‘at daggers drawn with the existent, its defenders and its false critics’, an anonymous anarchist notes: ‘if we refuse centralisation we must go beyond the quantitative idea of rallying the exploited for a f rontal clash with power. it is necessary to think of another concept of strength—burn the census lists and change reality, what we’re trying to do here is to not act en masse. carry out actions in three or four at the most. there should be as many small groups as possible and each of them must learn to attack and disappear quickly.’ — f rom the anarchist library, n.d. the collective ntu, composed of members nolan oswald dennis, tabita rezaire and bogosi sekhukhuni, is perhaps an example of working in small groups, doing the work and disappearing quickly. described as a ‘south af rican based family and creative agency concerned with the spiritual futures of technology’, the collective was founded in 2015 to disseminate and raise awareness of af rican sciences and technologies. through a multi-disciplinary approach, the collective produced a series of works that were often abstract and relied on materiality. ubulawu (2017), for instance, is a mixed media installation that includes mounds of earth. the work sought to encourage an experience and significance of dreams and practices of divination. a lot of the works by the collective tends to take this form of splicing, splintering, and collaging through a language that is material and often abstract. these insurrectionary principles of carrying out small unseizable actions over time are visible in the methods of many artists and artist collectives across the world. through his most recent body of work, nolan oswald dennis gestures towards possible ways of refusal through the act of care (see goodman gallery, 2021). the globe is abstracted and the colour black is invoked. dennis begins with the model of a globe – used to map and organise the world. refusing the systems that come with the singular mythology of the globe as an organising unit, dennis draws on black geographies and black cosmography to investigate world endings. through his body of work f rom his exhibition, conditions (2021), dennis engages both colour (albeit indirectly) and geometry to reach new possibilities of creation. through the instruction of old and new, far and near ancestors, practices of refusal run in our blood. i return to american abolitionist and women’s rights activist, sojourner truth, and her powerful speech delivered at the women’s convention in ohio, in 1851. being refused humanity and womanhood, sojourner truth responds with a question that isn’t really a question: ‘ain’t i a woman?’ she notes: ‘if the first woman god ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!’ — sojourner truth, 1851 special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm 69 this was one of many instances when sojourner had practised refusal in order to liberate herself. hers was a double refusal (refusing the refusal) as she also manipulated the extractive postcard industry (which at the time was used to further the colonial empire) to her advantage, selling images of herself taken in a photographer’s studio in order to fund her activism and support her abolitionist agenda. when we think of sojourner truth, we can think of refusal as a route of escape f rom hegemony. it is the stubborn refusal to conform – the embrace of odd constructions and the oddly constructed. one might have expected sojourner to protest the use of her image through postcards, but instead she used the industry through what she described as ‘selling the shadow to support the substance.’ this type of refusal is not obvious. it runs toward crossroads, pathways, and intersections, where things contradict and surprise – it is the beginning of queerness…perhaps? before it was coopted by harry styles, billie eilish, and gucci. this is when being ‘outside the norm’ was a fugitive strategy of survival used by those who were cast to the margins and who understood the power of the space between resistance and capitulation, between subservience and subversiveness. it’s not enough to say that black is beautiful artists such serge alain nitegeka have found ways to employ opacity and ambiguity through the literal use of the colour black. through the language of abstraction, nitegeka employs the colour black, often evoked through the titles of his exhibitions, innate black (2018), ode to black (2017) and black passage (2015). for nitegeka, black becomes a pathway to inquiries into philosophical and political concepts. for him, it is not enough to say that black is beautiful, rather: ‘black is a colour reserved unto itself. it is comfortable in its own nature, unruffled and confident. it tries very hard to stay anonymous but inquiring eyes are drawn to it; spectators cannot resist it. it is not popular. it reveals little because it is neither warm nor cold. it is an enigmatic pigment’ (nitegeka, 2017). colour is obscured born in 1938 in alexandra, johannesburg, koloane spent his career preoccupied with what we might refer to as the human condition. through his writing, teaching, curatorial and artmaking practices, koloane demonstrated modernist aspirations rooted in the questions and concerns relevant to the af rican artist (particularly the black af rican artist). his artmaking, which coalesces painting, drawing, assemblage and printmaking, displays a keen interest in colour – how colour can be manipulated to achieve different things. through blended colour and complex imagery, koloane produces works that are textured, meandrous and full. mgodoyi (iii) is a lithograph made in 1993. the work is part of the famous mgodoyi series, made on the eve of south af rica’s transition f rom apartheid to a democratic nation. the title refers to a person or people who behave like mongrels, an insulting term offering a critique of corruption. through a striking use of colour – blue, brown, orange, and yellow – koloane is able to articulate stark contrasts and shadows that foreground the two fighting dogs into prominence. combined with his ferocious marks, the colour blue loses its tranquil and orderly qualities while the yellow, brown and orange elicit feelings of f rustration and anxious excitement. can colour queer? ‘i find geometry and colour more reliable categories than like a man or a woman. so in some ways, i can see myself more in a square of yellow than i can in a drawing of a woman or a man.’ — sasha velour in an attempt to consider colour’s queering potential, i consider british artist marlow moss. my reading of moss’s work relates to ideations of self as they relate to queerness. moss’ composition in yellow, black and white (1949) is an oil painting of abstract and minimal composition. the focal point is a square of yellow at the bottom right of the painting. through the use of colour and proportion, the painting reveals nothing about itself beyond the basic elements of art – line, value, space. it creates a sense of f reedom and liberates the artist f rom being easily pigeonholed. writing about her work, moss notes: ‘i only see space, movement and light’ (tate, 2019). speaking about this work in a video recording for tateshots, lgbtq+ activist sasha velour reads moss’s painting as an entry point towards a more expansive way of thinking through gender and sexuality, referring to geometry special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 70 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 and colour as more reliable categories of identity, even more so than the traditionally accepted binaries of man and woman. through this work, we see the liberatory potential of colour and geometry. through this text, i have considered the ways in which colour is employed within various artistic practices and furthermore how it is metabolized by both the maker and the viewer. my analysis has led me to an interesting intersection of colour and abstraction as a generative combination in thinking through intersectional ways of being. a key conclusion is that colour is critical, but it will not perform all the work. i propose that colour, combined with abstraction, can in fact function as a methodology for artists and that through this combination artists continue to make work that is political and challenging – not abandoning the social, cultural, and material meanings that colour evokes. colour and abstraction can in effect function as legitimate modes of refusal. and of course, practices of refusal are not only useful conceptual f rames but are also catalysts towards constructing new conditions of black life. they exist as grand refusals recorded and documented throughout history but also, to evoke hartman again, as quieter moments that reflect on everyday choreographies of the possible. what continues to make refusing useful is not that it is radical or novel, but that it continues to inspire actions (and non-actions) that yield real results in our quests for f reedom. refusal against the unending ruthless crisis of anti-blackness. refusal against heteronormativity. refusing black consumption. refusing gender and class oppression. refusing now. refusing together. notes 1. credited to fred moten through a recorded conversation (see carter and cervenak, 2017). references anonymous, (n.d.) ‘at daggers drawn with the existent, its defenders and its false critics.’ the anarchist library [online]. available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-at-daggers-drawn-with-the-existent-its-defenders-and-its-false-critics carter, j.k. and cervenak, s.j. (2017). ‘the black outdoors: humanities futures after property and possession.’ humanities futures [online]. available at: https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/ the-black-outdoors-humanities-futures-after-property-and-possession/ english, d. (2016). 1971: a year in the life of color. chicago: university of chicago press. goodman gallery. (2021). ‘nolan oswald dennis.’ goodman gallery [online]. available at: https://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/ nolan-oswald-dennis hartman, s. (2018). ‘the anarchy of colored girls assembled in a riotous manner.’ south atlantic quarterly, 117(3): 465–490. hudleston, s. (1996). george pemba: against all odds. johannesburg: jonathan ball publishers. lenssen, a. (2018). ‘“we painted the crystal, we thought about the crystal”—the crystalist manifesto (khartoum, 1976) in context.’ post/moma [online]. available at: https://post.moma.org/ we-painted-the-crystal-we-thought-about-the-crystal-the-crystalist-manifesto-khartoum-1976-in-context/ nitegeka, s.a. (2017). ‘ode to black.’ stevenson [online]. available at: https://www.stevenson.info/exhibition/1868 okeowo, a. (2020). ‘how saidiya hartman retells the history of black life.’ the new yorker [online]. available at: https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/26/how-saidiya-hartman-retells-the-history-of-black-life practicing refusal collective. (2020). the sojourner project [online]. available at: https://www.thesojournerproject.org/about/ tate, (2019). ‘marlow moss: composition in yellow, black and white.’ tate [online]. available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/moss-composition-in-yellow-black-and-white-t01113 the crystalist manifesto. (1976). hassan abdallah, hashim ibrahim, kamala ibrahim ishaq, muhammad hamid shaddad, naiyla al tayib. truth, sojourner. (1851). ‘ain’t i a woman?’ national park service [online]. available at: https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth. htm special edition 84 fontein t h e t h i n k e r4 zimbabwe tirreverently known by many zimbabweans, was always likely to be something of an event. having ruled zimbabwe for 37 years, and as nearly the last of a whole generation of af rican liberation leaders in the region, bob was in equal measures revered, feared, respected and despised across his country and beyond. for many across the wider region, he remained a respected as a welcome thorn in the side of ‘western’ and global interests, and an icon of widely-resonating struggles for land and economic re-distribution. on the other hand, many ordinary zimbabweans (those living in zimbabwe and the millions etching out precarious lives in its diaspora) held a different opinion. after two decades of relentless economic crisis, political polarisation and numerous failed attempts to replace him electorally – often at enormous cost in terms of the violence unleashed against any perceived political opposition – bob’s only way that things were ever going to change, the only way that zimbabwe’s social, political and economic problems could ever be resolved. meanwhile, for a hard core of zanu pf loyalists, internal factionalism, bob remained very much the ‘hallowed’ father of zimbabwean independence, legacy’ – the ‘soft’ coup that unexpectedly pushed him out in november 2017 – have been at pains to maintain since taking over the presidency. for all these reasons, his death was always going by joost fontein © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m burying bob 5v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 zimbabwe different people. it was also long-anticipated: he was 95 and, until 2017, one of the world’s oldest serving presidents. since the early 2000s, when i expecting, and maybe hoping, that he would kick the bucket soon. there were endless recurring rumours about his ill health, and his many expensive trips to see doctors in singapore. yet he still masterly manipulating zanu pf’s rivalries and factions, so that zimbabweans grimly joked that maybe he would never die. it only became harder to conceal his evident f railty in his latter years. in many ways, bob himself was responsible for ever the ideologue, bob had – since independence – constituted, politicised and instrumentalised the national commemoration of zimbabwe’s liberation struggle through a system of district and provincial ‘heroes’ acres’ across the country, with its zenith at the national heroes’ acre in harare (werbner, 1998). a deeply partisan and much-contested process – long criticised for its narrow version of liberation history and for its marginalisation of so many other contributions to zimbabwean independence – the ‘national heroes’ system had become increasingly central to what some called ‘mugabeism’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2015), or zanu pf’s ‘chimurenga politics’ (chigumadzi, system ‘patriotic history’, especially in the wake of land reform and deepening political and economic crises in the 2000s. zanu pf’s controversial control of commemoration and the selection of its ‘national heroes’ is a key part of what i think of as zimbabwe’s ‘politics of the dead’ (fontein, 2009). every year, bob would lead annual ‘heroes’ day’ celebrations and an increasing number of state funerals at harare’s national heroes’ acre (as more and more of the liberation generation passed away). these were opportunities he apparently relished a great deal, as he rambled and ranted at tedious length, endlessly recanting his own revised versions of history, over the deceased bodies of zanu pf’s designated heroes, to bored bussed-in audiences or on national television broadcasts. among the many hundreds of other graves, some great zimbabwe-style walling, and some fairly garish north korean sculpted monuments, bob’s supposed burial spot had already long been marked out: on a top terrace next to sally, his late given all of this anticipation, and indeed announcements of his death in singapore, on 6th september 2019, were met with notable ambivalence among many zimbabweans. some of this ambivalence was predictable for a leader as controversial and polarising as mugabe. a seemingly endless stream of obituaries, statements and commentaries by politicians, journalists, commentators and scholars quickly emerged. these could be categorised into three groups. firstly, there were those who continued to valorise bob’s liberation past, including respected to samora machel and, later, to nelson mandela. secondly, there were those who, for very good reasons, continued to vilify him, both for the economic mess zimbabwe has endured for almost two decades, but even more so for the political violence of that period, including the atrocious, unresolved crimes of the gukurahundi massacres in the 1980s, when an estimated 20,000 civilians in matabeleland and the midlands were killed by the north korean trained fifth brigade. thirdly, there were those who sought to construct a middle path between mugabe’s ‘heroic’ liberation past in the 1960s and 1970s, and his markedly mixed postcolonial record. some of these accounts point to the positive, enduring legacies of bob’s expansion of f ree education and health care in the 1980s, whilst others f rame his complex past in a familiar narrative of ‘hero turned villain’ under the global pressures of neo-liberalism, or in the context of a wider disillusionment with the postcolonial dispensation across the region. sometimes, in many ways, bob himself was responsible for much of the anticipated bob had – since independence – constituted, politicised and instrumentalised the national commemoration of zimbabwe’s t h e t h i n k e r6 such commentaries appealed to the necessity of ‘not speaking ill of the dead’ to euphemise their biographies and obituaries. while the injunction to not speak ill of the dead has particular, and powerful, cultural connotations in a zimbabwean context (which i return to below), others – such as is no such thing as an injunction against speaking of the dastardly deeds of someone like bob. these ambivalences about mugabe’s complex legacy were to be expected. what struck me, however, in speaking to zimbabweans – and in reading the newspaper reports, blogs, commentaries, and twitter feeds that circulated immediately after his death – was a different kind of ambivalence, bordering on resigned indifference, or even disinterest. quoted in the guardian, for instance, was the following comment f rom a young woman – esther moyo – who attended mugabe’s funeral primarily because it was an opportunity to sell more peanuts: ‘mugabe is the reason we are in this mess…i just came here to sell my snacks to make a living...and to make sure the old man was really dead’ (burke, 2019). for the many zimbabweans scratching out a meagre living in its informal sector, or forced abroad to work low-level jobs in the face of xenophobic violence in south af rica, or increasingly vitriolic anti-immigration policies in the uk and elsewhere, bob’s death was just too far away, too inconsequential to their daily lives, and maybe far too late to really matter. this kind of ambivalence and indifference seemed to suggest that mugabe’s death was just a big anticlimax. given how long mugabe had been expected to implied, and for how long it had been assumed that this would be the moment of long-awaited political change, perhaps it was his unexpected demise into political irrelevance soon afterwards – that led to his death not being as big a deal as many had long expected. in a sense, he was already dead politically, regardless of the continuing activities of the so-called g40 faction ousted with him in november 2017, and the suggestions that bob had switched his support to the movement for democratic change (mdc) opposition in the 2018 elections. moreover, as the new regime’s claims to offer a more tolerant ‘open for business’ kind of politics rapidly lost credibility with new outbreaks of state-sponsored violence and killings in august 2018 and january 2019, amidst a new wave of disappearances, and as the economy again faltered, any promise that mugabe’s demise would offer meaningful change had already evaporated. conversely, for some, perhaps only a few, bob’s death could even be construed as meaningful only in so much as his successor has been shown to be even worse, with all of bob’s violence and intolerance, and none of his eloquence. if this kind of ambivalence can be represented, then perhaps it was best expressed in satirical memes that circulated on social media in the weeks after bob’s humour. my favourite is an image (entitled ‘pastor lukau has done it again’) of bob photo-shopped onto a now famous photograph of a man sitting up having allegedly been brought back to life. this kind of ambivalence, bordering on resigned that suggested that mugabe’s lying in state at two stadiums in the capital – and later at his rural home in zvimba – were marked by poor attendance and that other reports, particularly in the government press, were keen to emphasise the large numbers attendant at the airport to welcome his remains home and at various public vigils, as well as the take part in the state funeral in september 2019. the actual numbers involved in these events were always likely to vary, and are hard to measure. there of people being bussed in by the ruling party, as well as of people gate-crashing funerals simply for the promise of food or drink. more intriguing is the possibility that mugabe’s death being a non-event for a disinterested zimbabwean public might not in reading the newspaper reports, blogs, commentaries, and twitter feeds that circulated zimbabwe 7v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 have passed muster for those for whom his death presented political opportunities too good or too but if that was the case, there was no need for concern. the shenanigans that quickly emerged after mugabe’s state funeral, about where and how to bury him, ensured that his death would, after all, become a memorable and controversial elsewhere have written about in terms of the ‘political lives of dead bodies’ (verdery, 1999) or a reinvigorated ‘carnal fetishism’ across the region (bernault, 2006; cohen and odhiambo, 1992). mugabe’s burial turned out to be far more intriguing and revealing than the initial sense of general ambivalence and disinterest had promised, suggesting indeed, as my favourite meme also implied, that it was bob himself who had ‘done it again’ – ensuring that, in death as much as in life, zimbabwean politics would continue to circulate around him. it was always likely that the new political regime of emmerson mnangagwa – also known as ed or the ‘ngwena’ (‘crocodile’) – would be keen to ensure that mugabe was interred at the national heroes’ acre, and appropriately enshrined as one of independent zimbabwe’s foundational heroes. although mnangagwa has been at pains to be seen to be creating distance f rom the previous regime (by seeking to re-engage the international discipline and political tolerance, and even by promising to deal with the unresolved legacies of the gukurahundi), the truth is that his politics do not radically rupture f rom mugabeism. even the ‘soft coup’ itself was carefully presented as an effort to preserve bob’s and zanu pf’s liberation legacy f rom the young miscreants gathered around him, including his deeply-disliked and vitriolic second wife, grace. this was not just about needing regional legitimacy f rom the southern af rican development community (sadc) and the af rican union (au), although that did matter. it was more because – as key lieutenants in forging the ideology and political stylistics of ‘mugabeism’ – the new leadership has always been invested in zanu pf’s ‘chimurenga politics’: a politics that can be markedly gerontocratic and misogynistic, former vice-president joice mujuru by grace in 2014), and later of grace mugabe herself by the regime that ousted her husband. the new regime’s determination to preserve its claim on the legacies of mugabeism explains the great care that was taken to ensure that mugabe, his wife and his family were well-cared-for and given a very generous ‘retirement’ package after his removal in november 2017. this is also why efforts were constantly made to publicly reconcile with bob and grace following his ouster, even if bob himself was not so keen to play ball. in short, mnangagwa’s government were deeply invested in ensuring that mugabe took his place at the national heroes’ acre, in order to bestow his liberation legacy, ideology and legitimacy onto the new regime. even as arrangements for bob’s funeral and burial were being discussed, mnangagwa presided over the burial at the national heroes’ acre of another senior zanu pf and military commander – major general trust mugoba, who had coincidently died on the same day as mugabe – illustrating mnangagwa’s commitment to continuing the narrow politics of zanu pf-controlled commemoration that his predecessor had forged. but it seems bob had anticipated that his former zanu pf underlings would try to make use of his death in this way. bitter and resolute, mugabe apparently indicated before his death that he did not want to be buried at the national heroes’ acre, preferring instead to be buried at his rural home in zvimba, as indeed is common among many who have rejected burial at the national heroes’ acre. the ironies reverberate here. mugabe himself had presided over the burials of many former zanu pf stalwarts who, having fallen out with him in life, had publicly refused to be buried the shenanigans that quickly emerged after to bury him, ensured that his death would, after zimbabwe t h e t h i n k e r8 at the national heroes’ acre before their deaths, but were subsequently interred there anyway. this tendency to instrumentalise and contain in death through his will, and what he allegedly told his relatives in august before he died, mugabe was doing the same. understanding well how these politics worked, he was not prepared to allow his former comrades – who had so unceremoniously – to use his body to prop up their ideological cause, however much he himself had been an author of almost as soon as mugabe’s body touched down at harare airport, if not before, reports began emerging of a dispute between the government and bob’s relatives, especially his wife grace. the f reneticism of the plans for the viewing of his body in two stadiums in harare, and its journey to zvimba for memorial services and body viewing about where he should be buried appeared to be, rather simply, between the government who wanted him interred at the national heroes’ acre, and the family – headed by grace and supported by community and clan elders and chiefs in zvimba – who wanted him buried according to his own wishes, and according to local traditions, amongst other ‘chiefs’ in a secret cave near his rural home. many recognised bob’s wishes as a deliberate last snub to those who had ousted impose its will, having already publicly committed itself to respecting mugabe’s and his family’s wishes. evocative statements f rom some relatives – especially f rom leo mugabe (his nephew) – that mugabe had been hounded to an early death by the way zanu pf had treated him after the economic freedom fighters (eff) leader julius malema, when he visited to pay his respects) clearly upped the pressure on the ruling party. it was therefore with some surprise that news was received a few days after his funeral that the family had, reluctantly, agreed to allow mugabe to be buried at the national heroes’ acre. the negotiations must have been tense and acrimonious, especially because the agreement arrived at was that bob would not be interred in but rather in a new, still-to-be-built ‘mausoleum’ to be hastily constructed at a spot on the summit some of his immediate relatives. this would take some weeks to build, and many began to wonder how long bob’s body would be lying in state, or ferried between zvimba and the enormous, garish had lived. according to common cultural beliefs and practices related to death in zimbabwe, the period between someone’s death and their burial is often seen as a particularly anxious and unsettled period, because the spirit of the deceased is believed to hover around the body dangerously. grace mugabe spent much of this period under a heavy black veil, maintaining a vigil around her late husband’s corpse. many mused that grace must have managed, in some way, to get her way by refusing to allow bob to be buried next to his or strongly critiqued the decision to build a new separate and elevated mausoleum for mugabe, obvious extenuation of zanu pf’s long-running politics of distorting zimbabwe’s liberation past by privileging some legacies and contributions, and denigrating others. indications of the pressure that mnangagwa’s regime must have placed upon grace and bob’s relatives became clearer when it emerged a few days later that the title deeds on by the family were listed in zanu pf’s name, but family’s wellbeing, be transferred into their name. suggestions that the threat of withholding these title deeds had been waved over the family’s heads, in order to get their approval, revealed the extent understanding well how these politics worked, he was not prepared to allow his former comrades – who had so less than two years before – to use his body much he himself had been an author of this zimbabwe 9v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 to which zanu pf were invested in ensuring that bob would be interred at heroes’ acre. soon, however, the politics surrounding bob’s burial became even more complex, after it emerged that grace had wanted mugabe buried authorities had refused permission, citing city by-laws. not only is it likely that the city authorities could have succumbed to zanu pf pressure to refuse this request, but this detail also suggested that grace, bob’s children and the rest of bob’s family, let alone the chiefs and community elders in zvimba, were not necessarily speaking with the it emerged that several zvimba chiefs had fallen out with grace, and were forcibly ejected f rom her ongoing vigil around the corpse, because they had sided with zanu pf, and argued that bob should in fact be interred at heroes’ acre in harare. the controversies deepened further soon after. with building work on the mausoleum already proceeding, it was suddenly announced – on september 27th 2019 – that plans had changed again, and that bob would now be buried in buried one day later in a specially-designed casket and a cement-lined grave at the centre of his family homestead. the event was a private, guestlist-only affair, which mnangagwa did not attend. the causes of the family’s change of mind remain open to speculation, although the role of julius malema, and his outspoken critique of zanu pf’s pressure on grace and her family, was quickly was buried in the centre of his homestead, and not in a special and secret burial location for zvimba elders and chiefs, as had earlier been suggested, likely fallen out with local community elders, as well as with the ruling party. it later emerged that zimbabwe © c e c il b o d z w o w a / s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m t h e t h i n k e r10 leo mugabe – self-styled family spokesman – had also been excluded f rom the family burial, amid rumours that he and grace had fallen out after grace accused leo of taking bribes f rom zanu pf to ensure bob’s burial in harare. whatever family intrigues were at play, however, the end result was a kind of double ‘fuck you’ to mnangagwa and his new regime, with the half-built mausoleum at than any other zanu pf hero, but that he had also managed to defy his ousters till the very end. it will be curious to see what the longer term fall-out will be, but it is likely that a furious mnangagwa will as if all of this is not enough, there is yet another dimension to the controversies surrounding bob’s burial that is worthy of comment. after the burial, reports and rumours soon began to emerge that throughout the troubled negotiations between grace, the family and zanu pf, great concern had been circulating about ensuring that bob’s body was protected f rom any nefarious attempts to tamper with his corpse, or to remove his body parts. this, some suggested, was the reason for grace’s apparent refusal to allow bob’s body to be held at any city morgues or at one commando barracks, where national heroes are usually kept preceding burial. and it was this concern which fuelled (rumours suggest) grace’s exhausting (but well-performed) mourning vigil, and her insistence that bob’s body could only be kept and displayed under careful guard at her home in harare, and later in zvimba. according to leo mugabe, bob had himself been concerned that his enemies might want to steal and make use of his body parts for nefarious rituals to accrue ‘occult’ power. these suggestions fed rumours circulating in the press and on social media about the number of displayed in during the weeks since his death, as well as reports that a special ‘tamper-proof’ such rumours, grace’s long and tortured vigil performance later sparked suggestions that it was she herself who had sought to make nefarious use of bob’s potent corporeality. there have long been whiffs of the ‘occult’ to zanu pf’s style of politics, and to its internal factionalism. this dimension of zimbabwean political life is as broad and diverse as religious and spiritual life in zimbabwe in general. it ranges f rom the long-term association of some strands of af rican nationalism with spirit mediums, ancestral practices and so-called ‘traditional religion’ (which has been well-discussed in the literature), to increasingly spectacular overtures towards new charismatic pentecostal movements in recent years. it extends to include both the ridiculous – such as the much-mocked involvement of mugabe’s top ministers with the f raudulent ‘diesel n’anga’, in chinoyi, in 2007 – to the downright malicious, such as the accusations of witchcraft that grace mugabe levied at two previous vice-presidents replaced her in 2014), as part of the intensifying which led to both losing their positions. conversely, the statements, rumours and claims associating mugabe’s rule with some kind of divine, ancestral, or even occult providence have often contributed to the aura of totalising, all-encompassing power and supremacy that was weaved around him. although sometimes the cause of ridicule, these dimensions of zanu pf politics are extraordinarily effective and affective. this derives f rom their uncertain duplicity: both their ability to cast any perceived opposition into an over-determined position of absolute malevolence and, conversely, in making mugabe appear transcendental, omnipotent, and untouchable. seen in this light, there is nothing particularly unusual or ‘exotic’ about this stylistics of power. it is with this in mind that we should seek to understand the corporeal politics of the dead that circulated around bob’s cadaver, which grace there are deep cultural aspects of zimbabwean beliefs and practices to do with bodies and the zimbabwe of politics, and to its internal zimbabwean political life is as broad 11v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 dead, which cross over religious tensions and transformations between regional ancestral cults and different kinds of churches (older missionary and af rican independent churches, and more recent pentecostal movements). a central belief is that corpses are dangerous between death and burial, both for the often-unhappy spirits of the dead (who during this period are said to ‘hover’ around them), and for the troubling potential potencies of their corporeal substances. indeed, a system of funerals, burials and memorial services, culminating in kugadzira (shona) or umbuyiso (ndebele) ceremonies a year or more after death (through which, in more ‘traditional settings’, it is understood that settled, benign sprits are ‘returned’ to the homestead f rom a period of ‘exile’ in the bush) can be understood as processes of managing the transformation of life into death, of dealing with and containing the dangerous corporeal substances that death involves, and of making people safely and benevolently dead. this is why an injunction against speaking ‘ill of the dead’ has particular potency in a zimbabwean context, as dead people are considered dangerous before burial, and before this process is complete. indeed, there are many cases of relatives of murdered people deliberately not burying their dead in order to force compensation or some kind of response f rom those deemed culpable, who might become haunted by the dangerous unsettled spirits known as ngozi. the fact that mugabe himself was often rumoured to have been haunted – by the unsettled spirits of people whose death he was said to have orchestrated – illustrates how such cultural beliefs around death can be politically salient. it is also in this context that the long delays around bob’s burial were already politically affective and anxiety provoking. similarly, it is also common in zimbabwe for people to be anxious about protecting the graves of recently buried people, because witches and those who practice witchcraft are often believed (and certainly morally) as ‘anti-human’, witches are understood to demonstrate and substantiate this through consuming the dangerous substances of decaying corpses. it is therefore very common for people to check graves for any signs of disturbance during the days after a funeral. likewise, grandiose and cemented grave mountings – as have become increasingly common throughout the region – serve to function not only as a way of monumentalising the continuing memory of the dead, but also to keep them contained and secure. indeed, these two things reinforce each other: a highly monumentalised grave covered in concrete reinforces the power of a dead person as someone not only to be remembered, but whose corporeal substances are themselves potent and dangerous, and in need of being contained and protected. it is in this context that we can understand how the controversies surrounding where and how bob was to be buried, which i have discussed above, were aligned with this other more corporeal kind of politics – that is, that the rumours that grace’s the cement-lined grave, unusually placed in the middle of his rural homestead, were all a response to bob’s own fears that his body parts would be the target of nefarious interference by malevolent interests aligned against him and his family. these rumours and performances all served to reinforce bob’s (and perhaps grace’s) omnipotent salience and corporeal presence in zimbabwean politics, just as the refusal, then acceptance and then refusal again, to bury bob at the national heroes’ acre had ensured that his death and burial would become as eventful and talked about as they were always supposed to be. bob had indeed done it again. references journal of af rican history. 47 (2), pp. 207–39. burke, j. (2019). pomp, thin crowds and mixed feelings as robert mugabe is buried. [online] the guardian. available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2019/sep/15/pomp-thin-crowds-mixed-feelings-as-robert-mugabelaid-to-rest chigumadzi, p. (2018). these bones will rise again. johannesburg: jacana media. cohen, d. and odhiambo, e. (1992) burying sm: the politics of knowledge and the sociology of power in af rica. london: james currey. fontein, j. (2009). the politics of the dead: living heritage, bones and commemoration in zimbabwe. [online] association of social anthropologists of the uk & commonwealth. available at: https://www. theasa.org/publications/asaonline/articles/asaonline_0102.shtml fontein, j. (2018). political accidents in zimbabwe. kronos. 44 (1), pp. 33–58. mugabe and the tradition to not speak ill of the dead. [online] mail & guardian. available at: https://mg.co.za/article/2019-0923-mugabe-and-the-tradition-to-not-speak-ill-of-the-dead/ ndlovu-gatsheni, s. (ed). (2015). mugabeism? history, politics, and power in zimbabwe. new york: palgrave macmillan us. verdery, k. (1999). the political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia university press. memory and the postcolony: af rican anthropology and the critique of power. london: zed books. zimbabwe t h e t h i n k e r12 joost fontein joined the university of johannesburg as professor of anthropology in september 2018. this article is an abridged extract from his forthcoming monograph the politics of the dead in zimbabwe 2000 – 2015: bones, rumours & spirits (james currey 2021). before joining uj he was based in nairobi as director of the british institute in eastern african (2014-18), on secondment from the university of edinburgh, where he taught social anthropology for seven years (2007-2014). his research explores the political and material imbrications of landscapes, things and human substances. he has done extended periods of ethnographic fieldwork in zimbabwe since the late 1990s. his doctoral research (edinburgh 2003), explored the politics of heritage and landscape around great zimbabwe national monument in southern zimbabwe. it won the asa uk audrey richards prize in 2004, and was published as a monograph (ucl press) in 2006. his second monograph remaking mutirikwi: landscape, water and belonging (james currey, june 2015) was shortlisted for the melville herskovitts prize by the asa usa in 2016, and was reprinted a paperback in 2018. his more recent research has focused on emergence, materiality and becoming in urban contexts, as part of a large multi-authored, collaborative project between scholars and artists that he has co-initiated entitled nairobi becoming. for this project he has done ethnographic fieldwork across nairobi looking at water supply and sanitation in mathare, at the city's architectural salvage and the demolition industry, and at urban goat keeping and trading at kiamiako, in huruma. he is currently involved in two multi-authored, interdisciplinary book projects, one looking at nairobi, and the other at temporal frontiers and the excessivity of time. since joining the biea in 2014 he has also created films and installations for, and co-curated, various exhibitions in nairobi (at the biea and at the national museum), including remains, waste & metonymy i (october 2015 & february 2016); remains, waste & metonymy ii: sensing nairobi (february 2017 & june 2017), and remains, waste & metonymy iii: kikulacho nairobi (february and september 2018). he is a founding member of the bones collective research group, a former editor of the journal of southern african studies (2008-2014), and co-founder of critical african studies. zimbabwe note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel acheampong, kelvin is a recent graduate of the european interdisciplinary master in african studies (eimas), jointly hosted by university of porto, university of bayreuth, and bordeaux montaigne university. he has research interests in african studies, african literatures and decolonial thought. correspondence regarding this paper should be sent to kelvin.acheampong@unibayreuth.de mataruse, prolific is a lecturer in the department of governance and public management at the university of zimbabwe. correspondence regarding the paper should be sent to prolificmataruse@sociol.uz.ac.zw motoung, tlhabane mokhine ‘dan’ has published in edited volumes on varied thematic areas, which include history of identity in sa, anc politics, the south african state, language politics and traditional leadership. correspondence regarding the paper should be sent to motaungdan@gmail.com mpofu, william jethro is a researcher at the wits centre for diversity studies, university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg. correspondence regarding the article should be sent to william.mpofu@wits.ac.za mthombeni, zama is a phd candidate in development studies at the university of kwazulu-natal. correspondence regarding the article should be sent to mthombeni.z@gmail.com ndlovu-gatsheni, sabelo is a professor and chair of epistemologies of the south, faculty of humanities and social sciences as well as vice-dean, research: africa multiple cluster of excellence, university of bayreuth. correspondence regarding the article should be sent to sabelo.ndlovu-gatsheni@uni-bayreuth.de. ngqulunga, bongani is with the university of johannesburg where he directs the johannesburg institute for advanced study (jias) and also lectures in the department of politics and international relations. correspondence regarding the article should be sent to bongani0205@gmail.com t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 mailto:kelvin.acheampong@uni-bayreuth.de mailto:kelvin.acheampong@uni-bayreuth.de mailto:prolificmataruse@sociol.uz.ac.zw mailto:motaungdan@gmail.com mailto:william.mpofu@wits.ac.za mailto:mthombeni.z@gmail.com mailto:sabelo.ndlovu-gatsheni@uni-bayreuth.de mailto:bongani0205@gmail.com 79v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition settled by david mann | short story settled is a work of short fiction concerned with the notions of value and extraction in the arts, and the unequal relationships of power this imposes. it was written as part of a collection of short stories that seeks, through the lens of fiction, to provide an alternative record and critique of the south african art world. the collection was produced over the course of a creative writing masters programme at the university of witwatersrand, under the supervision of ivan vladislavic. the idea of the ‘borrow pit’ in the story is made in reference to south african theatre-maker jemma kahn’s 2018 play the borrow pit. 80 it is still dark when they leave bloemfontein, the roads blanketed with fog. theirs is the only car on the road. nicholas was meant to take the morning shift, but he is tired and groggy and so ayanda finds himself behind the wheel. they make a brief stop at an engen garage on the outskirts of the town to top up on petrol, snacks, and bad coffee before taking the onramp onto the n1 and continuing their journey into the eastern cape, towards kenton-on-sea. ‘what are we listening to?’ asks ayanda. nicholas shrugs. he is gripping his coffee cup with both hands, slumped against the passenger side window and staring out into the passing darkness. ‘wake up, please. if you’re making me drive, then you at least have to talk to me. i’m as tired as you are.’ ‘anything. just put on anything. i don’t care.’ ‘anything?’ ‘anything good. not that awful stuff you had on yesterday.’ ‘it’s a pop-culture podcast, nicholas. it’s not meant to be anything hugely sophisticated.’ ‘it’s mindless.’ ‘well, i like it. it’s helping me build my list of movies to watch once we get there.’ ‘no, no. i’m not watching any of that. i’ve got reading to catch up on.’ ‘i don’t think i’ve seen you read a book in the last ten years.’ ‘exactly. now i’ll have the time. look, just put something on, it’s too early for chatter.’ ayanda opts for silence. he drives on, hunched forward in the seat to better see the unlit road ahead. it will be a while before nicholas is out of his mood, he thinks. might as well let it pass. the drive f rom johannesburg yesterday was in higher spirits. they were both excited to be on the road, out of the city, finally making the trip down to their new home. it’s a move they’ve been planning for a while. ayanda has wanted out of joburg for years. nicholas has always been less keen on the idea. there is always some new project, a new exhibition to work towards, another installation to tend to. such is life when you’re in a relationship with one of the country’s art darlings, thinks ayanda. someone always wants a piece of nicholas and he is always happy to oblige. it took ayanda declaring that he was leaving on his own, flying down to set things up in the new house by himself, to force nicholas into action. ‘i suppose now’s as good a time as any,’ he’d said. in reality, nicholas could afford to pack up and go anytime he wanted. probably, he didn’t trust ayanda to handle the move on his own. outside, only the soft, red lights of long-haul trucks are visible through the mist ahead of them. ayanda yawns, stretches, readjusts his grip on the wheel. he embraces the silence, presses on, drives as fast as the road allows. nicholas sets down his coffee, still too hot to drink. ‘wake me up before we get to gariep,’ he says, pulling his jacket up to his chin and turning away f rom ayanda. *** the gravel road rattles nicholas awake as the car makes the climb up the track overlooking the gariep dam. it’s still early, but the sun is out and they can see the vast, shimmering body of water below. ayanda is tired. he drove through the dark in silence, letting nicholas sleep. they take the tarred road that leads down to the bridge arching across the dam. nicholas sits up. ‘pull over at the parking lot, there,’ he says, gesturing to an unpaved patch of land with a cluster of worn cement picnic tables. ‘can’t we just pull over at the viewing point on the bridge? no one’s around, anyway,’ says ayanda, slowing nonetheless. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 81 ‘i want to walk,’ says nicholas. ‘it’s cold.’ ‘it’s not that cold. isn’t this the whole reason we’re driving down anyway? to see the country? take it slow, make stops when we want? just up here’s good, pull over here.’ ayanda brings the car to a stop and they climb out into the icy morning. they make their way to the viewing point, jackets zipped up and hands stuffed into their pockets. they walk in silence until they get there. from where they’re standing, they get a view of the whole bridge, the hills beyond it, and the sky holding its pale pink hue. below, uniform concrete pillars plunge downwards, supporting the length of road that stretches across the dam. ‘it’s off,’ says ayanda, chin still tucked into his jacket. ‘huh?’ ‘the water’s not running.’ ‘hmm. well, if it was, i doubt we’d be able to have a conversation. you should hear it when it’s in full swing. like thunder.’ nicholas walks over to another small lookout point that provides a view into the dry ravine below. ayanda follows. the two of them take in the surroundings. ayanda takes out his phone and points it at nicholas. ‘look here.’ ‘no, no.’ ‘come on, just one. i can see you’re all sentimental being here. it’s sweet. come on, just stand there.’ ‘no. i’m still waking up, i look awful.’ ayanda pockets the phone. moves closer to nicholas. ‘is it good to be back?’ ‘mm. different.’ ‘want to walk over the bridge?’ ‘no. better get going.’ they walk back to the car. nicholas gets into the driver’s side and adjusts the seat, giving himself more legroom. they pull off and make their way over the bridge, looking out at the water and the hills as they go. *** twenty minutes outside of steynsburg, they begin to talk. the day is growing hot and the sun has lifted their spirits. they talk as two people who’ve shared a life together for more than two decades do – speaking alongside one another, independently of each other’s conversations, each pursuing their own line of thought without responding to the other’s. for a while, they talk about the accommodation f rom the night before, the small towns and farmstalls they passed on the way there. ayanda jokes about the presence of satanic cults in the area. nicholas talks about the drives he used to take through the area for research. anecdotes about getting lost, running out of petrol, spending the night sleeping in the car in the middle of nowhere. ayanda has heard them all before. some time passes. they fall into a familiar silence. ‘i took my first photograph there.’ ‘hmm?’ v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition settled is a work of short fiction concerned with the notions of value and extraction in the arts, and the unequal relationships of power this imposes. it was written as part of a collection of short stories that seeks, through the lens of fiction, to provide an alternative record and critique of the south african art world. 82 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition ‘at the dam. i took my first ever photograph there.’ ‘oh.’ ‘they were still finishing some of the lower foundations. we went there…’ ‘…on a family trip. you used your uncle’s camera. it was the last photo on the spool.’ ‘have i told you this before?’ ‘no. you’ve told other people, though. i remember reading about it in an interview.’ ‘before we met?’ ‘no.’ ‘oh. well, sorry to bore you with my stories.’ they stop talking. nicholas capitalises on their stubborn silence and changes the music. ayanda looks out the window, watches the gradation of the passing landscape – brittle greens and yellows, empty blue sky. he is upset, but he does not make a show of it. that sort of thing never works with nicholas, only hardens his resolve. nicholas can go hours without talking, just to prove a point. more often than not, the point being that he hasn’t done or said anything wrong. time will pass, ayanda will apologise. they’ll move on. the two met in cape town, at a bar in observatory. ayanda was 20, then, an art school dropout – a lack of funds more than a lack of ambition. nicholas was in his mid-30s although only just starting to enjoy his new-found fame, out celebrating the opening of a solo in town. ayanda had gone out with f riends because he had nothing better to do. they met through an acquaintance, began to talk. ayanda already knew who nicholas was by then. nicholas had no idea who ayanda was, but he enjoyed the attention. ayanda spent the night sitting across f rom nicholas in a corner booth of the bar that stank of piss and beer, listening to him talk about himself, about making art in post-apartheid south af rica, about the international markets opening up again. the opportunities were pouring in, he said, he was busier than ever. he was even looking for a new assistant to join him in his johannesburg studio. certainly, nicholas had no idea that ayanda would show up at his studio a month later, ready to work. ayanda worked in his studio, picked up some of the admin, screen-printed, reproduced endless amounts of landscapes and railway lines and electricity pylons in ink and charcoal – drawings to be cut up and reworked into whatever nicholas wanted them to be. they maintained a non-committal fling for a few months while nicholas saw other people. ayanda was useful, eager to work and to learn, and so nicholas kept him around. they became exclusive around the time ayanda started managing the studio, handling nicholas’s admin, travel, his exhibitions, forthcoming publications. he moved in. the years passed. they travelled, bought and sold homes, discussed the idea of marriage without ever taking it further. a gesture towards long-term commitment came in the form of ayanda’s eventual title of director of the nicholas trist foundation. ‘who else could i trust to manage it all?’ nicholas had said. ayanda was happy, he reasoned. what else would he have done with his life? and life with nicholas had been good, if a little lonely. ‘i’m taking us through cradock. i’d like to stop at the old schreiner house if we have time,’ says nicholas. ‘what about alice? didn’t we say we’d stop over and see athi?’ ‘what?’ nicholas turns the volume down. ‘what’s in alice?’ ‘athi’s there. i told you. he moved back there a few months ago. i wanted to go and visit.’ ‘oh god. i didn’t think you were serious about that.’ ‘why would i not have been serious about it?’ ‘you know what i mean. we didn’t plan for it, is what i’m saying. you should have let me know earlier.’ ‘we can still go,’ ayanda insists, ‘the turn off isn’t until 83v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition another hour at least.’ ‘we can’t just stop off there unannounced. where does he even stay? how will we know where to go?’ ‘i have his address. he’s told us to come and visit. he’s dying to see us. he’s been busy setting up that panaf rican library.’ ‘oh, that little project. i do remember that. look, he can come and visit us once we’re settled, i’ve already planned to see the schreiner house.’ ‘what for?’ ‘just to see it. i’m thinking of doing something around it. might want to photograph it as part of a series.’ ‘please! do you even have a camera on you? you haven’t done any of your own work in years.’ nicholas’s mood shifts. he speaks with a sharp, clipped tone. ‘not this crap again, ayanda. this is why i was reluctant to take this drive with you. these little tantrums you throw. and for what? because you’re bored? because you want to cause some scene to pass the time? i’m not doing this.’ ayanda falls back, does not respond. up ahead, roadworks slow them down. the heat and the trucks give them something to attach their anger to. they pass a large hole in the earth, deep and vast. they move past it slowly, both taking it in. for all the depth and scale of the hole, the amount of earth that has been removed in order to create it, there should surely be a mountain beside it, a pile of sand and stone, but there is nothing. the roadworks come to an end and they leave the hole behind them, dedicatedly overtaking long-haul trucks and bakkies with trailers carrying livestock. when they eventually reach the turn off to alice, nicholas drives on towards cradock. ayanda does not protest. *** the stop in cradock proves to be a salve for their moods. they agree to take the tour through schreiner house together. ayanda has little interest in schreiner, but he lingers and reads the many yellowing, laminated posters detailing her early life, the influence the site had on her writing, the influence her work has had on others. he reads a copy of a letter she wrote to a f riend, describing the joy she took in climbing to the top of a koppie one morning and stripping naked, feeling the elements on her skin. he takes a photograph of the passage and texts it to a f riend with the caption: ‘listen, olive was wild’. outside, nicholas chats idly with the curator who explains that he lives in a room at the back of the house, that they hardly get visitors these days, no support f rom the government. they buy a few books – local authors and anthologies of poetry about the eastern cape. nicholas leaves a small donation. they discuss the idea of making the trip up the koppie to visit schreiner’s grave, but decide against it. it is something they’ll do once they’re more settled. there will be time to do that sort of thing then, they agree. for now, they are happy to press on. back on the road, they are in better spirits, talking, listening to podcasts about architecture and literature and stopping at various points to admire the landscape, taking postcard-style photographs on their phones as they do. they pass bedford, glen ambrose, and stop for a late lunch at a pub in makhanda, where they’re served by a listless student waiter who is animated only once nicholas introduces himself in full. after lunch they amble around, remark on how quiet the place is in the absence of artists and performers and the endless production posters that colour the small student town for a week or so during the national arts festival. they consider a visit to the camera obscura, where nicholas says he spent a formative afternoon on a school trip many years ago, but decide against this, too. it’s already late afternoon, they reason. they do not want to arrive after dark. past salem, they see quarries and rocky hills, remnants of sustained blasts for shale and limestone. ayanda drives and nicholas thumbs through his phone. potholes and slow-moving trucks keep them f rom anything faster than 80 kilometres. *** it is the last stretch. they are both eager to be off the 84 road, although ayanda is not ready for the trip to be over. what then, he thinks? he agonises over the approaching finality. what to do or speak about once they finally arrive? they will unpack, sure. spend the week orientating themselves, settling in. and after that? after the unboxing and the pleasant drudgery of sorting out their new home – what nicholas says will be their forever home – will they take those trips they’ve been planning on the way over? doubtful. how long before nicholas grows bored, restless, finds a new project or production to busy himself with? around them, the landscape grows greener, the air feels cooler. ayanda anticipates the ocean, the sand, the rocky shores of places like kasouga, port alf red, and other seaside towns dotted along the sunshine coast. the road opens up, he drives on, leaves the trucks behind, races to beat the fading daylight. ‘it’s called a borrow pit,’ says nicholas, not looking up f rom his phone. ‘what?’ ayanda turns the music down. ‘that big hole we saw earlier. it’s called a borrow pit. well, that’s what the americans call it, anyway. i’m on some website about roadworks in the states and they say it’s called a borrow pit.’ ‘what’s it for?’ ‘it’s just the extraction of sand. they’ll be busy with a new section of road or building a bridge or something like that and they’ll use some of the earth f rom nearby. it leaves one of those big holes behind.’ ‘and what happens to it?’ ‘what do you mean?’ ‘the pit. does it get filled back in?’ nicholas considers the question, scrolls through the text on his screen. ‘i don’t know. doesn’t say.’ ‘so, they leave a giant pit behind? they never fill it up?’ ‘well, i imagine they’d need more sand to fill it up. which would mean they’d need to dig another hole. either that or a series of small holes, taking sand f rom each of them, but i mean who’s got the time to do that? it probably just fills back in over time.’ ‘probably.’ *** it’s dark by the time they arrive in kenton. ayanda yawns, grips the wheel with both hands as the car moves down the empty, suburban streets. ‘it’s there, just up there,’ says nicholas, sitting up in his seat. it is the most animated ayanda has seen him since they started the trip. they reach a boom gate and stop. a guard emerges f rom a security booth off to the left and exchanges words with nicholas. the boom rises and they enter. they travel along the same road for a while longer, passing other people’s homes in the dark. empty, thinks ayanda. a neighbourhood full of holiday homes. they turn right onto a gravel road lined with trees. they drive slowly, trying to take in their new surroundings through the lights of the car. they arrive at the house and get out. nicholas takes the keys f rom his pocket and walks towards the f ront door. ayanda stays at the car, watching nicholas fumble with the keys for the security gate, the f ront door. he watches the lights go on in the entrance hall, hears nicholas calling out for him to come and take a look. cold, white light spills out f rom the house and onto the driveway. nicholas goes upstairs, the collection was produced over the course of a creative writing masters programme at the university of witwatersrand, under the super vision of ivan vladislavic. the idea of the ‘borrow pit’ in the stor y is made in reference to south african theatre-maker jemma kahn’s 2018 play the borrow pit. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 85 his footsteps noisy on the wooden floors, the lights come on in one room and then another. he calls out again. ayanda gets his bag f rom the boot. tomorrow, he thinks, the vans will arrive with all of their things. maybe then it will start to feel a little more permanent, a little more like home. v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 special edition 52 special edition between pop and expressionism: beauchamp’s ‘hieroglyphics of the flesh’ by sven christian | peer reviewed t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract satire is meant to problematise the way we see things. if it doesn’t, it risks re-enforcing what it set out to critique. in 2019, athi mongezeleli joja raised this concern, arguing that despite vusi beauchamp’s desire to ‘take away the power’ that racial stereotypes have ‘over black af ricans,’ his use of such iconography ultimately ‘ends up misnaming, if not underestimating the power of the thing he thinks he’s undermining.’ while doubtful that beauchamp underestimates the power of such tropes, i want to foreground the possibility that he is not being heard in the way he wants to be, drawing on the understanding that his art came about as ‘sort of regurgitating something that [he] always knew but never had words for.’ it is within this corporeal vein—this space of no words—that i’d like to discuss beauchamp’s work, for while much attention has been paid to his iconography, it is the specificity of his experience and his treatment thereof that is often overlooked, if only by virtue of the sheer toxicity of his subject matter. here elizabeth alexander’s paper “can you be black and look at this?” is particularly instructive, suggesting that experience ‘can be taken into the body via witnessing and recorded in muscle memory as knowledge,’ or what hortense spillers calls ‘a kind of hieroglyphics of the flesh.’ 53 ‘people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.’ — james baldwin, ‘stranger in the village,’ 1955. satire is meant to problematise the way we see things. if it doesn’t, it risks re-enforcing what it set out to critique. richard pryor – the comedian said to have popularised the n-word’s use in contemporary culture (henry and henry, 2014: 150) – realised this quite late in his career following a trip to kenya. ‘i’ve been there three weeks and i haven’t even said it, i haven’t even thought it, and it made me say, “oh, my god, i’ve been wrong, i’ve been wrong. i got to regroup my shit.”’ pryor only began using the word in his sets following his political awakening in the 1970s while living in berkeley, where he met huey newton and deep-dived into the writings of malcolm x. he seized upon the word with much enthusiasm, adamant that in doing so he would empty it of all meaning. ‘it gave him strength,’ wrote biographers david and joe henry, ‘it robbed the word of its wretchedness and made him feel f ree.’ yet, as observed by richard iton, pryor later felt that ‘his intentions in using the word had been misinterpreted’ and that ‘his efforts were in vain: “they didn’t get what i was talking about. neither did i.”’ in 2019, athi mongezeleli joja raised a similar concern about vusi beauchamp’s art, arguing that despite the artist’s self-expressed desire to ‘take away the power’ that racial stereotypes have ‘over black af ricans,’ his use of such iconography ultimately ‘ends up misnaming, if not underestimating the power of the thing he thinks he’s undermining’ (2019: 32). drawing on a range of examples – f rom the works of irma stern, zapiro, and brett murray, to h&m’s controversial advert, the penny sparrow saga, and the #savesa march – joja makes a compelling argument for racial signification as an ‘itinerant, elastic, and common ersatz,’ able to mediate ‘between hard boundaries of every social strata’ (2019: 20). while many of the examples that appear in joja’s paper were met with outrage, he observes how public backlash has not managed to stamp racist attitudes out, but instead drives them underground, only to resurface in a different guise. for this reason, he writes that racism is ‘“beyond” the stereotypes it produces,’ arguing that it cannot ‘sufficiently hold sway without recurrently manipulating the gap these stereotypes offer’ (2019: 22). the result, he writes, is that racism ‘always reaches unto the social screen memory to reconstitute racial boundaries’ (2019: 22). consequently, he writes that despite beauchamp’s attempts at subversion, the artist’s reliance on such tropes may serve to inadvertently regenerate ‘myths about blacks’ and assuage ‘white culpability’ (2019: 20). part of the problem might be that satire’s efficacy is reliant on a ‘stable set of values f rom which to judge behaviour’ (colletta, 2009: 859); a set of values which enable artists to hold human folly to ridicule. in a racist society, the use of racial stereotypes, intended as satire, may simply reinforce or affirm racial prejudice. another might be that in our postmodern age of pastiche – defined by frederic jameson as ‘a neutral practice of mimicry, without satirical impulse, without laughter’ (colletta, 2009: 857) – it has become that much harder to distinguish between what is real and what is not, to the point where ‘unity’ is replaced with ‘multiplicity,’ ‘meaning’ with the ‘appearance of meaning,’ ‘depth’ with ‘surface’ (colletta, 2009: 856). in short, to the point where everything becomes noise, open to interpretation and misunderstanding. this might explain beauchamp’s preoccupation with popular culture, in particular the media. it might also explain his preoccupation with surface, sign, and symbol; with stereotypes, brands, politicians, movie characters, celebrities, and the like. my intention here is not to debate the efficacy of beauchamp’s work as satire – or, for that matter, whether it is satire – but to try to better understand his motivation. if he is not being special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the result, he writes, is that racism ‘always reaches unto the social screen memory to reconstitute racial boundaries’ (2019: 22). consequently, he writes that despite beauchamp’s attempts at subversion, the artist’s reliance on such tropes may serve to inadvertently regenerate ‘myths about blacks’ and assuage ‘white culpability’ (2019: 20). 54 heard in the way he wants to be, how does he want to be heard? if he is aware of the risks involved when reproducing racial stereotypes, then why continue to produce the work he does? is he simply exploiting the art market’s appetite for such tropes – for spectacle, shock, and awe, as joja suggests – or is there more to the work than meets the eye? if an artwork is always, to some extent, a self-portrait of the artist (and here i’m not only talking about the artist as an individual, but everything that they bring to the work f rom the world outside), then where is beauchamp in his work? premised on the understanding that his art is caught up in – and reflective of – a pervasive racial imago, i want to think about the relationship between the artist and the source of his imagery – what he is seeing in the world, how these images are internalised, and how they pass through the body to arrive in their present form. muscle memory thinking through these questions, i turn to a paper written by elizabeth alexander in 1994, titled ‘can you be black and look at this?’1 it centred around george holiday’s videotape of the beating of rodney king at the hands of four white los angeles police officers, in particular the video’s distortion during the trial, the attendant narratives which circulated it, and how the video was publicly staged and consumed. by no means an isolated incident, her paper sought to articulate ‘the ways in which a practical memory exists and crucially informs af rican-americans about the lived realities of how violence and its potential informs our understanding of our individual selves as a larger group’ (1994: 79), highlighting that although the historical spectacle of racially-informed violence has been primarily staged and consumed by white men, ‘in one way or another, black people have been looking, too, forging a traumatized collective historical memory’ which is ‘reinvoked…at contemporary sites of conflict’ (1994: 79).2 her essay draws on a number of witness accounts, f rom frederick douglass’ and harriet jacobs’ 19th-century recollections to those which followed the lynching of emmett till in 1955. whether or not experienced first-hand, alexander observes how the act of bearing witness is often physically inculcated, to the point where witness often becomes participant. thus, when douglass recounts the whipping of his aunt hester, he describes the sight of her blood as ‘warm’ (1994: 82). similarly, when watching the ‘not guilty’ verdict of king’s trial on tv, one individual reported ‘a pain that went f rom the top of [his] head to the tip of [his] toes’ (1994: 85). alexander describes this as a ‘synesthetic response’ (1994: 82) to an experience that has been imbibed – recorded in what hortense spillers calls ‘a kind of hieroglyphics of the flesh’ (alexander, 1994: 86). for alexander, such ‘corporeal images of terror suggest that “experience” can be taken into the body via witnessing and recorded in muscle memory as knowledge’; a knowledge which she deems necessary to those who believe themselves to be next (1994: 83). in this way, alexander demonstrates how such incidents inform one’s sense of self as part of a larger group, highlighting how this awareness is passed down f rom one generation to the next, ‘so that everyone knows the parameters in which their bodies move’ (1994: 85). here, it is not only the actualisation of violence but its potential – the understanding that violence can arrive at your doorstep, unannounced and unprovoked – that leaves in its wake the uncomfortable (yet necessary) knowledge of one’s own vulnerability. at the same time, she observes how the public spectacularisation of such violence and the narratives used to justify it – such as the repeated f reeze-f raming used to manipulate evidence in the king video and the defence’s description of king as a ‘bear-like,’ ‘probable ex-con’ (1994: 80) – stand at odds with those histories recorded in muscle-memory and passed down f rom one generation to the next. consequently, she writes that ‘if any one aphorism can characterize the experience of black people in [the united states], it might be that the whiteauthored national narrative deliberately contradicts the histories our bodies know’ (1994: 80), arguing that ‘the american way with regard to the actual lived experience of af rican-americans has been to write a counter-narrative’ which erases ‘bodily information,’ substituting it with a self-justifying text that often becomes ‘a version of national memory’ (1994: 80). although alexander’s essay is rooted in the particular – yet varied – experiences of af rican-americans, it is all too familiar here in south af rica. one need only recall the testimony of hawa timol (2012), who instinctively knew that the policeman in her living room was lying when he said that her son had jumped f rom special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 55 the tenth floor while in custody; or how the police responsible for steve biko’s death initially claimed that he’d died in prison f rom a hunger strike. later the story changed: there was a ‘scuffle’; biko had gone ‘berserk’; biko had fallen and ‘bumped his head.’ no doubt, biko too felt the acute sense that he might be next, having joked to his wife nontsikelo biko that she would be ‘a widow at the age of thirty’ (south af rican press association, 1997), but for biko, overcoming ‘the personal fear of death’ was a necessary step along the road to liberation. in an interview, first printed in the new republic a year after his death, he said that even ‘your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing’ (2005a: 152). to be sure, biko didn’t intend to be a martyr. he valued life. but it was precisely for this reason that he was prepared to die. much like alexander, who writes of ‘a desire to find a language to talk about “my people”’ – one which is ‘claimed rather than merely received’ (1994: 78) – biko’s black consciousness sought ‘to talk to the black man in a language that is his own,’ to ‘make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the county of his birth’ (2005a: 30). turning to beauchamp’s artist blurb for people f rom the sun (2020), i come across a line by publius terence that seems apposite: ‘i am human, and i think nothing human is alien to me.’ it sounds like a straightforward declaration, but to ‘think’ is also to doubt. where ‘i am human’ is a statement of fact, he cannot be completely sure that the way he inhabits the world is the same for others. the hesitation exists as an inconsolable gap; an unease about the placement of ‘i’ and its relation to the collective that in some sense echoes both alexander and biko’s desire to find a language through which to identify; a language that is ‘claimed rather than merely received’ (alexander, 1994: 80). it is here, i believe, that we may begin to understand beauchamp’s motivation, for while much attention has been paid to his iconography, in particular the repeated use of blackface and its potential efficacy as satire, it is the specificity of his experience and his treatment thereof that is often overlooked, if only by virtue of the sheer toxicity of his subject matter. in an interview with mmutle arthur kgokong (2015), beauchamp recounted his earliest memory. it is 1985. he is six years old, and has just arrived home in mamelodi f rom primary school. he and his oneyear-old brother are playing outside when they hear the sound of ‘gun shots f rom everywhere…loud and very close’ (beauchamp and kgokong, 2015). his mother comes running out of the house, dressed in her gown, picks up his brother and takes them both inside, placing a lappie over their faces to mask the tear gas. ‘i never saw my mother in the state she was in. i remember looking out through the big windows wondering what is going on. go iragalang? and at the same time there was this feeling, a scary feeling that i’d never felt before’ (beauchamp and kgokong, 2015). a little later on, he talks about how his art came about, as ‘sort of regurgitating something that i always knew but never had words for’ (2015). it is here, in this mute space – this space of no words – that i’d like to consider beauchamp’s work. what interests me is that although joja is making a case for why beauchamp’s work fails in its intent to empty such stereotypes of their meaning, i cannot help but feel that beauchamp would agree; that in some sense, the reasoning behind joja’s criticism is also the reason why beauchamp continues to hold such tropes, in all their grotesquery, on the surface of his canvases – not to let them disappear f rom view, but to keep that undercurrent in plain sight. when, for example, joja writes that ‘the spatio-temporal afterlives of racial stereotypes always seem contingent on the perpetual non-events of f reedom, aporias of special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 turning to beauchamp’s artist blurb for people from the sun (2020), i come across a line by publius terence that seems apposite: ‘i am human, and i think nothing human is alien to me.’ it sounds like a straightforward declaration, but to ‘think’ is also to doubt. where ‘i am human’ is a statement of fact, he cannot be completely sure that the way he inhabits the world is the same for others. 56 special edition redress, and endless rebirths of capital’ (2019: 22), or that ‘neoliberalism has accelerated privatization’ and ‘symbolically disaggregated “race”—as its definitive agent—f rom state politics, but without dissolving the conditions that give rise to racism and its practices,’ instead making ‘racial tropes appear denuded of their historical profanities, and reinvented as capacious forms floating innocently in the visual field’ (2019: 22), i cannot help but think that he is also in some sense describing the compositional make-up of beauchamp’s work. that the artist might fail in his intent simply underscores the extent of the bind he finds himself in – if he paints what he paints, he is trapped in its reductive logic; if he is forced to self-censor, equally so. while beauchamp’s use of racial stereotypes and their effect on audiences is important, the idea of entrapment — of being caught in a perpetual loop — deserves greater attention. in joja’s description of beauchamp’s congress (2014), for example, we read: ‘through repeated recourse to plantation visuality, whether in its inflammatory or empathetic forms, beauchamp repurposes these ventriloquizing postures with apolitical enthusiasm and a jingoistic acquiescence to their incendiary conclusions. in the painting entitled congress, this gleeful recourse to the most proverbial of tropes, that is, “the heart of darkness.” through this seemingly impenetrable and esoteric forest, a figure resembling the young nelson mandela abstractedly appears in the background. over him an emblem or ribbon hovers above like a halo, and the word “king” is inscribed across it. the punchline seems clear: mandela is the “king of the jungle.” across the middle of the image, the word “cooning” is inscribed in cursive red cocacola typographic style. below, towards the edge of the painting, in black, is written congress. suppose the prominent blackface figures, with their thick red lips, gaping mouths and big eyes, in shock or jubilation, are his “comrades.” in archetypal neo-tarzanist specular visuality, we encounter the traditional hollywood image of the pop-eyed african in the jungle.’ (2019: 30–31) while in agreement that the painting, in its dark and muted tones, evokes conrad’s heart of dark-ness, something that appears to have been overlooked is that this ‘seemingly impenetrable and esoteric forest’ is made solely of venus flytraps, which are recurring motifs in much of beauchamp’s work. the idea of entrapment — which also invokes achille mbembe’s description of ‘power in the postcolony’ as ‘carnivorous’ (2001: 200) and bound up with capital exploitation — is evident, not only through beauchamp’s repeated use of the venus flytrap or the shackle and chain, but his continued use of the title of his initial exhibition at the pretoria art museum in 2015, paradyse of the damned. the repeated use of this title invokes a difficulty — the inability to move beyond, to get past. granted, this does not discount joja’s argument that racism is ‘beyond the stereotypes it produces,’ or the risk that his work might inadvertently reinforce what he sets out to critique. nor can one discount the multitude of ways in which other artists have addressed this bind without mimicking and potentially perpetuating its stranglehold. glenn ligon’s series runaways (1993) is a case in point, as is self-portrait exaggerating my black features / self-portrait exaggerating my white features (1998). both implicate the viewer, whilst offering the artist a way out of the logic that would have his being reduced to a ‘type’. beauchamp’s work offers no such reprieve. as alluded to by joja, and articulated by ashraf jamal in a recent conversation, beauchamp presents the ‘disneyfication of black life.’ his optic is ‘caught inside a fabric of pastiche that is macabre, a fabric that he is trying to puncture,’ but which nevertheless continues to mutate and stitch itself back together again (jamal, 2021, personal conversation, observatory, cape town). the fabric in question here is markedly pop. much like the artists of the ‘50s and ‘60s who worked within this idiom – jasper johns, andy warhol, mark rauschenberg et al – beauchamp’s sources come readymade. the flatness of his early work carries the depersonalised hallmark of the production line. it is, perhaps, to this aspect of beauchamp’s work that i would attribute those elements described by joja as ‘apolitical’ and ‘gleeful,’ yet for me the work is far from passive. i see no ‘jingoistic acquiescence’ on the part of the artist. no reluctant acceptance of the status quo. unlike warhol, my hunch is that beauchamp does not want to be a machine.3 on the contrary, the blend of pop and expressionism – a mode outlawed by pop artists for being too self-absorbed, for bringing to the fore an ‘existential anxiety’ (livingstone, 1990: 15) – suggests an artist trying to navigate that precarious strait between t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 57 the self and a world that has consistently attempted to exploit and commodify the black body. his approach is not unlike that of jasper johns, who employed and re-employed the image of the american flag in order to re-articulate its meaning (livingstone, 1990: 16). that beauchamp might fail in the attempt simply underscores the nightmare he finds himself in. yet, as notes johns, ‘the painting of a flag is always about a flag, but it is no more about a flag than it is about a brushstroke or about a color or about the physicality of the paint’ (livingstone, 1990: 16). the acknowledgement is particularly instructive. by straddling the worlds of pop and expressionism – flatness and depth – beauchamp reveals a world of veracious consumption, as well as its toxic fallout. in three of his most recent series – prisoners of waar (2020), people from the sun (2020), and debunking: the interpretation of a dream (2021) – it is the latter which appears to take centre stage. once bright, clean-cut, and legible, his colours have gradually begun to bleed, his contours have become muddier, his words more opaque. this shift from the world of pop to expressionism – from what jamal describes as ‘statement art’ to something more ‘enigmatic’ (jamal, 2021, personal conversation, observatory, cape town) – has also been accompanied by a clear mutation in sign, from over-determined brands, stereotypes, and icons to venus flytraps, unknown figures, and sunflowers, all of which were present in his earlier work, but which now occupy a more prominent position. where signs and symbols once floated alongside or were superimposed on top of one another, here they appear to have been imbibed – a sickly residue at the back of the throat. the question for me is what to make of this new sticky conglomerate, because although the chemistry has always been there – buried deep beneath a cool and powerful veneer – for me his more recent work registers closer to the person. does this shift indicate that he’s found a way through, a way out, or is the artist simply responding to the criticisms levelled against his work? is this shift a sign of health, akin to richard pryor’s breakthrough realisation, or is the artist simply playing up the inner turmoil such iconography provokes? bringing it back to pryor, i am drawn to a particular instant in which the comedian was probed by a journalist to respond to those who initially criticised him for using the n-word ‘on stage, in his albums, and got rich doing it,’ to which he replied: ‘i’d say to them, “allow me to grow”’ (comedy hype, 2020). notes 1. the title is a nod to pat ward williams’ mixed-media work accused/blowtorch/padlock (1986), in which the artist, in her own handwriting, ‘reinscribes an african-american narrative onto a photograph of a man being lynched’ (alexander, 1994: 93). 2. this understanding is also echoed in joja’s paper, where he reflects on the explosive reaction to the h&m advert, which ‘left some h&m stores in a wreck, and the company’s public image tainted’ (2019: 19). 3. ‘machines have less problems. i’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?’ references alexander, e. (1994). ‘“can you be black and look at this?”: reading the rodney king video(s).’ public culture, 7(1): 77–94. baldwin, j. (1992 [1955]). ‘stranger in the village.’ in: notes of a native son. boston: beacon press, 185–202. beauchamp, v., and kgokong, m.a. (2015). ‘interview with mxolisi vusimuzi beauchamp (part i).’ intraparadox [online]. available at: https://mmutleak.com/2015/05/03/interview-with-mxolisi-vusimuzi-beauchamp-part-i/ biko, s. (2005 [1978]). ‘on death.’ in: steve biko: i write what i like: a selection of his writings. edited by aelred stubbs c.r. cambridge: af rican writers series, 152–153. ———. (2005a [1978]). ‘we blacks.’ in: steve biko: i write what i like: a selection of his writings. edited by aelred stubbs c.r. cambridge: af rican writers series, 28–33. colletta, l. (2009). ‘political satire and postmodern irony in the age of stephen colbert and jon stewart.’ the journal of popular culture 42(5): 856–74. comedy hype. (2020). ‘why richard pryor stopped saying “the n-word” – here’s why.’ youtube/comedy hype [online]. available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2isqtnf pnm henry, d., and henry, j. (2014). furious cool: richard pryor and the world that made him. chapel hill: algonquin books. joja, a.m. (2019). ‘provisional commentary on vusi beauchamp’s paradyse of the damned.’ propter nos, 3: 19–39. livingstone, m. (1990). pop art: a continuing history. new york: harry n. abrams. mbembe, a. (2001). on the postcolony. berkeley, los angeles, and london: university of california press. south af rican press association. (1997). ‘biko family to respond to confessions.’ department of justice and constitutional development [online]. available at: https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9701/s970130f.htm timol, h. (2012). ‘hawa timol’s testimony on ahmed timol at the truth and reconciliation commission (trc). youtube/sabc [online]. available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci9qbahkzso special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 26 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract masande ntshanga’s novel  the reactive  (2014) is the first south african novel written by a black male writer to feature the first-person voice of an hiv-positive man, lindanathi. following kgebetli moele’s  the book of the dead  (2009), which gave the virus itself a voice,  the reactive  heralds a significant shift in the portrayal of hiv in south african literature. eben venter’s afrikaans novel ek stamel, ek sterwe (1996) which was translated into english by luke stubbs as my beautiful death (2004), and which has – significantly – received little critical review in english as an hiv narrative, tells the story of a white south african man, konstant, in the australian diaspora who eventually succumbs to aids. both novels complicate ideas of masculinity and can be described as ‘coming of age’ narratives or bildungsromans.  both novels sit historically on the cusp of change, before and after the widespread availability of arvs.  given their commonality of subject and narrative perspective, these texts seem ripe for comparison despite their authors’ different backgrounds. the shifts and continuities in the representation of hiv/aids found between these two novels, published 18 years apart, seem to disrupt the trajectory of the post-colonial bildungsroman as it is mediated (for the first time?) through the hivpositive narrator. reading these two novels together helps us to understand literary patterns, associations and dissociations, which reveal a cultural symbology of hiv/aids, part of a wider cultural symbology of illness in south african literature.   by lizzy attree | peer reviewed p e e r r e v i e w daring to be different: the first-person hiv-positive narrator in two south african novels – masande ntshanga’s the reactive and eben venter’s my beautiful death1 27 special edition v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 masande ntshanga’s novel the reactive (2014) is the first south af rican novel written by a black male writer to feature the first-person voice of an hivpositive man, lindanathi. following kgebetli moele’s the book of the dead (2009), which gave the virus itself a voice, the reactive heralds a significant shift in the portrayal of hiv in south af rican literature. imraan coovadia suggests that ‘ntshanga sets out on a thrilling new expedition of writerly daring’2 – centring the interior life of a nihilistic hiv-positive protagonist. such daring is also detectable in eben venter’s novel, written earlier in the hiv/aids pandemic and published in the mid-90s, only two years after mandela was elected president. venter’s af rikaans novel ek stamel, ek sterwe (1996)3 which was translated into english by luke stubbs as my beautiful death (2004), and which has – significantly – received little critical review in english as an hiv narrative, tells the story of a white south af rican man, konstant, in the australian diaspora who eventually succumbs to aids. both novels complicate ideas of masculinity and can be described as ‘coming of age’ narratives or bildungsromans. both novels sit historically on the cusp of change, before and after the widespread availability of arvs. konstant lives in a time before effective treatment and lindanathi initially squanders that luxury in south af rica, before re-emerging as a survivor just as higher quality arvs are made more widely available. given their commonality of subject and narrative perspective, these texts seem ripe for comparison despite their authors’ different backgrounds. the shifts and continuities in the representation of hiv/aids found between these two novels, published 18 years apart, seem to disrupt the trajectory of the post-colonial bildungsroman as it is mediated (for the first time?) through the hiv-positive narrator. reading these two novels together helps us to understand literary patterns, associations and dissociations, which reveal a cultural symbology of hiv/aids, part of a wider cultural symbology of illness in south af rican literature. rita barnard identifies a gap in previous literary criticism of south af rican writing that ‘there are, to date, surprisingly few critical works…that consider south af rican literature in a broad thematic way, and there are fewer still without the modifiers ‘black’ or ‘white’ inserted in the title’ (viljoen, 2013: xxii). this is further underscored by a reticence for working with translations, and certainly for international students of south af rican literature, the vast body of af rikaans literature is barely studied at all. could it be daring then, in the south af rican context, to read venter’s novel comparatively alongside ntshanga’s novel? both novels demonstrate that the artistic and literary treatments of hiv are complex, culturally constructed, and nuanced. the language of venter’s novel has been described as ‘rich with innuendo, textual references and streams-of-consciousness’ (nb publishers, 2006) – techniques used to vividly inhabit the mind of the protagonist whose internal monologue is both witty and filled with pathos. ntshanga’s novel is rich with existential introspection and tumultuous consciousness. by linking venter and ntshanga’s texts it is possible to compare how the two writers tackle hiv, positioning their writing as part of a continuum in south af rican writing about hiv across two decades, which reflects the trajectory of the disease in the population as it moved f rom predominantly white gay men into the wider black heterosexual population. the habit of previously omitting or excluding texts written in af rikaans4 means we are missing crucial parts of the cultural narrative of hiv/aids in south af rican literature. in addition to the wealth of research on hiv/aids in media messaging, myths, stigma, taboo, awareness campaigns, tv, artworks and activism, the tac, body maps and the memory box project,5 literature provides access to a complex web of cultural, the shifts and continuities in the representation of hiv/ aids found between these two novels, published 18 years apart, seem to disrupt the trajectory of the postcolonial bildungsroman as it is mediated (for the first time?) through the hivpositive narrator. p e e r r e v i e w 28 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 intimate information that other forms of research cannot. anthropologist didier fassin remarks that ‘works in the social sciences rarely mention subjectivity’ (fassin, 2007: 261), or in other words the creative capacity subjects have for re-defining, reimagining and re-inscribing their reality. and social scientist alex de waal has written that ‘we need to imagine hiv/aids before we can think practically about it’ (2006: 117). he suggests we use literature, novels and short stories in particular, to put the ear closer to the ground to ‘investigate what people actually talk about’ (de waal, 2006: 32). there is much to be learned about hiv/aids ‘through those professional observers of everyday life: novelists.’ literature provides an opportunity to the reader and critic, not just to hear what people talk about, but most significantly, to read what they would perhaps otherwise not talk about. writing and reading are a silent form of communication which open covert spaces in which to approach the unspeakable, and this is where literature featuring hiv/aids is vital.6 this suggests that these novels can get to the heart of what steinberg found so hard to discern in his non-fiction book three letter plague (2008), when writing about sizwe, who is hiv-positive, and whose inner thoughts he could not access. drawing on paula treichler’s research which identifies hiv/aids as ‘an epidemic of signification’ (treichler, 1999: 171), readers can interrogate the disease’s multiple meanings and cultural connotations in these two south af rican novels. building a cultural symbology across historical racial divides, of an illness that has affected so many south af ricans, enables hiv/aids to be examined f rom new angles and folds the analysis in to the wider literary history of south af rica. the novel form is particularly concerned with ideas of the self, allowing as it does for introspection by first-person narrators into the condition of the self. epstein outlines the correlation of disease with the body and formations of the self: ‘diseases are cultural artifacts and social constructions as well as biological processes, and… individually, historically, and socially determined subjectivities impinge upon the relation of the body to the self ’ (1995: 1–2). and gikandi asserts that literature tells us as much about the self as the nation, stating, ‘to write is to claim a text of one’s own; textuality is an instrument of territorial repossession; because the other confers on us an identity that alienates us f rom ourselves, narrative is crucial to the discovery of our selfhood’ (1992: 384). this reclamation speaks of the functionality of literature, such that literature actively participates in the creation and formation of selfhood, particularly at a time of shifting national priorities. by writing in the first person, the hiv-positive narrators created by venter and ntshanga enact a process of discovering selfhood during sickness and in doing so, inscribe their exceptionally articulate characters into the history of illness in south af rican letters. in his review of the reactive, nathan goldman asks ‘how does illness fit into a cultural symbology?’ (goldman, 2016). drawing on sontag’s aids and its metaphors (1988), he describes how her seminal text sought to ‘clear away the metaphors surrounding these illnesses in order to conf ront them as brute facts, f reed f rom symbolic baggage.’ and yet through my research, since 2003, i have sought to find these culturally embedded metaphors and attempted to understand how they fit in to an imaginary or symbolic system that might help to explain the taboo around hiv/aids in south af rican fiction. since the late 1980s and early ‘90s, hiv and aids are hardly ever named in literary texts and the first person narrator is rarely hiv-positive.7 in these circumstances, it has been difficult in the past to establish whether aids does have a ‘cultural symbology’ in south af rica, and few other literary critics address these concerns. i argue that the analysis of these two texts in this article makes this idea of a broader cultural history of south af rican letters more viable. central to the reactive is the idea of becoming a man and this can also be said of my beautiful death. however, the presence of hiv/aids in both novels alters the trajectory of the conventional/post-colonial bildungsroman, complicating each protagonist’s development as they conf ront their mortality at a young age. these novels re-define what it means to be hiv-positive at different historical moments. venter’s novel is set in australia, removing the action f rom the politically contested geographic centre of homophobic south af rica during apartheid (emigrating as a form of protest or escape: ‘to get the hell out of here and make a life of my own’ (7)) and positioning the personal experiences of konstant wasserman, the protagonist, in a comparatively more politically calm, liberal environment. konstant leaves a small town (dorp) in the free state, south p e e r r e v i e w 29v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 af rica to become a chef in sydney where he forms close f riendships with a woman called shane, a fellow chef, and jude, who becomes his lover. konstant grows to realise that he has actually located himself in the centre of a ‘plague’ and the journey he makes becomes an internal journey as he discovers he is hivpositive and will eventually die of aids in australia. the reactive tells the story of lindanathi mda, a young xhosa man who is hiv-positive, living with two other young south af ricans, cecilia (cissie) and ruan, in cape town between 2000 – 2010. the three f riends make a living selling lindanathi’s antiretroviral drugs (arvs) under the mbeki regime that restricts their availability. as well as the virus, lindanathi also carries guilt about his brother’s death during his circumcision. the exact circumstances are unclear, but his brother was gay, and somehow did not survive this important transition to manhood, and lindanathi believes he could have prevented his brother’s death. this has led to lindanathi abandoning his traditions: he remains uncircumcised, and he has fallen out of touch with his family in the eastern cape. the proceeds obtained by selling the arvs are spent on drink and drugs, fuelling a period of ‘waiting’ in a liminal state, reflective of lindanathi’s name which means ‘wait with us’ in isixhosa. what is unusual and compelling about ntshanga’s novel and the approach he has taken is that he keeps lindanathi’s hiv-positive status in the background of the story, and focuses rather on the drug taking, the dream-like state that the protagonist and the two other central characters inhabit throughout the novel. however, simultaneously, the suffusion of glue-sniffing and drug-cocktail taking is only made possible by the fact that lindanathi is selling his arv medication to pay for this lifestyle. the lifestyle, then, at once seems like a form of denial of his status, as well as a mercenary and irresponsible approach to his serious illness. equally, the elements of hedonism suggest that there are other possibilities in terms of enjoyment in whatever form he is attempting to seize. it also stares down the reality of the disease which had been thought incurable in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and for so long had not been treated with arvs in south af rica, even though they were available in a limited form post-2011.8 the socio-political context in which ntshanga wrote the reactive is crucial to understanding the gap in to which lindanathi’s life falls in to circa 2005–2010. president thabo mbeki’s aids denialism (1999–2008), and both the opposition and the anc government’s failure to hold the president to account, meant that it was not until 2016 that the south af rican government under jacob zuma (2009–2018) set a target to treat 5 million people with arvs. this was far too late to save the lives of those who had been suffering and dying in great numbers since the 1990s9. the irony of the novel is that even when arvs were available in south af rica, after years of campaigning by zackie achmat and the treatment action campaign (tac), they are treated as any other valuable commodity by the central characters of the reactive. set during this period of transition marked by official denialism, lindanathi sells his potentially life-saving arvs to fund a form of self-destructive behaviour which nevertheless bonds him to his best f riends. this behaviour reflects a personal form of denialism and seems rooted in a need to escape f rom reality and enjoy life in a nihilistic way, while the troubles of south af rica, and cape town in particular, play out in the background. goldman (2016) states that ntshanga’s debut novel ‘situates [itself] in two distinct but related traditions: the protest novel and the novel of fundamental human alienation.’ goldman goes on to outline the conjunction of the personal and political, saying that ntshanga ‘creates a space in which the reader can experience this metaphorization, as well as critique it.’ he identifies the two epigraphs f rom mbeki and kafka included in the us edition10 published by two dollar radio (2016) as ‘unified in the despair they suggest’. former president thabo mbeki is quoted at the height of his denialism: ‘we need to look at the question that is posed, understandably i suppose: does hiv cause aids?’  positioning the novel within the protest tradition by refuting this view vehemently. this is juxtaposed by the quote f rom kafka which reflects the personal dislocation and disorientation of the central characters: ‘we are as forlorn as children lost in the woods.’ by using both of these quotes, ntshanga positions the novel as ‘at the convergence of these traditions: its content is essentially and necessarily political, while in form it centers on a single thoughtful, uneasy consciousness’ (goldman, 2016). p e e r r e v i e w 30 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the parallels with venter’s ‘uneasy consciousness’ bears further consideration. shaun viljoen paraphrases njabulo ndebele’s the rediscovery of the ordinary (1994) when he posits that ‘postapartheid literature moves away f rom the exterior binaries and the protesting voice to a preoccupation with the inner, the intimate, the individual, and the intermingled ordinary’ (viljoen, 2013: xxii). and it is in this way that we can link ntshanga’s ‘writing traditions’ to venter’s, and even perceive that venter’s novel demonstrates a shift away f rom exterior binaries before the end of apartheid. perhaps by writing a novel set ‘in australia’ venter escapes the dichotomies of ‘apartheid literature’? it is undoubtedly the dearth of translation of af rikaans writing into english (and vice versa) that has facilitated and accentuated the gap in critical thematic comparisons, meaning this link has not been made clear before. eben venter comments on the translation of his novel that ‘the heart of my story has been captured, and i can still hear my voice when i read the english text’ (jenkings et al., 2007). however, there is ambiguity in the af rikaans version over jude’s gender, which is more boldly presented as male in the english text. it is possible that the author can be more daring in translation, shifting representation ‘performed at least one remove f rom reality’11. nevertheless ek stamel, ek sterwe  was declared one of the ten best novels in the af rikaans literary canon and was reissued as part of tafelberg’s klassiek/classic series in july 2005 (jenkings et al., 2007). johann de lange states that the novel ‘has torn out my heart’ and says it is ‘[a]n intense exploration of dying, and a tour de force by a writer who surprises with every new book’12. as an english-only reader, i have to assume that the translation is a good one and work with the text i have.13 the reason my beautiful death may also have been excluded f rom previous analysis of south af rican fiction could be because of its firm location in the australian diaspora. in an early review, rachelle greeff commented that ‘although set mostly in australia, it conf ronts local readers with its raw but also delightful reality’14 (rapport, 1996). narrated right up to the protagonist’s final breath, my beautiful death nevertheless contains elements of displacement reminiscent of other writing in english about hiv in south af rica, such as phaswane mpe’s welcome to our hillbrow (2001) which was written in the second person. like lindanathi in the reactive, konstant is trying to escape his past and the novel opens with his decision to leave his family in south af rica and move to australia. it is not uncommon for af rikaans writing to feature this movement away f rom the farm or the homestead, towards the city.15 locating the story in sydney, australia removes the action f rom ‘home’ where the consequences of the illness for the main characters might be more drastically felt in terms of social ostracism, prejudice, and family repercussions. this could suggest a lack of courage, a fear of facing the consequences of being gay/hiv infection ‘at home’. in comparison, lindanathi has also moved away f rom the village to the metropolitan city of cape town in a similar attempt to escape his family and his past.16 and yet both authors have made the courageous (literary) decision to voice their protagonists’ dilemmas in the first-person which had previously been eschewed by south af rican novelists focusing on hiv/aids. there is also displacement in the deferral of blame which the protagonist, konstant, manages throughout. the revelation that jude seems to have deliberately infected konstant is not made until halfway through the book (122). similarly, there is no mention of who infected lindanathi in the reactive until towards the end of the novel when the shocking truth is revealed: the year after i graduated tech, and a week before the sixth anniversary of your death, luthando, i infected myself with hiv in the laboratories. that’s how i became a reactive. i never had the reactions i needed to give myself and could not react to you when you called me for help. so i gave my body a situation it couldn’t run away f rom. so here’s your older brother and murderer, luthando. his name is lindanathi and his parents got it f rom a girl. (174)17 this is a way of removing victimhood f rom the protagonist, but there is clearly guilt to be felt and punishment to be courted. lindanathi did not contract hiv in any of the usual ways, but deliberately infected himself. there is no one to blame, but clearly he blames himself for his brother’s death (‘i never went back home after we buried him’ (6)) and for avoiding his brother once he realised his brother was gay: ‘i was scared of being close to you, lt. the rumours about you had spread; you’d been set apart. i didn’t want people to mix us up, to look p e e r r e v i e w 31v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 at me the same way. when the mda house came under pressure to make a man out of its sissy son, i kept away – i crossed my arms in cape town’ (173– 4). he inflicts a horrific punishment on himself as a measure of how guilty and cowardly he feels. the level of displacement in the reactive is the basis for most of the novel. when lindanathi writes ‘what helps, of course, is to try to forget about it as much as possible. which is what i do’ (22), he is essentially telling us why he spends the entire novel high on drugs and alcohol. this is his coping strategy, and links to the writing of k. sello duiker in thirteen cents (2000) and the quiet violence of dreams (2001). goldman describes this strategy as a kind of haunting: ‘haunted by guilt, lindanathi haunts his own life, which he drifts through, drugged and dazed. he understands himself as undead and refers to his hiv-positive status as a state of being between life and death – like a vampire, he feels the presence of a ‘seemingly mystical barrier f rom returning home’; he’s a denizen of the in-between’ (2016). both ntshanga and duiker excel at creating wandering existentially liminal characters who roam through cape town, delineating the suburbs, the townships and the seaboard through the haze of their consciousnesses. ntshanga’s updated hero in the reactive has not been sexually abused like azuro (thirteen cents) and does not suffer f rom schizophrenia like tshepo (the quiet violence of dreams). the key similarity is that all three are on the cusp of manhood, experiencing a crisis of masculinity and suppressed trauma, that is sublimated with intoxicants. frenkel suggests that ‘nathi is unable to deal with his grief and feelings of loss f rom his brother’s death’ (2019: 76) and, in an interview with nick mulgrew, ntshanga explains that ‘part of what i wanted to do in the novel was complicate the idea of masculinity’ (mulgrew, 2014). central to the reactive is the avoidance of becoming a man. allegorically, south af rica is also growing beyond ‘f reedom’, and the birth of the nation, into adolescence, twenty years after apartheid ended (in 2014) and struggling with what it means to be ‘f ree’. one aspect of masculinity studies suggests that the crisis of masculinity in south af rica has arisen partly because ‘ironically, men’s greater social power places them in a position of vulnerability regarding hiv infection’ (walker, reid and cornell, 2004: 24). walker et al. go on to posit that ‘traditional notions of masculinity are strongly associated with risk-taking behaviour such as increased alcohol consumption, intravenous drug use, multiple sexual partners and violence’ (24) and cite wood and jewkes (1997) who write that ‘most studies show masculinity as rather f ragile, provisional, something to be won and then defended, something under a constant threat of loss’ (walker et al., 2004: 26). in particular, ‘traditional male authority was undermined by colonial authority and apartheid rule’ (33), so it’s not surprising that ‘one of the responses to the hiv/aids crisis has been to look back to tradition…a return to traditional customs is an attempt to take control over young bodies, sexuality and reproductive health’ (81). indeed, frenkel makes the comparison with niq mhlongo’s work and suggests that ‘ntshanga positions indigenous belief systems as offering redemption and restoration in a post-apartheid context’ (frenkel, 2019: 77). whether ntshanga is returning to tradition in the reactive, or simply examining the tradition of ulwaluko (initiation in isixhosa), it does mean that this ritual becomes a focal point for lindanathi’s understanding of what it is to become a man. contrary to what lindanathi believes (as he blames himself), his brother’s death was as a direct result of his initiation. we do not learn exactly how he dies, except that he struggled and screamed: ‘they called him the screamer’ (ntshanga, 2014: 6). it is only when lindanathi returns home to emthatha and undergoes initiation himself that he seems restored central to the reactive is the avoidance of becoming a man. allegorically, south africa is also growing beyond ‘freedom’, and the birth of the nation, into adolescence, twenty years after apartheid ended (in 2014) and struggling with what it means to be ‘free’. p e e r r e v i e w 32 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 to his sense of self. he comes back to cape town more hopeful and starts to talk about having ‘many years left before the end of our paths’ (186). this coincides with the announcement by the government that it will provide ‘free arvs to the country’s citizens’ (193) and that there will soon be ‘treatment for a hundred thousand of us’ (193; my emphasis). this shift into the objective first person plural reflects a shift into the national narrative that alters the economic (not altruistic) imperative that drives much of the novel: ‘the government was reported as having finally relented, ending a five-year struggle: under increased pressure f rom a civil disobedience suit’ (193). lindanathi seems to self-identify with the plural ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’, as if he is no longer an outsider – he now feels that he is part of society again. does this reflect a national coming of age of sorts? aligning the bildungsroman with national allegory? indeed, the cape town of the entire novel is one in which ‘the plague’ is ever-present – creating a market for the arvs that lindanathi is selling. but hiv/aids is a national problem. lindanathi’s f riend ruan describes a guy called ralph who thinks ‘the aidsinfected should be put on one island and left to fend for themselves’ (136) and lindanathi wonders ‘how many of us were affected inside this taxi? inside this metropolis?’ (193). for those of us with an awareness of the scale of hiv incidence in south af rica, the figure of 100,000 is very small compared to the number of people who really needed treatment in 2011. it wasn’t until 2016 that the government set a target to treat 5 million people with arvs,18 closer to the true number of affected people and for many far too late to save the lives of those who had been suffering and dying in great numbers since the 1990s. this is reflected in comments embedded in the text through memories of the past. a biology teacher in lindanathi’s fourth year at high school describes ‘how the earth [near richard’s bay] was gutted open with so many new graves for paupers…like a giant honeycomb…each grave was meant to contain the bodies of twenty adults…that is hiv’ (161). the vastness of the impact of aids in south af rica cannot be underestimated. however, the novel demonstrates that an alternative is possible. there is a hopeful turn and by the end of the novel lindanathi finally accepts and re-defines the imperative of his name which means ‘wait with us’, saying ‘that is what i plan on doing’ (198), instead of waiting in an altered reality. on the final page of the book, we read that lindanathi plans to stay, to take his medication and to live with his hiv positive status. lindanathi’s name can be paralleled with konstant’s, as ‘constant’ relays a sense of the steady, loyal, staying power of konstant’s character, who does not give up, wanting to ‘see until i die, i don’t want to lose sight of the blue sky, or the red-winged rosellas’ (venter, 2004: 235) and even thirty pages f rom his death declaring ‘i want to live, despite the fact that i have already begun making preparations for my departure...there’s no redeeming salve for my lust for life. i still want to live, people, i really do’ (248). in venter’s novel, the presence of aids as a social problem in both south af rica and australia is hardly mentioned, so the local detail (such as graves in richard’s bay, or government announcements about treatment) does not appear much in venter’s novel. in australia, the characters early on allude to a ‘plague’19 when a finger is cut in the kitchen and the chefs worry about the blood: ‘a shriek, a shout. everyone drops their work…. pandemonium…there’s a plague in the city, and who knows what’s in liz’s blood?’ (venter, 2004: 93). konstant displays his naivety when he apologises for leaving the knife in the sink and offers to ‘suck your thumb’ (94). he is quickly told off: ‘don’t be crazy…times have changed: you’re not at home now. where do you come f rom?’ – suggesting konstant is unaware of the potential threat of hiv contamination in blood. it is ironic in retrospect that south af rica, where konstant came f rom, became the epicentre of the aids crisis (avert, 2020), whereas australia’s infection rate dropped dramatically f rom its peak in 1987, to a drop off in prevalence in the ‘90s (due to arvs) to its lowest rate in 1999 (sedghi, 2018). it is a significant difference in the chronology of the two novels that when venter was writing (before 1996) there was no really effective treatment available for hiv/aids and so konstant’s diagnosis is essentially a death sentence. by the time ntshanga was writing twenty years later (before 2014), arvs were scarce, expensive, but available – before becoming more widely available to patients across south af rica in 2016. thus, the existential crisis for each protagonist is quite different. konstant would have benefitted f rom treatment but is unable to access it and swiftly dies; lindanathi has access to treatment and throws his good fortune away by selling his arvs, risking his life as a consequence. p e e r r e v i e w 33v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 konstant’s infection is related as a tragedy, whereas lindanathi’s situation is more contrived and under control (or at least he is lucky that he does not develop aids-related complications while he is wilfully rejecting his arv medication and selling it). konstant is haplessly infected by his lover jude who takes no responsibility for his terribly dangerous behaviour. even when jude suddenly drops into the conversation that ‘i’ve got it already’ (122) he finishes the sentence with ‘is there more coffee?’ he does not even blink when telling konstant he is hiv positive even though konstant has just said that ‘i’m scared of the plague that’s around. aren’t you?’ jude’s seeming indifference to konstant’s fear, ‘[h]aven’t i told you already?’ (123), is followed by a ‘thin, drawn-out sound’ a cry which konstant has never heard before, ‘a yowl f rom the depths’ (123). jude covers up saying: i’ve got eight, maybe ten, perhaps even fifteen, if i’m lucky. there’re [sic], yes, lift your head, there’re people who are still alive after fifteen years. and as far as you’re concerned, konstant, i know by now how your head works: don’t worry for a second. everything is completely under control; you’re as safe as a house. this completely inadequate attempt at comforting konstant simply leads to more questions. konstant immediately responds to the idea that he is ‘safe as a house’ with the damning retort ‘…of cards.’ he continues explosively: ‘can’t believe it jude. when were you diagnosed? why am i only informed now? hell, we live together, share the same bed, bath and bread’ (123). jude’s offhand disclosure, and completely false sense of impunity, makes this revelation as shocking as lindanathi’s revelation that he deliberately infected himself with hiv. in effect, jude has deliberately infected not just konstant, but all the other men he cruises with at the bluegum copse, by knowing he is infected, seeking out sex and apparently not using any protection. in contrast to venter’s f ictional gay white protagonist, the narrators of edwin cameron’s witness to aids (2005) and adam levin’s aids safari (2005) (which though non-f iction, share many other similarities with my beautiful death), do not locate the source of their infections in particular sexual partners (this is also true of sizwe in three letter plague, who attributes his infection to spirits/witchcraft). theirs are accidental contractions of hiv, and of course their narratives are survivor memoirs/autobiographies20, rather than the f ictional novel form that venter uses. neither cameron nor levin focus on causation (possibly for legal reasons), whereas in both venter and ntshanga’s novels the source of infection is a signif icant element of the plot.21 venter does not go as far as moele, who takes deliberate infection to a psychopathic extreme in the book of the dead (2009). in fact, venter’s hero, konstant, is surprisingly benevolent towards jude after he f inds out he has contracted hiv – perhaps because he also sympathises with jude’s infection. however foolhardy konstant can seem as a character, there is no doubt he loves jude, with all his flaws and apparent heartlessness. however, his heartlessness does not quite equate with abandonment. jude is at least still present when konstant f inally dies and perhaps that is the sign of a greater love and a clear responsibility to care for konstant in his last painful moments, particularly as jude knows a similar fate could await him at any moment. although acquired differently, it is interesting to compare how the infection itself is described in both novels. lindanathi describes the virus in his blood as ‘i like to imagine i can hear my illness spinning inside my arteries, that it’s rinsing itself and thinning out’ (ntshanga, 2014: 51) and konstant, in his f irst fever after discovering the blue spots – kaposi’s sarcoma – on his legs (venter, 2004: 157), says: ‘you [jude] led me to your lair and then throttled me…my blue spots, it’s you, jude, i feel it in my marrow. i know it…i know i’ve got it, i felt it inside me tonight, gnawing at me like an animal…i know my body. it was wriggling in my marrow’ (168). he goes on to ask: ‘what have i done to be punished like this? thought i was invincible’ (168). in one startling sequence konstant imagines jude, festively dressed in a bridal gown, in a vision by a river saying: i have bound you to myself with ties that cannot be broken…i gave you a present, man, a cell wrapped up in a fatty layer of protein. you were f ree to do with it what you wanted. as you know, you wanted it so badly that you tied it to your own t-cell. do you understand now that i’m inseparable f rom you? (223–4) p e e r r e v i e w 34 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 this unsettling revelation of konstant’s unconscious fears suggests that he thinks hiv was a gift f rom jude. if konstant wanted the gift in order to bind himself to jude, then this reveals a profound form of self-hatred. konstant blames himself in order to accept and reverse the nature of the transaction that occurred between the two men. it is incredibly sad that in this vision konstant sees the transmission of the virus as an act of love, and something that he brought on himself. this complete reversal means that in a way, like lindanathi, there is a part of konstant who wanted to be hiv-positive, however absurd that might seem, perhaps in order to punish himself for something? perhaps to punish himself for being gay? the rest of the vision certainly confirms that he wrestled with the way his father loved him, believing that he was loved less because he was homosexual, though his father continues to deny this in the vision: ‘damn it all, konstant, you know i’ve always loved you’ (226). the vital difference between the two protagonists, however they contracted the virus, is that lindanathi’s virus is arrested in his system, whereas konstant quickly develops full-blown aids and eventually dies. there is much description of blood platelets and t-cell counts and konstant is given a transfusion before going up to the house shane rents in the blue mountains (where he develops a cough) and writing a letter to his parents to tell them that he is ill. just like his mother’s letter about tannie trynie, which doesn’t mention the word ‘cancer’, konstant doesn’t mention the words hiv or aids. he adds a p.s. which reads: ‘some people here speak of the plague, however that’s not how it should be seen. it’s not a shame; it’s an illness. remember, cancer can also infect – though only succeeding generations. and who gives a damn?’ (202). fascinatingly, konstant tries to keep his system pure and his talents as a chef come in to play regularly in terms of the vegetarian food and healthy lifestyle he leads, whereas on the contrary lindanathi pollutes his system with as many toxins as he can. konstant tries to stay in control while lindanathi attempts to lose control. it is a sign of the times that clean-living konstant cannot survive in the ‘90s, whilst drug-addled lindanathi somehow can in the new millennium. if these bildungsromans are read as national allegories, what does this tell us about south af rica? konstant is soon overwhelmed by the fear and anger that hits him, particularly when he is tired. he quickly loses his temper, not just with jude and shane, but with himself: ‘i’ve lost every bit of control i had over my life, i scream’ (211). he reiterates: ‘i’m powerless! totally powerless! you have no fucking idea how it feels, you know nothing. i scream and cry all at once…i will never get my rage shouted out in this life, there’s too much of it’ (212). eventually, he comes to the real crisis: ‘i don’t care, don’t care about anything, i scream myself senseless, shane, jude, i turn to them, it’s irreversible: i am dying’ (212). and it is here that we can trace the rupture of the normal progress of the bildungsroman, the development f rom youth to maturity is here suspended and directly conf ronts the enemy of progress, facing death. he admits that ‘the word f rightens me. i’ve never said it before. they’ve never heard it f rom me, maybe thought it, but waited for me to say it. it’s better that it’s out’ (212). but apart f rom in this close circle, konstant keeps his diagnosis a secret. he sends a postcard to his parents but admits that ‘not over my dead body will i say a word about the fact that i’m still deteriorating’ (213). he also conceals his illness at work: ‘the old fear that i’ll be rejected comes back to haunt me. i wear wider shirts and looser trousers to cover up ever-thinning limbs’ (214). on page 216, konstant has his first black out and on pages 217–8, ‘jude, shane and i enter into a kind of pact. we almost go as far as to cut our the vital difference between the two protagonists, however they contracted the virus, is that lindanathi’s virus is arrested in his system, whereas konstant quickly develops full-blown aids and eventually dies. p e e r r e v i e w 35v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 wrists and mix blood-brother blood. they will get me better, if it’s the last thing they do… so together the triumvirate will heal me.’ like konstant, who has his f riends jude and shane, lindanathi has two f riends ruan and cecelia (cissie). so both novels feature a trio of characters, relating to each other in different ways, but with similar levels of solidarity when it comes to dying. in the reactive the f riends talk about ‘last life’ which is ‘the name we’ve come up with for what happens to me [lindanathi] during my last year on the planet’ (ntshanga, 2014: 24) and the sense that the trio are always aware of their mortality prevails throughout the novel. on their way to meet their most mysterious customer who has just transferred a lot of money to their bank account they discuss who will risk their life to go in to meet him and with black humour lindanathi says ‘i’m the one who’s halfway dead’ (92). in the bar while they await the meeting, cecilia asks ‘what would you drink on your last day on earth?’ the sense of the apocalyptic is constant, ‘what if last life was moved up to now?’ neither ruan or lindanathi can think of an answer and lindanathi eventually responds ‘maybe it is now.’ they fear the outcome of their meeting but are united in their fatalism. when they return to their flat, they consider what to do with the money they have been given and ruan says ‘we should just use the money and then kill ourselves’ (107). once again, their comrade-like fatalism kicks in: ‘cissie and i agree. we share another stem [of khat] and tell ruan that this isn’t a bad idea.’ unlike the more serious nature of konstant, jude and shane’s triangular relationship, these three suicidal fatalists ‘keep stems between our teeth and chew until we can’t feel our faces any more. we prod our fingers into each other’s sides and laugh like well-fed children’ (107). the drugs take away their fears and displace their concerns with death (which they perhaps ultimately do not take that seriously). the next day they continue nihilistically: ‘we walk out of the bottle store with a loaded shopping bag in each hand, skipping across the main road like the world might end tomorrow’ (108). all of this undercuts the element of progress normally associated with the bildungsroman: the characters do not mature and learn f rom their experiences; they inhabit a liminal, suspended reality in which they don’t care for consequences and refuse to embrace progress or change, at least until lindanathi returns ‘home’ to undergo ulwaluko. perhaps lindanathi, like konstant when he was asymptomatic, does not fully accept that he is really infected with hiv. konstant recounts that ‘is it true that all the time with jude i imagined myself invincible, so untouchable in my golden haze of happiness that i refused to conf ront the reality of his infectiousness?’ (venter, 2004: 190). perhaps lindanathi is in a similar state of denial, just as he is about his uncle’s insistence that he is ready for initiation. ‘lidanathi, my uncle bhut’vuyo says, ukhulile ngoku, you’ve come of age’ (ntshanga, 2014: 27) – he repeatedly deletes text messages f rom his uncle and those f rom his case manager requesting his required cd4 counts. at the end of part two, lindanathi in his drunken state lets himself go listening to cissie’s voice: ‘the feeling i get, sitting here on her living-room floor, isn’t about my uncle or du noon, it isn’t about my sickness or my job. instead, it’s about the three of us sitting together in her flat in newlands, the three of us knitting our fingers together, me, ruan and cecelia, closing our eyes and becoming one big house’ (115–6). certainly, for both hiv-positive narrators the f riendship and family-like support of these close f riends helps to stave off their fears of dying and gives them a sense of belonging, albeit in a distorted reality. however, solidarity cannot suspend reality forever, and eventually konstant develops a pain in his left eye and is diagnosed with cytomegalo virus which causes the retina to come loose f rom the chorion (venter, 2004: 231). his doctor explains that: ‘the virus also sends bacteria to attack the precious coli in the intestines, which causes chronic diarrhoea. in the worst-case scenario, it also affects the brain’ (232). and it’s here that the author’s intent, voiced through konstant, is made absolutely clear: ‘god don’t let me go mad. at least allow me the chance to verbalise my body’s decay to the very end.’ this is literally what venter achieves in the novel, writing right up until konstant’s last breath so that the last page ends mid-sentence (271). the stylistic basis of the writing, that remains a fluid stream of consciousness even as konstant’s body fails and his sentences become more confused in the last few pages, is essential to the narrative and its attempt at mimicking the veracity of a voice that narrates right up until the p e e r r e v i e w 36 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 moment of death. he repeats: ‘not mad, please, don’t let my brain ignite and my tongue spew forth the ash of demented words. merciful god, don’t allow my tongue’s deft words to slip away’ (232). konstant has to choose between losing his sight and the medication azidothymidine (also known as azt – an early form of arv) that extends the life of infected people. he chooses ‘to see until i die, i don’t want to lose sight of the blue sky, or the red-winged rosellas in the blue mountains’ (235). he wants to approach death eyes wide open and sentient. in doing so, venter enables konstant’s narrative to continue, again, not in the pattern of a ‘coming-of-age’ novel, in which difficulties are overcome, but in a fairly brutal realist form which details konstant’s suffering as his health declines. venter also shows us how konstant imagines aids when he talks to his t-cells one night saying that they ‘were too weak, too few to keep the cytomegalo virus at bay. he slinks in, jumps up and kneels between my legs’. he goes on to characterise the virus as a hybrid kind of tokoloshe – ‘the megaloshe’ (234) – a creature who ‘wants to smother me: he pulls the blanket over my eyes. it’s the old incubus’ (236). a tokoloshe is a mythical south af rican creature; xhosa and zulu societies believe it to be a mischievous dwarf-like being or animal that causes trouble and can be sent as a curse to poison, suffocate or kill a target. konstant says that he ‘recognises him immediately. he doesn’t f righten me anymore. ironic isn’t it? my night fear becomes something of the past just when you have thinned out, my pathetic little cells. you forgot your own attack command! you should have shoved him off, my t-cell helpers’ (236). the merging of the tokoloshe with the cytomegalo virus means konstant transfers his intent to directly targeting his eyes: ‘he [the megaloshe] wants to sit right on top of my head: he wants to destroy my last bit of sight.’ again, he accuses his t-cells of failing him: ‘you could have helped me. after all, i did give you oxygen; i did eat calf liver to give you strength. how did you turn in to such wimps?’ (236). he feels let down by his body but also blames his body for turning on itself. exposing his inner reality shows how konstant experiences his illness, personifying aids. this extended conversation in the dark night is a reminder of konstant’s strong links to south af rica. there’s an element of a shared cultural symbology in the reference to the tokoloshe of xhosa mythology. he also recalls the farm and beliefs held in the countryside about spirits that prey on the vulnerable. in an extended quote he demonstrates his last attempt to fight the disease that is rapidly killing him: herd them all together now, those weak cells. down to the last one, or, rather, what is left of them. herd each and every one into the kraal. may as well bring cyto closer too. let incubus squat on the kraal wall. observe the whole lot; count each one of the cells carefully, it’s still possible. cover cyto with a tarpaulin, and laugh at the stiff mannikin on the kraal wall. that’s it, yes, have you had a good look at them all? let them go now; open the gate so that the whole brood can scoot. away with them, the bastards. and do you know? they accept the invitation. just look! they’re only too happy to piss off. all gone. (236) he breathes in and dispels all the ‘blue-in-the-face smothering anxiety, breathe all the old blue air out’ (237) and here begins the downward spiral of increased sleep and lethargy, suffused with beauty, that characterises the final thirty pages of the novel. in a surreal episode towards the end of the reactive the trio go to a house in woodstock expecting to meet their mysterious customer who instead speaks to them through a computer screen and sends them each into a different room where they experience individual dream sequences. lindanathi recalls visiting the cemetery with cissie ‘where we test the ground and tell each other to choose sites... she tells me we’re preparing ourselves for the end of the world’ (ntshanga, 2014: 138). like lindanathi, cissie has experienced death, losing her mother to stomach cancer when she was twelve (91) and more recently her aunt (80), and believes her whole neighbourhood (in newlands) is haunted by ‘calvinist ghosts’ (75). she tells lindanathi that ‘when it comes, it won’t be mass destruction; the end of the world is the destruction of the individual’ (138). there are elements of attraction in their relationship but it stays platonic: ‘i always looked at her when she wasn’t looking at me. that way, i wouldn’t fall for her for being beautiful and she wouldn’t pity me for being unwell’ (139). like konstant, lindanathi p e e r r e v i e w 37v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 experiences a dark night of the soul which is worth quoting at length: later, i can’t sleep and have to do the next best thing and pass out. we’ve cleaned out the liquor stash and the glue, so i head straight for the f ridge and look for the champagne. i miss my grandmother in a way that makes me feel sick again, and i watch another movie that convinces me i have aids. there’s a quarter of the champagne left and the bubbles have gone flat. i only have hiv, i say, i don’t have aids, and when i take a swig f rom the bottle, the champagne tastes like lemonade inside my mouth. (139) unlike konstant, lindanathi can continue to get wasted and block the prospective reality of aids out. they have different coping strategies based on the different realities of their disease. and lindanathi is arguably altering his reality through his denial. in fact, the realities of these characters are altered by the chronology they inhabit, the twenty years that separates them (and the advances in science in that time) is what separates the aids victim f rom the hiv positive survivor. drawing these two disparate novels together for a thematic comparison enables the reader to follow two different trajectories of hiv infection across two decades. both novels are daring attempts to be different, to write hiv/aids directly into the personal and political context of their history. by reading translation and cross-cultural comparison as a form of ‘unprotected’ transmission22, of ideas, of imagery, and the experiences of a disease, death become the great leveller. by removing historical divisions between ‘black’ and ‘white’ writing, english, af rikaans, and isixhosa, we can see a more holistic vision of the south af rican literary canon. it is only through translation and comparative reading that we have access to this potential continuum and the means to assess whether there is a common cultural symbology at work. the parallels between venter and ntshanga’s narrative symbolism, imagery and literary techniques appear to suggest there is a continuum: differences in language do not mean the texts inhabit entirely different cultural systems. the comparison of these texts widens the poetics of hiv/aids in south af rica. both novels express different aspects of belonging and becoming men in different cultures. both konstant and lindanathi want to become independent and respected but both men are constrained by the disease that infects them. both novels contain elements of the bildungsroman, although the arc for konstant is to achieve manhood: ‘i’ve become so totally f ree here, like never before. so self-assured. no other country gives you as much space to be who you are. i could do anything here, achieve what i wanted’ (venter, 2004: 189) – and then be cut down in the prime of life. lindanathi, in contrast, has already given up on life and learns through the novel to embrace life again and gives himself a second chance. in the process, both men experience a form of self-annihilation and yet venter’s novel is absurdly optimistic: konstant stays stoic and cheerful to the end. ntshanga, on the other hand, gives us the bleakest portrayal of a young life that is very nearly lost to despair amidst the drugs and chaos of a cape town that seems to suggest that lindanathi’s centre cannot hold. lindanathi is sustained by his f riends, much as konstant is constantly buoyed up by his f riendship with shane and jude. lindanathi is also saved by his family, his uncle and aunt, who help to lead him back to his ancestors and face his cultural traditions and obligations so that he can ‘authentically become a man’. konstant, too, is supported by family: his brother arrives f rom south af rica at the last minute and provides some comfort to his dying sibling. essentially, the crucial commonality is hiv/aids, and yet the demise and survival of these two characters goes against the grain of other narratives of the disease, such as those shared by cameron and levin (in 2005), in which white gay men survive hiv infection and bouts of full-blown aids because of their access to private medical care, arvs or health insurance. the novels reflect the trajectory of the disease in the population as it moved f rom predominantly white gay men into the wider black heterosexual population, but re-shape the confessional form of autobiography, so favoured by writers in the west, and by cameron and levin in south af rica. fiction allows a close examination of the characters’ inner worlds, revealed through translation into a shared language, showing just how much they have in common. the comparison highlights the historical p e e r r e v i e w 38 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 precedent of venter’s work, that enables the present form of ntshanga’s, while also creating something different f rom what came before, through fiction. echoing gikandi the authors use their narratives to shape notions of hiv-positive selfhood at different historical moments. in general, it has been black men like lindanathi, who before arvs were rolled out nationwide in south af rica, would succumb to aids very quickly. ntshanga shows us an alternative to the ‘survivor’ trope that is more hard-won, partly due to different economic imperatives and the range of f reedoms that came with democracy. de waal’s suggestion was that before 2006, ‘a small sample of af rican novels in english provides a first cut at exploring this topic, and it is clear that aids is approached indirectly, in diverse ways, through other issues’ (2006: 32). whereas in venter and ntshanga’s novels hiv/aids is approached directly, in the first person, via the interior worlds of hiv-positive male protagonists, changing notions about intimacy, sexuality, gender, masculinity and community. through the internal narrative of their protagonists, both novels function not only as emotional insights into the minds of those who are hiv positive, but they also delineate the courage required to face the disease both in life and in certain death, whether all too soon, or through treatment deferred. the hivpositive narrator allows the authors the creative capacity to re-define, re-imagine, and re-inscribe their reality. most significantly, as works of fiction, the authors demonstrate how it is possible to alter reality and imagine ourselves inside the bodies of these two hiv positive men, allowing readers to identify a specifically south af rican cultural symbology and explore parallels beyond race, class and language, reaching deeper into an exploration of the body and the self. although they cannot map an entire tradition, these two novels provide us with the imaginative capacity to feel as the characters feel, and think as they might think, and face their divergent futures and prognoses together, as part of the continuum in south af rican writing about hiv/ aids across two decades. notes 1. with thanks to thando njovane, ranka primorac, and zoe norridge for their unfailing support of my work. and thanks to sue marais and lynda spencer for giving me time to write at rhodes university in the department of literary studies in english in 2017. and to carli coetzee and dorothy driver whose intellectual rigour and encouragement was essential to the completion of this article. 2. on the cover. 3. i must thank tim huisamen for identifying eben venter’s work when i was researching and teaching at rhodes university in 2010. 4. in an interview (published in the journal of commonwealth literature, 2004) phaswane mpe said that there were af rikaner writers who had written about hiv/aids before he did in welcome to our hillbrow. he suggested koos prinsloo had written stories featuring aids, so i commissioned michiel heyns to translate three stories into english. two of those ground-breaking texts were published in the december 2018 issue of the johannesburg review of books. 5. see, for example: thomas (2014), nattrass (2007), hodes (2014). 6. de waal makes it clear that ‘it is not that public education messages are getting through in some places and not others’ – in fact, it is the form of these messages, their calibre and their content, that has the greatest impact on audiences: ‘it is actually counterproductive for all aids advocates to be ‘on message’, because that makes people the hiv-positive narrator allows the authors the creative capacity to re-define, re-imagine, and re-inscribe their reality. most significantly, as works of fiction, the authors demonstrate how it is possible to alter reality and imagine ourselves inside the bodies of these two hiv positive men, allowing readers to identify a specifically south african cultural symbology and explore parallels beyond race, class and language, reaching deeper into an exploration of the body and the self. p e e r r e v i e w 39v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 bored, sceptical and switched-off. having been fed propaganda for decades they are instinctively distrustful of any message purveyed with earnest consensus.’ (29–30) 7. twidle (2019) comments on the ‘politically vexed, constrained or symbolically coded articulation’ that led to ‘“an uneasy south af rican sub-genre” of writing about the black experience of hiv/aids by white writers’ (173) – namely liz mcgregor’s khabzela and jonny steinberg’s three letter plague. 8. jodi mcneil (2012) writes that ‘by the end of 2010 only 55 percent of people who needed arv treatment were receiving it… on 1 december 2011 a third national strategic plan (nsp) on hiv, stds and tb was released for 2012–2016… in 2004 we had only 47 000 people on treatment... by mid-2011, we had 1.79 million people.’ 9. ‘in the year 2000, it is estimated that 40% of all adult deaths in south af rica were due to aids’ (karim and karim, 2002). 10. the epigraphs do not feature in my south af rican edition of the novel – presumably they were included in the us to provide context to an american audience. 11. i first use this phrase in attree, l. (2010). ‘introduction’, blood on the page: 15. 12. cover quote. 13. tim huisamen met with me again on 7 august 2018 and said the literal translation of ‘stamel’ is to stutter or to stumble, which adds depth to the title which would read: ‘i stammer i die’ or ‘i stumble i die’. 14. ‘hoewel dit grotendeels in australië afspeel, lees jy jou van begin tot einde vas teen ons eie rou (sowel as heerlike!) werklikhede.’ 15. see, for example: van coller (2008). 16. refentse in welcome to our hillbrow also moved f rom the village to johannesburg and back again. 17. my emphasis. 18. ‘in 2016, south af rica implemented the ‘test and treat’ strategy, making everyone with a positive diagnosis eligible for treatment regardless of how advanced hiv is in their body. this has seen the number of people eligible for treatment more than double in recent years: f rom 3.39 million in 2015 to 7.7 million people in 2018’ (avert, 2020). 19. slightly archaic but common usage as a euphemism for hiv/aids in the 1980s and 90s. 20. although adam levin has since died, in may 2019 (chandler, 2019). 21. according to johann de lange, the af rikaans version makes jude’s role ambiguous, so it is never clear whether the female jude has infected konstant. 22. i must credit carli coetzee with the suggestion that translation could be read in this way. references attree, l. 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(1995). altered conditions: disease, medicine and storytelling. new york: routledge. fassin, d. (2007). when bodies remember: experiences and politics of aids in south af rica. berkeley, ca: university of california press. frenkel, r. (2019). ‘post-liberation temporalities, utopian afterlives and three south af rican novels by masande ntshanga, mohale mashigo and niq mhlongo.’ english studies in af rica, 62(1): 70–80. gikandi, s. (1992). ‘the politics and poetics of national formation: recent af rican writing.’ from commonwealth to post colonial. ed. anna rutherford. sydney: dangaroo press, 377–389. goldman, n. (2016). ‘the reactive – masande ntshanga.’ full stop [online]. available at: www.full-stop.net/2016/08/16/reviews/nathangoldman/the-reactive-masande-ntshanga/ p e e r r e v i e w 40 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 greef, r. (1996). ‘venter se sterwensroman gunstelin.’ rapport, 29 dec. heyns, m. (2018), ‘the story of my father.’ by koos prinsloo. johannesburg review of books [online]. available at: www. johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2018/12/05/fiction-issue-the-storyof-my-father-by-koos-prinsloo-newly-translated-by-michiel-heyns/ heyns, m. (2018). ‘the story of my cousin.’ by koos prinsloo. johannesburg review of books [online]. available at: www. johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2018/12/05/fiction-issue-the-storyof-my-cousin-by-koos-prinsloo-newly-translated-by-michiel-heyns/ hodes, r. (2014). broadcasting the pandemic: a history of hiv/aids on south af rican television. hsrc press. jenkings, s., barnard, r., gilfillan, l., and venter, e. (2007). ‘creating my beautiful death: we speak to riana barnard, eben venter, luke stubbs and lynda gilfillan.’ litnet [online]. available at: www.litnet. co.za/creating-my-beautiful-death-we-speak-to-riana-barnard-ebenventer/ karim, q. and karim, s. (2002). ‘the evolving hiv epidemic in south af rica.’ international journal of epidemiology, 31(1): 37–40. [online] available at: www.academic.oup.com/ije/article/31/1/37/655915 levin, a. (2005). aidsafari – a memoir of my journey with aids. south af rica: zebra press. mcneil, j. (2012). ‘a history of official government hiv/aids policy in south af rica.’ south af rican history online [online]. available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-official-governmenthivaids-policy-south-af rica moele, k. (2009). the book of the dead. cape town: kwela books. mpe, p. (2001). welcome to our hillbrow. scottsville: university of natal press. mulgrew, n. (2014). ‘getting under the skin of the new sa with masande ntshanga.’ mail and guardian [online]. available at: www. mg.co.za/article/2014-11-21-under-the-skin-of-the-new-sa/ nattrass, n. (2007.) mortal combat – aids denialism and the struggle for antiretrovirals in south af rica. university of kwazulu-natal press. nb publishers. (2006). ‘my beautiful death’ tafelberg website listing. nb publishers [online] available at: www.nb.co.za/en/viewbook/?id=9780624044253 ndebele, n. (1994). south af rican literature and culture: the rediscovery of the ordinary. manchester: manchester university press. ntshanga, m. (2014). the reactive. cape town: umuzi. prinsloo, k. (2008). verhale. cape town: human & rousseau. sedghi, s. (2018). ‘australian hiv rates declining overall, but not for everyone.’ abc [online]. available at: www.abc.net.au/news/2018-0924/australian-hiv-rates-declining/10297546 sontag, s. (1988). aids and its metaphors. new york: penguin. steinberg, j. (2008). three letter plague. jonathan ball. thomas, k. (2014). impossible mourning – hiv/aids and visuality after apartheid. lanham: bucknell university press. treichler, p. (1999). how to have theory in an epidemic – cultural chronicles of aids. durham: duke university press. twidle, h. (2019). ‘unknowable communities: necessary fictions and broken contracts in the heart of the country.’ experiments with truth: narrative non-fiction and the coming of democracy in south af rica. woodbridge: james currey, 159–184. van coller, h.p. (2008). ‘the peregrination of af rikaans prose fiction f rom farm to city.’ journal of the australasian universities language and literature association, 109: 27–46. venter, e. (2004). my beautiful death. translated by luke stubbs. cape town: tafelberg. viljoen, s. (2013). ‘k. sello duiker’s thirteen cents – an introduction.’ thirteen cents. athens: ohio university press: v-xxxiii. de waal, a. (2006). aids and power – why there is no political crisis – yet. london: zed books. walker, l., reid, g., and cornell, m. (2004). waiting to happen: hiv/ aids in south af rica. cape town: double story. p e e r r e v i e w 25 special edition black orpheus1 black internationalism in a time of blackness by hlonipha mokoena | peer reviewed v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract although it’s only been thirty years since the berlin wall was torn down, the term “cold war” has become something of an antique. it is as if when ronald reagan pronounced those fateful words, “mr gorbachev, tear down this wall”, the wheels of history suddenly and irrevocably came to a standstill. the usa vs ussr nuclear, technology, space and innovation war came to an abrupt and unceremonious end. that at least, is one of the reasons for the global amnesia about what the cold war actually meant and the ways in which in altered our consciousness and the world. africa, is not even considered when “cold war studies” are mentioned. as a continent, we are absented from the volatile and deadly politics of that fateful period from 1945 to 1989. as many have pointed out, contrary to the popular perception that africa was untouched by cold war politics, the period was actually one of “hot wars” all over the continent. whereas in north america, citizens of the united states could breathe a sigh of relief that they no longer would stand accused of “un-american activities”, on the african continent the ideological fallout of the end of the cold war still continues. the fate of african nationalism, pan-africanism, negritude and black internationalism was also bundled up with cold war politics and this has in some ways resulted in the conclusion that the thawing of american and soviet union also led to the depreciation of these liberation and anti-colonial ideas. this aftermath has bred a certain type of continental fatalism in which all our dead, dying and barely alive utopias are inevitably read from the vantage point of cold war politics and after. it is therefore timely that we excavate the archives of anti-colonial art and literary movements and journals whose sole impetus for existence was to ensure that the ideals of african nationalism and pan-africanism would be realised in the world of cultural production. this excavation consists of many moving parts since it is at once an intellectual history of art and a social history of “little magazines”. equally important is the history of literary magazines that attempted to “modernise” and “localise” literature and thereby offer to the newly independent citizens of the continent avenues to express their “coming to consciousness” in the aftermath of colonial domination. this paper will attempt to use the concept of the “black orpheus” to imagine an intellectual history of art and art production through the lens of other concepts that lie in ruin — black internationalism, pan-africanism, african nationalism etc. 26 ‘mr. smith fosses, the middle gentleman in the photograph on the opposite page, 634, is a resident of kimberly [sic], south af rica. mr. fosses is of pure af rican descent and was born at burgesdorp. he is a baker by trade, and a selfeducated and self-made man. kimberly [sic], where mr. fosses resides, will be remembered by our readers as conspicuous in the englishboer war. the great south af rican diamond fields are situated there; and the population is about 45,000 nearly two-thirds of which are colored and the greater part of these are employed in the mines at 85 cents per day.’ (anon. 1904: 635) the biography of mr. smith fosses that was published in the colored american magazine2 in 1904 is what a biography should be – it gives us a sense of place, time, local colour and above all, it is an illuminating sketch of a man who wasn’t reticent in his description of himself as a ‘self-educated and self-made man’ (anon. 1904: 635).  although there are many high points in this profile, for now it is important that we begin with the description of mr. fosses as ‘of pure af rican descent’ and the fact that his biographical sketch was accompanied by a photograph which it is fair to assume was taken in burgesdorp, kimberley, where mr. fosses lived. if his biography had simply been textual – without an accompanying photograph – then the mind would have wandered. what would a man of ‘pure af rican descent’ have looked like in 1904 and why did he feel that he had to state that ethnic/ racial descriptor? once we look at the photograph, we can apply our own training and prejudices to decide whether mr. fosses fits into that category of being of ‘pure af rican descent’. this article is, however, not about our eyes and our prejudices and our training; it is about mr. fosses and many like him who took pride in being of ‘pure af rican descent,’ and who made such declarations on the pages of newspapers and magazines across the black and af rican diasporas. this article will attempt to understand the role played by magazines such as the colored american magazine in the construction and maintenance of two traditions – firstly, the black mission tradition of artisanal self-sufficiency, and secondly, the black radical movement defined as ‘ethiopianism’. the main thrust of the paper will be that both these traditions were underpinned by what has been called ‘black internationalism’. mr. fosses, f rom this viewpoint, was a man of colour of his time; he didn’t just believe that across the atlantic there were men and women like him who were ‘self-made’; he also believed that these other readers, also of ‘af rican descent’, would recognise in his face, posture, pride, language and repose their own faces and fates. his statements are about bridging the gap that time, slavery, colonialism, and distance had placed between himself and these other people of colour. but it should be obvious that his sensibility had also been shaped by the presence of the newspaper/magazine. without it, he would have had no publics to address and no communities within which to imagine what being of ‘af rican descent’ actually meant. mr. fosses, as shall be demonstrated, was more than a ‘self-made man’. he was a wordmade man; his world was shaped by the history of black letters and black writing in south af rica. the colored american magazine came into existence and was published f rom 1900 to 1909. as can be discerned f rom the illustration on the cover of the october 1904 edition, the term ‘colored’ already had a broad meaning. we can therefore infer that mr. fosses and other black residents of burgesdorp probably read the colored american magazine, not just because it addressed them in its name, but because they were already familiar with the elasticity and pliability of the term ‘colored’. it is probable that fosses and his associates did not just read one publication, but that they read many other publications that were concerned with ‘race pride’. in these publications, they would have learnt that a ‘race man’ or ‘race woman’ wasn’t just someone who was aware of their racial belonging – being of ‘pure af rican descent’ is just one example – but that a ‘race man’ or ‘race woman’ was someone who conscientiously worked for ‘racial uplift’. the latter term is embodied in mr. smith fosses’ list of what his burgesdorp community had achieved. there is a sense in which enumeration and accounting were part of this identity of being an ‘ethiopian’. in the brief sketch of life in kimberley, the author of the short article repeated what would have been mr. smith fosses’ list of his community’s successes. the author wrote: ‘mr. fosses gives a detailed account of affairs in af rica which is extremely interesting. kimberly sustains 12 colored churches, 12 schools, 6 coffee shops, 5 tailor shops, 8 grocery shops and general dealers, 11 shoemakers, 1 saddler shop, special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 27 2 bakeries, 7 butcher shops, 9 f ruit dealers, 2 secret societies, 2 political organizations, 1 brass band and about 25 letter carriers. the a. m. e. church, or ethiopian movement as it is called, is in a highly prosperous condition and has the confidence and support of the native population.’ (anon. 1904: 635). schools, businesses, churches, and artisans’ workshops defined the achievement of these communities of colour, and therefore defined what it meant to be a person of ‘pure af rican descent’. but, these points of self-congratulation and the language in which to express this race pride predate the establishment of newspapers and magazines. in a haunting eulogy to adam kok iii, a mourner at his funeral uttered these words: ‘after him, there will be no coloured king or chief in colonial south af rica… of coloured chiefs he is the last. take a good look into that grave. you will never look into the grave of another chief of our race.’ (company, 1906: 638) thus, even before mr. smith fosses’ time, being ‘black’ and being of ‘af rican descent’ meant more than just skin colour; it was a lifestyle, a communallyshared sense of accomplishment and a modern appraisal of what it meant to be ‘black in the world’. the latter point about ‘modernity’ requires some emphasis since it is often assumed that ‘blackness’ or ‘af ricanity’ is a product of colonialism/imperialism; this is only partially true. in the case of south af rica’s people of colour, ‘blackness’ emerged on the margins of the colonial and imperial f rontiers where people of colour congregated on mission stations f rom which they constructed multi-ethnic and multi-racial identities that were at once a reflection of the colonial condition but also its refutation, since so many of them often transcended the limitations placed on them by colonial racism. it is this dual contestation between ‘submission’ and ‘resistance’ that weaved itself into mr. smith fosses’ biography. it informed the deliberate and precise manner in which he informed his american readers that he was of ‘pure af rican descent’ while also informing them that he was an erudite ‘ethiopian’ who was a card-carrying member of a political organisation dedicated to the autonomy and success of people of colour.  his political identification is only hinted at, and for good reasons, since colonial discourse had already marked ‘ethiopianism’ as a dangerous and subversive ideology and so fosses was cleverly revealing his allegiances without directly asserting his ideological bent.  there is an uncanny resemblance between the manner in which a ‘coloured’ reader of an american magazine understood himself as an af rican and the way in which af rican-americans also accounted for their modernity and contribution to america in the 19th century. in the opening pages of his book, we were eight years in power (2017), ta-nehisi coates cites the example of a reconstruction era (1865–77) af rican-american politician who responded to the resurgence of white supremacy by pointing to the achievements of black government. the statement by thomas miller, an af rican-american congressman f rom south carolina, enumerates the sense of accomplishment that mr. smith fosses also seemed to want to convey to his american supporters. miller is quoted as saying:  ‘we were eight years in power. we had built schoolhouses, established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the ferries. in short, we had reconstructed the state and placed it upon the road to prosperity.’ (coates, 2017: xiii) special edition in the case of south africa’s people of colour, ‘blackness’ emerged on the margins of the colonial and imperial frontiers where people of colour congregated on mission stations from which they constructed multi-ethnic and multi-racial identities that were at once a reflection of the colonial condition but also its refutation, since so many of them often transcended the limitations placed on them by colonial racism. v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 28 in citing this optimism of the reconstruction era, coates makes the argument that what white supremacists hate more than ‘violent black recklessness’ is ‘good negro government’ (2017: xv). as with mr. fosses’ explicit naming of ‘ethiopianism’, coates makes the observation that it is only when black people run their own affairs, and do so elegantly and laudably, that white supremacy raises the spectre of ‘black domination’. in the case of south af rica, these forms of ‘black’ autonomy existed on mission stations and in the communities that were formed by the descendants of black/af rican people who had lived on mission stations. although this may imply a religious foundation of black autonomy, that is not the only possible conclusion. although congressman miller’s retrospective appraisal of american reconstruction could be read as nostalgic and resigned, it is equally possible to read his statements as a precursor to mr. smith fosses’ own version of ‘black modernism’ – the insertion of black people into narratives of progress and upward mobility. although such ideals may seem to have been inspired by christian progressivism, that does not seem to have been the only reason. fosses was a descendant – it can be argued – of men and women who had imagined themselves into a modernist narrative of history via the newspaper and via literacy. the idea that af rica and people of af rican descent were not outside of history but at its very centre is one of the main reasons for identifying this with the term ‘black orpheus’.  in the context of the current preponderance of ideas of the black self as a subject of abject and optic fear, of what relevance and value is mr. fosses’ portrait and biography? in its dignity and intentionality, the photograph of mr. fosses and his assistants evokes the work of the german photographer august sander (1876–1964). the deliberate composition that showcases him as a man at work and in business would have fitted well in sander’s series, which was originally titled ‘people of the twentieth century’. this comparison is, however, only superficial, since sander’s work only began in 1910 and mr. fosses’ photograph appeared in the colored american magazine in 1904. this means that mr. fosses had other reference points and other images in mind when he posed for the picture; he was not imitating sander. compositionally, he was continuing with the visual traditions and styles that were already in the magazine. he was presenting himself in a way that he had seen other black subjects present themselves. or, at least, he understood how important it was for him to foreground his profession as a baker and to do so with visual cues. historically, mr. fosses identified with the ‘ethiopian’ movement, which in south af rica can be dated as far back as 1884 when nehemiah tile founded the tembu church. although there are controversies and debates about whether there was a direct link between the rise of ethiopianism and the emergence of af rican nationalism, in fosses’ biography, politics and religion are indistinguishably mixed since his mention of the a.m.e. (af rican methodist episcopal church) preceded his description of the political movement to which we can assume he was also a member. the fact that religious affiliation seamlessly glides into politics in his biography implies that, to mr. fosses, the appellation ‘ethiopian’ was not metaphoric but was an expression of his position in burgesdorp’s ‘coloured’ population. his attachment to ethiopianism cannot be attributed solely to his reading of the biblical passage, ‘ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hand unto god’ (psalm 68: 31), but has to be explored as an embodied concept which mr. fosses summarised in his description of himself as of ‘pure af rican descent’. although it is not directly relevant to the colored american magazine, mr. fosses’ identity as an ethiopian is a harbinger of what took place in black and af rican newspapers and magazines in 1936 after the italians invaded the kingdom of ethiopia in october of 1935. our reading of mr. fosses’ photograph should therefore consider the fact that there was a before and after of his adherence to ethiopianism; he was positioned between historical epochs which make it possible for us to understand that his identification with this independence movement was not just a flourish of the pen, but a credible and historically verifiable commitment of his self and his identity. by submitting his contribution to the colored american magazine, mr. fosses was also indicating that he was a well-read man, he was a literary man. by choosing the colored american magazine, he was also expressing what jane nardal called ‘black internationalism’ – ‘blacks of all origins, of different nationalities, mores, and religions vaguely feel that in spite of everything they belong to one and the same race’ (2002: 105). black internationalism is not just the name of an ideology; as a type of consciousness, it functions to name a circulation of ideas about blackness around the world. by submitting his image and his story, special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 29 special edition mr. fosses was essentially placing himself in this circumnavigation that at the time didn’t have a definitive destination or outcome. he was, as with other men and women in his position, submitting his thoughts, his ideas, his achievements, his bodily presence to the judgement of history. he didn’t need a soapbox on which to stand and make his presence known; the newspapers and magazines of his era made this possible. to be of ‘pure af rican descent’ didn’t mean certainty and ethnic chauvinism; instead, what mr. fosses was indexing with his selfchosen descriptor was his challenge to the white supremacists who would have made his skin colour and his phenotype a product of ‘exotic’ race mixing. by choosing to identify as an af rican, mr. fosses was revealing the already porous and expandable contours of identity in pre-apartheid south af rica. he was, we could argue, pre-empting the narrowing of the word ‘coloured’ by the apartheid state. alternatively, we could say that in the short space that mr. fosses was given by the colored american magazine, he made a cultural statement about the difference between skin colour and culture; phenotype and presence; genes and accomplishments. his consciousness of himself as a self-made man of ‘pure af rican descent’ should therefore be read as a cultural rather than an ethnic statement.  if membership in the ethiopian movement is not evidence enough for the kinds of political commitments that were important to a man of ‘pure af rican descent’, then the closing paragraph on mr. fosses offers the reader undeniable proof of the political intent of his submission to the magazine: ‘the af rican political movement has a membership of 3,000. they recently established a national fund of £ 1,000,000 to be used in the purchase of real estate in good localities for the erection of industrial schools’ (anon. 1904: 635). although there is no need to specify which political party mr. fosses belonged to, the article names the ‘af rican political movement’ as the party that had raised money for the building of industrial schools. it is likely that mr. fosses’ biography is referring to the af rican political organisation founded in 1902 in cape town. this organisation later became the af rican people’s organisation (apo) and is historically associated with the figure of abdullah abdurahman, who was the first person of colour to be elected as a city councillor in cape town. thus, although mr. fosses does not give many details about which ‘af rican political movement’ he was a member of, he is likely referring to this organisation. the importance of his allegiance is that not only does it reveal one of many precursors to the af rican national congress and its allies, it also reinforces the idea that mr. fosses was not just a baker but that he was an embodiment of black selfhood since he identified with so many of the century’s central ideas of black thought, f rom ethiopianism to black internationalism to pan-af ricanism. he was, to use the slogan of the  pan-af ricanist movement, a true ‘son of the soil’. his awareness of the multiple ways that a black body could be pledged to politics, even while he seemed to be merely reporting on the successes of his community in managing its own affairs, reveals his knowledge of the genre of ‘racial uplift’ that he was contributing to. his biographical sketch was written for an audience that was conversant in the politics of blackness of the 19th and early 20th centuries; his was a succinct declaration of what a self-made man of ‘pure af rican descent’ could do, not just with his learning, but with his inculcation of black internationalist ideas.  imagining a world beyond his immediate political and social circumstances is perhaps mr. fosses’ most visible contribution. in an abbreviated and pointed biographical sketch, the joint labour of the colored american magazine’s editors and mr. fosses’ pen conjoin to present to a global black audience a v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 alternatively, we could say that in the short space that mr. fosses was given by the colored american magazine, he made a cultural statement about the difference between skin colour and culture; phenotype and presence; genes and accomplishments. his consciousness of himself as a self-made man of ‘pure african descent’ should therefore be read as a cultural rather than an ethnic statement.  30 special edition snippet of life in burgesdorp, kimberley. the seeming innocence of mr. fosses’ submission, however, belies a thorough imbrication in a world of black letters and black ideas. if mr. fosses had only been interested in advertising his career as an artisan, then the sketch would have still succeeded as a direct and visible index of his profession. however, it is the fact that mr. fosses moves beyond the register of professional self-representation and into the language of racial betterment that one truly comprehends his choice of words in describing himself as being of ‘pure af rican descent’. this construction of black selfhood depended on more than just his skin colour; it depended on the enumeration of the achievements of the ‘race’. mr. fosses was not content to let the image of himself flanked by his two assistants ‘speak for itself’; he wanted to make sure that his words, his thoughts, and his pride also appeared in narrative form. his abbreviated biography matter-of-factly expressed the history of newspaper and magazine conventions that had defined the black world and given many black writers and authors access to a public they would otherwise have never reached f rom their localities.   notes 1. this is a reference to the literary journal black orpheus, which was established in nigeria in 1957 by ulli beier. for a review of the type of content published in the journal see irele (1965). 2. the colored american magazine and the colored american newspaper are separate publications with distinct histories. for the history of the latter newspaper, see the library of congress entry, ‘the colored american (washington, d.c.) 1893-19??’ (washington, dc), jan. 1 1893. [online] available at: www.loc.gov/item/sn83027091/. references anon. (1904). ‘bakers of kimberly, south af rica,’ the colored american magazine, 10: 634–35. coates, t.n. (2017). we were eight years in power: an american tragedy. new york: random house. company, lloyd’s greater britain publishing (1906). twentieth century impressions of natal: its people, commerce, industries, and resources. natal lloyd’s greater britain publishing company. irele, a. (1965). ‘black orpheus: a journal of af rican and af ro-american literature’, the journal of modern af rican studies, 3:1: 151–154. nardal, j. (2002). ‘black internationalism,’ in sharpley-whiting, t.d. (ed.), negritude women. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 t h e t h i n k e r42 pan-african introduction: an overview of african common currencies a common currency is a necessary condition for the realisation of the benefits of integration. the adoption of a single currency exposes domestic markets to foreign markets, thereby increasing competition between member countries and enhancing the competitiveness of national industries (saka, onafowokan and adebayo, 2015). a common currency is the signification of an economic community and a united and developed people. the importance of af rican economies in global trade is not going to be judged by the power of each country’s individual economy, for there is none, so far, or by the stability provided by the benevolent hegemony of a colonial master. rather, the power of af rican economies lies in the actual share of the proposed currency in world official foreign reserves, its liquidity in international trade, and its role as a competitor against the exorbitant u.s. dollar. af rica’s experiments with common currencies are not a new phenomenon. the “colonies by anton m. pillay © s to ck .a d o b e .c o m in africa common currency assessing a 43v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 pan-african françaises d’af rique”, or “french colonies in af rica”, better known as the cfa zone, have existed in west and central af rica since 1945. prior to that, the french west af rican franc, as well as the british west af rican pound, served as the region’s official currencies. similarly, the east af rican shilling was the currency for colonial kenya, uganda and tanganyika, and even before that the indian rupee served as the currency for the british east af rican states. in the 1960s, east af rica was close to developing a regional currency, but the project was destabilised by the rise of nationalistic projects like the one of general idi amin dada. in the contemporary era, the region has been struggling to implement the “east af rican shilling”, which was last delayed in 2015 and is now expected to be released in 2021. in southern af rica, the southern af rican customs union (sacu), the oldest regional economic bloc in the world, pegs the currencies of swaziland, lesotho and namibia to the south af rican rand. besides the pegging and common monetary area (cma), the sacu has not sought to make progress towards a real common currency. west af rica, however, in the form of the economic community of west af rican states (ecowas) is leading in terms of common currency progress with its “eco.” though first expected in 2003 and postponed a good number of times, the eco is expected to be finally unveiled in 2020 (mosegbon, 2018). in december 2019, the eco made its strongest step with the cfa franc (west) opting out of certain ties with france to align itself more with the eco. many critics, however, consider this transformation to be nothing more than a name change. there have been varied results to the af rican common currencies projects. their potential and steady progress have been hampered by a lack of political will and unfavourable economic indicators. for example, despite the cfa (central and west) zone having existed for over 70 years, its states have remained some of the poorest in the world. likewise, swaziland and lesotho have steadily featured on the list of the poorest states in the world, while namibia is considered to be one of the most unequal states in the world with a 57.6 gini co-efficient in 2015, ranking it with the likes of haiti and the central af rican republic. what is clear f rom both the cfa and sacu systems is that a higher power appears to be benefiting f rom the arrangements: france in the case of the cfa, and south af rica in the case of the sacu. why are af rican common currency arrangements not developing their respective regions? what is happening at the regional level that is hampering real progress? using the cfa and the sacu as case studies, the following section seeks to answer the above questions. a close examination of the cfa and the sacu there are both advantages and disadvantages to the cfa currency. the cfa f ranc is used in 14 af rican countries, with a combined population of about 150 million and $235 billion of gross domestic product. the main problem with the cfa is that it is seen as a symbol of neo-colonialism. critics, such as those leading the anti-cfa movement, say that true economic development for the 14 states can only be achieved by getting rid of the currency (konkobo, 2017). these critics argue that in exchange for the guarantees provided by the french treasury, af rican countries channel more money to france than they receive in aid. they also argue that they have no say in deciding key monetary policies agreed to by european countries, which are members of the eurozone. luigi di maio, italy’s foreign affairs minister, backed up the anti-french view, noting that “france is one of those countries that by printing money for 14 af rican states prevents their economic development and contributes to the fact that refugees die in the sea or arrive on our coasts” (signé, 2019). chad’s long-serving president idriss debby in 2015 stated that the cfa pulls down af rican economies and that the “time has come to cut the cordon that prevent af rica to develop”. he called for a restructuring of the currency in order to “enable af rican countries which are still using it to develop”. debates over the persistence of the cfa f ranc zone also focus on af rican states’ there have been varied results to the african common currencies projects. their potential and steady progress have been hampered by a lack of political will and unfavourable economic indicators. t h e t h i n k e r44 independence and sovereignty. metaphorical armies of unemployed youth throughout subsaharan af rica—which may reach over 350 million over the next two decades—are often the loudest opponents of the cfa zone. other pro-democracy movements, like y’en a marre in senegal and le balai citoyen in burkina faso, consider the dismantling of the cfa zone as essential to their campaigns to reform their countries’ respective governments. other protestors have included kémi séba, a benin-born french activist who was charged with burning cfa notes in senegal before being deported. landry signé – author of innovating development strategies in af rica: the role of international, regional, and national actors – examines the political economy of the performance and economic development strategies of cfa f ranc zone states f rom 1960 to 2010 (2019). the empirical evidence he provides showcases the cfa as both an enabler and barrier to development. for example, he notes that guinea stands as a prime example for cfa supporters. guinea – which has its own currency – f requently experiences currency shortages, and has a central bank that does not have sufficient policies to ensure stability. in this case, the everpresent cfa offers a serious solution to this conundrum. a few hundred kilometres to the east, in ivory coast, president alassane ouattara has on numerous occasions contended that the cfa zone states are better off than the anglophone states due to growth and low inflation, whereas the poor are disproportionately affected by unpredictable inflation in anglophone countries. outtara has stated that the cfa is solid, well-managed, and a stabiliser for af rican economies (signé, 2019). signé’s data shows that, in terms of trade, the cfa’s fixed exchange rate to the euro has led to a greater facilitation of trade, through the reduction of uncertainty and the stabilisation of domestic prices. the logic of fixed exchange rates can be traced back to the bretton woods period, when 63% of developing countries had their currency pegged to that of an industrial country. the potential problems with a fixed exchange rate are mostly offset in central af rican economic and monetary union (caemu) countries, due to these countries’ high levels of excess liquidity f rom oil revenues. however, west af rican economic and monetary union (waemu) countries have experienced declining liquidity since 2004, thus suffering f rom the volatility of a fixed rate amidst external shocks. signé is of the opinion that the monetary policies in the cfa have been effective in achieving real exchange rate depreciation, which resulted in a reduction in government expenditures. as a positive effect, the unlimited convertibility of the cfa f ranc to the euro has generally reduced the risk of foreign investment in cfa countries. according to coppola, the cfa is so closely related to the eurozone that foreign exchange risk can be negligible on trade between cfa economies and the eurozone (2019). although the two versions of the cfa f ranc are not yet integrated, they are both worth exactly the same in euro terms, and the hard peg to the euro means that their external value is also identical, since their foreign exchange rates float up and down with the euro. so for nearly all intents and purposes, the 14 countries in the cfa f ranc currency union use the same currency, and that currency can be regarded as a version of the euro (coppola, 2019). this has helped the cfa zone states to survive recent falls in the price of oil and commodities without currency collapse, inflation spikes and fiscal distress. on the other side of the debate, and besides the already-mentioned political arguments against the cfa, the empirical evidence provided by signé shows that the cfa franc zone as a whole has had very limited success in intra-regional trade, especially in central af rica. the cfa zone has also been highly dependent on producing and exporting a limited number of primary commodities, and it also has a narrow industrial base. these two factors mean that the zone faces high vulnerability to external shocks. some critics argue that the strength of the euro may have on the other side of the debate, and besides the already-mentioned political arguments against the cfa, the empirical evidence provided by signé shows that the cfa franc zone as a whole has had very limited success in intra-regional trade, especially in central africa. pan-african 45v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 discouraged exports and encouraged imports, benefiting eurozone economies – especially france – at the expense of cfa zone countries. the december 2019 decision to rename the west af rican cfa f ranc as the eco and thereby cut “some of the financial links with paris” was welcomed by many heads of state, but the reliance on france remains in the details. the new eco will remain pegged to the euro, but the states in the bloc will not have to keep 50% of their reserves in the french treasury, and there will no longer be a french representative on the currency unions board. to george ott, the transformation f rom cfa to eco was largely symbolic and cosmetic, as the maintenance of the euro peg will continue to dictate the scope of regional monetary policy decisions (2020). the cfa’s transformation into the eco is all but theoretical, given that the eco must first circulate in the other non-cfa states to be considered a true eco. three key challenges have prevented this f rom happening. firstly, there is inconsistency in decision-making by the heads of governments of member states. over the years, new governments, new policies, coups d’état, or simple invasions in the case of ivory coast in 2011, have delayed true eco circulation. secondly, non-cfa zone states (i.e. waemu members) have not satisfied the convergence criteria for the adoption of the new currency. key criteria such as maintaining a budget deficit of less than 3% of gdp; a public debt ratio of less than 70% of gdp; an annual inflation rate of less than 10%; and a minimum of three months of import cover mean that it appears unlikely that the majority of the waemu countries will meet all these criteria by the very ambitious inception date of july 2020 (ott, 2020). thirdly (and quite surprisingly in the context of anti-colonial sentiments), it appears that in the face of the demise of the cfa f ranc, its benefits become more clear. the cfa is tied to fixed rates, which works well with the undiversified cash crop economies of the cfa. booms and busts and other fluctuations in the market mean that the exchange rate of the cfa is relatively unaffected. even in the face of political and election instabilities, the cfa remains unaffected. so, while often labelled as a neo-colonial system, the economic rationality of the cfa f ranc cannot be ignored. regarding the sacu, the penultimate question to ask is whether sacu members really aspire to the next level of economic integration. overall, the sacu is about protecting south af rican interests, which dominate the region. intra-sacu exports in 2017, which accounted for $14 billion, were dominated by south af rica, which accounted for 71% of total exports. south af rica also accounts for 87% of sacu’s exports to the world (chidede, 2018). except for botswana with its stronger pula, all sacu members are part of a common monetary agreement (cma). in a cma, there exists an anchor currency that is accepted as a medium of exchange within the monetary area. this anchor currency is accompanied by rules that govern a cma’s operations, such as limiting the mandate of local central banks within a cma (notably the financing of fiscal deficits through monetary expansion, so-called quantitative easing); maintaining sound macroeconomic performance; and uniform guidelines for prospective and existing members. other rules relate to the governance of inflation rates – both current and expected – and keeping a cma’s internal exchange rates within the margins of the de facto currency. in the case of the sacu cma, the south af rican rand acts as the anchor currency, and the policies of the south af rican reserve bank (sarb) are widely influential among the cma states of namibia, lesotho and swaziland. botswana is the only member of the sacu to stand outside of the cma, instead managing its currency based on a basket of currencies, of which the south af rican rand holds an approximate 60% weighting (nene and patroba, 2013). this “unfair weighting” is natural given that lesotho, swaziland and namibia combined regarding the sacu, the penultimate question to ask is whether sacu members really aspire to the next level of economic integration. overall, the sacu is about protecting south african interests, which dominate the region. pan-african t h e t h i n k e r46 provide less than 4% of the total gdp of the cma region. at the same time, their financial systems lack the high level of sophistication of the south af rican financial system (van zyl, 2003). this means that south af rica’s monetary and exchange policy is transmitted across the sacu (chidede, 2018). despite the fact that the cma is not a full monetary union because members do not have a single currency and single central bank, monetary integration in this cma is considered high, with cma members generally able to withstand shocks. while stronger monetary cooperation within the southern af rican development community (sadc) will be a slow process, this integration initiative will eventually create a major challenge for the cma. it remains to be seen whether the cma has a pivotal role to play in the larger sadc initiative. monetary cooperation in the sadc could eventually entail an entirely different f ramework, or it could come about by extension of the cma arrangements to include more sadc countries, as and when they are willing and able to join. expanding the membership of the cma would be more complicated than in the past, because new members would not share the history of the south af rican currency being legal tender. the cma arrangements have, however, in the past proved to be very flexible and this could be a big advantage (van zyl, 2003). sacu summarises af rica’s ventures in common currencies. it highlights the uncertainties of whether the benefits of deeper monetary integration outweigh the cost and the precaution of hegemonic dynamics which are common in af rica’s regions. linking a local currency to an anchor currency can improve macroeconomic stability, as opposed to operating under a flexible exchange rate. under a flexible exchange rate regime, commodity prices often become unstable, and can in turn create disturbances in smaller economies, particularly if their currencies are depreciating, thereby resulting in general price-level volatility. however, although a cma would have a better capacity to cope with these disturbances, it would have less capacity to deal with the idiosyncratic shocks and development challenges that might only occur in certain member states, which would have lost their capacity to tailor monetary policy to their needs through the centralisation of monetary control. individual countries could face the effects of differentiated external shocks due to differences in their production, consumption and expenditure patterns; market characteristics (monopolistic/ competitive); and level of openness, among others. asymmetric shocks could cause havoc to individual economies under independent currencies (nene and patroba, 2013). the institutionalised f ramework of trade, financial and other non-economic links, such as inf rastructure, binds sacu states ever closer to south af rica and, in doing so, limits their scope for independent action (mingst, 2008). the progress in sacu is slow due to a lack of authority within these forums, overlapping membership, and political turmoil in some countries (cox, 1996). this creates an ideal platform for south af rica to push its agenda. it is of paramount importance that the botswana, namibia, lesotho and swaziland (bnls) states be stable in all facets (socially, politically and economically), so as not to impede on the south af rican economy. while this dependency can, to an extent, be taxing on south af rica, it also works to its benefit because it provides viable opportunities for investment, trade and migrant labour in and f rom those states. according to van zyl, in view of the progress already realised by the cma under sacu, it could be worthwhile for countries to move towards a full monetary union by using a single currency. south af rica, particularly the sarb, could then continue to play the leading role in this process, capitalising on the experience of the cma (van zyl, 2003). nene and patroba also back up this view, noting that it would be beneficial for sacu to establish a monetary union. in such a case, the sarb could continue formulating a monetary policy for a possible sacu monetary union. a key challenge in obtaining this goal is the disparity across sacu member states and their poor sacu summarises africa’s ventures in common currencies. it highlights the uncertainties of whether the benefits of deeper monetary integration outweigh the cost and the precaution of hegemonic dynamics which are common in africa’s regions. pan-african 47v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 the appeal of an integrated african monetary union is the tremendous potential to increase intra-regional trade and encourage domestic production capabilities. however, another monetary union may lead to problems of dependence, such as those experienced by countries in the cfa franc zone. macroeconomic performance over the years (nene and patroba, 2013). conclusion in sum, there is potential for af rican common currencies. according to oladele, a common currency can be created with a lot less difficulty than our af rican leaders have so far led us to believe (mosegbon, 2018). in an empirical study by karras, it was concluded that af rican states like uganda, ghana and guinea have a lot to gain f rom a monetary union, but also a lot to lose f rom it. economies like morocco, ivory coast and gabon have little to lose by adopting a common currency, but also have little to gain f rom it. nigeria is a more promising candidate for membership in an af rican monetary union than kenya, and zambia is an unambiguously better candidate than either benin or mauritius (karras, 2006). the mix of benefits and constraints is visible in both the cfa and sacu. overall, both these unions have shown incredible durability in highly unstable or unequal regions. this seems to validate many of the benefits of such unions, with the regions showing consistently low and stable inflation rates. in surveying the literature around af rican common currencies and their dynamics, the most important details to success are well-coordinated monetary and fiscal policies. the coordination of such policies is a necessary foundation. a strong emphasis needs to be put on reducing the fiscal deficit of states seeking to join a monetary union. reducing inflation and debt levels and increasing reserve holdings will also ensure that the benefits of monetary integration outweigh the costs. okafor suggests that to benefit f rom economic and monetary integration, regions need to deal with the sources of fiscal policy distortion through better management of their economies (2013). using the cfa and sacu as yardsticks, an af rican monetary union would be most challenging to implement and would require countries to adhere to strict fiscal rules, similar to those in the cfa zone, until stability was achieved. this strategy requires significant investment and capital mobility to ensure a strong exchange rate union and currency convertibility. movement of labour and capital are necessary to spur economic growth and stabilise relatively different economies. the appeal of an integrated af rican monetary union is the tremendous potential to increase intra-regional trade and encourage domestic production capabilities. however, another monetary union may lead to problems of dependence, such as those experienced by countries in the cfa f ranc zone. ■ references chidede, t. (2018). southern af rican customs union (sacu)’s trade and tariff profile. trade law centre (tralac) blog [online]. available at: https:// www.tralac.org/blog/article/13807-southern-af rican-customs-unionsacu-s-trade-and-tariff-profile.html coppola, f. (2019). in af rica: understanding the cfa franc and its foreign exchange rate impact. american express [online]. available at: https:// www.americanexpress.com/us/foreign-exchange/articles/cfa-f ranc-andits-foreign-exchange-rate-impact/ cox, r. (1996). gramsci, hegemony, and international relations: an essay in method. in: robert cox and timothy sinclair, eds. approaches to world order. cambridge: cambridge university press, p.245 karras, g. (2006). is af rica an optimum currency area? a comparison of macroeconomic costs and benefits. journal of af rican economies [online], volume 16, issue 2, pp. 234–258. available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ ejl036 konkobo, l. (2017). af rican protests over the cfa ‘colonial currency’. bbc af rica [online]. available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/worldaf rica-41094094 mingst, k. (2008). essentials of international relations. london: w.w. norton & company, p.109. mosegbon, o. (2018). the significance of common currency to the success of economic integration. in: allied social sciences association – national economic association annual conference, january 4-7, 2018. philadelphia, usa. nene, m. and patroba, h. (2013). is sacu ready for a monetary union? south af rican institute of international affairs, saiia occasional paper, no. 143, april 2013 [online]. available at: https://saiia.org.za/research/is-sacuready-for-a-monetary-union/ okafor, h. (2013). macroeconomic costs and benefits of a common currency for the second west af rican monetary zone (wamz). af rican journal of economic policy [online], volume 20, no. 1 (2013). available at: https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajep/article/view/10151 ott, g. (2020). op-ed: from cfa f ranc to ‘eco’, what you need to know about west af rica’s new currency. cnbc af rica [online]. available at: https://www.cnbcaf rica.com/news/west-af rica/2020/01/10/op-ed-f romcfa-f ranc-to-eco-what-you-need-to-know-about-west-af ricas-newcurrency/ saka, j.o., onafowokan, i.a., and adebayo, a.a. (2015). analysis of convergence criteria in a proposed monetary union: a study of the economic community of west af rican states. international journal of economics and financial issues, econjournals, vol. 5(1), pp. 230-239 signé, l. (2019). how the france-backed af rican cfa f ranc works as an enabler and barrier to development. the brookings institution [online]. available at: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/how-thef rance-backed-af rican-cfa-f ranc-works-as-an-enabler-and-barrier-todevelopment/ van zyl, l. (2003). south af rica’s experience of regional currency areas and the use of foreign currencies. bis papers no. 17: regional currency areas and the use of foreign currencies, may 2003, pp. 134-139 [online]. available at: https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap17o.pdf pan-african t h e t h i n k e r14 international the history and fortune of umkhonto we sizwe (mk) is the history of the south african liberation movement in the period 1960-1990 culminating in the triumph of democracy over apartheid in 1994. the creation of umkhonto we sizwe (mk) in 1961, its achievements, reversal of fortune and recovery, culminating in the people’s victory over apartheid in 1994, must be seen in the international context, the collapse of the colonial system in africa from the late 1950s, and the armed contestation for change in algeria and southern africa where colonial racism refused to budge. the impact of the rivonia arrests of july 1963, possibly the biggest setback in the liberation struggle for south africa in the 20th century, has been well documented. a more considered assessment is needed for the aftermath years 1965-1975 when mk in an organised sense had ceased to exist inside the country.1 despite some heroic attempts in the wake of rivonia to keep the underground and the nascent armed struggle alive (wilton mkwai and bram fischer groups)2 the internal organisational structures of umkhonto we sizwe (mk) along with those of the anc and sacp were smashed. mk operations which according to the rivonia trial indictment amounted to 193 acts of sabotage between 1961 to 1963 dwindled to less than half a dozen and then petered out by 1965. there was of course far more to this reversal than the incapacity to mount operations as, important as that is in assessing the success or failure of armed struggle. it was only after the 1976 soweto uprising that operations would be resumed inside the country although there were mk’s brave incursions with zipra forces into zimbabwe in 1967-1968. from 1963-1966 the top leadership of the liberation movement was imprisoned, along with thousands of the foot soldiers; many were executed or died in detention; the remaining leadership were driven into exile; the apartheid regime and security forces were cock-a-hoop with success. the how and why mk managed to survive the rivonia blows is relevant in any overall appraisal of the history of the armed struggle as undertaken by mk (1961-1990). by ronnie kasrils mk in the aftermath of rivonia (1963 – 1976) 15v o l u m e 8 0 / 2 0 1 9 international masses within south africa were undoubtedly intimidated and without organised leadership. following the unprecedented defiance campaigns and mobilisation of the 1950s, the postrivonia decade of the 1960s witnessed a lull in mass struggle and organised underground activity. this was clearly the nadir of the liberation movement’s fortunes and applied equally to the anc, sacp, pac and other factions. yet the phoenix of mk was able to arise from the ashes and achieve its apogee in the late 1980s. this paper will attempt to discuss the many factors that made this recovery possible by considering the objective and subjective developments during 19651975. it is important to understand how mk had managed to survive as an organised force and from where it was able to obtain assistance, which meant that the anc was best placed to respond to the 1976 soweto uprising and take advantage of the opportunities provided by the landmark independence of angola and mozambique in 1975. how and why mk managed to survive the rivonia blows is relevant in any overall appraisal of the history of the armed struggle as undertaken by mk (1961-1990). it is important to make the point that although the period under discussion represented an acute downturn it was by no means a disorganised retreat. for a revolutionary movement the act of survival, to recover and have the ability to fight another day, is in itself something of a victory. the subjective courage and resilience of the rivonia trialists – and those in other trials throughout the country – acted as a clarion call for resistance and kept that spirit alive. the brave hope for freedom was never extinguished and as long as it existed the struggle was not dead. mandela and company made it clear they were prepared to die for their beliefs. they had a unique public platform to outline the reasons for the creation of mk and the dramatic sabotage operations unleashed. they seized this opportunity in no uncertain manner to raise the people’s awareness and consciousness. the trial itself motivated street protests and raised awareness of the outstanding solidarity of families led by winnie mandela and albertina sisulu. people might have learnt to keep their heads down but they bided their time, prepared to organise and resist afresh. the arrest of winnie mandela and 20 others in 1969, attempting to revive the anc underground is a case in point. the heroic bearing of the rivonia trialists furthermore motivated africa and the international community, including the united nations, to rally behind for a revolutionary movement the act of survival, to recover and have the ability to fight another day, is in itself something of a victory. mama albertina sisulu attending the rivonia trial. © p re to ri a n ew s an d n at io na l a rc hi ve s t h e t h i n k e r16 the struggle. the outcry had among other results an impact on socialist and african countries, demonstrating how serious the anc and sacp were about the armed struggle. external allies were consequently prepared to step-up promised material support and training which was indispensable to mk’s survival and progress. moreover, the rivonia leadership, and sacrifice of others including those who were executed like mk commander vuyisile mini, and those who like looksmart ngudle were murdered in detention, steeled the resolve of mk comrades who were itching to react and press on. although we readily accept that the outcome of the sabotage campaign of 1961-1963 ended in setback, a historic legacy of confronting the regime had been established. from the time of sharpeville (march 21, 1960) and the banning of the anc, the movement had the foresight to establish an organised external presence. oliver tambo, yusuf dadoo and moses mabhida had been sent abroad that year to organise international support. from the inception mk cadres were slipping out of the country for training. mandela’s trip to addis ababa and meeting the algerian nlf leadership in morocco was the forerunner. six top leaders including raymond mhlaba and wilton mkwai were sent for training in china. others were to follow for training in africa and particularly in the soviet union; and this entailed establishing secret routes in and out of the country. the anc mission abroad established offices in africa and london to mobilise international support. the infrastructure in places like tanzania, as well as safe contacts in soon to be free botswana and zambia, were important contact points along the long and precarious route to dar es salaam. with the apartheid regime passing extremely repressive legislation such as the sabotage act (later the terrorism act) the writing was on the wall, and other key leaders, among them jb marks, moses kotane, duma nokwe and joe slovo, were ordered to leave the country and strengthen the external mission both for political and military purposes. the recruitment of mk cadres in greater numbers for training abroad was well underway from early 1962. by the time of the rivonia raid and in the period to 1965 there were several hundred cadres completing or undergoing military training in a variety of countries in africa and eastern europe. the external human resource and infrastructure grew to become the movement’s indispensable rear base and major asset without which the liberation of south africa would have been far more problematic and taken a far longer time. this indispensable asset was painstakingly developed in those difficult years and became a key objective factor for survival and revival of the struggle. without a doubt the assistance given by the soviet union in the period under consideration (as well as in future) was a mainstay of mk’s survival.3 this was one of the key objective factors which saw us through the most difficult of times. i can attest to what it was like as one of those exfiltrating the country towards the end of 1963. it was a huge relief after being on the run at home and dodging the security forces to safely leave the country. fish keitsing, a former treason trialist and citizen of botswana, ran a competent system of picking up our cadres at rendezvous points at the border, utilising safe houses and transport to spirit one north, or arranging with the anc in dar es salaam for a transport to fly or drive one to this or that safe haven. the anc office in tanzania’s capital was a hive of activity handling the movement of cadres for training abroad. transit houses received those from home and those returning from training. the initial group that had trained in china were followed by middle level cadres who trained in egypt, cyprus and algeria once it was freed. by 1963 thanks to the earlier contacts provided by the sacp with moscow an advance group of 30 including archie sebeko, chris hani, lennox lagu and lambert maloi were training in moscow. i joined a group of some 200 comrades headed by joe modise as commander and moses mabhida as commissar which trained in odessa during 1964. another group of 200 which included joe jele and mosie moolla followed us in 1965. by the time my group returned to tanzania at the end of 1964 we joined at least 100 who had completed training, including the moscow group, and set up the anc’s main guerrilla camp at kongwe, 500 kms to the west. uniforms and weapons were supplied from the soviet union and other socialist countries. a small number had received training in czechoslovakia. by 1966 the camp boasted well over 600 trained cadres. further training and preparation were conducted there. at this point it is important to reflect that the establishment of a rear base in africa and training facilities in the continent and socialist countries had been conceived by the rivonia command from the start. their plans had included the creation of an underground network to engage in both political and military activity in various centres of the country as well as the reintegration of cadres who had trained abroad. hand-in-hand with this was the intended smuggling of weapons, a logistics infrastructure for producing basic explosives and capacity to produce and distribute propaganda material. the draft document operation “operation mayibuye” although never adopted, and criticised by some for being impractical and adventuristic, has the merit of indicating the breadth and audacity of thinking at that time.4 it was a strategic plan meant to facilitate the transition from sabotage to guerrilla struggle, drafted mainly by govan mbeki and joe slovo. ironically many of its recommendations evolved in the course of the struggle. by 1965, at a crucial point when mk cadres in large numbers abroad were primed to return home, the situation international without a doubt the assistance given by the soviet union in the period under consideration (as well as in future) was a mainstay of mk’s survival. 17v o l u m e 8 0 / 2 0 1 9 international © u ni ve rs ity o f f or t h ar e a rc hi ve s mk in training was dire. routes home were extremely dangerous, and most problematic of all there were no structures ready to receive them. comrades at kongwa in particular, having expected to be back home as soon as they had completed training, were beginning to experience “cabin fever,” growing bored and impatient with the leadership. a small group were so exasperated that sometime in 1966 they commandeered a truck and drove from kongwa to the new anc headquarters at morogoro to lodge a protest. this certainly shook up the leadership and impelled new thinking about how to address the problem of infiltrating people back home. the leadership had a difficult problem on their hands. not only were the mk soldiers becoming restless but so too were our hosts like tanzania and the oau. the liberation committee of that institution which was put in charge of supervising and assisting the many guerrilla movements of southern africa were impatient too. the anc in particular was pressurised to get on with the fight. fortuitously, zambia had become independent providing the anc the opportunity of establishing itself closer to home. this made a tremendous difference. kaunda permitted the anc to transfer numbers of its members to zambia and mk transit residences were set up around lusaka and in livingston across the zambesi river from rhodesia. the challenges for mk and the other liberation movements struggling to make progress in southern africa coincided with the publication of regis debrey’s controversial book “revolution in the revolution”5 on the challenges of guerrilla warfare in latin america. this had tremendous appeal and was hotly debated in many parts of the world including africa. but it gave the misleading impression that the cuban revolution had simply depended on the guerrilla band establishing a base with its own resources and not having to also initially depend on links with the rural or urban people. this went with scathing criticism of traditional leadership and organisation for failing to prosecute guerrilla warfare. whether or not the theory was fully discussed at leadership level in africa it certainly had great appeal for freedom fighters stuck in limbo outside their country. this was also the time when the vietnamese were engaged in the heroic struggle against the american invasion and the concept of people’s war was becoming extremely popular. the incursions into zimbabwe by mk’s luthuli detachment, some sixty strong, in alliance with zapu’s armed wing zipra, in the wankie campaign of 1967 followed by sipolili in 1968, were made possible by the opportunity provided by the emergence of an independent zambia, as a base from which to launch guerrilla actions. the idea for mk was that it would use zimbabwe as a route through to south africa and if they were intercepted on the way they would robustly engage the enemy. whilst the objective of reaching south africa failed, so fierce was the combat with the rhodesian forces that pretoria had to rush security personnel to prop up the smith regime. although the objective of reaching home was not achieved what should not be overlooked is that this was mk’s baptism of fire. in contact with the enemy they had seen white soldiers die and retreat in terror. invaluable lessons t h e t h i n k e r18 by 1965, at a crucial point when mk cadres in large numbers abroad were primed to return home, the situation was dire. routes home were extremely dangerous, and most problematic of all there were no structures ready to receive them. international were drawn; and the event made considerable impact back home. so popular were mk’s actions as broadcast by the anc’s radio freedom that taxi drivers and township commuters alike in south african cities were calling out along with their normal destinations “next stop rhodesia and wankie!” slovo referred to the wankie campaign as a “heroic failure”.6 and that heroism had another positive side. lessons were learnt and would be applied. i had been transferred to london where a special secret unit under dadoo and slovo was created to establish links with south africa, recruit travellers and students for underground work at home, and organise the smuggling in and distribution of both anc and sacp leaflets and literature. by 1967 this was well underway. our first few units had been established and the initial smuggling of literature soon became something of a sustained blitz as we recruited so-called “london recruits” – young internationalists who could journey into the country as tourists.7 they engaged in direct propaganda actions utilising leaflet bombs and street broadcasts to get the message to the masses.8 so successful were these actions that on numerous occasions the audacity of the leaflet distribution in all the main cities of south africa saw front-page headlines and greatly inspired the people. among the first large leaflet distributions to hit the headlines was a pamphlet about the mk incursions into zimbabwe proclaiming that the “end was near for vorster and his gang”9. many of the 1976 student activists who joined mk later told me how they had first come to know of the anc and mk through the leaflet bomb distributions. following the failure of the zimbabwe incursions and criticism from mk ranks concerning what they saw as leadership failures, the morogoro conference was convened in april 1969. central to all discussion was how to re-establish the movement back home and the strategy and tactics required in the new phase. arising out of lessons learned the emphasis was placed on a balanced interaction between political and military work. many cadres had felt the absence of experienced leaders from the minority groups, such as dadoo, slovo, reg september and others, had added to the problems they had endured. a revolutionary council at anc headquarters in zambia with these comrades included was established. preparation of comrades chosen to return home was fine-tuned and smaller groups sent to both the soviet union and the gdr (east germany) to receive refresher courses with an emphasis on how to establish underground work and link the political and the military functions. the infiltration of the first number of individuals began by 1970. mk managed to smuggle a couple of cadres on board a ship from dar es salaam destined to call at south african ports. comrades like chris hani and lambert maloi underwent special preparation and with coded communication methods were infiltrated through south africa to their destination in lesotho where they established a strategic underground centre. by the early 1970s the anc from zambia was strengthening mk’s presence in neighbouring botswana, and reconnecting with contacts from the rivonia period. arrests and trials at the time whilst attesting to the dangerous nature of the work, and the high rate of attrition, illustrated that cadres were prepared to take the risks whatever the cost. evidence emerging at such trials revealed that those on trial had been receiving more sophisticated levels of training and methods of work. in what many referred to as a doldrum period following the morogoro conference the trial of james april in 1971 reflected serious work that had been taking place. veteran of the wankie campaign, he had undergone further training in the gdr and had managed to reach and survive for some time in his cape town operational area – the furthest possible distance from lusaka. observers at his trial concluded that he “showed both the dedication and professional potential of the anc’s military personnel.”10 in october 1971 the security police uncovered an underground network of the sacp headed by ahmed timol.11 the scope and intent of the work that he had undertaken so alarmed them that when they could not get him to talk they killed him and threw his body from an upper floor of police headquarters. timol, a schoolteacher aged 29, had been trained for his underground work in the soviet union. he established a network with more than 25 contacts, some of whom were put on trial and imprisoned. his cell produced and distributed sacp and anc leaflets on a considerable scale whilst maintaining secret communication with london. “operation j”12 was one of the most ambitious operations undertaken by mk in its entire history. it was considered of such strategic importance that it was under the direct command of tambo, slovo and mabhida. an ocean-going vessel, the aventura, was purchased with the object of carrying 30 heavily armed mk combatants from somalia in 1971 and landing them on the transkei coast. the landing point had been reconnoitred for over a year by london recruits. the ship’s crew were internationalists from greece and britain. the aventura unfortunately broke down at sea and its mission was aborted. not to be undone, the cadres flew by regular commercial airline to destinations in botswana and swaziland. there they were met by one of the key london recruits, alex moumbaris and his wife marie-jo, who assisted them to cross the borders into south africa. in the process the moumbaris couple were t h e t h i n k e r20 international not only were the mk soldiers becoming restless but so too were our hosts like tanzania and the oau. arrested as were half a dozen of the mk cadres including veterans theophilus cholo and sandile sijake. they were all sentenced to lengthy periods of imprisonment. they were joined in the trial by another mk member justice mpanza, and a london recruit, john hosey, an irishman who had travelled to south africa to pass on documents and funds to mpanza. moumbaris managed to escape from prison in 1979 with mk’s assistance, along with leaflet bombers jenkin and lee, after serving seven years of his 15 year term. according to experienced researchers and commentators “the capture, trial and imprisonment of underground activists in these years was evidence of failure, but also evidence that the liberation movement existed.”13 of course there is no such thing as a risk-free strategy. internal efforts to revive the anc paralleled external efforts. the trial of winnie mandela and 21 others in 1969 was among the most sensational to take place at the end of the 1960s. they were accused of engaging in discussion and correspondence with the anc; possessing anc publications and distributing literature; listening to radio freedom broadcasts from tanzania; organising pro-anc groups and meetings; engaging in the reconnaissance of targets for sabotage operations; and devising means for obtaining explosives. the prosecution made a mess of the evidence and the case collapsed. the trial of harry gwala and others in 1974 reflected internal attempts to move beyond the military preoccupation to take advantage of the resurgence of political and labour activity in natal where this veteran communist was based. gwala had been contacted by the sactu leadership in lusaka who looked to him to send labour activists out of the country to receive training in clandestine skills. he received a life imprisonment and joined the mandela leadership on robben island. dotothy nyembe, a banned anc women’s league leader in natal, was contacted by a group of mk cadres who had managed to successfully cross the border and were seeking assistance. they were led by linus dlamini, a wankie veteran. the police were soon on their tracks and all ended up behind bars. a group in durban who were recruiting for mk were arrested by the security police. the leader of the cell, joseph nduli was arrested and died under interrogation. thabo mbeki, with jacob zuma and albert dlomo, operated in swaziland from 1975 and developed many links with comrades back home, beginning a process of reviving underground cells and receiving recruits. comrades of all backgrounds were recruited and became part of the underground network which was painstakingly developed between 1965 and ’75. those studying abroad who were recruited were given training and tasks. they were trained in the art of living double lives, working normally by day and carrying out subversive activities at night, mainly in the propaganda field. among other underground operatives who were apprehended in this period and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment were raymond suttner, jeremy cronin, david and sue rabkin, anthony holiday, tim jenkin and steve lee. they were mainly journalists and university lecturers. the latter two were extremely active in exploding leaflet bombs in cape town. during the first half of the 1970s the anc strove to connect with the emerging black consciousness movement and labour activists with limited success. the development of independent organisations within the country pointed to changing conditions which the anc strove to influence. some positive connections were taking place with the south african student organisation (saso) and key office bearers such as nkosazana dlamini (later dlamini-zuma), whose uncle was the sactu leader stephen dlamini, and terence tryon among others, joining the anc underground inside the country and in the neighbouring states. structures within lesotho, swaziland and botswana were expanding. returning to the training in this period it is necessary to refer to soviet assistance once more. as vladimir shubin recalls “the need for a special training establishment available for large contingents of trainees became acute, particularly as more and more requests were being by the liberation movements… such a centre was created in the crimea, in perevalnoye, near the city of simferopo… in terrain not very different from southern africa.”14 this extraordinary training facility served the needs of the foremost liberation movements of the region. i was told by mzwai piliso, who played such an important role in keeping the anc camps in africa functioning through the 1970s, just how fortunate the anc was to have perevalnoye as a base in reserve. “it literally saved our bacon” he told me. in 1969 the anc fell out of favour in tanzania, owing to rumours circulated by elements within the pac that we were involved in an intrigue to overthrow president nyere. unfortunately this was believed for a time and the anc had to redeploy all of its mk members outside tanzania. piliso was among the 500 cadres temporarily sojourning in the crimea until they could return to tanzania. and they made good their enforced “holiday” by upgrading the skills at the perevalnoye training facility. whilst the tide was beginning to turn inside the country, a dramatic and major turning point occurred on april 25, 1974 when an uprising of portugal’s conscript army overthrew the fascist government. war weariness and disaffection had set in as a result of portugal’s unjust colonial wars in africa and the resistance of the guerrilla movements in angola, mozambique and guinea-bissau. a new era in the politics of southern africa opened up as those former colonies moved rapidly towards independence. of momentous significance was the independence of mozambique and angola which were 21v o l u m e 8 0 / 2 0 1 9 international those studying abroad who were recruited were given training and tasks. they were trained in the art of living double lives, working normally by day and carrying out subversive activities at night. to provide incalculable assistance to mk. the former contiguous to south africa; the latter’s readiness to provide excellent training facilities for mk as a most reliable rear base. hundreds of mk recruits were to receive their training in angola from the time of the june 16th detachment on. the balance of power between colonialism and racism on the one hand and liberation movements on the other was changing dramatically. prospects for change in zimbabwe, namibia and south africa were greatly enhanced. according to karis and gerhart “…new prospects for guerrilla warfare opened and hopes revived that armed struggle, coupled with internal political renewal, might soon tip the balance of power against pretoria.”15 by 1975, with the collapse of portuguese colonialism in mozambique, the neighbouring state of swaziland became invaluable as a forward base for the anc. certainly by 1974-75, with the ferment of protest and dissent in the country, the first trickle of recruits since 1965 was again being resumed and among these were future mk commanders such as tokyo sexwale, snukie zikalala, siphiwe nyanda and solly shoke. this trickle became a flood with the 1976 student uprising which began in soweto that june and spread like wildfire throughout south africa. young people emerged from south africa in their hundreds in search of training and weapons. whilst many sought the anc owing to the prestige its activities had built up, many were simply attracted to its ranks because it had the infrastructure and the personnel in place to receive them. this was not the case with the pac; and the black consciousness movement which had attracted many young people had no infrastructure abroad at all. thanks to its record and its activities the anc was able to make the best of the opportunity provided by history. its ranks were swelled with the new recruits who in their training were educated in the movement’s policy and principles. the major training took place in the anc’s angolan camps. special crash courses were provided in maputo, botswana and swaziland for a quick turnaround so that some of the recruits would not be missed at home and were able to immediately be utilised for operations. utilising foreign recruits from the earlier period mk could bank on assistance in smuggling weapons into the country and setting up safe houses throughout the region by internationalists posing as tourists who would not be suspected of any connection. and mk had no problem in recruiting contacts from among the citizens of the neighbouring states or students studying in those universities.16 the period of retreat and revival post the rivonia arrests, from 19651975, which saw many creative developments, provided the platform from which the armed struggle could be revived and relaunched. the dedicated work and sacrifices of that period paid off as objective and subjective factors referred to coalesced and crystallised in the mid-1970s. the current of historic change was running firmly with the liberation forces throughout the southern african region. zimbabwe’s liberation in 1980 was further proof that settler colonialism was coming to an end in africa. the sadf met its nemesis at the hands of the cuban internationalists following the battle of cuito cuanavale in angola (march 1988) and were finally driven out that country. namibia’s independence was to follow on the heels of that defeat. with the dramatic change in the balance of power from 1975 mk’s operations increased massively, especially from 1980 onwards, to reach its highest incidence of operations in 1988 when in that single year almost 250 armed actions were recorded of increasing sophistication.17 the 1980s saw the heightening of mass organisation in the country, with the emergence of both the udf and cosatu, and the virtual unbanning of the anc through street protests, with an insurrectionary mood gathering. the balance of forces was changing in favour of south africa’s liberation. what the leadership that launched umkhonto we sizwe in 1961 had hoped for was indeed taking place. the launching of the sabotage campaign had grown from amateurish but brave beginnings into a phase that was approaching the people’s war envisaged by the external leadership from at least the time of the morogoro conference. who then can claim that the decade 1965-1975 were barren years or that those who sacrificed did so in vain? ■ footnotes 1 for a cursory assessment see karis and gerhardt, from protest to challenge: volume 5: nadir and resurgence, 1964-1979 karis and gerhardt, unisa press pretoria, 1997; see also: rocky williams “ ‘the other armies: a brief historical overview of umkhonto we sizwe (mk) 1961-94’” military history journal vol 11 no 5 june 2000 2 ibid; and see also padraig o’malley ”shades of difference – mac maharaj and the struggle for south africa”, viking, 2007, chapter 7 3 for a full appreciation of soviet assistance vladamir shubin’s “anc – a view from moscow” (mayibuye books), makes for indispensable reading. see also r. kasrils “armed and dangerous“ (jacana,) 2013 4 operation mayibuye 1963 south african history online https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/operationmayibuye-1963 5 regis debrey, “‘revolution in the revolution?’" monthly review press, 1967 6 karis and gerhardt, op cit, p 36 7 ronnie kasrils ”armed and dangerous” op cit, (jacana 2013) chapter 8 8 ken keable (editor) “london recruits. – the secret war against apartheid”, (merlin press, 2011) 9 ‘"leaflet bombs warn: end is near’" port elizabeth evening news, august 14, 1970 for the fascimilie see ken keeble opposite contents page. 10 karis and gerhardt, op cit, page 53 11 ahmed timol, was a member of the sacp, and a schoolteacher in the roodepoort area where he lived. 12 operation j which involved the purchasing of a seagoing vessel, the aventura, manned by a foreign crew of internationalists, with the objective of picking up 30 heavily armed mk combatants from somalia and landing them on the transkei coast, at a prearranged point, where they would be received by london recruits who would assist them to get to their operational area, where the objective was to set up mk structures. 13 karis and gerhardt, op cit volume 52 14 vladimir shubin, “anc– a view from moscow” op cit, (mayibuye books) p82 15 karis and gerhardt, op cit p55 16 siphiwe nyanda, ‘“weapons infiltration by the transvaal urban machinery”’; stuart round ‘“safari of a special type”’ stuart round; damien de lange, ‘“the role of african internationalists”’; the thinker, december 2013, vol 58 17 r. kasrils ‘“role, function and achievements of mk”’, the thinker, june 2013, vol 52 9 t h e t h i n k e r black africans’ contributions to global industrial revolutions abstract this article evaluates the contributions that have been made by black af ricans (in af rica and the diaspora) to the different industrial revolutions. the methodology used in this research was mainly qualitative. the findings confirm that black af ricans had achieved technological advances before the arrival of western and eastern slave traders and colonialism in af rica, and had made substantial contributions to the pre-industrial revolution and the first industrial revolution. even though slavery and colonisation halted further technological innovation and advancements, there is strong evidence to suggest that black af ricans are currently contributing to the fourth industrial revolution. impressive innovations are coming f rom af rica. af rican leaders must support af ricans’ technological innovations through funding, proper training, and availing raw materials for them to contribute to the fourth industrial revolution. by d.e. uwizeyimana | peer reviewed special focus introduction the purpose of this article is to critically evaluate the contributions made by black af ricans to the different industrial revolutions of the past and to explore what black af ricans can contribute to the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). from the onset, the concept ‘black af ricans or af rican people’ refers to black af ricans and their dependents with af rican ancestry in the diaspora. it documents examples of technological contributions made by living and non-living people with af rican ancestry to demonstrate that black af rican people can play a leading role in the current 4ir and future industrial revolutions, irrespective of where they live in the world. the specific intention of this article is to motivate current and future generations of black af ricans by showing them how our ancestors dominated the technological advancements and innovations in what is called the pre-industrial revolution by western countries; and how black af ricans lost their dominant position in the global technological advancements because of the slave trade, colonisation, and the religious brainwashing that came with these. the article starts with a conceptual and historic overview of the different industrial revolutions and what the 4ir truly entails. it proceeds with a discussion of how black af ricans contributed to technological and scientific innovations of the past industrial revolutions. the article concludes with suggestions for what black af ricans can do to benefit f rom the 4ir and contribute to its technological innovations. the conceptual and historical development of different industrial revolutions and their effects on the af rican continent are discussed in the next section. conceptual and historic overview of past and present industrial revolutions the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) has dominated the media, political and economic circles, and academia in af rica and around the globe since the beginning of the 21st century (maharajh, 2018: 1). although used earlier by french writers, the term ‘industrial revolution’ was first popularised by the english economic historian arnold toynbee (1852– 1883) to describe britain’s economic development f rom 1760 to 1840. ‘industrial revolution’ initially meant ‘complete change in the relationship between employers and employees brought about by mechanical inventions in the late 18th and early 19th century’ (fowler & fowler, 1965: 621). in modern history, the term has been more broadly applied by the media, researchers, politicians, and even ordinary people on the streets to describe the different industrial revolutions dominated by industry and machine manufacturing that followed the uk’s first industrial revolution (1ir) (maharajh, 2018: 1). the first part of this article provides a brief discussion of the different industrial revolutions and the disruptions associated and identified with them in the literature; the second part discusses black af ricans’ contributions to the different industrial revolutions. the journey from the pre-industrial revolution to the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) the pre-industrial revolution period entailed ‘the transition f rom foraging (wild f ruits gathering and wild animal hunting) to farming and animal domestication, which started about 10 000 years ago’ (schwab, 2016: 11). this period ended in the 18th century (1760 to 1840) when the steam engine was developed and used to mechanise, which began the mass industrial revolution, first in the uk and later in other western industrialised countries. the pre-industrialisation period was dominated by the agrarian revolution, which was made possible by the combined efforts of human labourers and animals. black af rican slaves were the main source of labour used in the production of products such as sugar and cotton in the european countries and their colonies (williams, 1988). people and animal labour were also the main source of transportation and communication (schwab, 2016: 11). the 1ir, which is discussed below, was the next step in the evolution process of the agrarian revolution of the pre-industrial revolution. the first industrial revolution (1ir) historical literature shows that the first industrial revolution (1ir), ‘began in britain in the 18th century (1760 to 1840) and then f rom there spread to other parts of the world’ (encyclopaedia britannica, 2019: 1). the 1ir was epitomised by the development of the steam engine (harvey, 2017: 2). the steam engine ushered in the mechanical production of 10v o l u m e 90 / 2 0 2 2 special focus 11 t h e t h i n k e r things that were traditionally done by humans and animals in the 1ir (xing and marwala, 2019: 2). ‘steam engines use hot steam f rom boiling water to drive a piston (or pistons) back and forth’ (ślusarczyk, 2018: 232). the steam engine enabled industry owners to mechanise mass manufacturing and build locomotives powered by steam engines to transport people and products to different places great distances apart (xing and marwala, 2019: 2). because of the steam engine, machinery was able to function much faster, with rotary movements and without human power (saho, 2017: 1). noticeably, coal became a key factor in the success of industrialisation. it was used to produce the steam power on which industry depended (saho, 2017: 1). the second industrial revolution (2ir) the world entered the 2ir with the discovery and use of electricity in factories in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century (ślusarczyk, 2018: 232). the discovery of electricity made it possible to produce electricity-powered machines/tools, which made mass production much faster than it was in the 1ir (harvey, 2017: 2; xing and marwala, 2019: 1). because of electric motors, car manufacturers such as henry ford increased efficiency on a large scale (i.e. mass production and assembly lines in automobile manufacturing industries as a way to boost productivity) (schwab, 2016: 11). because of the discovery of electricity, it was possible to manufacture items that use engines to function, such as aeroplanes, telephones, cars, and radio, most of which could be manufactured through mass manufacturing/production. electricity led to the further automation of many tasks previously performed by steam engines in the 1ir (nalubega and uwizeyimana, 2019). the third industrial revolution (3ir): electronic/ programmable tools the 3ir slowly began to emerge in the late 1950s and early 1960s. john bardeen and walter brattain’s discovery of the transistor in november 1947 catalysed the 3ir. this discovery led to the electronic age that gave the world computers and the internet (xing and marwala, 2019: 1). in addition to the development of semiconductors and mainf rame computing (the 1960s), other technological inventions of this era included personal computing (1970s and 80s) and the internet (1990s) (schwab, 2016: 11). therefore, it is often said that the 3ir (characterised by electronics, the internet, and the use of information technology) further automated mass production (ślusarczyk, 2018: 232). the fourth industrial revolution (4ir): robotics and artificial intelligence (ai) (2000 onwards) there is no doubt that the 4ir differs f rom the other industrial revolutions that came before it. unlike its predecessors, the 4ir is based on three ‘megatrends’, namely physical, digital, and biological (xing and marwala, 2019: 1), which are deeply interrelated. in fact, the various technologies of these megatrends benefit f rom each other and improve based on the discoveries and progress each makes (schwab, 2016: 17). thus, the 4ir refers to a new phase that focuses heavily on ‘interconnectivity, automation, machine learning, and real-time data’ f rom the physical, digital, and biological fields of practices and disciplines (marwala, 2007). xing and marwala (2019: 2) argue that several rapid changes in physical technologies (e.g. intelligent robots, autonomous drones, driverless cars, 3d printing, smart sensors, etc.); digital technologies (e.g. the internet of things [iot], services, data and even people, etc.); and biological technologies (e.g. synthetic biology, individual genetic make-up, and bio-printing, etc.) will inevitably and profoundly affect the way we work, learn, and live. these technologies have already become crucial for economic competitiveness and there is no doubt that the 4ir differs from the other industrial revolutions that came before it. unlike its predecessors, the 4ir is based on three ‘megatrends’, namely physical, digital, and biological (xing and marwala, 2019: 1), which are deeply interrelated. in fact, the various technologies of these megatrends benefit from each other and improve based on the discoveries and progress each makes (schwab, 2016: 17). special focus 12 social development. the link between physical and cyber networks is expected to allow continuous and uninterrupted real-time information flow for robots to do the work and perform tasks that were done by humans in the past (nalubega and uwizeyimana, 2019). machines and robots powered by ai are therefore the hallmarks of the 4ir (xing and marwala, 2019: 1). the 4ir is about connectivity between the industrial iot and big data and will require secure and reliable inf rastructure to allow for machine learning. the connectivity between the industrial iot and big data enables machine learning to take place, and the emergence of ai machines and robots that can perform sophisticated tasks better, faster, more efficiently, and more effectively than humans (ślusarczyk, 2018: 232). the following sections focus on black af ricans’ contributions to technological innovations that constitute the different industrial revolutions. the following are just a few of the many examples of historical records of black af ricans’ technological innovation contributions to different industrial revolutions in almost all f ields including, but not limited to: medicine, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, physics, civil engineering, and other f ields. contributions of technological innovations by black africans to different industrial revolutions ‘i have great respect for the past. if you don’t know where you’ve come f rom, you don’t know where you’re going. i have respect for the past, but i’m a person of the moment. i’m here, and i do my best to be completely centred at the place i’m at, then i go forward to the next place’ (angelou, 2011). this opening statement by american poet maya angelou (1928–2014) teaches us that the knowledge of where one comes f rom is an important starting point for one’s discovery of what one can do or can become in the future. this statement seems to be true if one looks at the historical records about the indigenous black af ricans in af rica. black africans’ contributions to the pre-industrial revolution the literature suggests that the pre-industrial revolution era, in both af rica and the rest of the world, was characterised by manual and animal labour. there is evidence to suggest that most af rican societies had developed technologies in almost all the fields many millennia before what is known as the pre-industrial revolution, long before the arrival of western colonisers in af rica. while most af rican countries import everything small and big f rom western and eastern countries, historical records show that black af rican ancestors were self-sufficient in almost everything. the oldest stone tools in the world have been found in eastern af rica: ‘evidence for tool production by our hominin ancestors has been found across sub-saharan af rica’ (maropeng 2021: 1). a review of historical records shows that af rica has the world’s oldest record of human technological achievements, long before the arrival of colonialism. advancements in medicine, surgery, caesarean sections, and mathematics before the arrival of the slave trade and colonialism according to opoku-mensah (2019: 1), andreas vesalius (the 16th century dutch anatomist and physician), has often been considered to be the father of modern human anatomy because of his influential book, de humani corporis fabrica libri septem. however, this is not entirely true, because a study of some of the greatest contributions of subsaharan af rica to human development suggests that the field of anatomy first evolved in egypt (3,100 b.c.). according to brazier (2018: 1), ‘ancient egypt was a civilization that lasted f rom 3,300 to 525 b.c.e.’ historical records show that the process of gaining knowledge about human anatomy and the cranium began with the ancient egyptians, whose embalmers were required to gain anatomical knowledge to perform mummification rituals (opoku-mensah, 2019: 1). the egyptians developed the process of embalming before anyone else could imagine that embalming was possible around 3,200 b.c. the reason that the egyptians embalmed bodies was because they believed religious resurrection could only occur for bodies which were preserved intact (raymond, 2020: 1). modern embalming methods originate f rom egyptian embalming technology and practices (raymond, 2020: 1). a review of historical records also shows that the first school solely dedicated to medicine dates back to ancient egypt’s first dynasty ((c. 2,925–c. 2,775 bce) (liberato, 2019: 1). physicians came f rom all over v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 special focus 13 t h e t h i n k e r the world to study at egyptian schools that, when translated, were called the house of life. unlike the rest of af rica where knowledge was mostly passed f rom generation to generation through oral history, medical practices in egypt were meticulously recorded by scribes on papyrus scrolls, such as the ones known as the ebers papyrus (named after the british trader georg ebers who claims to have purchased it f rom egyptian tomb raiders or could have stolen it f rom an egyptian tomb in 1873). the other record is what is referred to as the edwin smith papyrus (also named after the man who may have purchased it or stolen it f rom an egyptian dealer in 1862) (sutherland, 2016). the edwin smith papyrus is a medical text on surgical trauma, dating back to 1,600 b.c., and is considered to be the only medical papyrus of its time to reflect a systematic scientific approach to medicine (brazier, 2018: 1). another early medical dissertation is the ebers papyrus (an egyptian medical papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to circa 1,550 b.c.), which contains over 700 remedies and magical formulas and several incantations which are aimed at repelling demons that cause diseases (brazier, 2018: 1). it is believed that the authors of the ebers papyrus likely penned them around 1,500 b.c.e.; however, the document may contain material dating back to 3,400 b.c.e that was copied and included for the preservation of knowledge (brazier, 2018: 1). the two papyruses are among the oldest preserved medical documents in existence. the ebers papyrus ‘provides evidence of some sound scientific procedures’, some of which are still practised today (brazier, 2018: 1). a closer look at the ebers papyrus shows that ancient egyptian doctors had specialised knowledge of dentistry, pharmacology, gynaecology, autopsy, embalming, and general healing. the largest contribution the ancient egyptians made to medicine may be that they realised that the pulse related to the heartbeat and that the bronchial tubes were related to the lungs (brazier, 2018: 2). the first known physician was the high priest and vizier, imhotep, who lived f rom 2,667 b.c. to 2,648 b.c. the polymath black man imhotep is the true father of medicine in world history. this genius af rican doctor is believed to have diagnosed and treated over 200 diseases that included (but were not limited to) the abdomen, eyes, rectum, bladder, and many more. he also practised surgery as well as dentistry. because of his abilities to treat and heal many diseases he was initially considered to be a demi-god. he was elevated to full god status in 525 a.d. and is the only human being ever to be given this status (brazier, 2018: 1). the fact that an ordinary person was given a status which was known to be exclusively reserved for the creator alone in ancient egypt suggests that imhotep was a genius and a successful doctor in his time. ancient af rica’s contribution to scientific knowledge was not limited to egypt. it is said that european travellers in the great lakes region of af rica during the 19th century also reported cases of surgery in these kingdoms (doyle, 2006: 37). medical historians, such as jack davies, argued in 1959 that bunyoro’s traditional healers could have been the most highly skilled in precolonial sub-saharan af rica. the bunyoro’s traditional healers possessed a remarkable level of medical knowledge (davies, 1959: 47). according to doyle (2006: 32), caesarean sections and other abdominal and thoracic surgery operations were performed regularly in the great lakes region of af rica. these ancient surgeons used antiseptics, anaesthetics, and cautery iron to avoid haemorrhage and sepsis. in addition, around 400 b.c., west af ricans began smelting iron. societies in east af rica—in what are now known as tanzania, rwanda, and uganda—had achieved significant advances in metallurgy and tool-making between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago. these advances in scientific knowledge and toolmaking were more significant than those of europe, which astonished europeans when they learned about it (opoku-mensah, 2018: 2). in fact, ancient east af rican furnaces could reach 1,800°c, 200 to 400°c warmer than those used by the romans at the time (opoku-mensah, 2018: 2). as lovejoy (n.d.: 14) puts it in the analysis of af rican contributions to science, technology and development, scientific discovery in almost every field such as mathematics can be found in the 35,000-year-old textbooks on mathematics in egypt. these were housed in the library of alexandria founded in 295 b.c., which is now considered the largest library in the classical world. another example is the sankoré university in mali (1312 c.e. to 1337 c.e.), which was capable of housing 25,000 students and had one of the largest libraries in the world containing between 400,000 and 700,000 manuscripts. there is a consensus among many scholars such as strouhal special focus 14 (1989: 241) that ancient egyptian mathematicians had an impeccable understanding of the principles underlying the pythagorean theorem. the ancient egyptians knew, for example, that ‘a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a 3 4 5 ratio’ (katz and imhausen, 2007: 31). they were also able ‘to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth f rom its diameter and squaring the result’ (strouhal, 1989: 241; katz and imhausen, 2007: 31), as follows: area ≈ [(⁸/9)d]² = (²⁵⁶⁄81)r² ≈ 3.16r², [sources—strouhal, 1989: 241; katz and imhausen, 2007: 31] according to strouhal (1989: 241) and katz and imhausen (2007: 31), the above area formula is the closest approximation of the modern mathematic formula πr2. in addition, kemp (1991) states that ‘the golden ratio seems to be reflected in many egyptian constructions, including the pyramids’ (kemp, 1991). in fact, according to bianchi (2004: 230), the engraved plans of meroitic king amanikhabali’s pyramids show that nubians had a sophisticated understanding of mathematics and an appreciation of the harmonic ratios (hr). they also provided other sacred ratios with incredible details of time and space (i.e. duration, length and size of the days, months, and years) in what is known as sacred geometry. the engraved plans of the hr are indicative of much to be revealed about nubian mathematics. lovejoy (n.d.: 14) avers that the application of technology to the natural environment by ancient af ricans has been a vital part of the history of af rica and the development of the af rican diaspora throughout the world, especially in the americas. when black af ricans migrated, whether they did so as slaves or as willing travellers, they took with them knowledge of agricultural techniques and skills that they were able to employ in other countries to develop the natural environment into farmland (blackburn, 2011). the history of science and technology in af rica since then has, however, received relatively little attention compared to other regions of the world, despite notable black af ricans’ developments in mathematics, metallurgy, architecture, and other f ields in the pre-industrial revolution era. black africans’ technological innovation contributions to the first industrial revolution (1ir) the 1ir period (1750–1840) is believed to have led to the berlin conference, which kickstarted the ‘scramble for af rica’ f rom 1884 to 1885 (mjamba, 2014). the berlin conference signalled the start of a long period of colonialism, which was between 1804 and the 1950s, even though some countries such as namibia, zimbabwe, and south af rica attained independence between 1980 and 1994. by the time of the 1ir in britain in the 18th century (encyclopaedia britannica, 2019: 1), britain, spain, portugal, france, germany, and other western countries were already aware of the existence of the abundant natural resources in af rica (and other colonised parts of the world) (austin, 2021). colonialism helped to achieve several objectives, namely, to extend markets, keep the enslaved people in their home environments, and access muchneeded raw material for f ree f rom colonised countries (austin, 2021). instead of establishing commercial partnerships with the black af rican kingdoms, they colonised them so that they could acquire f ree raw materials and f ree human labour (kessler, 2006: 1). it is therefore not surprising that britain, the country in which the 1ir started, also had many colonies under its control in different parts of the world. this is confirmed by hudson (2011: 1) who stated that the industrial revolution began to transform britain to such an extent in the 19th century that by the time of the great exhibition in 1851, the country became known as the ‘workshop of the world’. ‘the great exhibition of the works of industry of all nations (also called the great exhibition or the crystal palace exhibition)’, which took place in hyde park, london, f rom 1 may 1851 to 15 october 1851 was an international exhibition (the gazette, n.d.: 1). it is therefore not surprising that world war i (1914–1918) and world war ii (1939–1945) were fought between western powers to wrestle colonies f rom each other. as crowder (1985: 1) argues, the most important legacies of wwi were the reordering of the map of af rica by creating artificial borders which characterise af rica today. it is also during this time in 1914 that germany lost control of its colonial empire to the allies (handerson, 1942: 124). it is important to note that no colonial power developed manufacturing industries in their colonies. manufacturing in colonial countries was v o l u m e 90 / 2 0 2 2 special focus 15 t h e t h i n k e r discouraged to avoid competition for raw materials with manufacturing industries back in europe. therefore, black af ricans lost everything f rom wealth and skills to belief systems, and become impoverished during the colonial era. king leopold ii of belgium’s speech, which shows the real intention of the christian missionary journey in af rica, was exposed to the world by mr moukouani muikwani bukoko, a congolese man born in 1915. in 1935, while working for the missionaries in the congo, mr bukoko bought an old bible f rom a belgian priest who forgot king leopold ii’s speech in the secondhand bible he sold (nobles and okoro, n.d: 1). in an extract of the letter f rom king leopold ii of belgium to colonial missionaries, 1883, king leopold ii of belgium describes the objectives of colonialism and western religious missionaries as follows: • your principal objective in our mission in the congo is never to teach the niggers to know god, this they know already. your essential role is to facilitate the task of administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests in that part of the world. • your mission in af rica is ‘to keep watch on disinteresting our savages f rom the richness that is plenty [in their underground].’ you must use any possible means ‘to avoid that they get interested in it, and make you murderous competition and dream one day to overthrow you.’ • your mission in af rica is to use the gospel to make the negro and their off-spring believe they can find comfort in poverty and misery. to achieve this objective, ‘you must find texts ordering, and encouraging your followers to love poverty, like; ‘happier are the poor because they will inherit the heaven’ and, ‘it’s very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of god.’ to ‘make sure that niggers never become rich. sing every day that the rich can’t enter heaven.’ • use the gospel to make them powerless and helpless and ensure that their posterity is also as powerless as their parents. ‘you have to detach f rom them and make them disrespect everything, which gives them the courage to aff ront us. your action will be directed essentially to the younger ones, for they won’t revolt when the recommendation of the priest is contradictory to their parents’ teachings. to ensure perpetual subjugation and total control of the negros, ‘you must singularly insist on their total submission and obedience, avoid developing the spirit in the schools, teach students to read and not to reason’ (nobles and okoro, n.d: 1). • trick the negro into believing that pain and suffering are good for them. to do so, you must; ‘recite every day – ‘happy are those who are weeping because the kingdom of god is for them.’’ • teach them that they are born with sins and that you, the whiteman have come to rescue them f rom their sinful nature. to do so, you must; ‘institute a confessional system, which allows you to be good detectives denouncing any black that has a different consciousness contrary to that of the decision-maker.’ • corrupt the niggers’ minds by teaching them to forget their heroes, culture, belief systems and to adore only ours (king leopold ii of belgium, cited in nobles and okoro, n.d: 1). colonialism has achieved its intended objectives to a significant extent. without industrial development in colonial countries, black af ricans are only consumers of western and eastern produced goods and services. without the education that trains people to become rational thinkers and innovators, most people attending af rican schools and universities are only trained to repair the goods and equipment designed and manufactured in western and asian industries. with all the colonisers’ and religious efforts to discourage black af ricans f rom it is important to note that no colonial power developed manufacturing industries in their colonies. manufacturing in colonial countries was discouraged to avoid competition for raw materials with manufacturing industries back in europe. therefore, black africans lost everything from wealth and skills to belief systems, and become impoverished during the colonial era. special focus 16 following in the footsteps of our ancestors, who took the leading role in the pre-colonial era, colonialism eliminated black af ricans’ abilities to develop in many social, economic, technical, intellectual ways. most training received by black af ricans empowers them to be better users and consumers of western and asian electronic products. this explains why few af rican countries have developed industries, research and development, and manufacturing. in his analysis of ‘why has af rica failed to industrialize?’, tefirenyika (2016: 2) explains that the af rican continent is ‘less industrialised today than it was four decades ago.’ consequently, ‘the contribution of af rica’s manufacturing sector to the continent’s gross domestic product declined f rom 12% in 1980 to 11% in 2013, where it has remained stagnant over the past few years’ (tefirenyika, 2016: 2). af rica accounted for more than 3% of global manufacturing output in the early 1970s. however, this percentage has since fallen f rom 3% in 1970 to less than 2% in 2013 and it is likely to remain small throughout the coming decades (tefirenyika, 2016: 2). this problem emanates f rom the colonial era. innovation and manufacturing became impossible through many decades of the slave trade, when the af rican continent lost many of its artisans to slave traders and colonialism because the few remaining black af rican artisans could no longer gain access to the necessary raw material (such as copper, zinc, and gold) that their ancestors used to manufacture ornaments and household goods before the arrival of western people in af rica. hence, it was impossible for the skills possessed by our ancestors to evolve and develop in the same way technological evolution took place in western countries. black africans’ contributions to, and benefits from, technological innovations in the 1ir and 2ir the above discussion shows that black af ricans were not able to contribute to the first industrial revolution, which started between the 18th and 19th centuries. black af ricans’ contribution to the first industrial revolution was in terms of them being turned into slaves and in terms of having their raw material stolen by their colonial masters. there is no evidence of black af ricans’ technological contribution or benefits f rom the second industrial revolution. it has been argued above that the 2ir was characterised by the discovery of electricity-powered machines/tools and took place in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 1950s (20th century). the contribution of black af ricans to the development of electricitypowered machines was limited. evidence suggests that the af rican continent did not benefit f rom the discovery of electricity. for example, almost 17% of the world’s citizens still have no access to electricity, and many people still do not have access to other basic inf rastructure such as cell phones and the internet (schwab, 2016). the world bank (2021: 1) estimates that ‘660 million will still lack access in 2030, most of them in sub-saharan af rica.’ black africans’ contributions to the 3ir the 3ir slowly began to emerge in the late 1950s and early 1960s. the 3ir (characterised by electronics, the internet, and the use of information technology such as computers) further automated mass production. it can be argued that af rica, and sub-saharan af rican countries in particular, have not been able to replicate what developed countries such as the uk and usa have done to achieve the same results. this is because of limited availability of, or lack of access to, inf rastructures such as computers, smartphones, and electricity. high levels of illiteracy or poor education are also some of the main problems facing citizens in almost all sub-saharan af rican countries, especially those living in rural areas (uwizeyimana, 2015: 150). to date, af rica remains the part of the world with the least access to the internet and electronic facilities such as computers and smartphones. few, if any, of these electronic tools are manufactured in af rica. most of them are manufactured by asian and western developed countries. af rica’s 43% internet penetration on 09 december 2020 was far below the world average of 64.2% (statista, 2020: 1). the success of the 4ir will depend on widespread and uninterrupted access to the internet where anything and everything is linked. can black africans contribute to the 4ir? as indicated above, africa was one of the leading continents before the arrival of slave traders and colonialists. however, because of the slave trade and colonialism, africa contributed little and has missed out on many of the inventions/innovations of the 1ir, 2ir, and 3ir. black africans cannot afford to fail to maximise the benefits of the 4ir. examples showing that black africans are capable of making significant v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 special focus 17 t h e t h i n k e r contributions to the 4ir abound in the literature. for example, nsengimana (2018: 2) cites the examples of young black african university students from senegal who won a global innovation contest run by ericsson. these students created a virtual reality (vr) headset that allows scientists, especially students, to complete science laboratory experiments through vr without the need of constructing a laboratory or buying equipment. heinrich-böll stiftung (2018: 3) mentions examples highlighted in the 2018 edition of the innovation prize for africa, where the african innovation foundation (aif) recognised ten major examples of innovations by africans. among these innovations were ‘two molecular tests for the rapid, accurate and effective detection and load quantification of tuberculosis and hepatitis c’ (morocco) and an enose sensor for tea processing (uganda) which supplements current teaprocessing procedures using low-power sensor devices to determine optimum levels of tea fermentation. they also included mobile shiriki network, a smart solar kiosk powered by strong solar panels and equipped with large-capacity batteries invented by rwandan students, and waxy ii technology, invented by tanzanians (heinrich-böll stiftung, 2018: 3). in addition, on 16 november 2017, cnn broadcasted a programme titled ‘african innovations that could change the world’ and listed several innovations that it said were ‘truly african’ in the sense that, unlike innovations in western countries that seek to replace human labour to increase profit, these black africans’ innovations make the work of human professionals (labourers) more effective, efficient, economic, and faster. these 4ir innovations range from vr, 3d printing technology, and ai to cars (cnn, 2017: 2). they also include the biomedical smart jacket (uganda) that helps medical doctors improve the diagnosis of pneumonia in a faster and more accurate way than human beings. the biomedical smart jacket analyses the chest and then sends medical reports and pictures via bluetooth to a computer. they also include robot traffic wardens, which were invented by a team of congolese engineers, based at the kinshasa higher institute of technology. the robot traffic wardens are used to control traffic jams across kinshasa (nsehe, 2014: 2). they also include the m-pesa app for mobile banking, which was invented in kenya in 2007 and is now used by 30 million users in 10 countries (nsehe, 2014: 2). there are currently many black af rican innovations to be listed in the limited space of this article, but one cannot forget dr philip emeagwali (born 23 august 1954, nigeria), who invented the world’s fastest computer ‘based on bees’. according to cnn (2017: 2), dr emeagwali discovered the efficiency of the way bees construct and work with honeycombs. in 1989, he used 65,000 processors to invent the world’s fastest computer, which performs computations at 3.1 billion calculations per second. his invention is used in weather forecasting and in predicting global warming (famous black inventors, 2019: 1). this nigerian-born scientist and inventor is known for first using a connection machine supercomputer to help analyse petroleum fields (cnn, 2017: 2). conclusion and recommendations the objective of this article was to analyse the different types of industrial revolutions and to discuss how black af ricans contributed to them. the analysis in this article shows that black af ricans contributed heavily to the pre-industrial revolution period in the sense that they led technological innovations f rom medicine to engineering, manufacturing and other disciplines. however, af rica was entirely under colonialism by the time of the 1ir, and the technological development of the 1ir did not spread to the af rican continent. the slave trade and colonialism killed all technological developments and extinguished all efforts that characterised the af rican continent before the arrival of slave traders and colonisers. the world graduated f rom the 1ir to the 2ir, because of the discovery of electricity to power the machines and tools, which led to increased mass productions in western manufacturing industries. once again, black af ricans did not benefit f rom the discovery of electricity in the 2ir because of colonisation. as indicated in this article, about 1.3 billion of the world’s 1.7 billion who lack access to electricity globally are in sub-saharan af rica. because of the lack of access to electricity (and other general inf rastructures), many black af ricans have not been able to benefit f rom the 3ir, which was characterised by automation of tasks made possible by electronic/programmable tools such as computers and the internet. however, unlike the 2ir and the 3ir, and despite the colonial exploitative economic systems that have decimated manufacturing efforts and have turned af rica into a permanent supply of western industrial raw material needs, there is evidence that black af ricans can contribute to the 4ir technological special focus 18 innovations. as we embark on the 4ir, it will be important for black af ricans to keep in mind that anyone who consumes the products and services they do not manufacture will become the market for those who provide them. the 4ir presents the chance for black af ricans to regain the technological innovation leadership they once held in the pre-colonial era. the 4ir is different f rom the 1ir, 2ir, and 3ir because it uses advanced technologies that do not follow the natural evolution of its predecessors. for example, the 4ir uses sensors and ai technologies, which can be invented by anyone, anytime, and anywhere on the globe. the article presented a few examples of 4ir technological innovations which have been accomplished by black af ricans f rom different corners of the af rican continent. these include groundbreaking technological breakthroughs in almost every area of life (science, technology, medicine, farming, financial service, security, etc.). the fact that the 4ir technological innovations can happen anywhere in the world provides ample opportunities for black africans to contribute to its development. however, to benefit from and contribute to the 4ir technological advancements, african leaders should encourage, nurture, and support black african investors and innovators. instead of spending government budgets on purchasing technologies and robots made in western and asian countries, they could invest in infrastructure development, providing better education, and financial support to black african inventors and innovators. the success of black africans in the 4ir technological innovations, research, development, and manufacturing will depend on the abilities of african education systems and institutions to produce graduates with the necessary critical thinking, technological innovation, and manufacturing capacity, instead of producing consumers of western manufactured goods. all of these are necessary to create a conducive environment for black africans to engage actively in innovation and the 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(2019). implications of the fourth industrial age on higher education. johannesburg: university of johannesburg. https://doi.org/10.25073/0866-773x/87 special focus 70 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract expanding access to financial services is seen as a promising means of dealing with developmental challenges, reducing poverty, and promoting economic development. greater access to financial services is essential to people’s well-being as it promotes entrepreneurship, moves people out of poverty, and provides hope for a better economic future. tools such as savings, payment, and credit services are crucial to smoothing householdlevel consumption, helping insure against risk, and allowing investment in education and other capital forms. as a result, many developing countries have committed to increasing people’s access to financial services, especially the poor. however, achieving access to financial services remains a challenge despite this high-level importance. this article focuses on the determinants of individuals’ access to financial services. it uses available literature and the national income dynamics survey (nids) data for analyses. p e e r r e v i e w the buzz around access to financial services by individuals by lusanda batala | peer reviewed 71v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction globally, countries strive towards poverty alleviation or reduction – with international institutions such as the world bank (wb) and the united nations development programme (undp) foregrounding poverty reduction in their primary goals. poverty encapsulates different multidimensional phenomena and depends on the context and perspective of an individual. muhammad yunus, winner of the 2006 nobel peace prize, defines poverty as including joblessness, illiteracy, landlessness, homelessness, powerlessness, and lacking adequate capital, facilities, or food. therefore, poverty alleviation reduces these conditions for an individual or a community. however, according to shil (2009), the poor require assistance to overcome these conditions. various strategies have been proposed to overcome developmental challenges such as poverty. some of these strategies include better nutrition, birth control, increasing girls’ education, and more substantial property rights. undp believes that economic growth cannot reduce poverty, improve equality, and produce employment unless it is inclusive. furthermore, undp indicates that despite progress since the heads of state and government endorsed the millennium development goals (mdgs) in september 2000, human poverty remains a challenge. however, globally, there is an acknowledgement that there has been a reduction in extreme poverty – a decrease of about 650 million during the last three decades. despite this progress, more than a billion people worldwide still live in extreme poverty. it is widely believed that economic growth helps to reduce poverty and improve individuals’ welfare. however, todaro (1997) points out that economic progress can increase growth, but does not necessarily guarantee the wellbeing of the poorest members of society. beck (2007) also states that the close relationship between financial development and growth does not necessarily indicate that financial development contributes to poverty alleviation. instead, the characteristic of growth is either with rising income inequality and poverty or falling income inequality and poverty (inoue and hamori, 2010). the implicit assumption is that if financial development improves growth, that automatically reduces poverty. however, this assumption might not be accurate as income distribution can worsen, resulting in disproportionate gains f rom growth transfer to the non-poor. expanding access to financial services is seen as a promising means of dealing with developmental challenges, reducing poverty, and promoting economic development. greater access to financial services is essential to people’s well-being as it promotes entrepreneurship, moves people out of poverty, and provides hope for a better economic future. tools such as savings, payment, and credit services are crucial to smoothing household-level consumption, helping insure against risk, and allowing investment in education and other capital forms. as a result, many developing countries have committed to increasing people’s access to financial services, especially the poor. in may 2015, 54 institutions across 61 countries signed the maya declaration pledging to recognise the importance of access to financial services, to develop policy, and to implement sound regulatory f rameworks (villasenor, west, and lewis, 2015: 2–3). however, achieving access to financial services remains a challenge despite this high-level importance. banks have struggled to expand access to poor or lowincome individuals, especially in developing countries. according to morduch et al. (2009), about 2.5 billion people globally are unbanked. in most cases, the unbanked are the poor without assets as security when looking for loans. in addition, many unbanked individuals want to make transactions at too small a scale to attract much interest f rom profit-seeking institutions (cull et al., 2009b; johnston and morduch, 2008). furthermore, the 2014 world bank global financial index report indicates that the gender gap on access to financial services is not narrowing, with a global average difference at seven percentage points on account ownership (58% for women and 65% for men) between 2011 and 2014. the gender gap is at nine percentage points on average in developing countries, with some countries experiencing a higher gap. access to a transaction account is a first step towards broader access to financial services, as it allows an individual to store money and to send and receive payments – and acts as a gateway to other financial services.  p e e r r e v i e w 72 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 collins et al. (2009) believe that what drives the financial activities of the poor are basic needs such as food, health, and school fees – as well as other sizeable expenses and, where possible, investment opportunities when they arise. the world bank (2001b) identifies three critical areas for assessing the impact of finance on economic performance: contribution to economic growth, contribution to poverty reduction, and the ability to lead to financial stability. therefore, understanding the determinants of access to financial services is critical. theoretical basis and review finance is at the core of the development agenda. development practitioners argue that efficient and well-functioning systems are essential in properly allocating resources to improving opportunities and reducing poverty. the world bank policy research report (2008: 21) indicates that ‘improving access and building inclusive financial systems is a goal relevant to economies at all levels of development.’ the theory indicates that the challenge for better access to financial services is more significant than ensuring that more people access basic financial services. it is also about enhancing the quality and reach of credit, savings, payments, insurance, and other risk management products to facilitate sustained growth and productivity. the lack of inclusive financial systems results in poor households’ reliance on their internal resources to invest in education, entrepreneurship, or growth opportunities. moreover, there is a likelihood that imperfections, such as information asymmetries and transaction costs, are binding to talented poor individuals. stijin (2005) indicates that access to financial services consists of the demand and supply sides. the demand side focuses on the choice made by individuals about the services offered by financial institutions. the supply side is about financial services provision. theories on access to financial services give a general f ramework for financial services and intermediation demand. several theories exist in the literature on how individuals decide to access financial services, including: rationality theory, bounded rationality theory, theory of satisficing, prospect theory, intertemporal theory, delegated monitoring theory1, information asymmetry theory, and transaction cost theory2 (scholtens and wensveen, 2003). the delegated monitoring and rational choice3 theories explain the demand for financial services. in contrast, the information asymmetry and the transaction cost theories deal with the supply side dimension of access to financial services. the most influential theories which explain individual behaviour in response to a decision towards consumption and savings/borrowing include the ‘life cycle hypothesis’ (ando and modigliani, 1963; modigliani and ando, 1957; modigliani and brumberg, 1954) and the ‘permanent income hypothesis’ (friedman, 1957). the bases for these hypotheses are on the assumptions that individuals are rational beings who respond in predictable ways to changes in incentives and that borrowing or savings are ways to ‘smooth consumption’ in facing income fluctuations. these models assume perfect capital markets; however, they suggest that individuals generally consider their consumption based on their income pattern. therefore, the analysis of these models helps understand individuals’ behaviours in response to income expectations. then, according to the general theory, keynes states that the marginal propensity to save and hold financial assets depends on subjective and objective factors. the strengths of these factors differ enormously among individuals with divergent socio-economic conditions. similarly, the lifecycle theory predicts that an individual’s consumption and saving behaviour the implicit assumption is that if financial development improves growth, that automatically reduces poverty. however, this assumption might not be accurate as income distribution can worsen, resulting in disproportionate gains from growth transfer to the non-poor. p e e r r e v i e w 73v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 will change considerably with income, wealth, age, marital status, and other socio-economic conditions during various stages of the individual’s life. since the equilibrium demand for a financial asset is a function of income or wealth, which in turn is related to the demographic conditions of an individual, changes in the demographic variables would not only affect the level of income and wealth but also affect the demand for financial assets. modern development theory emphasises the central role played by the imperfection of financial markets. the shortcomings of the financial market determine the extent to which the poor can borrow to invest, for example, in education. thus, finance influences the efficiency of resource allocation throughout the economy and the comparative economic opportunities of individuals f rom relatively rich or poor households. improving access, then, means improving the degree to which financial services are available to all at a fair price. since use is observable, it is easier to measure financial services, but usage is not always the same as access. unlike general equilibrium models and the aggregate regression methodology, the micro-analyses often focus on the direct effect of access to finance on individuals’ wellbeing, without always considering possible spillover and the indirect effects highlighted in the general equilibrium analyses. the ecosystem approach is also relevant as it can find and analyse possible factors affecting access to financial services. moore (1993) indicates that access to the financial services ecosystem consists of the environment and stakeholders: step (sociodemographic, technological, economic and political) describes the environment and ecosystem; stepe considers the same factors, with the additional final component referring to ecology (davenport and prusak, 1997). despite the development of various models describing the environment, researchers regard step as the most appropriate because of the simplicity of its four basic dimensions of the ecosystem and its spheres as significant factors that could affect access to financial services. what does the empirical literature say? access to financial services has demand and supply conditions (claessens, 2006; beck et al., 2009). the main barriers to accessing financial services have been the supply side, with limited focus on demand – bearing in mind that the demand constraints can result in voluntary exclusion. however, the discourse on access to financial services has mainly believed that all exclusion is involuntary. empirical studies employing questions such as ‘did the individual receive credit in the past year or not’, without probing the willingness to access financial services, implicitly make such an assumption by outlining their questions in such a way that the possibility of voluntary exclusion is by the nature of the study design and implementation. much empirical research has been conducted to understand the factors that lead an individual to access financial services. the studies have unearthed vital findings that help propose policy interventions that could help deal with the developmental challenges of accessing financial services, especially for the poor. the literature indicates a considerable number of studies that have unearthed factors or determinants that lead to access to credit (kochar, 1997; atieno, 1997; jabbar et al., 2002; pal, 2002; pitt and khandker, 2002; zeller and sharma, 2002; swain, 2007; barslund and tarp, 2008). there has also been a fair amount of focus on the determinants of access to savings (deaton, 1992; gurgand et al., 1994; muradoglu and taskin, 1996; spio and groenwald, 1996; kimuyu, 1999; aryeteey and udry, 2000; kiiza and pederson, 2002). these dynamics are also similar for south af rica, where the analysis of factors is skewed towards credit (okurut, 2006; chauke et al., 2013) and with some focus on savings aspects (chipote and tsegaye, 2014; zwane et al., 2016). however, the focus on the analysis of determinants on access to insurance in developing countries has been limited compared to access to credit and savings (bendig et al., 2009; asfaw, 2003; jütting, 2003; gine et al., 2008; gine and yang, 2007). research work that concentrates on the determinants of access to bank bonds (home loans) is limited. as the literature has shown, most research has focused on other basic banking transaction services, such as bank accounts and personal loans. as a result, the factors that influence access to a bank home loan have been overlooked. a study by ford and jones (2001) indicates that product features, emotional influences and reputation, credibility, and external factors all influence an individual in the decisionmaking process on accessing a bank bond loan. p e e r r e v i e w 74 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 devlin (2002) indicates that professional advice, interest rates, another account with the financial institution, higher social class, higher household income, higher education attainment, and financial maturity are essential determinants of accessing a bank bond loan. ngugi and njori (2013) indicate that tax incentives, cost of capital, land registration systems, and loan maturation period are determinants of mortgage finance access. according to jones and stead (2020), the effective demand for housing is constrained by the inaccessibility of affordable finance and mortgages, especially for those working informally. kamau (2018) indicates that income level, political environment, collateral, and interest rates are determinants of housing finance access. olawumi, adewusi, and oyetunji (2019) indicate income, nature of the occupation, type of collateral, years of the banking relationship, loan duration, and loan sector as significant determinants of access to mortgage finance in nigeria. the empirical research findings are a mixture of different conclusions. for example, pitt and khandker (2002) indicate that households with a female head are negatively related to financial services. on the other hand, some researchers indicate that household size is an essential determinant of access to financial services (dror et al., 2007; swain, 2007; barslund and tarp, 2008). other studies indicate that age negatively correlates with demand for informal credit (barslund and tarp, 2008) and the demand for insurance (chankova et al., 2008; gine et al., 2008). several other studies indicate that an individual is more likely to access financial services, especially loans (kiiza and pederson, 2002; pal, 2002; pitt and khandker, 2002) or contract insurance with increasing income or wealth of the individual (jütting, 2003; pauly, 2004; bhat and jain, 2006; dror et al., 2007; gine et al., 2008). lower levels of income have a negative correlation with access to financial services. beck and brown’s (2011) empirical findings indicate that having a bank account increased with income and education. the literature suggests that banking services are standard for individuals who reside in urban areas, male heads, individuals with higher levels of education (university), and individuals with formal employment. a study by woodruff and martinez (2008) found that education and household assets have significant associations with opening accounts in urban areas, while the wealth, expenditure, and ownership of an agricultural business are substantial in opening accounts in rural households. these findings show the importance of assets ownership as a determinant of access to financial services. using an ordered probit model, arun and beindig (2010) measured the determinants which affect a household’s decision to participate in none, one, two, or all three types of financial services. the three financial services under assessment were savings, credit, and insurance. the findings indicate that access to financial services is a diversified measure to cope with the consequences of risks. the study finding is that access to financial services is a function of the individual’s past shocks. therefore, the study concludes that broadening access to financial services for the poor and increasing financial literacy among low educated, illiterate, and some religious groups would raise awareness about the benefits of financial services, which would serve as efficient risk management strategies. ololade and olagunju (2013), nandru, byram, and rentala (2016), soumaré, tchana tchana, and kengne (2016), khan, m.i. (2017), kandari, bahuguna, and salgotra (2020), mhlanga and denhere (2020) all analysed the determinants of access to financial services. their findings indicate that income, education, marital status, lack of guarantor, high-interest rate, age, race, gender, place of residence, and employment status matter concerning access to financial services. beck, demirguc-kunt, and peria (2006) indicate that there are several ways in which the importance of broad financial services outreach is justified. one of the ways is the importance of a well-developed financial system for economic development and poverty alleviation (beck, demirguc-kunt and levine, 2004; honohan, 2004a). another way is the schumpeterian process of ‘creative destruction’ about economic structure revolution f rom within through creating a new form by destroying the old state. finally, access to financial services is about inclusivity, hence the need to revolutionise the financial system to include those excluded. the literature indicates that economies with better developed financial systems experience a faster drop in income inequality and more rapid poverty reduction. the world bank economists have done most research in banking competition, focusing on determinants of access to and use of financial services (beck et al., p e e r r e v i e w 75v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 2007; claessens, 2006; honohan, 2008). for example, berger and hannan (1998) indicate that banks that are not in a competitive environment tend to be less efficient when compared to those subjected to more competition. in addition, the degree of competition can affect the efficiency, quality of products, and degree of innovation (claessens and laeven, 2005). beck et al. (2007) indicate that physical inf rastructure for connectivity and information is positively and significantly associated with access to financial services. the implication is that the costs of delivering banking services are reduced by better inf rastructure, leading to increased access to banking services. burgess and pande (2005) indicate that india’s strategy to expand bank branches to rural areas led by the state assisted in reducing poverty. on the other hand, in malawi, brune et al. (2011) indicate that increased financial access through commitment savings accounts in rural areas improves the wellbeing of the poor as it provides access to their savings for agricultural input use. furthermore, allen et al. (2012) indicate that giving financial access to those who do not have it in kenya can improve financial access. also, kumar (2013) indicates branch penetration as an essential dimension that impacts access to financial services. the study shows further that expanding branch networks has a considerable impact on access to financial services in india. the studies that focused on the impact of banking concentration on access to financial services indicate a positive association between banking concentration and having a bank account (owen and pereira, 2018; marin and schwabe, 2013). however, ardic et al. (2011) and kendall et al. (2010) indicate that there is a negative relation between the market share of the five largest banks (concentration ratio) and the penetration of deposit accounts (bank accounts). they argue that the banking sector’s competitiveness is essential for access to financial services. the studies mostly use cross-country data for their analysis. the literature on mobile usage for accessing financial services indicates that mobile banking, f rom a demand side, does offer a great solution to individuals in emerging markets that have access to a mobile phone (ismail and masinge, 2012). one of the great benefits of mobile banking is minimising the time and distance that an individual spends visiting a bank branch, making financial services more accessible (ismail and masinge, 2012). according to mago and chitokwindo (2014), mobile banking in zimbabwe leads to the poor’s quick adoption of mobile banking. this is mainly due to mobile banking’s access convenience and ease of use. besides the benefits of mobile banking, the literature analyses the factors that lead individuals to mobile banking. a study by shaikh, karjaluoto, and chinje (2015) indicates that trust plays an essential role in promoting the continuous usage of mobile banking. van deventer, de klerk, and bevan-dye (2017) believe the interest in mobile retailing and mobile financial services will continue to grow. nevertheless, the trust is likely to discourage many potential customers and impede its growth. according to roy et al. (2000), mobile transactions will increase and mature through the internet. however, its success will depend primarily on achieving and upholding a certain level of trust. another study by kang, lee, and lee (2012) indicates that perceived usability, channel preference, and value are critical for sustained mobile banking usage. mathew, sulphey, and prabhakaran’s (2014) research on perceptions and intentions of mobile banking users indicate that usefulness and facilitating conditions are the most critical factors. masrek et al. (2013), whose research focused on technology trust and mobile banking satisfaction, indicate that trust creates a positive relationship with mobile banking satisfaction. a study by yu (2014), which looked at factors influencing consumers to transition f rom the implication is that the costs of delivering banking services are reduced by better infrastructure, leading to increased access to banking services. burgess and pande (2005) indicate that india’s strategy to expand bank branches to rural areas led by the state assisted in reducing poverty. on the other hand, in malawi, brune et al. (2011) indicate that increased financial access through commitment savings accounts in rural areas improves the well-being of the poor as it provides access to their savings for agricultural input use. p e e r r e v i e w 76 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 online to mobile banking, indicates that relative attitude and subjective norm positively motivated respondents to switch f rom internet to mobile banking while relative perceived behaviour control deterred respondents f rom transitioning. furthermore, the literature indicates that banks’ integrity plays an essential role in influencing customers’ trust in mobile banking. lin (2011) believes that if there is a lack of trust between the retail bank and the customer, the relationship is unlikely to succeed and continue. another important factor relates to the system quality of mobile banking – ease of use, ease of navigation, visual appearance (gu et al., 2009), and speed of access to mobile banking (kleijnen et al., 2004). for example, zhou (2013) indicates that mobile banking customers expect to make mobile account payments and access financial records easily, anytime and anywhere. in cases where information is out-of-date, incomplete, inaccurate, or irrelevant, the retail banks’ capability will be questionable and will jeopardise trust in the retail bank and its mobile banking system. kim et al. (2009) indicate that contracts, regulations, policies, laws, agreements, and feedback forums are forms of structural assurances that can increase trust between a retail bank and a customer. however, another factor is risk, where some customers might perceive mobile banking as risky and where they will require some confident assurance concerning its safety for better adoption. nor and pearson (2008) stress the importance of effecting structural assurance, guarantees, and legal and technological safeguards that improve the trustworthiness of the cybernetic environment. contextual review of access to financial services in south africa south af rica’s financial system comes out of the mining boom of the late 1800s. as a result, it is known as developed and sophisticated. based on the sophistication of the country’s financial system, the logical expectation is that south af rica should be experiencing robust economic growth and be much more inclusive. however, according to the global financial index data, south af rica’s inclusivity is at about 54% of adults using a formal account to make deposits and withdrawals through banks. however, even though south af rica performs better than the brics, the rest of af rica, and the rest of the developing world on account penetration, it still faces challenges. the account penetration in south af rica varies by the characteristics of the individual, such as income, residence, age, education, and gender. the gender disparity is evident, with women less likely to have an account compared to men. the world bank economic update report (2013) indicates that the aggregate picture for south af rica conceals significant inequalities. south af rica experiences gaps in many areas of access to financial services. these are the gaps between the poorest and wealthiest quantiles: about 12 million adults still lack a basic bank account; only 35% of adults in the poorest 20% of income earners have formal accounts; 78% of the richest 20% do have accounts; and the distribution of account ownership is significant between the top and the bottom income quintiles. in addition, south af rica’s account penetration varies according to individual characteristics, such as income, residence, age, education, and gender. for example, in south af rica, 94% of adults with tertiary education have formal accounts, while only 43% of those with primary education or less have accounts. however, despite the impressive financial systems and account penetration performance, barriers to access call for new delivery mechanisms that consider the country’s vast geographic segmentation – such as mobile and retail agent banking. some of the obstacles cited by the unbanked relate to banking costs, lack of money, distance, lack of documentation, and low trust. the challenge in south af rica persists beyond the unbanked population to the underbanked millions – that is, to people who hold bank accounts, but whose utilisation rate remains low. in south af rica, reliance on informal credit remains prevalent – such as borrowing f rom f riends and family. the country has improved people’s financial access over the past decade. since 2004, some financial sector reforms have taken place: legislative (tiered banking, consumer credit bill, financial sector charter) and commercial (mzansi account, capitec, teba, pick’ n pay go banking). as a result of the financial sector reforms, the finscope report (2014) indicates that the improvements increased banked customers and formally served clients. p e e r r e v i e w 77v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 figure 1: banked customers – comparison between 2004 and 2014 source: finscope south af rica, 2014 the improvement in banking is mainly due to transactional banking. savings and credit levels are still low in south af rica, whether through formal or informal means. in 2014, 68% of adult south af ricans did not save at all. figure 2: rate of savings through various channels in south af rica source: finscope in south af rica, institutional factors, product features, and individuals’ socio-economic characteristics are the main factors influencing access to financial services. location and conditions of the financial services institutions significantly affect access probability. access to financial services tends to be limited only to those who are employed and earning a salary. however, there seems to be less focus on the poor, unemployed, self-employed, and informally employed. the south african case: constraints to accessing financial services the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) report (2013) indicates that in south af rica, consumers have limited resources and skills to understand financial sector complexities. as a result, the inability to evaluate the appropriateness of financial products concerning personal circumstances, predatory lending, high levels of consumer debt, low saving rates, the proliferation of pyramid schemes and financial scams, high product service and penalty fees, lack of accessible and comparable pricing information, and limited knowledge of recourse mechanisms are some of the compelling consumer issues in south af rica. savings related constraints one common reason south af ricans always raise with regard to savings is affordability. however, considering some of the research findings, south af ricans indicate that several factors influence an individual’s decision to save or not, such as country demographics, income levels, income stability, and employment levels. unemployment in south af rica is very high in comparison to other international emerging economies. this predicament harms income levels and income stability in south af rica. in addition, the country has a very high age dependency ratio – at over 50%. south af rica’s household debt level is also very high, at 78% of disposable income, making individuals vulnerable to interest rate hikes. as a location and conditions of the financial services institutions significantly affect access probability. access to financial services tends to be limited only to those who are employed and earning a salary. however, there seems to be less focus on the poor, unemployed, self-employed, and informally employed. p e e r r e v i e w 78 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 result, consumers in south af rica are under pressure, and there is a rise in dependency ratios. contributing to the savings dilemma in south af rica, education and financial literacy play a vital role in the population’s ability to save with the complexity of financial products. individual factors that impact willingness to save in south af rica are much more complex. during uncertain times, there is a tendency to save more. this ensures that individuals have a buffer to fall back on during rainy days. however, the relative ease of access to credit in south af rica creates a disincentive to save. after the 2008 banking crisis, individuals in south af rica are much more cautious about where they invest. often, this leads to financial institutions’ mistrust and advice. this predicament further leads to individuals either procrastinating or not saving. credit-related constraints according to von pischke et al. (1983), a lack of access to credit can perpetuate poverty. however, according to zeller and sharma (2000), providing credit to the poor is an effective strategy. increased access to credit relaxes liquidity constraints, improves a household’s risk-bearing ability and productivity, equips individuals with new skills, and encourages activities that could generate economic growth (zeller, 2000; parker and nagarajan, 2001; khandker, 2003). credit constraints have various implications on an individual’s well-being, such as effect on consumption in the short run and poverty reduction. other effects of credit constraints relate to individuals’ inability to cope in times of income shocks to smooth consumption (zeldes, 1989) and the failure of an individual to invest in education and health (behrman et al.,1982). some of the main reasons the poor in south africa do not have access to credit include: a lack of salary due to unemployment, a poor credit record, a lack of correct documentation, or the amount asked being too much. stylised facts on south africa’s access to financial services prior to 1994, south af rica’s financial services were primarily accessible to nonblack individuals (meagher and wilkinson, 2002). following the financial service charter (fsc) policy recommendations, the ‘mzansi’ account was initiated in 2004, offering entry-level bank accounts. the initiative was broadly about the outreach of financial services: scale (number of clients), depth (poorer clients), scope (wide range of services), and breadth (reaching different social groups). the aim was to deal with the imbalance in access to financial services. commercial banks and state-owned financial institutions took this as a lead to expanding access to financial services. the depth target of outreach was that 80% of poor households should have access to transaction and savings products and services. since the financial sector reforms started in 2004, south af rica’s overall access to financial services has improved. however, the poor still lag behind. the 2011 financial services board financial literacy report indicates that most south af ricans use basic products such as bank accounts. still, only 39% are aware of more sophisticated alternatives such as unit trusts. this is a significant missed opportunity and points to the need for more consumer education on available choices of financial services. the outcome agrees with the old mutual savings and investment monitor survey that indicates that about 80% of south af ricans are interested in learning more about savings (see figure 3 below). however, south af ricans’ confidence in making a financial decision has been decreasing since 2013. a lack of financial knowledge could be the reason. these findings point to the need for a savings culture revival in south af rica. figure 3: south af ricans’ attitudes about finances p e e r r e v i e w 79v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 source: old mutual savings and investment monitor survey state of credit access in south africa credit extension is an essential link in the transmission mechanism that relays changes in monetary policy to changes in the total demand for goods and services and the general level of economic activity. in addition, credit availability makes it easier for individuals to spend. south af ricans use different forms of facilities to access credit. these can be either through formal institutions such as banks, through semi-formal institutions such as microlenders and store cards, or through informal institutions such as family, f riends, and stokvels. according to the national credit regulator (ncr), during the third quarter of 2015, different credit facilities were used or granted to households in south af rica. these entail mortgage loans, developmental credit, short-term loans, unsecured loans, and other secured loans. the finscope consumer survey (2015) indicates that most south af ricans are getting credit through formal products driven by unsecured loans that are used for short-term necessities, such as food (26%), emergencies (26%), transport fees (12%), bills (10%), and clothes (10%). throughout the country, individuals can access credit led by those in kwazulu natal (12%), followed by the free state (11%) and the western cape (10%). microcredit one of the most far-reaching financial sector developments in south af rica has been the arrival and development of a market-driven microcredit model. several international development communities funded microcredit programs in south af rica, including the get ahead foundation (gaf) and the small enterprise foundation (sef). the initiatives lead commercial banks in south af rica to start providing microcredit directly through their branch networks and wholesale funding to the central micro credit institutions (mcis) for on-lending to the poor. thus, there has been an increase in the supply of microcredit.the main weakness of developing the microcredit model in south af rica is that it primarily focused on employed individuals to meet consumption spending needs. as a result, it misses the opportunity to finance entrepreneurial ideas with income-generating prospects, as per the standard microcredit model. in 2007, the government of south af rica passed the national credit act (nca) and later the national credit register (ncr). these assisted with transparency, discipline, accountability, and fairness in the microcredit market. however, in 2010, south af rica’s microcredit sector and the majority of the poor were plunged into a crisis of over-indebtedness. in 2012, nearly half of the 19 million credit-active consumers had ‘impaired’ credit records (meaning they were three or more months in arrears), while a further 15% were ‘debt stressed’. figure 4: consumers with impaired credit records source: national credit regulator (ncr), 2016 state of savings in south africa in south af rica, domestic savings constitute three tiers: government, private sector, and individual households. government is a net spender, detracting f rom the net domestic savings rate and widening the current account deficit. in addition, individuals in south af rica are not saving much at a net level. p e e r r e v i e w 80 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 therefore, out of the three tiers, the private sector is the only sector that contributes to domestic savings. domestic savings as a percentage of gross domestic product (gdp) has been decreasing in south af rica. the downward trend is f rom 20% between 1960 and the late 1990s to 13.2% in 2012. south af rica’s average domestic savings between 1975 and 2012 are lower than other bric emerging market economies, with the exception of brazil (see table 1 below). table 1: domestic savings, 1975 – 2012 emerging economy average domestic savings percentage china 42% russia 28% india 25% south africa 19% brazil 17% source: investec, ‘the poor state of savings in sa’ conclusion therefore, based on the available literature, we can conclude that the critical commonly identified factors that have the most significant impact on access to financial services are: age, income, education, employment, and the accessibility of financial institutions. other additional determinants include household size, gender, marital status, wealth, financial institutions, distribution of banks, banking competition, and utilising mobile banking. however, the literature is not convincing concerning the effect of competition within the banking industry and whether competition can determine access to financial services. the literature indicates that greater bank competition strengthens financing obstacles and generates higher loan rates. however, a view exists that lower competition encourages incentives for banks to invest in soft information. conversely, a higher level of competition lowers investments in banking relationships and leads to deteriorated access to services such as credit. a noticeable gap in the literature relates to subjective issues as determinants of access to financial services, such as an individual’s self-assessment of their level of satisfaction with their life or well-being. for example, individuals who assess themselves as dissatisfied with their well-being are likely to be disinterested in accessing financial services. therefore, socio-economic indicators show the influence of individual characteristics in access to financial services. notes 1. the delegated monitoring theory basis is on financial institutions that can act as trusted monitors for net savers (diamond, 1984). this means delegation of the role of safekeeping of savings by depositors to financial intermediaries. financial service providers have a fiduciary relationship with their clients to ensure no depreciation in deposits. the theory is on the demand side of access to financial services because individual savers perceive financial intermediaries as entities that can delegate their responsibilities. 2. the transaction cost theory is about the emergence of financial intermediaries to utilise economies of scale and transaction technology. the critical element of the approach includes costs associated with gathering and processing information that is needed to decide the transaction process, successful contract negotiation, and policing and enforcement of contracts (benston and smith, 1976). 3. neo-classical economists promulgate the rational choice theory. the rational choice theory of demand for financial services involves typically an account of the following: (i) the desire for financial services (savings, credit, and money transfer services); (ii) nature and type of services provided by the financial institutions; (iii) the condition of services provision. the rational choice theory is based on the fundamental principle that the choices made by the individual are the best choice to help them achieve their objectives in light of 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(2016). ‘the determinants of household savings in south af rica: a panel data approach.’  international business & economics research journal (iber), 15(4): 209–218. p e e r r e v i e w note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel åsa eriksson has a phd in gender studies, and currently works as a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of ethnology, history of religions and gender studies at stockholm university. research interests include gender, work and neoliberal globalisation, labour and social justice activism, as well as activism for sexual and reproductive rights and justice. beate stiehler-mulder is the w&r seta leadership chair: gauteng and a senior lecturer at the department of marketing management at the university of johannesburg. she holds a phd in industrial economics and management f rom kth in stockholm, sweden. she is the winner of an ‘outstanding paper’ 2017 f rom the emerald literati network awards. she was a main jury member for the 2020 & 2021 financial mail adfocus awards, and is currently a judge for south af rica’s first youthowned-brand awards. she also presented a tedtalk in 2022. charis harley is a professor based in the faculty of engineering and the built environment at the university of johannesburg. she holds a doctorate in computational and applied mathematics f rom the university of the witwatersrand. she conducts research in the areas of numerical analysis, computational mathematics, machine learning and data science, and has published more than 40 research articles in isi accredited journals. she is a j. william fulbright research scholar, as well as the recipient of the carnegie sandwich research grant and friedel sellchop award. corné davis is a known gender-based violence and gender identity activist, lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate modules at the department of strategic communication at the university of johannesburg. she is a trustee of matla a bana, a well-known ngo which campaigns against child rape and secondary abuse; she is also an advisory to tears foundation with whom she is collaborating to publish the gbv victim profile report for south af rica in 2023. ebrahim momoniat is an nrf b2-rated professor in the department of mathematics and applied mathematics at the university of johannesburg. he is a registered professional natural scientist with sacnasp. he is a member of the academy of science of south af rica and the royal society of south af rica. his main areas of research interest are in the study of linear and nonlinear differential equations that arise in the study of heat conduction and fluid dynamics. he is working with prof jan nordström and prof charis harley on developing provably stable numerical methods for solving partial differential equations that arise in studying thermal explosions and anomalous diffusion. elise m. dermineur is an associate professor of economic history at stockholm university (sweden). her research interests focus mainly on financial markets and networks. she has been a fellow at the center for advanced study in the behavioral sciences at stanford university, the swedish collegium for advanced study and the robert schuman centre for advanced studies at the european university institute. since 2019, she is directing the research v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 initiative human economy lab. she is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles. her latest book before banks: the making of debt and credit in preindustrial france will appear next year. frank lipnizki is professor in chemical engineering in the department of chemical engineering at lund university, sweden since 2017. he heads the membrane group at lund university and manages memlab – the industrial membrane process research and development centre – at lund university. before he joined lund university, he worked for 16 years at alfa laval – business centre membranes in denmark. his group is the largest membrane group in sweden, and its research focus is on the water, energy and food security nexus combined with the united nation’s sustainable development goals. so far, he has published 47 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has given over 100 presentations at international conferences. currently, he is council member and treasurer of the european membrane society. hedda krausz sjögren is ceo and artistic director for colombine theatre agency, representing 500 of scandinavia’s leading playwrights. she was sweden’s first counsellor for cultural affairs in south af rica (2017–2021), served as expert advisor for the swedish government, and began her career in the mid 1990s as an actor, later producer, and playwright. she serves on several boards and advises on issues pertaining to culture and international relations. she holds a ba f rom bennington college and a master of fine arts f rom the university of washington. heidi richards is a senior lecturer in the school of chemistry at the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. she has a background in wastewater, having worked for the city of cape town, scientific services division for more than 10 years. her research area focuses mostly on the use of polymer membranes for the treatment of wastewater and she has published a number of peer-reviewed manuscripts on the topic. helin bäckman kartal is a project coordinator at the division for global partnerships at uppsala university, sweden. she is the coordinator for the south af rica-sweden university forum (sasuf), a transformative project that fosters collaboration among 40 universities f rom sweden and south af rica. by bringing together researchers, educators, students, university leaders, and various stakeholders, this initiative aims to develop collaborative solutions addressing the challenges presented by the united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) and agenda 2030. helin holds a ma in international crisis management and peacebuilding. her academic focus has centred around the exploration of informal finance in south af rica and the formalisation process of the country’s informal financial sector. johanna gondouin is a researcher at the multicultural centre in botkyrka, sweden, with a background in comparative literature and film studies. her areas of expertise are postcolonial feminist theory and critical race and whiteness studies, with a specific focus on reproduction and reproductive technologies. she completed the research project ‘mediating global motherhood: gender, race, and sexuality in swedish media representations of transnational surrogacy and transnational adoption,’ funded by the swedish research council, and is currently leading the research project ‘from waste to profit: gender, biopolitics, and neoliberalism in indian commercial surrogacy,’ also funded by the swedish research council. she has published her research in journals such as critical race and whiteness studies, catalyst, and economic & political weekly. kine bækkevold is currently studying a master’s degree in international relations at the norwegian university of life sciences, during which she has also spent a semester of exchange at science po lille in france. additionally, she is taking a postgraduate executive diploma in the art of diplomacy at the european academy of diplomacy. she has fieldwork experience f rom tanzania and lately rwanda, after research activities conducted in cooperation with the fafo institute of social and labour research. bækkevold’s academic interests include economic diplomacy, international trade, strategic partnerships, migration, and refugee flows.   lesego motsage is a master of arts candidate in development studies at the university of johannesburg, as well as a research intern at the institute for pan-af rican thought and conversation (ipatc). she holds a ba social sciences degree (cum laude) and a ba honours in politics and international v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 contributors to this edition relations degree (cum laude). her research interests are gender studies, the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), and the coloniality of knowledge. marion stevens has an academic background as a midwife, in medical anthropology and in  public and development management and has worked in sexual and reproductive justice for  over 30 years. her work has included conducting participatory research, policy analysis and development, project management and governance and advocacy. currently, she is registered  as a phd candidate within the sarchi chair in gender politics, department of political  science, stellenbosch university. she is also a sol plaatje canon collins scholar. she is the  outgoing founding director of the sexual and reproductive justice coalition in south af rica  and currently sits on the gender advisory panel of the world health organisation. nora hattar is pursuing  a master’s degree in global political economy at stockholm university, sweden. her academic background features  a bachelor’s degree in human rights f rom lund university. during this period, she had the opportunity to spend a semester of exchange at universidad de europea in madrid, spain. nora’s academic endeavours have predominantly focused on human rights and politics in af rica, and in 2021 she was one out of two students who were granted a scholarship f rom the raul wallenberg institute to participate in the zimbabwe winter school on human rights. currently, she is in south af rica, engaged in f ieldwork for her master’s thesis, in collaboration with sasuf and the human economy lab. additionally, nora has worked with non-governmental organisations on an international scale. her academic interests span political economy, labour rights, diplomacy, and sustainability. suruchi thapar-björkert is docent and associate professor at the department of government, university of uppsala, sweden. her research trajectories cover the following areas: gendered discourses of colonialism and nationalism, gendered violence in india and europe, ethnicity, social capital and social exclusion, assisted reproductive technologies and qualitative feminist research methodologies. her f irst book, women in the indian nationalist movement: unseen faces: unheard voices, 1925–1942 (2006), was nominated as a sage classic and reprinted in 2015. sven botha is a researcher at the af rica centre for evidence in the faculty of humanities at the university of johannesburg (uj). sven is simultaneously the internationalisation liaison in the faculty of humanities at uj. his research interests include: af rica-nordic relations, counterterrorism, gender, foreign policy, and diplomacy. in 2022, sven co-created the student essay contest on south af rica-sweden relations in partnership with the university of johannesburg, the embassy of sweden in pretoria, and the south af rica-sweden university forum. sven is also the director of the professors without borders think tank. thea tselepis is an associate professor in the south af rican chair initiative (sarchi): entrepreneurship education and teaches in the department of business management at the university of johannesburg. she holds a phd in consumer science with expertise on design thinking and entrepreneurship and does interdisciplinary research on the problem solving of humans in various systems. unathi kolanisi is a professor and head of the department of consumer sciences, university of zululand, kwadlangezwa, south af rica. she has published extensively especially in relation to food security. her research interests include  food and nutrition security, indigenous knowledge systems and innovation, human economy and social transformation, and sustainable food systems and nutrition sensitive food value chains.  she is a member of the human economy lab initiative. ylva rodny-gumede is the head of the division for internationalisation and a professor in the school of communication at the university of johannesburg. she holds a phd f rom the school of oriental and af rican studies (soas), london university as well as an ma degree in politics f rom the university of the witwatersrand in south af rica and an ma in journalism f rom cardiff university in the uk. v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 contributors to this edition 38 special edition curating in the dark: notes on a fugitive concept of black curation by phokeng setai | peer reviewed t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract the last forty years have seen substantial market attention being directed towards the aesthetic practices of black af rican artists. causing an exponential rise in expenditure on black cultural production circulating in the global economy, stimulated by neoliberal interests seeking to capture extant vernaculars of black af rican subjectivity. such particularistic articulations of black subjectivity have, over time, become commodif ied—instrumental to their commodif ication has been the removal of these practices f rom the cultures in which they were inherited (gilroy, 2000:249). this paper delves into the machinations of this trend and interrogates by means of critical speculation how nascent curatorial constructs and discursive models may engender alternatives for engaging with black modes of artistic production.. the paper proposes a method of ‘curating in the dark’, a speculative, multi-vocal dialogic praxis and non-linear approach that seeks to intervene into bankrupt models of curating or engaging with black art. curating in the dark is geared towards expanding the scope of what we understand black art to be in the spectrum of current global artistic practices, and what it can also still become. furthermore, this avowedly speculative inquiry seeks to disempower the neoliberal art system’s modalities of capturing black artistic practices and cultural patterns in the present. 39 in the 1960s, af rica had begun undergoing substantial political transition. a tide of af rican countries gained independence f rom european domination, sending shockwaves through the international community. this caused concern in the western world1 and stoked fears that it would have to loosen its powerful grip on political economic affairs on the continent (okeke-agulu and enwezor, 2009). the decolonial momentum continued into the 1970s and reached a resounding crescendo in the 1980s, with the liberation struggle thriving in southern af rica culminating in mozambique, angola and zimbabwe gaining their independence. meanwhile in south af rica, dissent against the apartheid government led by student and worker resistance movements escalated at an alarming rate. for those af rican nations that had begun their transition into post-independence life, this phase presented a huge challenge to their new political agendas. a majority of these countries liberalised their economic markets on the notion that doing so would be a positive stimulus that would enable their countries’ economies to expand. the strategy proved effective in this regard, as post-colonial life in these countries heralded the promise of great opportunity, neatly sheathed in the prospect of a new post-colonial nationalism. the burgeoning market economies of these countries, and the resolute presence of neocolonialism, had an interesting effect on the art and cultural patterns that began mushrooming in different parts of the continent. it is the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s in particular that became a defining era in the socio-political historiography of the af rican art and cultural landscape. so called ‘af rican art’, more specifically the art of af rican artists emanating f rom post-colonial territories, entered the global art marketplace. this fuelled a commercial spike in the purchasing of artwork produced by these artists and instigated the birth of contemporary af rican art. it is at this critical juncture that the term ‘contemporary’ in relation to af rican culture started to feature significantly in global cultural discourse. the term became used to describe those emergent genres of af rican art-making, particularly those emanating f rom the postcolonial af rican world. in a very short space of time, contemporary af rican art became a highly sought-after commodity. prior to this moment, af rican art had been reduced to moribund classifications which portrayed af rican onto-epistemology as benighted, and af rican material culture was used as proof of this ‘fact’. the presentday phenomenon of the proliferation of black images in international contemporary art is a direct off-shoot of the last 40 years of the neo-liberalisation of the global economy, during which time the art sphere has undergone significant transformations. most notably, the art world has gradually deviated away f rom an overemphasis on representation of white european artistic subjectivities, and shifted its attention towards the aesthetic practices of black af rican artistic producers. the last decade alone has seen this trend escalate even further, evidenced in the exponential rise in global levels of demand for black art. financial markets operate on the basis of the principle of speculation, and the commercial art market is no different, as can be seen in how the soaring interest in black af rican aesthetic modes, practices and cultural objects is inextricably connected to the commercial fixation with black af rican cultural production. up until this point, i have attempted to explain how the rapid ascendancy of black cultural production in global economic markets is propelled by neo-liberal market forces, for whom expressions of black af rican subjectivity appear merely as commodities readily available for consumption. the resultant shifts in the global economic order that occurred in the latter stages of the 20th century, f rom economic liberalism to neo-liberalism, coincided with the transition of political dispensation on the continent of af rica and other parts of the global south. so extensive were these transformations that they had an invariable impact on incipient articulations of universal black af rican subjectivity. over time, the effects of the commodification of black af rican subjectivities became visible in how emergent modalities of black af rican artistic and cultural production started to rapidly assume the form of economic goods. the objectification of modes of black af rican subjectivity – whether it be on an ontological, epistemological, or purely materialistic basis – doesn’t begin with the passage of the world economic system into the neo-liberal era. rather, history would have it, intrinsic to the machinations of the western imperial enterprise has been the intentional distortion and detachment of black af rican cultural and spiritual components f rom their emplacement and their conversion into commodities assigned a special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 40 definitive economic value (gilroy, 2000: 249). the introduction of neo-liberalism marked a significant moment, as modes of human cultural expression and creativity became subsumed into the global economic superstructure. at present, human creative and cultural functions have developed into major economic reservoirs and powerhouses of capitalist production and accumulation. this phenomenon has proved to be a determining characteristic epitomising the advent of the neo-liberal era, namely the commodification of cultural patterns, particularly those of black and/or other minority cultural groups into objectifiable products which are then dispatched into different parts of the globe. this is one way in which post-colonial black af rican culture has, in recent decades, been disseminated into different parts of the world. the art market, notorious for operating according to its own arbitrary rules based on subjective and symbolic speculation, has led us to this historical juncture in which black artistic production seemingly lies at the f rontier of global cultural production and discourse. what this remarkable development has unfortunately coincided with is the art market’s inundation with copious amounts of artistic representations. these commonly appear in the form of popular styles of figurative and photographic representations depicting black af rican human figures according to a mimetic register denoting quotidian scenes of everyday life, and/or attempting to portray familiar accounts and documentations of the multiplicity of black subjectivities. the amalgamation of these aesthetic representations can be seen as contributing to the repopulation of the denuded black epistemological archival repository, which underwent despoliation at the hands of the vehicle of western imperialism. so copious are these aesthetic representations circulating in the art market that they are bordering on the line of aesthetic saturation. the superfluity of the black figure in contemporary art runs the risk of homogenising blackness and flattening its universal dimensionality. what makes this increasingly insidious is that for scholars such as souleymane bachir diagne (2011: 6), who advocate certain aspects of senghorian ideals, black af rican art represents the philosophical worldview and ontological status of its people. if we were to go according to this principle to f rame what constitutes contemporary black af rican subjectivity, we would be led to believe that the phenomenon of the proliferation of images of black bodies in contemporary art irrevocably essentialises black af rican life and negates any of its complexities. this is the main issue with these in vogue representational aesthetics in contemporary art today; they perpetuate a singular understanding of blackness and inconveniently trivialise the rising status of black onto-epistemologies. nevertheless, i still believe that the excess of black art in the art market should equally be read as an affirming statement of the space that black cultural production has seemingly earned for itself in the broader domain of cultural discourse. achille mbembe, in the introduction to his 2017 opus critique of black reason, foretold this condition, referring to it as the becoming black of the world – claiming that europe is no longer the absolute centre of the world (2017: 1). his viewpoint is by and large commensurate with the widening of regimes of representation. today, modes of being that were previously excluded through colonial suppression, historical erasure and epistemic negation have become included into the expanded matrix that constitutes the broader landscape of human societies. many sceptics see this as a regenesis of the disingenuous strategy of inclusion by exclusion. however, as suspicious as these trends may be, i see them contributing positively to the formation of global black subjectivities. it is important to critically engage with emergent trends shaping the face of global culture. history has special edition this is one way in which post-colonial black african culture has, in recent decades, been disseminated into different parts of the world. the art market, notorious for operating according to its own arbitrary rules based on subjective and symbolic speculation, has led us to this historical juncture in which black artistic production seemingly lies at the frontier of global cultural production and discourse. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 41 proven to us on so many occasions that the violence enacted towards marginalised cultures is a systematic consequence of white supremacy rather than merely a symptom of intermittent shifts in global patterns (ross, 2013: 178). this makes it necessary, in my opinion, for us to implacably problematise these modes, and i use this point to further argue that it is not completely irrational to read the current emphasis on modes of black af rican aesthetic representation as the residues of imperialism and grotesque manifestations of white european historical privilege intermingled with privilege (walcott, 2018: 61). lest we forget, white europeans continue to have more visibility and rights of access in the art world, more than any other racial group. the global contemporary art world may be proliferated with black art but the institution remains a bastion of western european heteropatriarchy. western capital dominates in the art world and this has a corollary geopolitical impact on the circulation of capital in the global art world. this has me questioning the control that western forces have on the imaginative faculties of black af rican artistic producers? throughout the generations, eurocentrism has managed to successfully entrench itself in the global social imagination. westerners scrupulously colonised entire realms of colonial and post-colonial libidinal desire tied to the imaginations of historically oppressed people (mbembe, 2015). the overt danger of the west possessing so much power is that formulations of notions of blackness will inevitably be to suit what the west deems acceptable. i argue that this warrants distrust of the authenticity of emergent social constructions of blackness, as these could arise f rom fabricated schemas aimed at constraining vernacular personifications of the global black experience. what if these arising formulations are in fact construed to encumber the malleability of black onto-epistemologies? i consider such tendencies to be reincarnations of the long-standing colonialist fixation to ethnographise the people whose life worlds are congenitally linked to the black onto-epistemological paradigm. it is a pathology that can be traced as far back as the foundations of western imperialism, through which westerners endowed themselves with unbridled authoritative power over the cultural representation of the people they oppressed. over time, this gradually engendered insular perceptions about colonized people, which then became crystallized into historical facts and finally consolidated in the constitution of colonial archives (scott, 1999 in kasfir, 2007: 7). i argue that the legacies of these nefarious acts are observable in the formation and sedimentation of colonial visual cultural regimes that span the post-colonial world. there are several reasons attributable to the sudden recognition of post-colonial black af rican artists. regardless of the disparities distinguishing one artistic producer f rom another, they all share one quintessential characteristic: their unique political subjectivities as former colonial subjects or descendants thereof, as well as the trait of belonging to a historically oppressed group of people. an overdetermined inference emanating f rom this is that black af rican art-making practices are in summation an assemblage of sublimated traumas carried by its producers. these assertions are not completely erroneous, as numerous postcolonial af rican artists have been inclined to illuminate through their art the socio-economic and political conditions prevalent in the societies that they emanate f rom. the circumstances in these societies can get so visceral that it is understandable why they can easily saturate and enforce themselves on the life worlds of the artistic producers – almost with the force of natural law (ndebele, 2006: 14). perhaps then, due to this, the aesthetic practices of post-colonial african artistic producers can be seen as articulations of curative sensibilities employed to cope with the damaging effects of colonialism on them and the societies that they come from (mogorosi, 2021: 29). tumi mogorosi (2021: 19), in his book de-aesthetic: writing with and from the black sonic, proposes that we adopt an approach to our field of relations that aims to de-aestheticize and unframe the structural inherency of imperial violence scaffolding our ontoepistemic and socio-phenomenological field of relations. i concur with mogorosi’s stance; just consider the fact that in the recent history of human social life on planet earth, black subjecthood has constantly been relegated to the position of objects of total and symbolic violence. moreover, due to it being primarily by means of aesthetic judgment that humans negotiate the onto-epistemological and empirical ground on which we stand, similar aesthetic motifs are traceable throughout the work of post-colonial and contemporary black african artistic producers. special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 42 special edition most of them tend to incorporate a critical component in their work, which oftentimes is rooted in their nation’s current or past socio-political status. as political subjects coming f rom territories riven by all kinds of socio-economic and political absurdities, i resonate with the inclination to artistically process the complex political intersections and profound identitarian connections (goniwe, 2017: 38). the explosion of contemporary af rican art became solidified in the mass commodification of af rican artistic production. in the contemporary art world, one explicit ramification of this is the manifest instrumentalization of black bodies and experiences to construct particularly distorted narratives about blackness (mombaca, 2018: 43). all the more reason why it is important for us to problematise the rise and widespread proliferation of depictions of the black figure in global contemporary art today (gilroy, 2000: 255). i have come to realise the immensity of the influence these artistic representations have on the cultural imagination universally. these artistic representations act as signifiers and are therefore seen as synonymous with the collective black experience. as a result, people use them as mediatory conduits to understand the nuances of black life without having to live with the fact of being black, like many black af rican cultural producers have to do. persons who are designated as belonging to this heterogeneous cultural milieu known as black beingness, act upon and internalise social inscriptions encoded in their experiences of the social world; they then make use of these typifications to construct their social political identities (kasfir, 2007: 11). global blackness has successfully interpolated itself into the present-day discourse of neo-liberal cultural production. a huge reason for this is the manner in which black pan-af rican artistic producers have aesthetically engaged their life worlds and translated them into idiomatic formulations of artistic and cultural expression (hassan and oguibe, 2001: 22). jacques rancière (2004: 12) states that the system which determines how our sensibilities are distributed is what establishes the linkages of commonality and dictates the factual nature of sense perception which then discloses the respective parts that constitute our spectrum of existence. rancière’s elaboration of what constitutes our shared field of relations leads me to assert that social constructions of black subjecthood are, to a large degree, responsible for governing considerations of the aesthetic, rational and theoretical constructs that coalesce to comprise notions of blackness, as well as anti-blackness, throughout history into our present time (bradley and ferreira da silva, 2021). the ramifications of these outmoded conceptual models are widely at play in audiences’ encounters with and experiences of black af rican and af rican diasporic artistic and cultural production. this leads me to side with rizvana bradley and denise ferreira da silva (2021) who state that, in order to be able to reimagine possibilities in which global black subjectivities can exist outside the structural confines engendered by western imperialism, we must eradicate and/or overhaul the basic tenets undergirding the aesthetic f ramework of our current symbolic universal order of possibilities. the same can be said about the aesthetic field of black art: it unfortunately finds itself bound inside this order of non-possibility and, for this reason, there is an urgent need for black artistic production to be untethered f rom the representational schematic enclosures of our current global superstructure (bradley and da silva, 2021). i am ultimately forced to question the extent to which we, in our practices as critical black curatorial practitioners and intellectuals, may inadvertently legitimize and reinforce the very same libidinal economies against which our work theoretically tries to push. as in recent decades, artists, cultural theorists and producers have been waging a persons who are designated as belonging to this heterogeneous cultural milieu known as black beingness, act upon and internalise social inscriptions encoded in their experiences of the social world; they then make use of these typifications to construct their social political identities (kasfir, 2007: 11). t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 43 special edition protracted battle in which they have questioned the thingification of black bodies in terms of how they have been imaged inside the locus of western ocular-centric imagination (hassan, 2001: 26). this is all entangled in the neo-liberal politics aimed at converting black expressions and attributes into a wholly different, universalised configuration that can no longer be called uniquely black. curating in the dark i argue that the same phenomenon i discuss above is at play with the multiplication of black images that we see in the contemporary neo-liberal art market. this then begs the question, which i borrow f rom pre-eminent black south af rican historian professor hlonipha mokoena (2021), who in an interview poses the question: what does it mean to be a black artist portraying black subjects? secondly, as the curators of these images, the people who build bodies of knowledge around these representations and contextualise them inside a global discursive field: what does it mean to create new knowledge and discourses around these artistic reproductions of subjectivity, especially one so maligned and elusive as the global black subjectivity? i am here to argue that black radical propositions of curatorial practice are in a stronger position than ever to rewrite cultural discourse by offering oppositional formulations to these staid constructs and one-sided conceptual models that foster circumscribed articulations of emergent black onto-epistemologies. herein, i would like to propose a speculative method of ‘curating in the dark’, whose aim it is to deconstruct hegemonic ideologies intrinsic to the practice of curating and contemporary cultural discourse. through incorporating strategies of multivocality and dialogism in the construction of interventions, this experimental methodology seeks to critically intervene into staid and obsolete models of curating and engaging with the multifarious genres constituting black artistic and cultural production. ‘curating in the dark’ is essentially geared towards expanding the scope of analytic vocabularies we use to curatorially interpret black art. it is a curatorial methodology rooted in the interpretive paradigm, and functions according to an approach that endeavours to confabulate new epistemic terrains that can be accessible to all (bassene, 2018: 199). this approach draws its ideological impetus f rom anti-capitalist and racist genealogies situated inside the revolutionary f ramework of the black radical tradition. its prime modality of expression is inspired by the temporal fluidity of process-based articulations of artistic production. this primarily has to do with trying to resist the commercial art world’s tendency to privilege the object as commodity form, but rather to intentionally engage with the forces of production (i.e. process as object), and centralise this aspect of artistic production as the main site of aesthetic emancipation (bishop, 2012: 11). hence why i envision strategies of ‘curating in the dark’ to be contemporary descendants of black avantgardist aesthetic traditions. because these strategies rely on collaborative and improvisational syntheses of divergent aesthetic practices, instrumentalised to generate social and cultural models that are divisible f rom hegemonic societal constructs. emphasising the dematerialisation of aesthetic production enables social processes to come into the foref ront. this alone is an empowered point of departure, considering how easily the neo-liberal art market ensnares black aesthetics amenable to the commodity form. suna lebota: a silent refusal to the images of our time at the beginning of december 2021, i embarked on one such speculative interdisciplinary intervention in collaboration with the artist brian montshiwa at church project space2, the latest addition to cape town’s bustling art ecosystem. suna lebota3, the intervention that brian and i conceptualised, was an experimental durational performance, performed by the artist montshiwa and co-facilitated by the church project’s production team and myself. the intervention spanned a period of five days, during which the artist repeated the action of applying red lipstick and kissing the pristine white walls of the project space. in the end, brian amassed a total amount of 17 hours and six minutes diligently performing the action, whilst nina simone’s live montreal performance of her song stars played on loop to great melancholic effect in the background. the reason i am mentioning this intervention with brian is that i undertook this project a number of weeks upon returning f rom participating in the black self v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 44 special edition colloquium4 organised by ashraf jamal and funded by the nirox foundation. at the time of my participation in the colloquium, ‘curating in the dark’ was merely an idea that i wrote a paper on and presented at the conference. my collaboration with brian at church project space presented me with an opportunity to practically experiment with this inchoate concept. before brian arrived in cape town to begin their shortterm residency at church project space, we held a series of conversations on zoom discussing a myriad of topics, related to our respective practices, what we were both currently reading and the phenomenon of black images in contemporary art, amongst other things. it is during these preliminary conversations that i related the performance method of duration as a possible approach for the artist to explore during their ten-day residency. what led me to conceive of durationality as a methodology of intervention was the thinking i had begun doing around the aesthetic practices of deceased legendary nigerian musician fela kuti and the writings of the distinguished south af rican writer, professor njabulo ndebele. from a curatorial standpoint, practical factors such as the location of the project and brevity of brian’s residency featured prominently in my preparatory thinking. in response, the everyday as a site of knowledge juxtaposed to the temporal intrusions shaping everyday phenomenologies of human stories began to interest me. in my observations, i had noticed that performance-based artistic practices – particularly those involving of black (queer) artists – had the tendency to be spectacularised in a manner that i had begun to regard as problematic. analysing this phenomenon in relation to the proliferation of black images in contemporary art, the question occurred to me again, what did it mean for black bodies to be the centre of so much spectacle? professor njabulo ndebele, in his seminal book rediscovery of the ordinary: essays on south af rican literature and culture, has this to say about the impulse to spectacularize: ‘the spectacular documents, it indicts implicitly; it is demonstrative, preferring exteriority to interiority; it keeps the larger issues of society in our minds, obliterating the details; it provokes observation and analytical thought; it calls for emotion rather than conviction; it establishes a vast sense of presence without offering intimate knowledge; it confirms without necessarily offering a challenge.’ (ndebele, 2006: 41) the spectacle flattens out the quotidian, in many ways it renders it invisible by casting a shadow over the details of ordinary life; by doing so it strips the complexity out of our life-world experiences and intersubjective encounters with one another. in the context of live performance art, the black body tends to be super-naturalised to conform to such alienating registers, inevitably de-humanising the performer and de-contextualising the performance f rom its intended meaning. therefore, as a provocation to the artist, i asked us to explore the notions of duration and ordinariness as a radical counterpoint to the myopia of the contemporary art world. in doing so, we were already working in opposition to established temporalities of the neo-liberal art world. furthermore, placing emphasis on the minutiae of the everyday alongside the performance, we challenged the viewer to think about their complicity in the construction of everyday life. especially because the spectacularization of certain groups of people’s livedexperiences disempowers their existences in such subliminally harmful ways. this intervention of ours derives its theoretical thrust f rom the curatorial strategy which i refer to as ‘curating in the dark’. brian and i made use of this approach to puncture the monotonous fabric of everyday life. this is what makes live performance art so potent because it is able to interrupt the ordinary and simultaneously disarticulate our expectations of the everyday. what emerged f rom these interactions between the artist is an experimentally fugitive performance piece which became referred to as suna lebota. as the experimental piece matured over the five days and the redness of the lipstick adorned the walls, assuming a cartographical appearance, what stands out to me more than anything is the manner in which the artist, brian, as the main provocateur, returned the gaze back to us, the viewers. this evokes tina campt’s musings in her latest book, a black gaze, in which she discusses emancipatory regimes of black self-representation which lie at the disposal of black people, subverting the white supremacist gaze and techniques aimed at capturing modalities of black aesthetic production, and more importantly the onto-epistemological expressions of black life. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 45 notes 1. i am using this term to refer to various regions, nations and states, depending on the context, most often consisting of the majority of europe, northern america, and australasia, also known as the global north. 2. church project space is a multidisciplinary art project co-founded by hoosein mahomed and shelleen maharaj located on church street, in the central business district in cape town, south af rica. 3. ‘suna lebota’ is a sesotho phrase which in english translates to ‘kiss the wall’. 4. the black self colloquium was a two-day workshop think-tank that took place at nirox sculpture park in gauteng province, 4–6 november 2021.notes references akademe der kunste. (2018). 10th berlin biennial for contemporary art. exhibition catalogue. berlin, germany: german federal cultural foundation. banks, m., gill, r., and taylor, s. (eds). (2013). theorizing cultural work: labour, continuity and change in the cultural and creative industries. new york: routledge. bayer, n., kazeem-kaminski, b. and sternfeld, n. (eds). (2018). curating as anti-racist practice. aalto university: aalto arts books. bishop, c. (2012). artificial hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. london: verso. bradley, r. and ferreira da silva, d. (2021). ‘four theses on aesthetics.’ e-flux journal [online]. available at: www.e-flux.com/journal/120/416146/four-theses-on-aesthetics/ diagne, b. s. (2011). af rican art as philosophy: senghor, bergson and the idea of négritude. kolkata: seagull books. enwezor, o. and okeke-agulu, c. (2009). contemporary af rican art since 1980. bologna: damiani. gilroy, p. (2000). against race: imagining political culture beyond the color line. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. goniwe, t. (2017). ‘contemporary south af rican visual art and the postcolonial imagination, 1992–present, ph.d. dissertation, cornell university. hassan, s. and oguibe, o. (2001). authentic/ex-centric: conceptualism in contemporary af rican art. new york: forum for af rican arts. kasfir, l. s. (2007). af rican art and the colonial encounter. bloomington, indiana: indiana university press. mbembe, a. (2015). ‘the state of south af rican political life.’ af rica is a country [online]. available at: www.af ricasacountry. com/2015/09/achille-mbembe-on-the-state-of-south-af rican-politics ndebele, s. n. (2006). rediscovery of the ordinary: essays on south af rican literature and culture. scottsville, pietermaritzburg: university of kwazulu-natal press. mogorosi, t. (2021). deaesthetic: writing with and f rom the black sonic: in visual conversation with emeka alams. bayreuth: iwalewa books. mokoena, h. (2021). ‘the art of meleko mokgosi part two.’ the wiser podcast [online]. available at: https://witswiser.podbean.com/e/ the-art-of-meleko-mokgosi-part-2/ rancière, j. (2004). the politics of aesthetics. new york: bloomsbury academic. truscott, r. and van bever donker, m. (2017). ‘what is the university in af rica for?’ kronos, 43: 13–38. williamson, s. (2009). south af rican art now. london: harpercollins. special edition v o l u m e 9 1 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 85 ayodele awojobi as a scholar-activist: an assessment of the historical mission of intellectuals towards an african revolution abstract intellectuals are the threads that hold societies together. they form the basis upon which the making and unmaking of the future of societies are built. in fact, it is almost impossible to assess the progression of earliest societies without considerations of the transformative roles of individuals with inimitable intellectual skills and essence. this article will attempt a preliminary study on the socio-cultural and political tasks of intellectuals in neo-colonial af rica. since there is a nexus between colonial domination vis-àvis the production and consumption of knowledge, the existence of neo-colonial af rica thus presents a society whose intellectuals are behind in the fulfilment of their historical task. the dominance of western liberal epistemologies and methodologies across the purported af rican academy have precluded, to a reasonable extent, the existence of ‘af rican’ intellectuals whose mission ordinarily ought to be related to the actualisation of the af rican revolution. nkrumah has argued that in birthing a revolutionised postcolonial af rica—a society f ree f rom all forces of capitalism and neo-colonialism—the intellectuals are destined for an important role. chomsky has echoed this position when he posited that there has to be a connection between scholarship and activism. by exploring the socio-political activities of the ‘mighty giant’ professor ayodele oluwatuminu awojobi, this article examines the mandate of ‘af rican’ intellectuals as both the ‘producers of ideas’ and ‘workers for ideas’. through the exploration of existing primary and secondary sources, this article argues that postcolonial af rican intellectuals have the duty of being inspired by the revolutionary life and works of the activistscholar ayodele awojobi. the ultimate submission of this article is that scholarship cannot only be an arena for rhetoric, but must also be committed to the production of pragmatic thoughts, ideas, and actions that have the capacity of transforming the prevailing repellent social conditions and realities of the vast majority of the downtrodden af rican masses. by temitope fagunwa | opinion africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 86 t h e t h i n k e r introduction ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it’ (marx, 1964: 647). although karl marx did not write extensively on the specific role of the intellectuals in a class society, himself and engels in the renowned the german ideology (1989) unambiguously attempted a theoretical explanation on the class character of knowledge production. since the production of material objects is based on human social relations, the place of the nature and character of knowledge production in any society cannot be overemphasised. in whatever society, and at whatever point in time, the production of this knowledge has consistently been anchored by a group of individuals, now recognised as intellectuals. the progression of societies since the earliest times in fact cannot be accurately interrogated without the transformative roles of individuals with inimitable intellectual skills. this article explores the socio-cultural and political tasks of the intellectuals in the current neo-colonial state of the af rican continent. by exploring the socio-political activities of the ‘mighty giant’ professor ayodele oluwatuminu awojobi, this work intends to examine the mandate of intellectuals as not just ‘producers of ideas’ but also as ‘workers for ideas’. one of the most recent influential leftist thinkers in the western world is noam chomsky. the scholar-activist in one of his essays argues that intellectuals have to embrace the concepts of responsibility, power and truth-seeking (chomsky, 1967). the point was made that scholars have the ultimate duty of conf ronting and exposing the f requent effects of neoliberalism, inequalities, poverty, etc. against this backdrop, the ‘causes and motives, and often hidden intentions’ of right-wing ideologies that have dominated the overall affairs of neo-colonial af rica have to be within the research sphere and pedagogical approach of scholars. what the above presupposes, therefore, is that scholarship cannot simply be an arena for rhetoric, but rather for the production of pragmatic thoughts, ideas, and actions that can transform the prevailing repellent social conditions and realities of the vast majority of the masses. scholars will have to be groomed to internalise their vanguard roles in the process of mobilising, organising and sensitising the downtrodden in any society, against their oppression. in pursuit of the af rican revolution – a term kwame nkrumah has described to mean the ultimate unity of the af rican continent under socialist governments, intellectuals have been charged with a pivotal role (tunteng, 1973). the erstwhile ghanaian president affirms that the ultimate bulwark of the af rican revolution is the class of genuine af rican intellectuals whose aspirations will have to differ f rom that of members of the ruling class (nkrumah, 1970: 40). because the chase for repressive power, primitive accumulation of wealth and social privileges are contrary to the material base of a socialist economy, the af rican intellectuals in the struggle for a better society cannot share alliances with members of the ruling class. though the above provides a guide into what ordinarily should be the mandate of contemporary african intellectuals, this path has largely been ignored. on a large scale, consequent to the infusion of neoliberalism into the entire polities of the african continent, particularly beginning with the 1980s, the consumption and reproduction of repugnant bourgeois scholarship has dominated the affairs of the intellectual circle. unlike the era of decolonisation when african intellectuals fought, gallantly, against the racist colonial historiography, both in actions and writings, the atmosphere in more contemporary times seems to have changed greatly. be that as it may, some scholars in their works and deeds have classified themselves as the continent’s beacon of hope. in this category, radical intellectuals such as walter rodney, bade onimode, claude ake, samir amin, bala usman, ngugi wa t’iong, etc. resisted the overwhelming consequences of neoliberalism and western bourgeois scholarship in their actions and works. although this is a small category of scholars, their lives and works have had a significant influence across the continent and in fact beyond. understandably, this influence has not successfully ignited the motion for the highly anticipated african revolution. the ‘bourgeoisification’ of the af rican academy has concretely limited the space of scholar-activists in the larger society. this reality, amongst other factors, is symptomatic of the gradual isolation of the af rican ruling class f rom the mandate of adequate funding africa as usual 87 of the educational sector. in spite of this obstacle, this paper is challenging members of the intellectual circle on the af rican continent to rise to the occasion of marching arm-in-arm with the hoi polloi in the journey towards the attainment of the purpose of the af rican revolution. in the early 1980s, the cloud of neoliberalism had gathered across the af rican continent through the insidious roles of the bretton woods institutions. in neo-colonial nigeria, the situation was not any different. governments gradually began the process of underfunding the educational sector in the country. accompanying this trend was the systemic infiltration of western bourgeois and capitalist narratives into the af rican academy. interestingly, it was during this period that ayodele oluwatuminu awojobi began to develop an important profile of a consistent nigerian scholar-activist. at a time when it was not fashionable for university intellectuals to stand with the suffering masses at the barricades of protests and demonstrations, awojobi was a different breed. beyond the barricades, the scholar-activist was f requently the voice of the people at important occasions and on the then-traditional media. nigerian newspapers, radio and television stations were repeatedly interested in awojobi’s positions on numerous national issues during this period. though a mechanical engineer in the university of lagos, professor awojobi was a renowned political activist during the 80s. beyond national issues, he was convinced about the potency of the students’ movement in the overall revolutionary struggles of the nigerian masses. in his works and speeches, awojobi had no qualms in demystifying the illusive sacredness of the nigerian ruling class and their apparatuses. heeding to the challenge of nkrumah, the political activist was able to relate the relevance of theory and practice. although awojobi started out as a conventional ‘academic’ or ‘intellectual’, he gradually evolved into a full-grown revolutionary intellectual, consequent to his practical involvement in the daily struggles of the nigerian masses. the value of his involvement in these struggles is a pointer to the nexus between scholarship and activism as required by the processes that are to birth the af rican revolution. it is against this background that this paper is convinced that the life and works of awojobi have the wherewithal to inspire contemporary af rican academics into undertaking the required vanguard role in pursuit of the af rican revolution. although he was not a self-acclaimed marxist, ayodele would pass diligently as a student of marxism for he understood the dialectical relationship between thoughts and actions. there is no doubt that, had he lived beyond his untimely death, he would have transcended to the point of a full-fledged marxist intellectual. this position can be proven against the background that as far back as the late 1970s, ayodele was in the public space denouncing the then attempt by the shagari-led government to privatise the power sector. this denouncement was premised on the basis that the sector cannot adequately live up to expectation because of the unapologetic interest of the private sector in crude profit maximisation. this position is concretely marxian in context. and indeed, the relevance of this position is more so visible in the odious state of the recently privatised power sector in the country. in spite of the periodic huge funds the federal government of nigeria (fgn) had previously stashed in the power distributing companies, the national bureau of statistics (nbs) reported that nigerian households spent n2 trillion on fuel and electricity in 2019 (the punch newspaper, 2020). in point of fact, adoyele’s fears have proven correct: since 2005, the sector has been fully privatised under the electric power reform act, and the activities of the private companies have shown that the ultimate focus is the accumulation of profit by all means. the instinctive approach of ayodele to the abovementioned crisis of the power sector is just an expression of his commitment to the struggles against social injustice and inequality in nigeria. another event that expressed this concrete reality was the decision of the scholar-activist, against all odds, to sue the government of shehu shagari to court over charges that ranged f rom corruption, to nepotism, to electoral violence and irregularities. it is also important to note that the political activities of ayodele did not in any way isolate him f rom his responsibility as a professor in mechanical engineering. prior to his demise, the professor invented a car, now popularly known as autonov 1, at the university of lagos. concretely, a lesson that can also be drawn f rom the life and works of ayodele is that the academic field of any af rican scholar is indeed not an obstacle in the attempt to combine scholarship with practical activism. africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 88 t h e t h i n k e r ayodele awojobi and his activism professor ayodele olutuminu awojobi was born on 12 march 1937 into the family of chief daniel adekoya awojobi and madam comfort bamidele awojobi in oshodi, an infamous part of the modern lagos state. his father had roots in the ijomu area of ikorodu, and the young ayodele awojobi spent his youthful days in lagos. ayodele went to the st. peter’s primary school, faji, lagos, for his early education between the years 1942 to 1947 (awojobi and awojobi, 2008: 1). however, it was while he was attending the renowned cms grammar school, lagos, that his academic prowess began to come into light. after passing his west af rican school certificate examinations in the year 1955 with an unprecedented record of eight distinctions, ayodele awojobi proceeded to sit for a general certificate examinations (gce) in 1958, earning himself a federal government scholarship, owing to his exceptional performance, to study mechanical engineering at the defunct nigerian college of arts, science and technology, zaria, now known as ahmadu bello university, zaria (awojobi and awojobi, 2008: 2). indeed, it was another brilliant feat at zaria that merited ayodele another federal government scholarship in 1962 to study for a post-graduate programme in the field of mechanical engineering at the former imperial college of the university of london, now known as imperial college london. in the year 1966, he was awarded a ph.d. in mechanical engineering f rom the institution. in the same year, ayodele joined the faculty of engineering, university of lagos, as an academic staff member. within a short period of time, ayodele rose to prominence across the four walls of the university and also beyond as an outstanding academic, so much so that in 1974 he became the first ever af rican scholar to be awarded a post-doctorate degree of doctor of science by the university of london. and with this achievement, within a period of just a few weeks, he was appointed a professor by the senate of the university of lagos at age 37. it is pertinent to mention that ayodele’s academic feats are symptomatic of his strong decision not to be an armchair scientist – rather an inventor. in the year 1972, the federal government had announced that the country was going to change f rom left-hand drive to right-hand drive. dr. ayodele awojobi in the same year successfully converted a family car f rom righthand drive to a left-hand drive with the assistance of a group of technicians and students alike. during the same period, ayodele was said to have invented the legendary autonov 1. the autonov 1 used to be a regular military jeep but its engine was reinvented by ayodele giving the vehicle the ability to run in both the forward and backward directions, utilising all four pre-existing gears in whichever direction. in addition to this invention, the autonov 1 also has a second steering wheel and a central revolving chair (asoya, 2008: 13). the basic agenda of this paper is not to examine at length the numerous academic achievements of ayodele awojobi. however, it is relevant to mention that these feats were not inspired from any self-serving and opportunistic tendency. contemporary intellectuals on the continent can be inspired by learning that in spite of several lucrative offers, ayodele resisted the attempt aimed at the commercialisation of his autonov 1. indeed, he could have accumulated substantial wealth from these offers, but the inspiration that propelled the invention was altruistic. consequent to the unmitigated project of the bourgeosification of the african academy, the ultimate passion of an ever-increasing number of academics on the continent is not driven by groundbreaking creations for the systemic liberation of the teeming population. quite ahead of the general norms of the period he lived in, ayodele was convinced that the african academy will the basic agenda of this paper is not to examine at length the numerous academic achievements of ayodele awojobi. however, it is relevant to mention that these feats were not inspired from any self-serving and opportunistic tendency. contemporary intellectuals on the continent can be inspired by learning that in spite of several lucrative o� ers, ayodele resisted the attempt aimed at the commercialisation of his autonov 1. africa as usual 89 be moribund if acquired knowledge has no place in the overall transformation of the nefarious social realities and conditions of the oppressed people. across all academic fields, scholars have consistently attempted to express how best societies can be transformed through their speeches and writings. a frequent lacuna that this paper has recognised in the antidotes of these scholars is the lack of understanding of the question of power – and not just any form of power but political power. meanwhile, ayodele was clear about the relevance of political power to scholarship. the nexus between political power and the state of societies cannot be undermined. it is in recognition of this fact that ayodele once asserted that intellectuals must necessarily be political in their approach to scholarship. this is more so because only politics has the incomparable access to the ultimate resources that can bring about the lasting transformation any society deserves (awojobi, 1980). though a mechanical engineer by training, ayodele awojobi was a specialist on both national and international political matters. an account reveals that he was sometimes mistaken for a political scientist at public occasions (adebayo, 2021). his audiences were often sceptical of his area of specialisation as an academic based on his well-articulated political and economic solutions to the problems of nigeria. this paper is convinced that this attribute is most trendy amongst consistent scholar-activists. ayodele in fact once confirmed his strong conviction in polemics when he affirmed that: ‘i do not believe in running away f rom debate or analysis of different and controversial subjects, since a nation cannot progress if she turns her back to those areas that manifestly recur as problem and sensitive areas’ (awojobi, 1976: 37). for ayodele, these polemics were a call to action. he once declared that: ‘at the age of 65, i will have built the inf rastructure. there would be very few illiterates in nigeria when i mount the soapbox. then i will go into proper politics’ (asoya, 2008: 14). the point about the relevance of the life and works of ayodele echoes in the submission of another important scholar-activist – patricia hill. hill, in one of her works, once declared that since a school cannot be isolated f rom the society and also since ‘thinking’ cannot be separated f rom ‘doing’, it will hence be fallacious to dichotomise between scholarship and activism (hill, 2012: 12). this position, however, has consistently been under attack by governments, university managements, proponents of neoliberalism, and other bourgeois elements. with the exemptions of radical and transformative academic bodies, journals such as codesria, roape, etc. there are more bodies, institutions, agencies, etc. whose ultimate agenda has been to stifle radical scholarship vis-à-vis the existence of scholar-activists. against this backdrop, contemporary af rican intellectuals have the historic duty of not just speaking truth to power but also hijacking power f rom the distractors and traitors of truth. because the aim of the af rican revolution is not limited to raising consciousness alone, absolute conscious political actions for the complete transformation of society are required f rom members of the intellectual circle. a further glimpse into the life of ayodele expresses his relevance to contemporary african intellectuals. the second republic in nigeria’s history has traditionally been proven to be marred with issues ranging from political to economic instabilities. maier karl beautifully narrated the tragedy of the second republic in his classic work ‘this house has fallen: midnight in nigeria’. in this work, karl concluded that the errors of the republic by the political class spurred the social consciousness of the nigerian masses against the class (karl, 2000: 23). whilst there was a mass opposition against the ineptitude and corrupt shagari-led administration, ayodele was one of the most outspoken public figures of this period. fascinated with the solutions of obafemi awolowo to the problems of the second republic under the leadership of shagari, ayodele became a staunch follower of the former. as described by sylvester, ayodele was such a loyal apostle of awolowo that the duo would passionately analyse the state of the nation at any given opportunity (asoya, 2008: 13). unsurprisingly, awolowo wrote the foreword of a number of books and monographs authored by awojobi. the political instability of the second republic became more pronounced during the 1979 – 1983 general elections, which according to joseph r. were marred with several irregularities and overt riggings in favour of the government of shagari (joseph, 1987: 36). like thousands of nigerians, ayodele became a renowned critic of the government in the aftermath of the elections. he was consistently making the headlines in the newspapers for his strong views against the government of the day. and quoting adebayo africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 90 t h e t h i n k e r ninalowo on the roles of ayodele awojobi during this period, the former wrote: to be a social crusader in favour of the amelioration of the human condition is normally a courageous selfless feat. to be iconoclastic in challenging the rulership of the day for not living up to popular yearnings, that takes exceptional courage. the late prof. awojobi was not only exceptionally selfless and courageous, he was both an epitome and personification of encyclopaedic intellectual ingenuity. he was, therefore, a quintessential role model (paadc, 2018). in what can be best described as an expression of courage and vision, ayodele eventually sued the government of shehu shagari in 1983 for corruption and electoral f raud. another test of the ideological clarity of ayodele is visible in the relationship that was built with the rank and file of the students’ movement. it is pertinent to state that the fame of the political stances of ayodele was not just resounding within the nigerian society, but also across universities. consequently, he was a regular lead-off speaker during students’ rallies or protests. as a scholar-activist, he was convinced that the process of liberating nigerian society was also reliant on the direct involvement of students, and generally youth. beyond the f requent firebrand speeches, ayodele was galvanised by a large stratum of nigerian students of this period because of his forthrightness and uncompromising stances on issues bordering on the democratic rights of students. in the university of lagos, he became an iconic figure owing to his consistent interventions in several cases bordering on the attacks of the rights of students by the management. ayodele was an unapologetic critic of intolerant university authorities. on different occasions, he was clear that one of the ways in which the administrative structures of universities can be democratised is through the unconditional integration of student representative bodies. this position indeed was publicly expressed at a time when it was not fashionable for academics to raise such. as a point of fact, it was envisaged that a time would come when presidents of students’ bodies would be actively involved in the administrative mandate of the governing council of universities. he even furthered this discussion in one of his publications by demanding for a student representative in the national universities commission (nuc) (awojobi, 1976: 44). and, quite interestingly, ayodele would often urge the now defunct national union of nigerian students (nuns) to always be vocal on national issues. leadership of the association was often urged to publish prostudent positions on national issues. this was the kind of ideological based relationship ayodele built with the rank and file of the students’ movement. there is no doubt that this tradition has not been sustained in the face of the persistent systemic repression of scholaractivists and students by management of universities. this outcome has propelled a widening gap between the labour movement and the students’ movement. in 1977, ayodele presented his inaugural lecture at the university of lagos. though the lecture centred on the pragmatism of theories of engineering and mechanical vibrations, a coherent argument was stressed on the necessity of a localised theory and pragmatism for the ultimate benefit of the nigerian masses (awojobi, 1977). the scholar-activist further argued in his lecture that: ‘there must be a conscious effort through a deliberate policy to ensure that the product of academic research is, first, of localized interest to nigeria rather than the more popular approach of being seen as a contribution to the universal stock of knowledge’ (awojobi, 1977: 15). needless to say, the mission of localising and af ricanising the production and consumption of knowledge precluded ayodele f rom jumping at numerous lucrative offers to lecture at foreign institutions. there is no doubt that this panaf ricanist aspiration has been under great attack in more recent times. sequel to the surge of brain drain in the af rican academy, institutions and centres are gradually being deserted by specialists and experts. the verdict by ayodele to lecture in a nigerian university is understandably an unequalled sacrifice, then and now. though a professor of mechanical engineering, ayodele ended his inaugural lecture with a firm political statement: ‘…men in power succeed only when they govern firmly and fairly without double standards – this they do if, and only if, they learn to run the machinery of government – well beyond resonance (awojobi, 1977: 23). the social actions ayodele awojobi was involved in were unarguably beyond mere rhetoric. in the early 1980s, ayodele rose to become the chairman of the lagos state school’s management board. this africa as usual 91 position not only afforded him the opportunity of revolutionising secondary school education in the state, but also brought him closer to the mass of the people. interestingly, this position did not estrange ayodele f rom the daily struggles of members of the oppressed class. from the get-go, the scholar-activist was convinced about the potent role the judiciary can play in the liberation of the downtrodden. beyond the impeccable role the judiciary can play in the restoration of the political and socio-economic order in the country, ayodele expressed that its formidable and functioning institutions can indeed prevent nigeria f rom mismanagement. this stance is well encapsulated in one of his publications where he expressed that: ‘i am of the very strong opinion that if nigeria does not have a trusted judiciary that could be manifestly seen to stay impartial between the citizens and the government, we should all accept that nigeria – our dear country – is still a very backward nation’ (awojobi, 1976: 36). the conviction of ayodele in the powerfulness of the judiciary explains why he literally became a private law student of the renowned chief barrister rotimi williams (awobodu, 2009). the pertinence of facts and figures cannot be undermined in the judiciary. ayodele progressively became aware of this, hence his consistent tendency of providing concrete evidence against the corrupt administration of shagari, and any corrupt government for that matter, on any media platform during the 1980s. oral sources show that on any of these media platforms, ayodele would make serious effort to ascertain his charges against any members of the ruling class (adebayo, 2021). in a way, the professor was the mouthpiece of the masses on the trail of justice, transparency, and equity. he put on the toga of the people’s advocate. while soldiering on his mandate as the people’s advocate, ayodele encountered the event that took his life in the year 1984. in the early months of 1984, the scholar-activist had instituted a court case against governor akin omoboriowo of ondo state on the allegation of electoral f raud during the 1983 elections. in the course of one of the court appearances for the case in ondo, reports have it that he was attacked with an amulet by a group of political thugs. unfortunately, ayodele did not recover f rom the illness caused by the attack as he died a few months later in his prime. he was 47 years old when he died on 23 september 1984. oral sources confirm that the city of ikorodu came to a halt during the interment of ayodele (adebayo, 2021). several dignitaries also trooped into the city f rom far and wide to pay their respects to the renowned scholar-activist. many eulogised him publicly for his overall great accomplishments as both a successful professor of mechanical engineering and an uncompromising activist. from the foregoing analyses, it is clear that ayodele’s activism revolved around the struggle for the complete liberation of the oppressed masses of nigerian society. he was most committed to the struggle against all forms of injustice, corruption, mismanagement, nepotism, and other qualities of bad governance. the disregard for the rule of law by members of the nigerian ruling class was considered as a great anomaly. ayodele was clear on the notion that members of this class are f requent adversaries of the constitution they formulated in the f irst instance. overall, this has been a major clog in the socio-economic and political development of the country. ayodele stressed this position when he asserted that ‘a constitution becomes a worthless document if it can be violated by the men in power without a reliable judiciary to ensure obedience to the constitution and put the men in power under the law’ (awojobi, 1976: 43). ayodele stressed this position when he asserted that ‘a constitution becomes a worthless document if it can be violated by the men in power without a reliable judiciary to ensure obedience to the constitution and put the men in power under the law’ (awojobi, 1976: 43). africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 92 t h e t h i n k e r the persistent disdain for the rule of law by members of the ruling class in a way has a strong connection with electoral irregularities. it is against this backdrop that ayodele had no qualms in relating the surge of electoral f raud in the 1980s to the internal contradictions of the judiciary. beyond this, the scholar-activist was clear that members of the political class who rely on electoral f raud and violence are indeed saboteurs of democracy. according to kayode, ayodele once declared that the process of building a strong democratic base in nigeria will continue to be a farce since the country is bereft of true democrats (komolafe, 2005). the conviction of the activist in constitutional powers, particularly as a potent weapon in the defence of the rights of the masses, can also be predicated on the roles he played in the establishment of a renowned political movement known as the national association for the survival of the 1979 constitution (hussein, 2018). this attempt distinguishes ayodele as not just an articulator of f reedom, but also as a working or active revolutionary intellectual. on the imperativeness of a just nigerian society, the systems and institutions that have permitted the ownership of the vast resources of the land by a tiny minority will have to be dismantled. this intervention is germane because the majority of nigerian people are indeed already disenchanted with the state. the outpour of youth on the streets during the 2020 #endsars protests, across major cities in the country, is a strong indication of this reality. in a way, ayodele is in accord with this position when he admitted that ‘the fundamental property of a stable society is support f rom masses of people arising purely f rom their satisfaction with the policies of the government of the day’ (awojobi, 1976: 4). based on current trends, nigeria is unarguably an unstable society. governments across the board have lost the support of the people. by reflecting on the limitations of the gowon and obasanjo regimes on the one hand, and the shagari administration on the other hand, ayodele would contend that the country ultimately has what it takes to develop, had it not been for the greed and insincerity of the ruling class. these erstwhile governments were further accused for inciting ethnic politics in the country as a means of distracting the oppressed f rom the reality of their obnoxious and inhumane state. the governments of balewa and ironsi, in this case, were held liable by ayodele. overall, ayodele – the fiery critic of the nigerian state – was a believer in social justice and equity. this path he walked until his demise in 1984. in line with the injustices that characterised the state of the second republic, ayodele was a f requent mobiliser of the masses. he was convinced that the masses have the duty of organising against their oppression. more often than not, the nigerian state and her apparatuses were exposed by ayodele, for clamping down on the natural and human rights of the people to resist the effects of bad governance. ayodele expressed in one of his publications that: ‘a nation that pretends the problem should never be discussed or does not exist is like an ostrich burying its head in the sand’ (awojobi, 1976: 37). the above presents the impactful life and works of a genuine af rican intellectual who was interested in the practical struggles for the complete emancipation of the oppressed people of nigeria f rom the claws of their oppressive state. ayodele awojobi: a resonator for african intellectuals frantz fanon, the algerian revolutionary thinker, posited that: ‘each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it’ (fanon, 1961). the continuous degeneration of neocolonial af rica has created a massive disorder, to the extent that the intellectual class has been polarised on the question of its historical mission. on the one hand, numerous intellectuals are largely indifferent to the sufferings and disenchantment of the downtrodden. and on the other hand, an insignificant number of intellectuals have consistently displayed their interests in alleviating the social realities and conditions of the hoi polloi. in spite of this interest, the monopolisation of the public space by the af rican bourgeoisie has had an overwhelming effect. neoliberalism, nepotism, corruption, etc. are just some obstacles that have precluded the chances of the rise of a determined class of af rican intellectuals. in spite of these challenges, there must be a reawakening of the traditional mandate of af rican intellectuals. oral sources have indicated that the socio-economic growth and development of a chunk of proto-feudal af rican societies chiefly rested on the gigantic roles of distinct intellectuals of that era. a case in point is how transformative the innovations of imothep were in the emergence of the renowned egyptian civilization. proto-feudal af rican intellectuals africa as usual 93 acted in different capacities such as artists, griots, historians, artisans, philosophers, etc. colonialism truncated the conventional process of knowledge production and consumption in colonial af rica through the introduction of western education. postcolonial intellectuals have the duty of rising above this challenge. in the process of concretising the political and economic subjugation of the colonies, the european colonisers had to dominate knowledge. through the colonial educated af ricans, the racist notion of western supremacy was not only institutionalised but successfully emerged as a model for postcolonial af rica. the complicit roles of the colonial educated af ricans in the process of european imperial control over the af rican continent has gained extensive scholarly attention. in the submission of ayandele, the western educated af ricans were at best ‘deluded hubris’ (1974: 12) because of their over-glorification of bourgeois western social norms and customs at the detriment of af ricans. rodney echoed this point when he posited that ‘the main purpose of the colonial school system was to train af ricans to help man the local administration at the lowest ranks and to staff the private capitalist firms owned by europeans’ (1976: 60). the scholar-activist in his critique against the colonial school institution also expressed that ‘the colonial school system educated far too many fools and clowns, fascinated by the ideas and way of life of the european capitalist class. some reached a point of total estrangement f rom af rican conditions and the af rican way of life’ (rodney, 1976: 69). understandably, the domination and exploitation of the af rican colonies was somewhat meant to be supervised by the colonial af rican intellectuals. while it is true that a section of members of this class were in the long run instrumental to the anti-colonial struggles, owing to the internal contradictions of the overall structures of colonialism, they really did not relinquish the western bourgeois modus vivendi that the era had created. extensively, the intellectuals postcolonial af rica inherited had no interest in waging any main struggle against the forces of neo-colonialism consequent to this trajectory. the intellectual class, except for in rare occasions, is not conventionally modelled for this responsibility since members were historically and mandatorily meant to alienate themselves f rom the social realities and conditions of their immediate societies, including the state of members of the downtrodden class. the foregoing analysis therefore exposes why the academy within the context of the af rican continent is a somewhat citadel of western neoliberal philosophies and epistemologies to a significant extent. the dominance of capitalist and bourgeois individualistic lifestyles that colonialism institutionalised are indeed apparent in the circles of intellectuals even today. it is thus relevant to state that the sense of solidarity and social responsibility that was dominant in protofeudal af rican societies have to be revived today. af rican intellectuals in postcolonial af rica have to be encouraged and inspired by the life and works of scholar-activists such as ayodele awojobi, walter rodney, claude ake, etc. for the sake of fulfilling their historic mission. postcolonial af rican intellectuals will have to pay attention to the submission of wilf red and martin on the task of educators. the scholars contended that educators have the mandate of shaping their acquired knowledge to their immediate environment and to ‘make it move to the rhythms of the people and their land’ (cartey and kilson, 1970: 121). at this moment, the call by chinweizu that stressed the necessity of a decolonised af rican educational system is especially pertinent and must be a dominant objective in the af rican academy. chinweizu called for a ‘black af rica that is liberated f rom imperialism, neo-colonialism, powerlessness, and f rom the world’s contempt – a black af rica that has a technologically robust culture; is autonomous in its economy, culture and politics; and is prosperous and af rocentric’ (chinweizu, 1987: 21). the class of contemporary af rican intellectuals ultimately must rise to the occasion of being the ‘articulators of f reedom’. the renowned kenyan writer, ngugi wa t’hiongo, also made this point when he contended that ‘it is necessary for an intellectual who really wants to contribute to the liberation of the af rican people – that is, the liberation of their productive forces and their genius – to put his intellectual resources at the service of the people; to make sure that whatever he articulates in writing, in lectures, in essays, everywhere is in harmony with the needs of the struggling classes in af rica’ (wa thiong’o, 1985: 20). africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 94 t h e t h i n k e r africa as usual it is true that a number of scholars in the af rican academy, both in the past and now, had identified with the revolutionary methodological approach and practices of marxism. mayer (2016), in his classic work, has revealed the depth of the existence of marxist intellectuals in the nigerian academy during the post1980s era. by providing an overview of the works of nigerian marxist scholars such as edwin madunagu, bala usman, eskor toyo, etc. the author painted the noble attempts of the circle of radical af rican intellectuals in birthing a better society. the point however must be made that the mandate of a marxist scholar cannot entirely be exhausted in the literature and indeed in the four walls of the universities. das raju (2013) espoused that ‘a marxist is someone who is committed to dialectical and materialist analysis of society and nature with the purpose of contributing to the creation of a better world, a world which is ecologically sustainable and which is without class exploitation and social oppression’. the scholar, by implication, argues that the defence of the basic ideals of marxism is dialectically related to actual practices. in other words, the absolute appreciation and commitment to the tenets of marxism requires the combination of thought and practice. against this backdrop, af rican intellectuals who appear to be propagating the ideals of marxism in the colleges, universities, etc. have the duty of playing vanguard roles in the overall struggles of the oppressed. it is germane to emphasise that contemporary af rican intellectuals will not be embarking on a strange journey by merging their scholarship with activism. this paper erstwhile painted the overall relevance of the intellectuals in the making of proto-feudal af rican societies. in fact, the renowned nigerian academic, ukpabi asika, in discussing the af rican context, once said that intellectuals can be understood as the threads that hold society together (chuku, 2013). the retrogressive roles of bourgeois intellectuals in postcolonial af rican society therefore have to be consumed for a renaissance. the relevance of this renaissance is obvious in the submission of soyinka when he argued that: ‘the artist (intellectual) has always functioned in af rican society as the record of mores and experience of his (or her) society and as the voice of vision in his (or her) own time’ (cartey and kilson, 1970: 122). it is thus an undebatable fact that, should this responsibility be ignored, such an intellectual will not just be distorting his or her traditional role but also expressing a great disservice to the postcolonial af rican society. since the ultimate relevance of intellectuals can be most felt in their immediate distinct societies, the former – in the context of the social realities and conditions of postcolonial af rica – have the revolutionary duty of conf ronting the cruelty of neo-colonialism. the intellectual class, flowing f rom its historic task, as argued by nkrumah, have to provide the necessary impetus and leadership for the af rican revolution in the struggle against neo-colonialism (nkrumah, 1970: 39). in quest of the af rican revolution, the foregoing has painted the consequential role of the intellectuals. since the revolution, as articulated by nkrumah (1970: 30), can only be possible when the organic structure and conditions within the society have aroused mass disenchantment and desire for positive action to transform the society, the intellectuals will be critical in the process of not only articulating these structures and conditions, but also providing the masses with a concrete alternative. the radical life and works of ayodele awojobi, as discussed hitherto, is a pointer to the immense contributions that intellectuals can play in the process of birthing a better society. the conviction of the activist-scholar in the power and relevance of the nexus between scholarship and activism is exceptional and should be emulated today by intellectuals. though a trained mechanical engineer, the works of ayodele on socio-economic and political matters in nigeria are outstanding. works such as ‘nigeria: in search of a social order’, ‘nigeria: in search of a political order’, ‘where our oil money has gone?’, etc. are logical expression of the class ayodele was loyal to – the oppressed class. intellectuals will have to transcend the myopic pedestal for success in academic promotions, positions, etc. concretely, the basis for any academic excellence should be reflective in the social change and transformation of the society itself. the overall quagmire that has continued to engulf the nigerian state is indeed an indication of the exceptionality of ayodele’s intellectualism. as stressed by kayode, the well selected titles and arguments in most works of ayodele might confuse one into thinking he was writing about the present state of nigeria (komolafe, 2005). this calls for a reawakened commitment by contemporary af rican intellectuals in the struggle for a better society. simply put – there is much liberation mission that is yet to be embarked upon. if ayodele fought the shagari-led government 95 in the 1970s because of a missing n 2.8billion, one cannot begin to imagine how many ministries, government agencies, institutions, and organs he would have to conf ront today. conclusion the ultimate objective of this paper should not be misconstrued to mean a denial of the roles of the oppressed masses in their collective struggle towards liberation. the intellectuals, however, are the strong blocks that have the capacity of sustaining and enriching the people’s struggle with the necessary ideology and purpose. but, as warned by nkrumah (1970: 40): ‘if they (intellectuals) are to play a part in the af rican revolution, they must become conscious of the class struggle in af rica, and align themselves with the oppressed masses. this involves the difficult, but not impossible task of cutting themselves f ree f rom bourgeois attitudes and ideologies imbibed as a result of colonialist education and propaganda’. what this paper has done is to expose how ayodele awojobi can inspire the emergence of another generation of activist-scholars. this is timely, given the current absolute repression and exploitation of the masses by members of the af rican ruling class. the overwhelming dominance of the forces of neocolonialism on the af rican continent also bears witness to this urgency. concretely, the continent is at a crossroads and only the intellectual class, in alliance with other strata of the oppressed, can change the tide. references adebayo, a. 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(1973). ‘kwame nkrumah and the af rican revolution’. journal of civilizations, vol. 23. no. 2. wa thiong’o, n. (1985). ‘the commitment of the intellectual’. review of af rican political economy, no. 32. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056248508703611 africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 africa as usual 69 beyond sub-imperial war, ‘blood methane’, and climate-debt denialism: south africa’s pro-military lobby risks worsening multiple injustices in northern mozambique abstract south af ricans really must conf ront two conjoined crises that affect both the majority here, and the vast majority next door in mozambique. first, the climate catastrophe’s amplification due to rising dependency upon liquefied natural gas (which is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in coming decades), leaving our neighbour as the world’s fourth worst-affected country since 2000, at a time when south af rica is already the third-highest greenhouse gas emitter per person/ gdp among major countries. second, the deplorable trajectory of pretoria’s sub-imperialist adventurism, now represented by the army’s deployment in cabo delgado province in order to promote gas drilling by multinational corporations. in part because of the corrupt, repressive maputo government, many southern af rican civil society organisations regularly appeal for an end to both mozambique’s ‘blood methane’ war and, behind it, the fossil fuel extraction that amplifies the climate crisis. the innovative demand is for global-north payment of climate reparations to victims of extreme weather, plus financial compensation so as to leave the world’s fourth-largest gas ftield unexploited. against these arguments and movements, there is a vociferous south af rican lobby—which can be termed ‘laptop bombardiers’—ignoring or brazenly dismissing both crises: climate and the danger of further sub-imperial mishaps. it is long overdue to conf ront this lobby by objecting to damaging fossil fuels and militarism, and call it to account for the vast ethical lapses in their analyses. by patrick bond | opinion v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 70 t h e t h i n k e r introduction on 22 december 2021, 31-year-old tebogo radebe’s life ended in cabo delgado, mozambique. he was a corporal in the sa national defence force, and was a tragic casualty—fighting within the regional southern af rican mission in mozambique (samim) deployment—along with a few other soldiers f rom the region and f rom the rwandan army. also perishing in battles involving samim since mid-2021 have been scores, if not hundreds, of mozambicans, mainly islamicist insurgents, but also innocent bystanders caught in the cross-fire. the destruction since late 2017 has included more than 800,000 displaced people and 3,000 fatalities, plus extremely high ratios of inf rastructure and crop damage. there is a sub-imperial context to this battle ground that must be openly acknowledged, partly because all public-intellectual commentary and certainly all scholarship really should include acknowledgements of both the worsening climate catastrophe in the region, and the deplorable power relations between multinational big oil corporations (and allied northern governments), south af rican elites (including its largest oil company, sasol), and mozambique’s ruler on the one hand, and people and planet on the other. yet a group of south af rican fossil-militarist commentators, overwhelmingly drawn f rom a certain generation and race group, seem to have no qualms about downplaying either the climate implications of exploiting the world’s fourth largest gas field in terms of climate, or the sub-imperial ethics of regional armies intervening to prop up multinational oil companies, as they incessantly drum-beat in favour of war. university of the free state political science department chair theodor neethling (2021a) is just one of many scholars to promote both liquefied natural gas (lng) and military intervention: ‘the lng projects in the northern cabo delgado area, with major gas reserves attracting an estimated total investment of more than $50 billion, represent a silver lining of hope for this impoverished country in terms of major international investment and revenue generation. observers often assert that this could pave the way for the country to become af rica’s qatar or even dubai f rom 2024 onwards… the lng industry in mozambique could revolutionise the economy of the country.’ the ‘revolution’ is in good hands, claims neethling (2021a): ‘at government level, the mozambican head of state, president filipe nyusi, plays a key role in the country’s lng sector. in fact, he was elected 2020 person of the year by af rica oil & power, the af rican continent’s leading investment platform for the energy sector. this prestigious award is presented to individuals who are considered exceptional and who display true leadership and innovative thinking in the steering of their countries or organisations to the foref ront of the global energy sector. thus, a lack of political commitment to the lng sector does not seem to be an issue or risk in the development of the lng sector in mozambique.’ who will defend the fossil revolution—and especially the expensive new cabo delgado lng investments by total, exxonmobil, eni, galp, and china national petroleum corporation—and with it, maputo’s gallant revolutionary leader against rising islamic terror? though nyusi and his close allies are, in reality, a corrupt, brutal tyranny (norbrook, 2021), neethling is enthused about several armies marching to the rescue: ‘on the positive side, an agreement was reached in june 2021 by the leaders of the southern af rican development community (sadc) to deploy forces f rom the regional organisation in cabo delgado to assist the government of mozambique in its fight against the insurgents.’ questions arise: • what assumptions of neethling’s deserve questioning, and what indeed are the roots of this way of thinking and arguing? • why would climate dangers to mozambique’s extremely vulnerable coastline, inland inf rastructure and agricultural land be completely ignored, when reporting on the world’s fourthlargest source field for lng—made up mainly of africa as usual 71 • methane, whose climate-destructive potency via extraction, processing, storage, transport, and combustion is more than 80 times worse than co2 (the main cause of the climate catastrophe), in the coming (critical) two decades and 25 times worse over the coming century (stanford university, 2022)? • why is the climate import of this gas identified by neethling merely as an economic (trade-related) risk, insofar as he correctly notes that western sanctions on imports f rom countries relying on high levels of greenhouse-gas-sourced energy are due to begin in 2023—but with no reference to the cyclones, floods, droughts, and other damage that have made mozambique the world’s fourth most adversely affected country f rom climate change this century (reliefweb, 2021)? • and how, in this analysis, can the sadc leaders’ own abundant military abuses—especially by south af rica’s troops in the region when protecting other multinational-corporate extractive industries, but also other armies’ brutal actions against citizenries in zimbabwe, eswatini, and angola—simply go unremarked upon? neethling and others in this tradition are genuinely playing with fire, and their lack of rigour and ethics are yet more glaring—being white, apartheid-era beneficiaries of an extremely carbon-intensive economy whose military’s sub-imperialist role included not just repressing local democrats, but defending a crime against humanity. that background really requires an extra level of critical introspection not apparent in their recent commentary. sub-imperial cheerleaders an anonymous analyst at the texas-based political consultancy stratfor—a firm referred to by barrons as a ‘shadow central intelligence agency’ (laing, 2001) and whose main database was exposed by wikileaks in 2012—assessed south af rica’s long-term subimperialist fusion of economic interests and regional military prowess: ‘south af rica’s history is driven by the interplay of competition and cohabitation between domestic and foreign interests exploiting the country’s mineral resources. despite being led by a democratically-elected government, the core imperatives of south af rica remain: maintenance of a liberal regime that permits the f ree flow of labor and capital to and f rom the southern af rica region, and maintenance of a superior security capability able to project into south-central af rica.’ (stratfor, 2009) over the subsequent dozen years, the war-making capacities of the south af rican defence force (sandf) deteriorated substantially, even as it was called into service in several af rican missions. the army’s performances in south-central af rica—as well as at home—were open to various forms of criticism, not least that in a democratic society, the merits of sending troops abroad to risk their lives on behalf of opaque but plainly corrupt ruling-party players and multinational corporations should be subject to social debate. in spite of the objectionable—often self-destructive—manner in which sandf forces were deployed in, most notably, the central af rican republic’s capital bangui in 2012–13 and the mineralrich eastern democratic republic of the congo for much longer, and in spite of continuities associated with sub-imperialist violence dating well before 1994, the regional-militarist lobby is ascendant. this is easily observed today by considering mozambique’s ‘blood methane’ war. (the term recalls the zimbabwe defence force’s role in manicaland’s ‘blood diamonds’ conflict: on behalf of chinese and israeli capital and the mugabe-mnangagwa regime’s generals, hundreds of local working-class troops killed hundreds of desperate artisanal miners in 2008 so as to evict them f rom the marange fields they had farmed for generations [maguwu, 2013].) south af rica’s lobby includes a highly-vocal, well-connected militarist intelligentsia, some of whom are consultants to the local military industrial complex—though this conflict of interest is rarely disclosed in public commentary. many contemporary security operatives and promoters of sub-imperial extractivism date to apartheid-era service (and indeed many are male with af rikaner surnames, and served in the military prior to 1994). in their analyses of the 2017–21 cabo delgado war theatre, there was only occasional, slight hesitation by sub-imperial-inclined think tanks, journalists, and commentators when making the case for armed intervention. some were slightly africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 72 t h e t h i n k e r more reserved, including the international crisis group and a few other ngos which requested both military and humanitarian aid, suggesting the need for more sophisticated relations with the armed forces of ex-colonial (portuguese and british) plus other imperialist armed forces. most of the vocal commentariat, though, proved unable to grasp the human costs of war, were uncritical of multinational corporate arrangements with mozambican elites, exhibited no climate consciousness (either of cause or effect) and were, finally, subtly islamophobic. these advocates of militarism were given an opening in mid-2020 when south af rican foreign minister naledi pandor reconfirmed pretoria’s subimperial agenda in no uncertain terms. pandor (2020: 12) testified to her parliament that a ‘great opportunity exists for south af rica to import natural gas f rom mozambique, thus the security of cabo delgado is of great interest to south af rica and her energy diversification strategy. south af rica’s security agencies need to enhance their capacity.’ notwithstanding her open call to fuse fossil-capital dependency with military sub-imperialism, that security strengthening wasn’t likely to happen under conditions of austerity, as conditions deteriorated over the subsequent seven months. indeed, sandf’s capacity to purchase equipment and sustain personnel fell much more rapidly as a result of treasury’s 2020–21 budget cuts, as well as a surprise mid-2021 deployment when the army had to police sites of unrest within kwazulu-natal and gauteng provinces during a week of rioting, widespread looting, and police incompetence (af rica commission, 2021). nevertheless, the potential that south af rica would benefit f rom cabo delgado gas allowed wardrumming to thump ever more loudly throughout the most influential local media in 2021, periodically amplified by energy minister gwede mantashe’s comments favouring import of mozambican gas (omarjee, 2021). the beat emanated most consistently f rom south af rica’s two main metropolitan areas, home to the pretoria-midrandjohannesburg elite-regionalist intelligentsia (foreign policy specialists, scholars, journalists, and researchers), and the stellenbosch/saldanha-cape town military-strategic zone (with potchefstroom an important old school outlier). this network represents south af rica’s version of ‘laptop bombardiers.’ that phrase emerged to capture the spirit of mid-1990s u.s. intellectuals who advocated carpet-bombing serbia. it was coined by simon jenkins in the spectator but popularised most by los angeles times columnist alexander cockburn (1994). the latter witnessed the debate about yugoslavia’s tragic dismembering becoming ‘one of the most astonishing displays of high-minded warmongering since the cream of europe’s intelligentsia of the left cheered their respective nations into the carnage of world war i.’ the analogy stretches today to the squad of reinvigorated sub-imperialist boosters operating f rom the main south af rican geopolitical ‘think tanks’ (i.e., places where people are paid to think, by the people who control the tanks). these analysts advance the argument made by pandor (2020), namely that if south af rica’s state managers consider mozambique’s rovuma basin gas ‘of great interest’ for an ‘energy diversification strategy,’ then the corresponding logic is, ‘security agencies need to enhance their capacity.’ to that end, the most prolific pro-military commentator in af rica, jane’s defence weekly correspondent helmut heitman, made a similar nationalistic energy-security case in 2021: it is ‘purely selfish selfinterest for us to try and stabilise at least our region’ with the sandf intervention he favoured. this was in part because of the insurgency’s potential to ‘place at risk cahora bassa hydroelectric power station. it places at risk the gas fields f rom which we now draw gas. in fact if you look longer term, we need the gas fields in cabo delgado as well, because the gas fields we now use [i.e. sasol’s offshore central mozambique, at temane-pande] are running down’ (sa broadcasting corporation, 2021). to illustrate the upgraded security required for transferring gas f rom cabo delgado, the proposed af rican renaissance pipeline to johannesburg was greeted with enthusiasm in the mid-2010s, although it became a pipe dream once the insurgency began. to avoid shipping, truck and rail traffic when exploiting the pande gas fields starting in 2004, a 900km pipeline was built, crossing into south af rica at lebombo-komatipoort. the route begins at the temane lng facility (near vilanculos) in the middle of mozambique and ends in secunda, where gas is squeezed into liquid petroleum at the single highest africa as usual 73 greenhouse gas emissions point-source in the world. could an extension twice as long be built northwards to palma? even without civil war prevailing, maintenance of such pipelines is arduous, and as bloomberg reported in october 2020, on much more secure south af rican terrain, ‘transnet pipelines has had over 80 incidents of fuel theft this financial year that involve tampering with inf rastructure,’ mainly to bunker stolen oil (burkhardt, 2020). yet south af rica’s main opposition party militarist, democratic alliance shadow minister for defence kobus marais, stressed precisely such direct importation (i.e. by pipeline not ship) when speaking to cape talk a few days after the palma attack: ‘south af rica most certainly do have a direct interest in what is happening in cabo delgado. there are south af rican mining companies that is operating officially with all the necessary authority in that area. it is rich in minerals and gemstones and then obviously the whole lng industry. south af rica has got major investments in terms of construction, providing construction material, maintenance, etc there. also remember we are already getting lng f rom mozambique to sasol. and then there is the possibility of getting something like that directly to gauteng f rom cabo delgado. so we have to become involved.’ (marais, 2021a) moreover, into a vacuum like mozambique’s war zone, there may wander other self-interested elements f rom the west whose oil firms are at risk. hence for pretoria to not intervene, marais (2021b) continued, would be ‘unsustainable, unaffordable, and indefensible f rom a foreign policy perspective. although the usa, france and portugal all currently have a presence, it is not ideal for the region not to be part of any stabilisation force.’ in the same spirit, neethling (2021b) advocated ‘south af rican military support to stabilise cabo delgado and restore law and order in the short term. wider international support might even be necessary,’ in part because ‘sasol has invested heavily in gas exploration projects since 2014.’ francois vreÿ (2021), emeritus professor of strategy at stellenbosch university’s saldanha-based war college, was even more f rank about multinational corporate beneficiaries: ‘the impact spilled offshore as gas companies placed extensive foreign inf rastructure development for the energy sector on hold. rebuilding the confidence needed for the gas industry to resume activities is a major incentive to get the insurgency under control.’ suave sub-imperial narratives it is easy to follow the logic of stratfor’s (2009) vulgarmarxist argument here, namely that the sandf has to become involved in the blood methane struggle— ideally in explicit alliance with the west—so as to back up south af rican capitalists’ investments. if marx’s simple dictum that the state is essentially the ‘executive committee of the bourgeoisie’ really does apply, then some of these commentators seem entirely comfortable with crude, profiteering selfinterest as justification for such blatant sub-imperial intervention. however, there are much more suave ways of selling south af rican involvement in this conflict, which is where the laptop-bombardier intelligentsia becomes important. from the same generation (and ethnicity), armed conflict location & event data project analyst jasmine opperman was hopeful the imperial-sub-imperial combination might actually work: ‘a foreign/regional joined force with a streamlined command and control can shift the momentum away f rom the insurgents... it is an insurgency that cannot be viewed, and must not be regarded and underplayed, as not only a risk to mozambique but also the region” (essau, 2021). that particular part of the narrative—that the insurgency yet genuine concern about islamic-terror contagion is just as easily a narrative to not introduce troops into northern mozambique, so as not to kick the hornet’s nest and potentially be met with a backlash elsewhere. as opperman (2021) put it: ‘the problem we are sitting with is the islamic state threat directed at south africa if they should get involved in cabo delgado, and that threat must be taken seriously. we know we have islamic state disciple figu es on home soil’ (le roux, 2021). africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 74 t h e t h i n k e r will spread, not just into tanzania where conditions are supposedly ripe, but perhaps to johannesburgpretoria, to cape town and to durban (where in each there are large muslim populations)—could be based upon paranoia or justified fear. it could also be a ruse to promote militarism. yet genuine concern about islamic-terror contagion is just as easily a narrative to not introduce troops into northern mozambique, so as not to kick the hornet’s nest and potentially be met with a backlash elsewhere. as opperman (2021) put it: ‘the problem we are sitting with is the islamic state threat directed at south af rica if they should get involved in cabo delgado, and that threat must be taken seriously. we know we have islamic state disciple figures on home soil’ (le roux, 2021). thus, the second component of the pro-intervention narrative is that if sadc doesn’t step in, then the u.s. or other foreign interests will. opperman referred to the new administration of joe biden: ‘there are clear foreign agendas at play… this is old wine in an old bottle with a new label… the us is merely going to aggravate the situation’ (le roux, 2021). would the u.s. military be able to defeat al-shabab? to prosecute a bush war against insurgents of this sort will be difficult, as the fighters are apparently able to blend in and out of the dense cabo delgado terrain. after more than four years of fighting there were only a few prisoners taken, with no apparent mozambique army successes in capturing leaders or permanently retaking guerrilla bases, though the main coastal town was wrested back f rom the militants’ control by mid-2021. given the mozambican army’s appalling record, a careful but nevertheless militaristic approach was advocated by the international crisis group, a network established in 1995 by u.s. and british diplomats which ‘aspires to be the preeminent organisation providing independent analysis and advice on how to prevent, resolve or better manage deadly conflict.’ it was established by finnish and australian sub-imperial leaders martti ahtisaari and gareth evans after both played significant roles in the south af rican and namibian elite transitions f rom apartheid to neoliberal democracy. with access to well-placed (always confidential) imperialist sources of information, its analysts remarked with confidence: ‘to tame the insurrection, maputo needs to use force, with bespoke assistance f rom outside partners, and to carefully address underlying grievances... mozambique’s western partners say they want to help but their diplomats say their capitals will be reluctant to supply materiel to the military without the institution going through significant training and reforms... a heavy deployment of regional troops unfamiliar with the local terrain may not be necessary. instead, maputo should welcome bespoke af rican and international assistance to support its own special forces, who are receiving training primarily f rom a few western partners. it should task these special forces to spearhead restricted military operations to contain and then degrade al-shabab.’ (international crisis group, 2021) indeed, another narrative common to centrist research agencies and ngos acknowledges that without addressing socio-economic grievances, the necessary military suppression of al-shabab will not resolve the local tensions. diverse sources of regional power and humanitarian aid will be required, according to sa institute for security studies commentators jakkie cilliers, liesl louw-vaudran, timothy walker, willem els, and martin ewi (2021). for opperman: ‘we don’t have a choice. we cannot let the isis or an international terror group direct our foreign policy, but we also have to apply caution here. we cannot simply deploy soldiers. that will not solve the problem’ (le roux, 2021). setting pro-intervention advocacy aside, by mid2021 several genuine dangers associated with further armed incursions into cabo delgado were obvious. one was failing to incorporate the disgust that local residents had for the faraway maputo government, especially the army and also mercenary allies. the latter include russia’s wagner group, and south af rica’s dyck advisory group and paramount group. the two former mercenary companies had committed countless, blatant atrocities (sauer, 2019; hanlon, 2021; the economist, 2020). in turn, a related danger was an inappropriate delegitimization of the insurgents, by underestimating the degree to which socio-economic desperation and anger created genuine roots for their base-building. a third obvious danger was completely africa as usual 75 ignoring the role of the climate crisis in exacerbating both the roles of victims (cyclone and drought victims) and villains (big oil) in cabo delgado. the pro-intervention analysts themselves are thus guilty (in varying degrees) of denialism, defined as taking three forms by stanley cohen (2001): whether literal (e.g. in disputing the local factors, thus assuming that regional and western troops can solve the problem as it were merely surgical ‘degrading’ the insurgent enemy); interpretive (e.g. in downplaying the socio-economic and ecological factors); and implicatory (failing to acknowledge the need to leave the fossil fuels unexploited and pay reparations for climate damage). however, the laptop bombardiers were only as serious a problem as there were real forces on the ground to activate the threat. these took the form of mercenaries, the sa army and other countries’ troops, most immediately f rom rwanda, as well as other sadc countries and potential western powers, including the former portuguese colonists. but it is the militarist analysts’ faith in the sandf that merits more attention than they dare give. south africa’s sub-imperial shame recall stratfor’s (2009) view that an ‘imperative’ of post-apartheid south af rica remained not only ‘the f ree flow of labor and capital’ intra-regionally but also, to enforce this, ‘a superior security capability able to project into south-central af rica.’ the latter role, however, has long given both south af rican militarists and anti-militarists great cause for concern, in part due to the sandf’s illegitimacy before 1994 and to its uneven competence since. there was no question that under apartheid, superior security capability permitted the sa military to conduct unrivalled regional state-terrorism during the 1970s–80s. that ended, though, with the 1987–88 battle of cuito cuanavale in angola, during which cuban air support to the angolan army was decisive and more than a hundred white soldiers returned to south af rica in body bags. one immediate result was the realisation that army supply lines were too stretched both logistically and psychologically, and not only did the military struggle that pretoria had supported since the mid1970s fail miserably (the guerrilla movement unita killed a million angolans, but could not win power). in between southern angola and the south af rican border was pretoria’s colony of south west af rica— whose liberation movement had by 1989 gained enough international support that the sa defence force (sadf) was forced to retreat, and the country won its f reedom. the sadf’s periodic incursions into the region also included state terror attacks against democracy proponents who were civilian members of the af rican national congress, in lesotho, botswana, eswatini, zimbabwe, and zambia. the sadf’s role in mozambique included support for the renamo rightwing movement which like unita in angola, is accused of killing an estimated million civilians with nothing to show for it aside f rom post-1992 oppositional status. the apartheid regime’s army was also brutal when working inside south af rica—in the black townships and rural bantustans alike—but, after the late 1980s, also increasingly ineffectual in repressing the democratic mass movement. in the period f rom the 1976 soweto youth rebellion, when soldiers became a constant presence in townships, to early-1990s ‘third force’ activity, the sadf purposively created mayhem in many areas of south af rica. especially in its collaboration with the south af rican police and the inkatha zulu-nationalist movement, tens of thousands of deaths of black activists (and a few whites) were attributed to state terror, including 14,000 f rom 1990–94 alone (stott, 2002: 36). the post-apartheid era witnessed six major engagements by the sandf, which are worth briefly revisiting to assess whether by far the largest military force in the region is capable of carrying out a longterm pacification of the cabo delgado insurgency: lesotho in 1998; burundi in 2001–09; sudan since 2004; the central af rican republic in 2013; the eastern democratic republic of the congo since 2013; and internal deployment of troops within south af rica both to fight western cape gangs and impose covid-19 lockdown regulations. • in lesotho, a september 1998 sandf countercoup mission initially to the katse dam wall— which was meant to halt threatened (but highly unlikely) destruction of the lesotho highlands water project (supplying gauteng province) by mutinying lesotho defence force soldiers—led to the deaths of over 50 of the latter alongside nine sandf troops (out of 600 deployed) and 40 africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 76 t h e t h i n k e r civilians (ka’nkosi, 1998). the series of fights was described by south af rican political scientist philip frankel (2000) as a ‘debacle’ that fulfilled ‘some of the worst predictions of brutality, ill-discipline and poor leadership’ in the new democratic army (though neethling [1999] defended it). • the burundi mission was successful within the narrow terms of a 2001–09 mandate—in which 750 sandf troops were deployed to help the local army halt a 1993–2005 civil war, and specifically to protect 150 formerly exiled hutu politicians—but it was not a lasting peace. shortly after sandf left, dissatisfaction over the 2010 and 2015 elections led to an attempted coup and widespread civil society protest that continues into the 2020s. • in sudan, sandf’s deployment—through the un-af rican union hybrid mission in darfur— left hundreds of troops vulnerable in mid-2015 to an (alleged) near-hostage situation. this was due to sudanese soldiers’ anger at their leader omar al-bashir’s potential arrest while visiting johannesburg for an af rican union conference, although that was resolved thanks to al-bashir’s escape before the court-ordered arrest was implemented. he skipped out of south af rica surreptitiously—with president jacob zuma’s open condonation—after an arrest warrant was issued thanks to a local legal ngo’s desire to see the international criminal court’s mandate followed, which in turn led zuma to begin withdrawal f rom the icc. on the one hand, sudanese peace activists considered sandf’s troop withdrawal in 2016 to be dangerously premature but on the other, as heitman remarked, ‘the mission has been largely futile as a result of its forces being matched if not overmatched by the weaponry available to the various militias’ (fabricius, 2016). a small residual team was left behind, but in 2019 it suffered the temporary loss of two of their vehicles in a hijacking, although they were returned, albeit at the expense of some local fatalities (martin, 2019). • in the central af rican republic capital bangui, in march 2013, the deployment of 220 sandf troops was even more chaotic than in lesotho, because both presidents thabo mbeki and zuma had agreed to defend the dictator francois bozizé following a 2006 deal for diamond market monopoly control and other commercial opportunities shared with the af rican national congress’ investment arm chancellor house (amabhungane, 2013). but 15 sandf fatalities resulted when bozizé was overthrown by the rebel séléka movement that month, leaving bitter troops to tell sunday times reporters: ‘our men were deployed to various parts of the city, protecting belongings of south af ricans. they were the first to be attacked… outside the different buildings – the ones which belong to businesses in jo’burg’ (hosken and mahlangu, 2013). • in the eastern democratic republic of the congo in 2013 (shortly after the battle of bangui), zuma renewed sandf’s 1,300-strong role in the un peace-keeping mission – including deployment at bunia, within 50km of a lake albert oil concession worth $10 billion that his nephew khulubuse zuma very dubiously acquired in 2010 f rom drc president joseph kabila jr. this continual redeployment has occurred notwithstanding allegations of south af rican troops’ abuse of local residents, and indeed further scandals soon followed including drunken (and sexual) rampages, and one case in which sandf troops ignored a 2016 massacre by warlords just a kilometre f rom their base (allison, 2016). along with other grievances, this led to intense youth protests against the un mission in 2021, at least one of which resulted in civilian fatalities. • finally, the internal south african deployments of sandf troops began in 2019 in mitchells plain and other cape town working-class townships in order to subdue gang war, and by april 2020 were amplified into enforcement of one of the world’s most stringent economic lockdowns. nearly 80,000 troops (including reserve forces) served at peak from may–september, leading to continual controversies over abuse. the main newspaper in johannesburg editorialised: ‘many stories of brutality by sandf members are doing the rounds among communities and on social media. the military had been found to be enforcing the covid-19 lockdown at the expense of undermining human rights, personal dignity and common sense. a solution is needed, urgently, to deal with the mindset of the men and women in the military’ (the star, 2021). then in mid-july 2021, the sandf was suddenly called into service to quell rioting in two provinces, which led to more than 330 deaths and $5 billion in damages over four days. these were not the usual south african service delivery africa as usual 77 protests, which in some periods of dissent occur thousands of times annually, nor instances of progressive advocacy pressure by unions or social movements. they were chaotic revolts, with no logic aside f rom consumerist looting, although the initial spark had a zulu-ethnicist flavour in support of jailed former president zuma. the sandf deployment began with an initial 2,500 troops but these had so little visible presence in durban, pietermaritzburg, johannesburg, pretoria or two dozen other sites of rioting. the force was suddenly boosted to 25,000. this left reduced capacity to send the scheduled 1,500 troops to mozambique at an anticipated cost of nearly $70 million. however, an advance sandf team did deploy to cabo delgado on schedule in late july 2021. in many such settings, sandf troops appeared not only unwelcome but also unprepared, as several otherwise pro-intervention commentators (not just heitman) grudgingly acknowledged. and this, then, brings home the ultimate logic of pro-war advocacy: restoring sandf budgets. conclusion: sandf-restoration rhetoric or climatereparations responsibilities the pro-war commentariat will not succeed because material conditions do not favour a successful subimperial outcome. these conditions are not likely to change, because the regular ridicule sandf has received for incompetence was, to some extent, because of persistent post-apartheid budget cuts, and these will worsen in the 2020s due to extreme neoliberal fiscal pressures greater than the sub-imperial counter-pressures. sandf’s operational problems were exacerbated in 2021 by the treasury’s renewed austerity drive, in the wake of a substantial budget deficit opening up due to the covid-19 lockdown in 2020 (gdp was 6.4 percent lower than in 2019 and tax revenues had dropped even more). in april 2021, following a $1.04 billion budget cut over three years, defence minister nosiviwe mapisa-nqakula (2021) complained to parliament: ‘our defence capabilities are under extreme stress. our ability to equip and train our force appropriately has become progressively more difficult. the current threat manifestations require more boots on the ground, which is contrary to the imposed funding ceiling on personnel.’ according to heitman: ‘the army bluntly doesn’t have enough infantry to handle the mozambique deployment plus the one in the congo plus the border. we don’t have the air lift to move troops around quickly. we don’t have enough rooivalk attack helicopters. we don’t have the naval assets to really secure the mozambique channel as well as our own waters… we haven’t been spending money to maintain our f rigates. we haven’t like given them refits. they’re starting to have problems. things are starting to break. there aren’t enough spares. i think only one of the three submarines is operational at the moment.’ (sa broadcasting corporation, 2021) as for sadc’s samim force, heitman predicted it would be ‘laughably too small to do the job’ with ‘no real reconnaissance capability, no tactical mobility. it’s actually a joke in poor taste’ (sa broadcasting corporation, 2021). after the first six months of deployment, heitman reconfirmed that samim was ‘faffing around,’ not ‘achieving anything’, because it remained ‘ludicrously weak and under-armed with criminally inadequate air support’ (hanlon, 2022). heitman’s agenda has always been to beef up military spending (he is a defence industry consultant, having served in the sa military during apartheid). so, the critique above might be taken as akin to a boy crying ‘wolf!’ with respect to sandf’s capacity to mobilise roughly 1,500 troops, of whom only a few hundred were hunting the islamic terrorists at any given time. still, the critique of sandf’s incapacity does correspond to what, since 2019, has been a popular trope: army troops were given the derogatory nickname-meme ‘mabena,’ after a soldier whose commanding officer called him out (in what became a viral clip) for being ‘tall and lazy for nothing’ (timeslive, 2019). pretoria’s head of international intelligence, robert mcbride, amplified the bumbling-fighter impression in 2021 when four of his undercover security operatives f rom pretoria were captured by mozambican counterparts, and when conf ronted with the information by a journalist, he ‘responded to city press’ query with two laughing emojis’ (stone, 2021). the following week, mcbride was suspended because of the humiliation ramaphosa and state security minister ayanda africa as usual v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 78 t h e t h i n k e r dlodlo felt when meeting nyusi and requesting him to release the south af rican spies, in the course of thorny negotiations then underway over sadc troop deployments (felix, 2021). however, it later transpired that dlodlo had approved the spies’ mission in writing during the palma attack in late march, reinforcing pretoria’s keystone cops image (masondo, 2021). perhaps reflecting such weaknesses, samim was kept away f rom the two areas with gas inf rastructure (palma and mocimboa da praia) f rom mid-2021 into 2022. joe hanlon (2022) observed that sandf-led regional fighters ‘failed to quell the insurgents. and both lesotho and south af rica are having financial problems and may not be able to continue to pay for troops and supplies.’ but all of this requires us to consider some uncomfortable conclusions. neethling (2021a) provides one approach in the thinker: ‘all in all, the problems in mozambique primarily relate to what matsinhe and valoi describe as ‘four decades of halfmast sovereignty’ in mozambique, which is evident f rom the fact that, since the country’s independence in 1975, the central government in maputo has lacked a monopoly over the means of violence in its territory and its long coastline.’ but when neethling and fellow laptop bombardiers advocate more violence—with the mozambique state better backed by sub-imperial and imperial military forces—so as to solve the blood methane war, they are fantasising. in contrast, there is a distinctly different narrative for progressive intellectuals to grapple with, which concerns the way global north economies (including roughly the wealthiest 5% of south af ricans) have overconsumed fossil fuels and run up a vast ‘climate debt’ in the process. one result is that in spite of so-far negligible contributions to the catastrophe (i.e. trivial per capita greenhouse gas emissions), mozambique was f rom 2000–19 the world’s fourth-most climatedamaged country (behind only puerto rico, myanmar, and haiti) (reliefweb, 2021). the unprecedented cyclones, floods and droughts, especially in 2019, were compensated only tokenistically by foreign aid. the case for the north—including commentators in the pretoria-midrand-joburg-potch-stellenboschsaldanha-cape town foreign policy intelligentsia—to face up to their/our climate liabilities, simply cannot be disputed. (unless, that is, we are climate denialists in the donald trump tradition, or hit-and-run-style climate-debt denialists who refuse ‘polluter pays’ responsibilities.) this is especially obvious in relation to the 2019 cyclones that were most damaging to mozambique (mikulewicz and jaf ry, 2019). frequentflying academics and researchers have been especially f rightened of admitting that climate damage should be part of our conferencing and lifestyle calculations. if ‘build back better’—following the 2020–21 covid-19 travel and in-person meetings pause—is to mean anything, then it would be logical to begin identifying how to repay mozambicans for the vast damage, and also encourage to no further harm. one route is compensating that society for not extracting the cabo delgado gas, and insisting on rapid demobilisation of samim and sandf and the earliest possible exit by big oil. it may sound outlandish to leave such vast fossil resources unexploited, but even the south af rican government acknowledged this logic in mid-2021 when its nationally determined contribution offer demanded: ‘the just transition in south af rica will require international cooperation and support… by the international climate and development and finance community for non-fossil-fuel development in mpumalanga…’ (republic of south af rica, 2021: 28). of course, to expect the pretoria government to act consistently with such rhetoric, given its worsening methane addiction and sub-imperial proclivities, would be naïve. instead, civil society advocates and scholars must continue to arise f rom within civil society with three interrelated demands: to stop the pro-war commentariat will not succeed because material conditions do not favour a successful subimperial outcome. these conditions are not likely to change, because the regular ridicule sandf has received for incompetence was, to some extent, because of persistent post-apartheid budget cuts, and these will worsen in the 2020s due to extreme neoliberal fiscal p essures greater than the subimperial counter-pressures. africa as usual 79 the war, to leave fossil fuels unexploited, and to use compensatory funds to pay poor people in northern mozambique (as an alternative to them picking up arms with islamic guerrillas). most recently, political-ecologist scholar-activists anabela lemos (2022), boaventura monjane (2021), teresa cunha and isabel casimiro (2021), and samantha hargreaves and lemos (2021) have made these arguments, as have many within the alternactiva progressive activist network, the união nacional de camponeses (unac) peasant movements, the friends of the earth affiliate ja! (host of the “say no to gas!” international campaign) and the centre for living earth’s territórios em conflicto. here in south af rica, solidarity activist groups which in 2021 commented along the same lines include the international labour rights information group and south af rican federation of trade unions. in harare, the zimbabwe coalition on debt and development were similarly in solidarity. regional networks committed to leaving fossil fuels under the mozambique channel and solidarity payments to compensate, include women in mining, the rural women’s assembly and the southern af rican people’s solidarity network. in lisbon, solidarity protests were organised by climaximo, 2degrees artivism, and the youth movement’s greve climática estudantil. in london, friends of the earth uk offered support (bond, 2022). linking these groups to south af ricans who can expand their struggles against lng exploration in the indian and atlantic oceans is now critical. rising anti-gas sentiments in 2021–22 were sufficient to block south af rica’s two main offshore seismic-blasting explorations (by shell, total and local ally johnny copelyn). in those cases, like mozambique, the south af rican state’s objective has been to ensure foreign corporations—especially those f rom johannesburg operating regionally— could engage in extractivist profiteering, in the process impoverishing local residents through displacement, pollution, and depletion of nonrenewable resources. as refugees f rom such conflict spill back into south af rica (such as congolese immigrants since the early 2000s), working-class xenophobia surges. there is little or no south af rican comprehension of the terror felt by those fleeing f rom such resource wars. perhaps it is unfair and incorrect to paint all the laptop bombardiers mentioned in this article with the same brush, including accusations about their self-destructive climate denialism, their desires for militarist alliance-making between pretoria and the vicious, corrupt maputo regime, their apparent nostalgia for cross-border war-making, and—for many, not all—their absurd faith in a declining subimperial army that they believe simply needs more funding. perhaps these scholars will start considering the realities discussed here and not avoid them— and perhaps even take a progressive not utterly reactionary point of view. if not, if they stay the course, the pro-military lobbyists court the risk of extreme self-harm in mozambique, and further harm to our own society and our species’ potential for survival, too. references africa commission. 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(2002). ‘from the sadf to the sandf: safeguarding south africa for a better life for all?’ centre for the study of violence and reconciliation violence and transition series, 7. stratfor. (2009). ‘monography for comment: south africa.’ wikileaks, may 5 [online]. available at: http://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=951571. the economist. (2020). ‘why african governments still hire mercenaries.’ 28 may [online]. available at: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/05/28/why-african-governments-still-hire-mercenaries. the star. (2021). ‘soldiers enforce lockdown rules at the expense of citizens’ human rights.’ johannesburg. 23 march [online]. available at: https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/opinion-analysis/soldiers-enforce-lockdown-rules-at-the-expense-of-citizens-human-rights. timeslive. (2019). ‘watch hilarious clips of soldier mabena who keeps disappointing.’ 14 june [online]. available at: https://www.timeslive.co.za/ news/south-africa/2019-06-14-watch-hilarious-clips-of-soldier-mabenawho-keeps-disappointing/. vreÿ, f. (2021). ‘delay in sending regional forces to mozambique could exact a high price.’ the conversation, 26 may [online]. available at: https://theconversation.com/delay-in-sending-regional-forces-to-mozambique-could-exact-a-high-price-159753. africa as usual t h e t h i n k e r12 higher education leadership by jaco du preez and saurabh sinha in the era of the fourth industrial revolution introduction a number of universities in south af rica have taken up the quest for the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). universities like the university of johannesburg (uj) aspire to “dynamically shape the future”, and the 4ir provides a perfect segue for this – the university’s approach towards the 4ir catalyses us to shape graduates who are able to think differently and to distinguish themselves in this way. in particular, our focus has been on learning. learning encompasses a blend of teaching, research and innovation in an era where even the fundamentals are shifting. through a considered process that took almost a year, uj decided to contextualise its 2025 strategy for global excellence and stature (ges) for the 4ir. this strategic or catalytic initiative has wide implications for the university’s business, and in particular for the research-innovation nexus. the quest is to graduate students who are able to access and define new economic zones. south af rica’s current focus is not only on the physical and urban economies, but also on the digital economy and the oceans economy, through operation phakisa (“hurry up”). the south af rican government has more recently extended these initiatives to the basic education sector. the digital economy brings about opportunities for creating jobs in a virtual environment, as well as new ways of combatting poverty. while it may be tempting to point out that one of the main culprits education and 4ir 13v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 education and 4ir higher education leadership behind the rise in income inequality worldwide is technology, this conclusion does not do the complexity of the problem any justice. technology improves efficiency and creates avenues for wealth creation. the methods by which we utilise the benefits of these improvements can play a vital role in income disparity, as reported in an in-depth analysis of countries throughout western and eastern europe with respect to technological change (kharlamova et al., 2018). the digital economy has, however, been around for some time. one could visualise the oceans and digital/data economy in an analogous way. in the ocean, for instance, there is much water, but most of this is not accessible for (say) drinking. the digital economy similarly has much data, but there are limitations that prevent making use of all this data in a meaningful way – as computing and communication technologies (wired and wireless) have yet to converge in a sophisticated way. sophistication refers to the inclusion of advanced artificial intelligence (ai) systems utilising machine and, in particular, deep learning. the latter includes data fusion f rom various man-machine sources, and this will have privacy, security and other secondary implications. advanced systems, such as traffic networks, may face the complication of a hijack and individual data breaches would routinely occur. using technologies such as ai in a multipronged way refers to the 4ir and would allow for accessing and utilising data beyond offerings of the “traditional” digital economy (the third industrial revolution). in the analogy of the oceans, it would be like accessing water (data) or aspects of the ocean (digital economy) that are yet to be harvested in a sustainable way. with that said, the importance of curbing the hype behind the alleged powers of big data and seriously taking into account its real world implications, such as privacy and information security, should not be brushed aside. it is important to note that the digital economy has the potential of deepening inequality, unless a consideration of digital equity and equality is included as an “initial specification” in education and economic scenarios related to the 4ir. in the education scenario, inclusiveness must be a central focus in project and programme initiatives. fortunately, younger generations (millennials and beyond) are a majority in the “global south” and their energy, combined with the 4ir, could bring about a new kind of global renewal for equality. in the economic scenario, government must play a role in encouraging entrepreneurship by assisting start-up companies, supporting small, medium & micro enterprises (smmes), encouraging and driving investment in digital inf rastructure, and guiding the adaptation of primary and secondary education to the new digital landscape. an example of such initiatives would be to incentivise the 4ir as an economic stimulus, with productivity gains gradually being taxed. the nature of start-up companies operating in highly competitive markets requires government to lower the barrier to entry and loosen the regulatory burden for small businesses. the situation is worsened in the case of the digital economy. the world bank notes that it takes an average of 40 days to start a business in south af rica, compared to four days in the u.s. and five days in the u.k. as initiatives progress in parallel, education-economic thinking for inclusiveness would need to be central to the graduate’s paradigm of thinking, as it would encourage economic participation and would enable previously unexplored horizons. university students therefore have to be trained to reach a new level of digital astuteness, to access multiple thought domains through interdisciplinary activity, and to develop a mindset that aspires beyond the ordinary. the 4ir provides a perfect platform for this new model of education. a distinguishing characteristic of the 4ir is the effort expended to ensure sustainability, and an acute awareness of the social change that accompanies technological revolution. it can be argued that these changes occurred rather organically in the past, and were in part also a product of the rapidly varying geopolitical situation across the world (prime examples are the two world wars, which accelerated technological and it is important to note that the digital economy has the potential of deepening inequality, unless a consideration of digital equity and equality is included as an “initial specification” in education and economic scenarios related to the 4ir. t h e t h i n k e r14 education and 4ir scientific development in addition to drastically altering global economic activity). in today’s world, broadly speaking, things are more stable, and new technologies need time to be fully adapted and to produce their full effect. it is by no means far-fetched to consider the higher education system as an industry in itself, given that it records about $380 billion worth of economic activity in the u.s. (penprase, 2018). to this extent, the analysis of the education system in the context of the 4ir can be performed. this article first analyses the education paradigm in a historical context, given that there is much to learn f rom the joint advancement and interaction of technology and higher education, as evidenced in the previous three industrial revolutions. with the background established, we zero in on the unique situation in south af rica and discuss various opportunities where 4ir technology could be adopted in the process of propelling higher education into the next age. the effect of the first three industrial revolutions on the education paradigm figure 1 provides a brief, visualised summary of the move towards industry 4.0 and highlights some of the pertinent technologies that have come along with it. the utilisation of the 4ir technologies outlined in figure 1 has been studied extensively for industrial and manufacturing applications (perera et al., 2015), but recent efforts in the education industry have also been promising. the first industrial revolution abruptly highlighted the limitations of the educational system at the time, and it opened up a diverse array of new disciplines that could be pursued in educational programs. the new education, as described by charles eliot (president of harvard at the time), details a dramatic shift in the education paradigm, and universities across the world adopted the german model of postgraduate research (hawkins, 1964). as a result, dozens of research-focused universities started to appear in the united states, and this model is still influential to how universities are operated today (watson, 2010). the second half of the 19th century, a time period commonly associated with the second industrial revolution, saw the emergence of electrically driven manufacturing technologies, leading to what was known at the time as a “new economy”. significant improvements in access to higher education were achieved, which in turn produced a genuine leap in discovery by harnessing the possibilities brought about by technological revolution. the united states in particular saw a drastic increase in innovative institutions of higher education, driven by a combination of private and public funding (penprase, 2018). moreover, the morrill act of 1862 expanded the options for further study to agriculture, mechanical arts and figure 1. pathway to the fourth industrial revolution across time. 15v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 education and 4ir science and engineering, with the intention of opening up educational opportunities to the industrial class (jolly, 2009). as a result of this and the previously-unseen profitability of new industries brought about by the revolution, institutions such as stanford university and the university of chicago were founded (in 1885 and 1890, respectively). smaller colleges such as the throop college (caltech as it is known today) were also established during this time. the societal and economic changes were both a product of the revolution and a response to it. a role for women as an integral part of the academy and industry was cultivated by the prominence of co-educational institutions. given the recent emergence of the third industrial revolution (which will loosely be described as the computer revolution of the later decades of the 20th century), the effect that it has had on higher education has arguably only been truly felt in the past couple of years. countries across the world have been exhibiting increasing participation rates to higher education programs, and the globalisation of research efforts has further added to this effect. moreover, the prominence of remote learning has increased substantially due to the availability of online courses – many of which are available f rom highly reputable institutions, such as the open courseware (ocw) initiative f rom the massachusetts institute of technology (mit). education in south africa the problems facing our education system in south af rica are multi-faceted and should be approached as such. among age groups f rom 15 to 64 years, the youth (15-24 years) bracket boasts the highest unemployment for all educational levels (stats sa, 2019). more than 30% of graduates of some or other form of tertiary education are not employed, while close to 60% of young people that did not graduate f rom high school are in the same boat. a breakdown of educational engagement for 18 to 24 year olds as measured in 2014 is shown in figure 2 (stats sa, 2019). figure 2 shows that 58.9% of our youth are neither employed nor engaged in any form of tertiary training, educational or otherwise. there are plenty of factors that contribute to these alarmingly high rates – resource availability and utilisation in primary and secondary schools, access to mother-tongue education, administrative and policy issues, and school inf rastructure problems, to name but a few, and limiting the discussion to but a few paragraphs is nowhere near enough to do the issue justice (legotlo and wilf red, 2014). about half of individuals between 18 to 24 state that a lack of funding is the reason behind their inability to attend further education, compared to about 18% that indicated insufficient academic performance. the solutions that the 4ir could bring to problems such as accessibility to education could be significant, but they would rely on harnessing the many aspects of current and future generations of intelligent systems. a handful of initiatives are discussed in the succeeding section. one of the primary challenges of the 4ir is the scarcity of qualified, trained personnel to spearhead the movement, especially in higher education (baygin et al., 2016). as such, the importance of improving access to online resources, training material, courses and remote instruction cannot be overstated, as it will facilitate greater enrolment. online universities, for example, are not burdened by the need for physical proximity and the maintenance of campus figure 2. summary of individual engagement in higher education for persons between 18 and 24. significant improvements in access to higher education were achieved, which in turn produced a genuine leap in discovery by harnessing the possibilities brought about by technological revolution. t h e t h i n k e r16 education and 4ir inf rastructure, although they do come with their own challenges with regards to inf rastructure upkeep. the upcoming section will highlight some aspects of the 4ir that could greatly benefit young people who are eager to learn. applications and educational improvements inspired by the 4ir the subtle entry of machine learning techniques into our daily lives in recent years has truly enabled connected devices to operate as extensions of people, augmenting many ways in which they operate at home and at work. a new era of augmented intelligence is bound to drastically change current educational systems, and the success of the transition relies on efficiently manoeuvring technological changes. the trend of augmentation (as opposed to automation) will most likely continue in the education industry, considering the importance of human interaction and relationships during development. higher education (he) forms an integral part of the 4ir, and he4.0 (as it is occasionally referred to) will no doubt transform the education system for the better (xing and marwala, 2017). an effective educational plan to cope with the 4ir must follow the example of the third industrial revolution, which took a more hybrid approach to instruction and made a vast array of resources available on demand, even outside of scheduled hours. massive open online courses massive open online courses (mooc) are a departure f rom the classical lecturing paradigm, where students are gathered in a classroom run by one or more lecturers. removing the need for physical proximity to a lecturer and significantly expanding the reach of lectures presented are two primary positives offered by mooc. the success of online training services such as udemy, coursera, udacity and skillshare (to name but a f raction of the selection available) clearly highlights the efficacy of these platforms. courses are rated by users, but are generally not presented and evaluated according to any particular standard – an issue that should be addressed if such platforms are to be expanded to universityand graduate-level training. the open university is an example of a successful online educational platform that offers degrees accredited by both the middle states commission on higher education and the midatlantic region commission on higher education. perhaps one of the greatest advantages of the online university, and for selected academic programmes, is the sizeable reduction in inf rastructure and upkeep costs. with south af rica’s higher education institutions reporting a reduction in capital expenditure of about 6% between 2015 and 2017, reducing the cost of providing tertiary education is crucial (stats sa, 2018). remote learning, tutoring and support an integral part of mooc, remote tutoring and support can also be leveraged in traditional teaching environments. moreover, access to online discussion boards and remote support f rom tutors is, for the most part, significantly more efficient compared to traditional teaching environments. the online interface between students and facilitators opens up additional possibilities, such as translating written material into different languages. natural language processing (nlp) can greatly assist in this regard, especially considering the amount of algorithm training material available. an extension of this is the translation of speech material into a suitable language. the usefulness of such an approach is of course subject to the characteristics of each particular language, but in many cases portions of the material that have considerable overlap between languages could be translated, whereas more technical aspects may not be translatable to begin with. with that said, nlp as a field is not mature enough to handle such complex tasks, seeing that lexical, syntactic, referential and pragmatic ambiguities – fundamental characteristics of language – are not yet properly defined within the f ramework in which nlp interprets language. a new era of augmented intelligence is bound to drastically change current educational systems, and the success of the transition relies on efficiently manoeuvring technological changes. the trend of augmentation (as opposed to automation) will most likely continue in the education industry, considering the importance of human interaction and relationships during development. 17v o l u m e 8 3 / 2 0 2 0 education and 4ir automated administration administrative tasks – such as grading, the collection and analysis of historical data, student administration and feedback – could benefit f rom the adoption of several machine learning paradigms. tools such as nbgrader offer a standard interface through jupyter notebooks that guide instructors through the grading process of a particular notebook. the tool is an example of an integrated grading solution that is used to release assignments to students, analyse results, collect submissions and provide a combination of automated and manual grading options. another example is gradescope, which is currently used in at least 500 universities worldwide. this service is capable of grading just about any subject (computer science, math, engineering, economics, etc.), regardless of whether the assignment is paper-based (i.e. with handwritten answers). in-depth analyses of each student, as well as the class as a whole, throughout the course of a semester can be generated easily. gradescope also automatically groups similar answers, allowing instructors to grade multiple papers simultaneously. individualised and adaptive learning data collected f rom online portals, mobile learning applications, student assignments and other sources opens the door to a long-term analysis of each individual student that can be produced without much involvement f rom an instructor. all of this data documents the journey of each student, which allows the instructor to access key insights that almost certainly would not be available if such a task were to be approached manually. like augmenting administrative tasks, this could allow institutions to service a larger number of students with critical instructive tasks. in an environment where outstanding instructors are limited, this could significantly improve the student intake without necessarily sacrificing quality. furthermore, online material could be tailored to each student: by giving a proficiency goal at the end of a course, a customised pathway through the coursework can be recommended to ensure that students can progress at their own pace. improved connectivity and accessibility the profound proliferation of connected and affordable mobile devices, the widely available inf rastructure for high-speed internet, and the abundance of quality educational content available online has drastically altered the delivery of educational services for the foreseeable future. with mobile providers investing in 5g inf rastructure, and the department of communications and digital technologies giving the go-ahead on initiating the rollout, internet access is bound to improve even further. providers could partner up with universities (physical and online) to offer educational packages that would further improve connectivity for students. collaboration between institutions in different hemispheres has become a reality with the support of the education cloud, which not only improves the quality of teaching but benefits research efforts in multiple different ways. in the 4ir paradigm, the student is seen as a customer who buys into a service with an envisioned outcome, and the service is designed to meet this outcome within certain restrictions – much like universities are accountable to accrediting agencies. providing students with practical content outside of their normal f ramework greatly improves long-term understanding, and this is possible now more than ever with the connected nature of our lives. independent online communities of academics, researchers and students have emerged, facilitating the exchange of experiences, findings and material. platforms have become a truly dominant approach to delivering services. they act as mediators between various groups (such as between users and advertisers, as is the case for most f ree-to-use platforms available today), providing the owners with vast information about user trends and habits. this, in turn, enables the continuous improvement of services and the the profound proliferation of connected and affordable mobile devices, the widely available infrastructure for high-speed internet, and the abundance of quality educational content available online has drastically altered the delivery of educational services for the foreseeable future. t h e t h i n k e r18 education and 4ir expansion of the target audience. the demand for enhanced performance measurement, internationalisation, competition, marketisation and innovation is driving universities towards an unbundling into multiple discrete services (galbraith, 2018). these services can be catered for by a range of providers, and institutions can then package these services as needed. this creates an education-on-demand paradigm, which can be accessed (and accordingly monetised) by the student as required. conclusion accessibility to tertiary education remains a central problem in south af rica, f rom the perspective of students as well as instructors. limited and expensive inf rastructure, practical limitations in terms of classroom size and instructor workload, as well as the limited availability of quality personnel are some of the major problems that must be overcome. the somewhat rudimentary requirements for beginning to harness the educational benefits of the 4ir – such as low-cost smartphones and widely-available broadband internet – are readily available, and online learning is challenging the traditional notion of reliance on a campus-based university education in order to access higher learning opportunities. for us to realise the true potential of the technologies that have taken the world by storm in the 4ir, a new generation of trained and capable instructors must play their part in transforming institutions of higher education through a multi-disciplinary approach. the 4ir is changing every aspect of our lives and is transforming the world into a connected, augmented marketplace of ideas. as industries are gradually reacting and adapting to the 4ir, it is safe to say that the best is undoubtedly yet to come, and the opportunities for growth are up for the taking. it is, however, naive to ignore the challenges – technological and societal – that the new revolution poses, and we should be careful to not sacrifice hard-earned f reedoms in the name of progress. an equally sophisticated effort must be directed at maintaining privacy, information security and f reedom f rom tyranny. in solzhenitsyn’s address to the international academy of philosophy in lichtenstein, he famously stated “no, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth. the victory of technological civilization has also instilled in us a spiritual insecurity. its gifts enrich, but enslave us as well. all is interests, we must not neglect our interests, all is a struggle for material things; but an inner voice tells us that we have lost something pure, elevated, and f ragile. we have ceased to see the purpose” (1993). ■ references baygin, m. et al. (2016) an effect analysis of industry 4.0 to higher education, in 15th international conference on information technology based higher education and training (ithet), istanbul, 2016, pp. 1-4 galbraith, g. (2018). the ‘unbundling’ of the university experience – a shot across the bows. higher education policy insitute [online]. available at: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2018/11/12/6709/ [accessed 31 jul. 2019] hawkins, h. (1964). charles w. eliot, university reform, and religious faith in america, 1869-1909. the journal of american history, 51(2), pp. 191–213. jolly, j. l. (2009). the national defense education act, current stem initiative, and the gifted. gifted child today, 32(2), pp. 50–53. kharlamova, g., stavytskyy, a. and zarotiadis, g. (2018). the impact of technological changes on income inequality: the eu states case study. journal of international studies, 11(2), pp. 76–94 [online], doi: 10.14254/2071-8330.2018/11-2/6. legotlo and wilf red, m. (eds), (2014). challenges and issues facing the education system in south af rica. pretoria: af rica institute of south af rica. penprase, b. e. (2018). the fourth industrial revolution and higher education, in higher education in the era of the fourth industrial revolution. singapore: palgrave macmillan, pp. 207–229. perera, c. et al. (2015). a survey on internet of things f rom industrial market perspective, ieee access. ieee, 2, pp. 1660–1679 [online], doi: 10.1109/access.2015.2389854. stats sa, (2018). financial statistics of higher education institutions. department of statistics, pretoria, south af rica [online]. available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p91031/p910312017.pdf. stats sa, (2019). quarterly labour force survey: q1 2019. department of statistics, pretoria, south af rica [online]. available at: http://www.statssa. gov.za/publications/p0211/p02111stquarter2019.pdf. solzhenitsyn, a. (1993). notable quotations. the aleksandr solzhenitsyn center [online]. available at: https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/notablequotations south af rican market insights, (2019). south af rica’s education statistics 2019. south af rican market insights [online]. available at: https://www. southaf ricanmi.com/education-statistics.html [accessed 30 jul. 2019] watson, p. (2010). the german genius: europe’s third renaissance, the second scientific revolution, and the twentieth century. new york: harper perennial. xing, b. and marwala, t. (2017). implications of the fourth industrial age for higher education. the thinker, vol. 73, pp. 10-15. for us to realise the true potential of the technologies that have taken the world by storm in the 4ir, a new generation of trained and capable instructors must play their part in transforming institutions of higher education through a multidisciplinary approach. 44 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract membrane technology is crucial to achieving sustainable development goal no. 6 of clean water and sanitation for all. despite its numerous benefits, high capital and operating costs pose major challenges. recent research has focused on sustainable materials as membranes and more effective cleaning regimes to reduce costs and improve membrane lifespan. while south af rica and sweden have both begun using membrane technology for water and wastewater treatment, it remains relatively rare. collaborations through sasuf aim to evaluate and share best practices. although mbrs have produced high-quality effluent in south af rica, cost, maintenance, and membrane replacement, as well as river pollution, remain major considerations. in contrast, sweden has seen large-scale membrane installations in drinking water and wastewater treatment plants. establishing working membrane references is crucial to the success of membrane technology, which is well-established globally but often requires local adaptations. collaborations between the two countries are essential to support this approach by sharing knowledge and learning f rom each other. by heidi richards and frank lipnizki evaluation and mapping of sustainable water and wastewater treatment with membrane processes in south africa and sweden 45 total membrane market for industrial/municipal and medical applications is today approx. 20–25 billion euro worldwide and the market is still growing with a stable average annual growth rate (aagr) of 8–9%. the water and wastewater market including desalination is the largest membrane market after haemodialysis for treating patients with kidney failure. other, key membrane markets are agro-food, biorefineries and biotech including pharmaceutical applications. the key membrane technologies are the pressure-driven processes microfiltration (mf), ultrafiltration (uf), nanofiltration (nf) and reverse osmosis (ro). figure 1, below, shows an overview of how these processes can retain different microand nano-pollutants from water and thus purify the water. despite the global success of membrane technology, membrane processes for water and wastewater treatment are still relatively rare in south africa and sweden. thus, this collaboration between south africa and sweden tries to accelerate this development by mapping and evaluating the status on membrane technology for drinking water and wastewater treatment in the two countries and share experiences and best practices. v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction water is a global future challenge as highlighted in sustainable development goal 6: ‘clean water and sanitation for all’. one of the key technologies which can significantly contribute to reach this important goal is membrane technology. although there are numerous merits of this technology, some major challenges like high capital and operating costs still exist. the heart of membrane technology is a semipermeable (often polymeric) membrane which acts as a barrier retaining targeted components and allowing others to pass. in order to address the operating cost challenges, recent research has focused on the use of more novel, sustainable materials as membranes, as well as more effective cleaning regimes that can improve the membrane life span and reduce costs in the longer term. membrane technology is still often considered as an emerging technology but in fact it is already a widely established technology for both drinking water preparation and wastewater treatment. the success of membrane technology started in the 1960s with the invention of the phase inversion membranes. since then, the membrane market grew rapidly and the (source: the authors) figure 1: membrane processes for water and wastewater treatment and their retentions. 46 south africa globally, membrane technology is very common for the treatment of water and wastewater; in south africa, however, this is not the case. the few drinking water treatment plants using membrane technology are based on ro as part of the treatment regime; however, the technology has been slow in uptake in the wastewater treatment area. this is due to several complex reasons that are not all easy to overcome. currently there are only 4 membrane bioreactors (mbrs) operating on wastewater treatment plants (wwtps) in south africa, a shockingly low number considering that there is a total of 824 treatment plants. this fact led us to look critically at the existing plants and their successes and/or challenges. south africa has nine provinces, of which gauteng is the smallest in land size, but the most densely populated. the province that is furthest south, and the most well-known by tourists, is the western cape. it is here where one currently finds the only mbrs in the country. table 1 indicates the location of the mbrs that are currently in operation, as well as the type of effluent that they treat. it must be noted that scientific publications focused on the applications of mbrs in the south african context are very limited; in fact, they are near non-existent. therefore, information obtained for this article was sourced directly from municipal managers with the necessary expertise and background in the technical aspects of the mbrs currently in operation. we acknowledge and thank the city of cape town for their contribution in this regard. plant type location application pilot vs. full scale drinking water ro v&a waterfront – cape town seawater desalination pilot uf + ro beaufort west – western cape reclamation plant ww to drinking water full ro witsand – western cape solar-driven seawater desalination full wastewater mbr malmesbury wwtp – western cape domestic effluent full mbr bellvile wwtp – western cape domestic/industrial effluent full mbr zandvliet wwtp – western cape domestic effluent full mbr stellenbosch wwtp – western cape domestic effluent full (source: the authors) witsand desalination plant was the first desalination plant in south af rica that uses solar energy to power its processes. its new technology applications allow for the elimination of storage batteries in the design. the plant’s new  osmosun® technology involves the use of a specialised ‘intelligent’ membrane that is able to continue delivering  reverse osmosis, even when the sun goes behind a cloud, thus reducing the amount of solar energy delivered (the gremlin, 2019). the energy delivered would increase again when the clouds moved away. this ability to ‘soften’ the variability in the energy delivered preserves the reverse osmosis membranes. at night, when there is no sun, the design allows the plant to switch to conventional grid-electricity and continue working all through the darkness, until the sun rises the next morning. the first municipal mbr module in south af rica was installed at zandvliet wwtp. the mbr plant was sized for 18 ml/d average dry weather flow and was commissioned in 2009. the membranes used were zenon hollow fiber (now suez). the plant is currently significantly overloaded, and a second capacity upgrade will have to occur immediately after the one currently under construction (capacity will increase f rom 72 ml/d – 90 ml/d when complete (mandela, 2019). the plant has a combined inlet works and consists of two treatment modules: t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w table 1: summary of membrane treatment plants in south af rica in 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reverse_osmosis 47v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w • 54 ml/d conventional activated sludge (cas) module treating raw wastewater and using chlorine gas for disinfection (2 bioreactors, mle process configuration); • 18 ml/d mbr treating raw wastewater with dedicated 2mm fine screen, 1 mbr (uct process configuration) and site chlorination for disinfection (chlorine gas). the entire wwtp is currently being upgraded with a new combined inlet works, new combined primary sedimentation, second 18 ml/d mbr section, together with refurbishment of all existing modules and a new mechanical dewatering installation. the commissioning of the new plant is anticipated to be by december 2023.  it is clear that mbrs are producing high quality effluents at the 4 wwtps where there are currently in use, which brings us to the question: why is it not being considered by the rest of the treatment works in south af rica? there are a number of reasons for this, but some of the considerations are: i. first and foremost is the cost of the technology. not only is the budget for construction of a mbr plant huge, but maintenance of the plant and cleaning of the membranes is very expensive. the membranes have a limited life cycle and have to be replaced every number of years. south af rica is still a developing country, with many challenges such as poverty and poor inf rastructure. not all municipalities are therefore equipped to justify such a huge capital expenditure. ii. secondly, our rivers in south af rica, especially in the north of the country in provinces like gauteng, are extremely polluted. discharging a final effluent obtained f rom a multi-million-rand treatment facility into a river that is polluted on a daily basis, is simply not economically feasible. iii. thirdly, due to the two reasons just mentioned, it is very difficult to convince the decision makers in local government to invest in more mbr based wwtps. iv. as researchers in membrane technology, we remain hopeful that this will change in the nottoo-distant future. sweden industrial applications for membrane processes in sweden started in the 1970s. however, in contrast to many other countries, the focus was not on drinking water production but on process applications in the dairy and pulp and paper industry with the demineralisation of whey f rom the cheese production by ultrafiltration as one of success stories. membrane processes for water and wastewater treatment only became established in the swedish market at the beginning of the 21st century. the main reasons for the late entry of these technologies into the swedish market were the generally good availability of highquality water and the initially high costs of membrane processes compared to conventional treatment technologies. however, in recent years, a major change with regard to the amount of large-scale membrane installations has been noted in sweden. generally, three major trends have been observed: 1. drinking water plants based on uf/nf using ground and surface-water, e.g. river or lake water. 2. drinking water plants based on ro using brackish water aka water f rom the baltic sea. 3. wastewater treatment plants using mbrs. an overview of key membrane plants installed in sweden is given in table 2. membrane processes for water and wastewater treatment only became established in the swedish market at the beginning of the 21st century. the main reasons for the late entry of these technologies into the swedish market were the generally good availability of high-quality water and the initially high costs of membrane processes compared to conventional treatment technologies. 48 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w plant type location application pilot vs. full scale ref drinking water uf gothenburg river water full [3] uf kungälv river water full [4] uf varberg lake water and ground water full [5] uf + ro ôland industrial waste and brackish water full [6] uf + ro gotland brackish water 2 x full [7, 8] wastewater mbr stockholm domestic effluent full [9] (source: the authors) a milestone in the use of membrane technology in sweden for drinking water preparation was the lackarebäck plant in gothenburg. the uf plant was not only the first major plant in sweden, with a capacity of 186 ml m3/day, but also one of the largest uf plants in europe (pentair x-flow(a), n.d.). the treatment plant converts river water f rom the göta älv to drinking water for the second largest city in sweden. the success of this plant led to the installation of similar plants using river, lake, and ground water in locations such as kungälv (pentair x-flow(b), n.d.) and varberg (keucken, 2017). another important step was the installation of membrane plants on the swedish baltic sea islands gotland and öland. the first installation was ro plant at herrvik on gotland with a capacity of 20 m3/h in 2016 (region gotland, n.d.). the treatment plant directly takes water f rom the baltic sea, passes it through a strainer plus uf and then desalts it to produce drinking water. the second installation on gotland is the kvarnåkersham plant, which uses the same concept and was started in 2019. with a capacity of 7.5 ml/day it is the largest brackish water desalination plant in scandinavia (ncc, n.d.). an interesting concept for drinking water production was realised at mörbylånga on öland (mörbylånga kommun, n.d.). the plant uses brackish water f rom a well close to the baltic sea and industrial wastewater f rom a food processing plant. the industrial wastewater passes initially through an industrial wwtp and is then further polished by flocculation, uf and uv-light before being mixed with the brackish water. the combined stream is then further treated in a second line of uf, ro and uv-light as major steps before being used as drinking water. most recently the henriksdal wastewater treatment plant in stockholm opened the first of four mbr stages (andersson, 2018). the total capacity of the plant once completed is two million persons equivalent and it will be ranked among the largest mbr plants in the world. an interesting feature is that the plant is completely installed inside a mountain close to the centre of stockholm. the use of mbrs for municipal wastewater treatment is only a very recent trend. it is foreseen that other swedish municipalities will follow that trend and update their wastewater treatment plant to mbrs. table 2: selected membrane plants in sweden status 2022. figure 2: concept of direct membrane filtration (hey, 2016). (source: the authors) 49v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w furthermore, at lund university the use of another concept described as direct membrane filtration (dmf) for municipal wastewater treatment is investigated (hey, 2016). the dmf concept treats municipal wastewater by flocculation/coagulation followed by microsieving and thereafter by mf/ uf, figure 2. key to the process is that negligible biological degradation is involved in the treatment process and thus the solid biodegradable organic load of the wastewater is available for biogas production. the supernatant containing soluble nutrients such as phosphorous, ammonia and nitrogen is available for surrounding agricultural activities. conclusions the use of membrane technology in drinking water and wastewater treatment in south af rica and sweden is growing despite the relative late start of both countries. key for the success is the establishment of working membrane references for both drinking water preparation and wastewater treatment to serve as best practice examples. membrane technology as such is very well established on the global market but often needs some local adaptions to work effectively. reclamation of wastewater effluent would either be done indirectly as present scenarios and/or directly with the use of membranes. thus, the collaborations between south af rica and sweden as done in the south af rica sweden university forum (sasuf) are essential to support this approach by learning f rom one another. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank sasuf plus the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, and lund university for their support of the project. references andersson, s. (2018). ‘henriksdal – snart världens största reningsverk med membranteknik?’ svenskt vatten [online]. available at: www.svensktvatten. se/globalassets/utbildning/konferenser-och-seminarier/2018/nam18/5-sofia-andersson-svoa.pdf hey, t. (2016). ‘municipal wastewater treatment by microsieving, microfiltration and forward osmosis: concepts and potentials.’ doctoral thesis. lund university [online]. available at: lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/16812792/municipal_wastewater_treatment_by_microsieving_microfiltration_and_forward_osmosis.pdf keucken, a. (2017). ‘climate change adaption of waterworks for browning surface waters: nanoand ultrafiltration membrane applications for drinking water treatment.’ doctoral thesis. lund university [online]. available at: lucris. lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/34846542/doctoral_thesis_a.keucken_final.pdf mandela, d. 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access to business training and mentorship facilitated by non-governmental organisations. this paper advances empirical evidence in the field of social development and sustainable livelihoods. using qualitative methodology, i present evidence from 20 women who were beneficiaries of a non-governmental organisation’s entrepreneurship training in the province of gauteng, south africa. underscored by the sustainable livelihood approach, this paper deliberates three connected themes: motivational factors that promote women entrepreneurs, nurturing social networks, and navigating financial capital challenges. the paper affirms women entrepreneurship as a positive social development strategy to assist unemployed women to work towards economic self-reliance. by tanusha raniga | peer reviewed p e e r r e v i e w 18 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 livelihoods and enhance their social, human and financial capital development? the central premise of this article is that to achieve gender equality, human service professionals and policy makers must give women access to business training, psychosocial support, and funding resources. additionally, unemployed women who are determined to break the cycle of poverty have the capacity to sustain their own livelihoods through embracing opportunities for human capabilities development, nurturing business networks, and lobbying for access to government funding to sustain their businesses in the informal economy. the paper begins with a review of literature on the feminisation of poverty which follows an outline of the research methodology. the discussion subsequently presents the three connected themes that distilled f rom the data analysis. the final section of the paper synthesises the women’s reflections and highlights improvement for policy and practice. the feminisation of poverty and social entrepreneurship the feminisation of poverty is a dominant feature in most global south countries where gender discrimination and exclusion are rampant (mcferson, 2010). even though women comprise more than 50% of the world population, it is ironic that women make up over 70% of the poor in global south countries (cheteni, khamfula and mah, 2019). lombard (2019) argues that it is important to take into account that there are signif icant differences in the life experiences of different groups of women in various af rican countries. however, what is common is that they share the same intersectional discriminatory experiences – that of race, class and gender, which are closely connected to structural and systemic flaws in society, as such women across the continent continue to have minimal representation in mainstream economic and policy development. in sub-saharan af rica, 32.7% of women are illiterate, 23% are unemployed, and 59% have little or no access to family wealth (reichelt, makovi and sargsyan, introduction the alarming rate of unemployment amongst women in south af rica is a serious concern to the government and is seen as a key contributing factor to the feminisation of poverty. social entrepreneurship is the cornerstone of socio-economic development of women in society as it opens new job avenues both in the formal and informal economies. the structural humanist theory explores entrepreneurship as opportunities to address access to resources which can either encourage or discourage entrepreneurial behaviour amongst individuals (derera et al., 2020). globally, social entrepreneurship has emerged as a social development inspiration for private, public and social service sectors. south af rica’s economic growth would be skewed without the active involvement of women entrepreneurs, as they constitute approximately half of the country’s population (statistics south af rica, 2020). the promotion of women as entrepreneurs is one such initiative geared up both in the global north and global south countries. a global survey conducted by the world bank in 2017 revealed that australia, canada, france, germany, sweden, the uk and the us have dominated in propagating women entrepreneurship (global women entrepreneur leaders, 2017). transitional economies such as brazil, india, china and south af rica have in the past decade been promoting the growth of women entrepreneurship through government policy, awareness campaigns, corporate social investment, the implementation of social development programs, business training and transformative marketing programs facilitated primarily by nongovernmental organisations. in the same breath, we must acknowledge that in the informal economy there is a wide disparity in women’s economic status. therefore, there is a need to investigate the reasons for the economic and gender disparity of access to resources – and to identify policy and practice strategies to promote the status of women entrepreneurs in the informal economy. the field of women entrepreneurship has attracted the invaluable attention of human service professionals, policy makers, and academics across af rica. this study sought to answer the question: to what extent have entrepreneurial activities contributed to women’s quest to sustain their p e e r r e v i e w 19 2021). to strive for economic empowerment and to break the cycle of poverty of af rican women, there is a need to promote an entrepreneurial culture. the national department of social development strategic plan (2020–2025) maintains that the overinflux of women who work as entrepreneurs in the informal economy, combined with insufficient jobs in the formal economy, remain as challenges for gender mainstreaming. in order to address this macro challenge, it is positive to note that the gauteng department of social development as well as non-governmental organisations are involved in the implementation of entrepreneurial training to promote women entrepreneurs in the age group 18 to 55 years (review of the white paper on social welfare, 2016). in addition, government and ngo practitioners are tapping on corporate social investment funding and private sponsorships to facilitate the development and empowerment of women entrepreneurship. empirical evidence put forth by raniga (2021) in a qualitative study with eight successful women entrepreneurs revealed that economic empowerment can be nurtured through appropriate business training, transformative intervention, and policy support. according to statistics south af rica (2020), women working in the informal economy in gauteng are considered the backbone of the state’s informal economy. they have participated in entrepreneurial activities mostly in the textile industry – processing raw materials, making garments and quilts, shawls and sweaters. the review of the white paper on social welfare in 2016 and the national development plan vision 2030 are commendable policy roll-outs put forth by government to address gender inequality and the socio-economic imbalances that affect women. whilst much was expected f rom the national development plan vision 2030 to mitigate the feminisation of poverty in south af rica, research undertaken by cheteni, khamfula and mah (2019) concludes that girl children and women are still grossly exposed to the feminisation of poverty. raniga (2021) and lombard (2019) posit that entrepreneurial activities have opened up new job opportunities for women and this has emerged as a key economic empowerment strategy in lowincome communities. entrepreneurial activities focus on civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights – thereby influencing public policies, societal attitudes, and socio-political processes (basal et al., 2019). in south af rica, women in urban areas have discovered opportunities where they can network and engage in implementing group economic cooperatives to generate income and sustain livelihoods (raniga, 2017). sustainable livelihood approach this study employed the sustainable livelihood approach (sla) as the key theoretical foundation. prominent proponents of sla, chambers and conway (1992), note that the livelihoods f ramework provides conceptual tools such as assets, capabilities and capitals that enable women to make a sustainable living. this is enshrined in the developmental social welfare approach in south af rica where practitioners who work in low-income communities are encouraged to set up economic cooperatives to improve the social and economic profile and reduce gendered poverty (white paper on social welfare, 1997). serrat (2017) states that the sla does not replace other intervention f rameworks such as participatory development or integrated rural development. instead, it makes a connection between women and the economic environment that influences the outcomes of entrepreneurial activities. it brings attention to the inherent capabilities of women in terms of tapping into their proficiencies, social networks, access to physical resources and financial assets. the national department of social development strategic plan (2020–2025) maintains that the over-influx of women who work as entrepreneurs in the informal economy, combined with insufficient jobs in the formal economy, remain as challenges for gender mainstreaming. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w peer review 20 t h e t h i n k e r training programme, which covered topics such as savings, asset training, technical assistance, psycho-social support and business management. the women were encouraged to set up their own businesses in their communities through selling clothing and household items. a positive aspect of this collective organisation and training was that the women received seed funding f rom tcb to purchase their goods while also having access to consistent psychosocial support, encouragement and mentorship f rom the project coordinators. it was positive that in 2014, tcb received substantial funding f rom the job fund to facilitate the training of the women. in addition, many private sector companies donated unused clothing and household items to tcb and this was sold to the women at reduced costs when they started their own businesses. the project coordinators encouraged the women to have a sense of ‘social responsibility’ and to recruit other unemployed women in their resident communities. this paper reports on the experiences of twenty women who benefitted f rom tcb training and provides insight into factors that motivated the women, their social networks, and how they navigated financial challenges in order to sustain their livelihoods. methodology in order to address the research purpose, a qualitative, descriptive design was employed. according to rubin and babbie (2017: 134), a descriptive design is concerned ‘with conveying what it’s like to walk in the shoes of people, providing rich details about their environments, interactions, meanings and everyday lives.’ this approach afforded the women the opportunity to speak with confidence about the benefits and challenges regarding their participation in tcb entrepreneurial training. the researcher was concerned with how these women make sense of their lived experiences, taking into account the intersectional socio-economic and gender factors that profoundly impact their daily living in impoverished communities in gauteng province. gauteng is known as the economic hub in af rica and is the most populous province in south af rica – with a total of 15 million people and an estimated 37% unemployment rate (statistics south af rica, 2021). while there is no recent statistical data on the impact of poverty on women in this province, the sla recognises that poor women are conscious of and understand their survival challenges best and are in a position to formulate solutions and strategies to solve these challenges (raniga, 2021). entrepreneurial activities thrive on access to natural capital, social capital, human capital, financial capital and physical capital which inherently improves business performance and sustains households. the relationships, coalitions and networks formed by women in entrepreneurial ventures are beyond economic purposes and benefit as they enhance selfempowerment, skills development and confidence – while sustaining livelihoods (nel, 2014; raniga, 2016). purpose of the study this study provides insight into women entrepreneurship by investigating the experiences of 20 women in gauteng province who benefitted f rom an ngo named the clothing bank (tcb) and the implementation of business training programmes. context of the study: the clothing bank the clothing bank (tcb) is a social enterprise that was established in 2010 in cape town to empower unemployed women to become confident, competent and independent entrepreneurs. as a nonprofit, the organisation set out to establish a platform for unemployed women to become financially and socially independent through the implementation of entrepreneurial activities. the clothing bank has satellite offices in four provinces: cape town, kwazulu-natal, gauteng and east london. the clothing bank was started by two retired women who had worked in multinational companies in the private sector. these project coordinators had a deep sense of social responsibility and they wanted to share their business skills with unemployed women who resided in impoverished communities. the project coordinators across the four provinces have recruited about 2,200 unemployed women between the ages of 18–55 years since 2019. non-profit organisations seeking to facilitate the entrepreneurship of women have been earmarked as powerful platforms with the potential to increase the sustainable incomes of women (derera et al., 2020). these women participated in a two-year t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 21 the national department of social development (2020) report reveals that high levels of poverty, crime, lack of housing and economic opportunities are key developmental challenges. as applicable to qualitative methodology, the researcher employed non-probability purposive sampling to select the women. the researcher undertook several field visits to tcb office located in a formal suburb north of gauteng. the purpose of these visits was to gain information f rom the project coordinators about the history and background of the organisation and the branch operating in gauteng. the second purpose was to peruse through records and to observe women who were involved in the business training. a letter detailing the research process and its purpose was given to the director and the project coordinator and an appointment for the follow-up interview was set. the criteria for inclusion of the participants were: • women who had participated in the ngo for the past two years • women who had completed the training at tcb • women who resided in low-income communities in gauteng the researcher envisaged a total of twenty-five women who would participate in the study but data saturation was reached with twenty women. the researcher made contact with them by means of whatsapp, telephone, email and site visits. during this initial contact, the purpose and objectives of the research were discussed and the womens’ voluntary participation in the study was ascertained. ethical clearance was obtained f rom the research ethics committee of one higher education institution to conduct the study. since this study presents the experiences of a small sample of 20 women, the f indings cannot be generalised. the ethical issues outlined by marlow (2011) were respected and adhered to as follows: no harm done to the participants, assurance of conf identiality and anonymity when reporting the data, and participants not having unrealistic expectations of the study. voluntary written consent, as well as permission to audio-record and to take f ield notes during the interviews, were sought f rom the participants. data was collected between november 2018 and 2019 and interviews were conducted at a neutral venue, namely the women’s place of business or at the tcb offices. two methods were used to collect the data: social media records of tcb and one in-depth interview with each of the women. the interview was conducted with the aid of an interview guide which comprised open-ended questions and which covered topics on motivations to start a business, financial benefits, social benefits, and challenges to sustaining the businesses (marlow, 2011). interviews were conducted in english and the average duration of the interview session was 1.5 hours. the advantage of the interview was that it provided the women with an opportunity to answer questions in their own space and terms, avoiding bias and providing extensive, rich information on their experiences while participating in tcb training. consistent revision of the transcripts with the women through member-checks and multiple peer review sessions with the project coordinators served to enhance the trustworthiness and credibility of the data. in addition, the use of two data collection sources (interview and ngo records) contributed to enhancing the dependability of the data (marlow, 2011). the data analysis comprised a systematic process of introspective examination, categorisation, tabulating and recombining the data to address the purpose of the study. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 as applicable to qualitative methodology, the researcher employed non-probability purposive sampling to select the women. the researcher undertook several field visits to tcb office located in a formal suburb north of gauteng. the purpose of these visits was to gain information from the project coordinators about the history and background of the organisation and the branch operating in gauteng. p e e r r e v i e w 22 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 presentation of results and discussion three interconnected themes emerged f rom the data analysis which form the central premise of the results and discussion below: motivational factors, social associations, and financial capital challenges. pseudonyms are used to document the voices of the women in the discussion below. motivational factors promoting women entrepreneurs there were two prominent reasons that motivated the women to join the ngo and initiate their own businesses. first, their choice related to the desire for entrepreneurial aspirations (mcclelland et al., 2005). the women spoke about the desire for independence, self-fulfilment, wealth creation, social status and power, desire for a flexible lifestyle and enhancing their creative entrepreneurial skills. second, the more urgent motivation that the women related to was insufficient family income, dissatisfaction with a salaried job, difficulty in finding work in the formal work sector, desire for flexible work schedules and perceived lack of opportunity for career advancement (mcclelland et al., 2005). some of the comments shared by the women were: angeline: being involved in the ngo gave me the opportunity to grow and spread my wings. lillian: i never dreamt that i would be running my own business. now i am able to employ two women. martha: for the first time in my life i am working for myself and making my own money. nkensani: the best part is helping other poor women to also succeed like me. personal, interpersonal and organisational factors can promote or impede the sustainable livelihoods of women entrepreneurs. the women in the interviews spoke about personal factors such as accumulated life experience, access to education, social networks and work-life balance issues. lenka and agarwal (2017), writing about women entrepreneurs in india, stated that the role of government, ngos and financial institutions are environmental factors that can deter or enhance the growth of women entrepreneurs. the stories shared by the women provide evidence of their gratitude towards the ngo for increasing their business skills, confidence, professional knowledge and access to psycho-social supportive services. all the women expressed appreciation to the staff at tcb for their facilitation of training and mentorship, and for providing psycho-social counselling and support. some of the sentiments shared by the women were: paulina: when you are suffering it doesn’t mean that you are dead, where things happen that you didn’t think could happen to you it doesn’t mean it is the end of the world. you can still stand up. sizwe: at the beginning there was always self-pity but then the counsellor will say: pull yourself towards yourself and do something with your life. if you are not going to do it no one else is going to do it. tinyiko: i know that i have got responsibilities towards my kids so i have to get up and run my business. wendy: i say never give up because you can still change your life never mind how old you are. this study resonates with skelton, evans and la chanaye (2020), who argue that it is important for women entrepreneurs to enhance their human capital skills and to join the ngo training programs to realise their economic potential and to increase their social networks. this study demonstrates that human service professionals must consider women entrepreneurs’ socio-economic circumstances within the broader political economic agenda. hence it is imperative to take note of gibson-graham’s (2006) conceptualisation of community economies and local innovation as the findings affirm a conscious appreciation of women’s entrepreneurial strengths, skills and collective associations that contributes to nurturing business social networks. this theme is explored further in the next section. nurturing business social networks emerging data suggests that tcb has succeeded in empowering the women with access to goods and clothing, as well as with marketing and business skills that enable them to transform their lives, improve their food security, and sustain their livelihoods. thaba et al. (2015) revealed that women in gauteng tend to have a low morale, lack affirmation and p e e r r e v i e w 23v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opportunity to succeed as entrepreneurs in the informal economy due to their unemployed status. it was established through the interviews that all the women made conscious efforts to consistently nurture social networks and associations with those women who had completed the training and to share business experiences and to enhance the sale of their products. the women stated that the interpersonal support, networking and marketing skills that they gained during the training workshops helped them to mobilise support f rom other women in their resident communities. in addition, it was deemed important for the women to keep in contact with the project coordinator and all the staff employed at tcb so that they could enhance marketing of their businesses. many of the women stated that the ngo training had helped them to associate with women f rom all economic backgrounds and that the social bonds formed united women f rom diverse racial and cultural backgrounds in the gauteng province. some of the women’s comments are: rose: ngos that focus on women give us hope and inspire us to become social entrepreneurs and economically empowered. beauty: we have established a business forum to provide ongoing support and training for women who are entrepreneurs. thabsile: we have set up whatsapp groups to stay in touch and share our business experiences. given the development of information and communication technology, it was clear that the women established whatsapp business support groups to deal with challenges, seek expertise, and share their strengths and resources. all the women indicated that the major challenges they experienced related to access to a market for sale of their clothing products and lack of financial capital. hence, nurturing business support and social networks with women within and outside of their resident communities served to enhance their business success. what was interesting is that it also gave the women the opportunity to encourage other unemployed women to join the ngo training and to initiate their own businesses. the findings corroborate the research evidence put forth by lenka and agarwal (2017) who aptly maintain that social support and networking provide a platform for women’s economic development. navigating financial capital challenges one of the key challenges mentioned by the women in the interviews was a lack of access to consistent funding or cash to sustain their entrepreneurial activities. thembeni commented that: ‘it was difficult for me during the training as i needed to pay someone to take care of my child yet i was not earning any money.’ paulina spoke about how grateful she was to the project coordinator at the ngo who had given her a loan to purchase her clothing. she commented: ‘this helped me a lot as i was able to sell the clothing for a profit and to pay back the loan.’ it must be noted that the sustainability of entrepreneurial activities depends to a large extent on access to credit and funding f rom both non-governmental organisations and government institutions who are primarily responsible for promoting women’s economic development (raniga and ngcobo, 2014). a comment f rom angeline illustrates the funding challenge which had implications for sustaining her business: if we had access to government or private funding, we would be able to help more unemployed women and assist them to start their own businesses. these assertions concur with raniga’s (2021) empirical evidence obtained f rom qualitative voices with eight women involved in cooperatives that lack of funding f rom government are key factors that lead to the unsustainability of cooperatives. a practical solution that all the women had instituted through their business whatsapp groups was to share resources such as transport for delivery of goods to customers and monthly cash contributions as an emergency fund to subsidise and support each other when in financial crisis. the findings reveal that all the women were committed to transforming their material realities and to providing opportunities to increase income security in their households. it was clear that the life choices made by the majority of the women to run their own businesses enhanced their self-confidence and business skills – and increased the profits f rom the sale of their garments. it was encouraging to p e e r r e v i e w 24 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 note that this translated into the women receiving a steady monthly income f rom the sale of their garments. in fact, beauty shared that she was able to employ three women in her business. some of the comments made by the women were: beatrice: i am now able to send my children to private schools and to university. tami: i never dreamt of opening a second business. now i am able to do so. tumi: i opened up a clothing store and i’m able to employ two women. mama d: i am coming f rom poverty and now my future is glowing because of the ngo. researchers such as thaba and mbohwa (2015) provide empirical evidence that the role of nongovernmental organisations is fundamental in supporting women’s entrepreneurial activities and their quest to survive independently f rom external support and to confidently compete in relevant markets to sell their products. bradshaw et al. (2010) state that transferring financial capital to meet basic material and non-material needs is key to sustaining a household. all the women believed that the consistent mentoring and access to seed funding f rom tcb to purchase their goods was a major part of the success of their businesses in their resident communities. raniga (2021) reiterated that it is imperative for human service professionals to integrate sla as a social development strategy to assist women entrepreneurs to facilitate a household analysis of the economic, human, physical and social assets that are needed to sustain a household. all the women unanimously acknowledged that their participation in the ngo training had led to an improvement in their own human capital development, enhanced social status, and income security in their respective households. final conclusions the entrepreneurial training facilitated by the ngo the clothing bank in this study highlights that entrepreneurial learning helps in the development of human capabilities, social networking, and entrepreneurial competencies. the women in this study had acquired a business identity through their training and networks which contributed to sustaining livelihoods. the clothing bank’s training provides evidence of an innovative case where the staff were committed to enhancing the innate capabilities of unemployed women who were keen to break the cycle of poverty. evidently, the experiences of the women highlight that nurturing business networks and building partnerships using social media platforms were useful strategies for sharing material resources and navigating financial challenges in their quest to sustain their businesses. the findings also reveal that access to financial capital remains a dire challenge for women entrepreneurs as a result of poor funding f rom the private sector and government intervention. based on these conclusions, the following recommendations are made: • transformative interventions should include the establishment of online business forums to assist women entrepreneurs with access to ongoing business training, networking, and advocating for funding f rom government. • it is important that policy makers support the livelihood activities of women through access to micro credit schemes and better access to financial literacy training. • lobbying by human service professionals to address the economic and educational needs of women residing in lowincome communities is necessary. • this study represented a limited sample of 20 women who participated in one ngo training project in one province in south af rica. this clearly warrants further qualitative research to be conducted with both men and women entrepreneurs across various provinces in south af rica. references bansal, s., garg, i., and sharma, g.d. 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[online] available at: www.gov.za/sites/default/files/ gcis_document/201409/whitepaperonsocialwelfare0.pdf p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r36 covid-19 the rise of in the time of covid-19 machiavellian realism by anton m. pillay nanomedicine in the fight against covid-19 tomorrow’s medicine today by steven mufamadi and mpho ngoepe © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 37v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 the coronavirus disease (covid-19) caused by the sars-cov-2 virus has so far infected more than four million people worldwide, and the pandemic shows no signs of stopping. there is currently no known cure for covid-19. according to the world health organization (who), the spread of covid-19 can be controlled by a number of precautionary measures, including f requent handwashing, the spraying of surfaces or objects with disinfectants, and the wearing of face masks. the sars-cov-2 virus structure consists of spike proteins on the surface, membrane glycoproteins, small envelope proteins, nucleocapsid phosphoproteins and rna. many researchers and pharmaceutical companies around the world are focusing on this structure to develop a potential medical weapon to fight covid-19. nanomedicine – which refers to the application of nanotechnology to achieve innovation in healthcare – is proving important in this medical research. the use of nanomedicine in the fight against covid-19 includes the design of nanotechnology-based masks, diagnostics devices, disinfectants, sanitisers, vaccines and drugs. according to prof. thomas webster – a nanomedicine specialist at northeastern university – the virus behind covid-19 consists of a structure of a similar scale to nanoparticles, at a nanoscale of 1-100nm. nanoparticles could attach to sarscov-2 viruses and disrupt their structure, making it difficult for the virus to survive and reproduce in the body. potential contributions of nanomedicine in the fight against covid-19 there are four areas where nanomedicine is making significant contributions in the fight against covid-19: i) prevention (disinfection/ sanitisation and personal protective equipment (ppe)), ii) screening and rapid diagnosis, iii) vaccine, and iv) treatment. disinfection/sanitisation nanotechnology-based antiviral disinfectants are highly effective virucidal agents against contagious viruses such as sars-cov-2. they can kill 99.9% of viruses on contaminated surfaces or objects, such as stainless steel, plastic, cardboard, aluminium, and many more. in the czech republic, scientists have tested two different nanotechnology-based disinfectants, made up of nanopolymers, for their effectiveness in fighting covid-19. both disinfectant products were tested on public transport, such as trams and buses, for the capability of long-term antibacterial and antiviral effects for about 21 days after application. these products could reduce the daily spraying of disinfectant agents, ultimately reducing costs. in the usa, new jersey hospital (njh) used nanovapor (fda-approved, nanovapor biotech) as a disinfectant agent. nanovapor is capable of killing sars-cov-2 on surfaces and objects in the hospital, and is effective for up to 70 days after application. njh used this product as an additional measure to protect its staff and patients. many other countries around the world are currently testing their own nanotechnology-based antiviral disinfectants and sanitisers for hand washing or to protect homes, hospitals and shoppers. these countries include malaysia (mydin virus nano spray buster/booth for the whole body disinfection) and the united kingdom (mvx protex antimicrobial coat spray, mvx prime ltd, uk), amongst others. personal protective equipment (ppe) countries around the world are using face masks to prevent the spread of covid-19. surgical masks, n95 masks (fine dust masks) and/or other equivalent respirator-type masks are among those currently used by healthcare workers to protect themselves f rom coronavirus. however, these masks can only protect healthcare workers and/ or individuals to a certain extent f rom respiratory secretions or viruses in the air. nanotechnologiesbased masks promise to offer unique solutions in the form of a new generation of face masks that are reusable, washable, recyclable, electrical and self-sterilised, while providing the wearer with the necessary protection against viruses. nanotechnology-based masks have proved to nanomedicine – which refers to the application of nanotechnology to achieve innovation in healthcare – is proving important in this medical research. the use of nanomedicine in the fight against covid-19 includes the design of nanotechnology-based masks, diagnostics devices, disinfectants, sanitisers, vaccines and drugs. t h e t h i n k e r38 be 99.9% efficient against coronavirus and other infection threats. nanofiber masks are capable of trapping and killing viruses immediately upon contact. in a recent report, the respilon group – a czech republic nanofiber technology firm – claims to have developed a respimask® face mask that is capable of trapping and killing viruses, including coronaviruses. respimask® mask is made up of nanofiber technology with a three-layer membrane incorporated with copper dioxide (cuo) nanoparticles. in another report, the hong kong-based new world development group claims to have developed self-sterilising nanodiamond-coated masks that are both affordable and highly effective against coronaviruses. many other nanotechnology-based masks have been developed so far around the world, including electrical sterilisation breathing masks (graphene mask, guardian g-volttm, belgium), nanotechnology-enabled n95 masks (nanofiber mask, fanavaran nano-meghyas, iran) and many others that are still in the development stages. screening and rapid diagnosis the screening and rapid diagnosis of covid-19 is crucial in preventing the spread of the disease in a community. currently, the diagnostics of coronavirus are done by real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rrt-pcr) and genexpert. although rrt-pcr is the gold standard for diagnosing coronavirus, and genexpert can offer rapid results in a short period of time, both are very complex, expensive, and lengthy – it can take 24 hours f rom sample collection to laboratory analysis to obtain diagnostic results. rapid test kits are the fastest and cheapest way to test for sars-cov-2 in a short period of time; these include antibody tests and nanotechnology-based covid-19 test kits/sensors. nanotechnology-based covid-19 sensors are able to give results in less than 20 minutes. rapid diagnostic kits such as these could reduce the burden on our current shortage of laboratory machines. for example, gold nanoparticles have been used by researchers in diagnostic rna assays to detect amounts of coronavirus rna sequences in a matter of minutes. the world nano foundation (wnf) claims to have identified a second generation rapid covid-19 igm/igg antibody assay kit that consists of gold nanoparticles in the testing strip. this colloidal gold method has the capability of separating readings for igm and igg, detecting covid-19 with more accuracy, and delivering results within 3-15 minutes. a recent article published by norwegian scitech news reported that researchers at the norwegian university of science and technology (ntnu), in collaboration with st. olavs hospital, have developed iron oxide nanoparticles coated with silica as the next generation of coronavirus diagnostic tests. the advantage of using magnetic nanoparticles coated with silica in the testing kits is that these have a strong affinity for the coronavirus rna that is extracted f rom the patient sample. in addition, these testing kits allow medical practitioners to conduct more than 30-40,000 tests in a day, and an estimated 150,000 covid-19 tests per week. furthermore, nanotechnology-based diagnostic devices are capable of measuring and interacting with single biological events, which means they have the capability of diagnosing single cells or viruses within a patient sample with a very low viral titre, which is very difficult to do when using conventional methods such as rrt-pcr, genexpert or covid-19 antibody test (elisa). vaccine and cure there is currently no vaccine or cure for covid-19. several covid-19 vaccines and treatments are in development and clinical trial phases, including nanotechnology-based vaccines and therapies. conventional vaccines and/or dna vaccines show promise for a universal influenza vaccine, but they have several downfalls, including the failure to engage the immune system, and their high toxicity and low stability in vivo. it is very difficult to deliver them to target areas, and they are easily eliminated in the reticuloendothelial system (res). nanovaccines, which are a new generation covid-19 nanotechnology-based antiviral disinfectants are highly effective virucidal agents against contagious viruses such as sars-cov-2. they can kill 99.9% of viruses on contaminated surfaces or objects, such as stainless steel, plastic, cardboard, aluminium, and many more. 39v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 of vaccines that utilise nanoparticles (nps), offer a safe delivery vehicle to a target site. nanosized particles include liposomes, protein, polymeric nanoparticles and nanospheres. nanovaccines can improve the efficiency of vaccine delivery, can offer prolonged protection, and can induce both humoral and cell-mediated immune responses. one example of this is self-assembling ferritin proteins that formed nanoparticles, which can promote the production of antibodies to neutralize viruses, including coronaviruses. nanovaccines that are currently undergoing clinical trials include the mrna-1273 vaccine (phase 1 trial, moderna, usa), nvx-cov2373 (a nanovaccine that is a recombinant protein nanoparticle technology platform; novavax inc, usa), bnt162 dna vaccine (phase i/ ii trials) developed by pfizer (new york city, usa), in collaboration with biontech (mainz, germany), ino-4800 dna vaccine, in phase i clinical trial (inovio pharmaceuticals, usa), ad5-ncov vaccine (a recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine; cansino biologics inc, tianjin, china), and ino-4800 dna vaccine (phase i/ii trials) developed by korea national institute of health (osong, republic of korea), in collaboration with the international vaccine institute (seoul, south korea). n4 pharma plc (united kingdom) recently announced nuvec® technology, a silica nanoparticle with elongated silica spikes radiating f rom the core. on the other hand, alnylam pharmaceuticals has synthesized more than 350 sirnas targeting all available genomes of coranoviruses in the usa, using rna interference (rnai) therapy. a collaborative study between northwestern university and massachusetts institute of technology claims to have discovered a peptide molecule that binds strongly and specifically to the spike proteins on the surface of sars-cov-2. the peptide molecule is encapsulated within the nanostructure to protect it f rom elimination in the res, and is delivered into the target site where there are coronaviruses. nanomedicine studies also provide insights into anti-malaria chloroquine’s efficacy against covid-19. synthetic nanoparticles were allowed to interact with host cells in the presence of chloroquine, in vitro. the studies provide clues on chloroquine-induced alterations of covid-19 cellular uptake. although cell culture studies have proved that chloroquine might have antiviral activity against covid-19, further studies or positive clinical trial results are still required. conclusion nanotechnology-based antiviral disinfectants are highly effective and could be used in south af rica for increased surface disinfection or sanitisation in public transport, hospitals, schools, supermarkets and homes. they could also be applied once a month instead of on a daily basis, which is the case with conventional disinfectant agents. in the case of ppe, nanotechnologies promise to offer a new generation of face masks that are reusable, washable, recyclable, and selfsterilised, as well as capable of killing the virus immediately upon contact. in the case of covid-19 diagnostics, nanotechnology promises to offer cheap and quick covid-19 tests that deliver accurate results in less than 20 minutes. when it comes to covid-19 treatments and vaccine, nanomedicine promises to offer nano-enabled medicine products that are capable of neutralising viruses. there are currently many organisations around the world that are busy working on the development of nanovaccines and treatments, some of which are currently undergoing clinical trials. however, extensive research is still required in order to declare the success of nanomedicine in the fight against the covid-19 outbreak, as there still exist questions concerning the efficacy and side effects of nanotechnology-based vaccines and treatments on humans, as well as the environmental impact of nanomaterials. ■ references chard, l. (2020). news updates: nano-based vaccines for treatment of covid-19. [online] the nanomed zone. available at: https://www. nanomedzone.com/covid-19-updates-nano-based-vaccines-for-treatmentof-covid-19/ [accessed 29 apr. 2020] statnano, (2020). nanotechnology in battle against coronavirus. [online] available at: https://statnano.com/nanotechnology-in-battle-againstcoronavirus [accessed 30 apr. 2020] covid-19 however, extensive research is still required in order to declare the success of nanomedicine in the fight against the covid-19 outbreak, as there still exist questions concerning the efficacy and side effects of nanotechnology-based vaccines and treatments. t h e t h i n k e r14 zimbabwe the covid-19 pandemic has left zimbabwe given the nation’s parlous health system, conventional wisdom would suggest that the country should go into a total lockdown in a bid to contain the spread of the virus. however, such a decision is not easy to implement in the zimbabwean context. why is this the case? zimbabwe’s fragile economy zimbabwe has a broken economy which has been shrinking since 2000. in march 2020, the international monetary fund (imf) gave a very bleak assessment of the country’s economic performance when it reported that zimbabwe’s economy was thought to have contracted by 7.5% in 2019, the worst performance in sub-saharan af rica, with extreme poverty levels rising to 34%, which translates to around 5.7 million people in the country falling under this category (smith, 2020). the implementation of a total nationwide lockdown – as was announced by president emmerson mnangagwa on 27 march 2020, in a bid to halt the spread of covid-19 (munhende, 2020) – extremely f ragile economy. announced might leave some businesses facing total collapse. it is telling that a number of informal traders have continued to defy the lockdown regulations, as many zimbabweans survive handto-mouth f rom their informal economic activities. warning signals in the form of whistles are given in areas where informal traders operate, as a way of alerting them to the impending arrival of the police or the army (mataranyika, 2020). a full-blown lockdown was never going to work in a context such as the zimbabwean one, where the economy is in a precarious state. the predicament, however, is that an explosion of covid-19 cases would leave zimbabwe’s limping health system totally exposed because of its lack of preparedness to deal with the highly infectious virus. the country’s main opposition leader, nelson chamisa, called for the immediate imposition of a nationwide lockdown in the wake of zimbabwe’s (chibamu and munhende, 2020). the mnangagwa regime, however, dithered over making such a such a move on an already weakened economy. the huge informal economy an imf working paper released in 2018 suggested that zimbabwe’s informal economy is the largest in af rica and second only to bolivia’s worldwide, as it accounts for at least 60% of all of zimbabwe’s economic activity (medina and schneider, 2018). by tapiwa chagonda covid-19 fully exposes zimbabwe’s comatose economy © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 15 zimbabwe lockdown on all informal businesses (barring those that sell food), one wonders how the millions of zimbabweans who make a living through the informal economy will survive, when most of them are already mired in extreme forms of poverty. this may explain why president mnangagwa exempted those who sell food (who account for a sizeable number of informal traders) f rom the lockdown total lockdown was therefore not a de facto one, as a sizeable chunk of the informal sector was permitted to continue trading in food. this then raises questions on whether the covid-19 pandemic exercising social distancing in people’s interactions when buying and selling food, in a country that is facing its worst hunger crisis in more than a decade (smith, 2020). due to the shortage of essential food staples such as maize meal, one cannot discount the usual stampedes that have been witnessed in the past few months at food markets. president and security services to ensure that food markets are operating in a hygienic way and exercising social distancing (munhende, 2020) shall be tested in the coming weeks. ‘level 2’ lockdown regulations on 1 may 2020, president mnangagwa announced a further two weeks of zimbabwe’s started pronouncing zimbabwe’s lockdown levels, by announcing that the extended phase of the lockdown was going to be ‘level 2’, which would entail most formal businesses opening between 8 am–3 pm. president mnangagwa also promised a stimulus package of zwd 18 billion (usd 720 million) to assist small to medium industries in the informal sector. however, the million-dollar question is where this money will come f rom. the zimbabwean treasury’s coffers are empty, as was revealed in a leaked letter to the bretton-woods institutions by zimbabwe’s minister of finance, prof mthuli ncube (dzirutwe, 2020). in the letter, dated 2 april 2020, ncube pleaded with the bretton-woods zimbabwe’s economy would totally implode in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, which requires a huge purse to combat. zimbabwe’s dire economic situation – compounded by covid-19 – will probably force the government to print money, which might million percent (chagonda, 2016). the country’s over 500% (smith, 2020). fixing a health system that is in a parlous state given the challenges of enforcing total compliance with lockdown regulations in zimbabwe, the mnangagwa regime must speedily act on ensuring that the current covid-19 referral health centres are fully equipped with ventilators and intensive care unit (icu) facilities. the two designated centres – wilkins hospital and thorngrove hospital – are currently woefully unprepared for this enormous task (new zimbabwe, 2020). the government also needs to urgently provide health personnel with the requisite personal protective gear. hopefully, the fact that covid-19 does not discriminate between elites and the poor – a point that has been made more stark by global travel restrictions which now make it impossible for the highheeled in zimbabwe to seek medical treatment internationally, as has been the case in the past – will hasten the mnangagwa regime’s actions on this very serious issue. ■ references chagonda, t. (2016). the other face of the zimbabwean crisis: the black market and dealers during zimbabwe’s decade of economic meltdown, 2000-2008. review of af rican political economy, vol 43 (147), pp 131–141. chibamu, a. and munhende, l. (2020). ed, chamisa mourn zororo makamba. [online] new zimbabwe. available at: https://www. newzimbabwe.com/ed-chamisa-mourn-zororo-makamba/ [accessed 29 mar. 2020] dzirutwe, m. (2020). zimbabwe pleads with foreign lenders to prevent coronavirus ‘catastrophe’. [online] reuters. available at: https://www. reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-zimbabwe/zimbabwe-pleadswith-foreign-lenders-to-prevent-coronavirus-catastrophe-iduskbn22g1eo [accessed 4 may 2020] mataranyika, m. (2020). zimbabweans play cat and mouse with lockdown. [online] city press. available at: https://city-press.news24.com/news/ zimbabweans-play-cat-and-mouse-with-lockdown-20200503 [accessed 6 apr. 2020] medina, l. and schneider, f. (2018) imf working paper: shadow economies around the world: what did we learn over the last 20 years? [online] international monetary fund. available at: https://www.imf.org/en/ publications/wp/issues/2018/01/25/shadow-economies-around-the-worldwhat-did-we-learn-over-the-last-20-years-45583 [accessed 8 apr. 2020] munhende, l. (2020). mnangagwa decrees 21-day covid-19 lockdown starting monday. [online] new zimbabwe. available at: https://www. newzimbabwe.com/breaking-mnangagwa-decrees-21-day-covid-19lockdown-starting-monday/ [accessed 29 mar. 2020] new zimbabwe. (2020). thorngrove hospital still to get funding for coronavirus equipment. [online] new zimbabwe. available at: https:// www.newzimbabwe.com/thorngrove-hospital-still-to-get-funding-forcoronavirus-equipment/ [accessed 8 apr. 2020] smith, e. (2020). zimbabwe in “economic and humanitarian crisis” as imf sounds alarm. [online] cnbc. available at: https://www.cnbc. com/2020/03/03/zimbabwe-in-economic-and-humanitarian-crisis-as-imfsounds-alarm.html [accessed 6 apr. 2020] 10v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract the historiography of the af rican nationalist movement in south af rica tends to focus on the struggle for political liberation. what gets marginalised, often, is that early af rican nationalists envisioned their political mission as not only bringing about inclusive f reedom, but also to establish what they called ‘the ‘new af rica’ or ‘the regeneration of af rica’. the purpose of this paper is to discuss critically the idea of af rica—the new af rica—that leading early af rican nationalist intellectuals such as pixley ka isaka seme, selope thema, selby msimang, anton lembede and herbert dhlomo advocated. this paper explores commonalities and differences in their imaginings and idea of af rica, and demonstrates the signif icance that political and intellectual currents f rom the af rican diaspora had in shaping the notion of the ‘new af rica’ that they advocated. by focusing on this idea at the heart of the af rican nationalist political tradition, the paper challenges scholarship that often dismisses early af rican nationalists as conservative, influenced by their experiences in mission communities, or by an eagerness to become loyal subjects of the british empire. by bongani ngqulunga genealogies of african nationalism and the idea of africa 11 introduction the af rican nationalist movement emerged in south af rica in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly as a response to british colonialism and white minority rule (see, for instance, walsh, 1970; odendaal, 2012; and ngqulunga, 2017). central to its political aims was a call for the inclusion of black people in the political affairs of the emergent south af rican state, as well as access to economic opportunities such as land ownership (ngcukaitobi, 2018). early af rican nationalists believed that, critical to achievement of their political goals, was unity of the af rican people under the banner of af rican nationalism. this belief was eloquently articulated by pixley ka seme in his opening speech to the inaugural conference of the af rican national congress (anc) in 1912, in which he decried the divisions that kept black people apart and prevented them f rom waging a united political struggle (ngqulunga, 2017). in the same address, seme (1906) argued that black people were one and needed to act as such, in order to achieve their political struggle of emancipation and inclusion. running parallel to the political struggle for black unity and national liberation were debates and discussions among early af rican nationalists, regarding the relationship between their political endeavours in south af rica and the rest of the af rican continent. this aspect of the af rican nationalist tradition is often overlooked, despite its significance for early af rican nationalists. the purpose of this paper is therefore to examine critically the imaginings and idea of af rica that af rican nationalists, of the first half of the 20th century in particular, advanced. i focus in particular on the writings of major af rican nationalist thinkers such as seme, r.v. selope thema, h. selby msimang, and their younger counterparts in the congress youth league such as anton lembede, herbert dhlomo and a.p. mda. this paper explores the commonalities in their imaginings and conceptions of af rica, as well as identifying the divergencies in their opinions. while acknowledging the various ways in which their background in mission schools and their attachment to the ideals of the british empire had an impact on their political outlook, this paper argues against the reductionism that is often found in scholarship on early af rican nationalism; this scholarship tends to dismiss early af rican nationalists as either apologists for empire or as conservative political hacks whose main ambition was to copy lifestyles of white people. although each of the af rican nationalists i discuss in this paper articulated their own idea of af rica, one factor that was common across their scholarship was a vision of the continent which was fundamentally different f rom that espoused by missionaries of old or white politicians such as jan smuts or cecil joh rhodes. the af rica they imagined—the new af rica as they called it—was characterised by political equality, receptiveness to modernity brought by science, education and economic development, as well as criticism of political projects that sought to subjugate the peoples of af rican descent. numerous scholars of af rican nationalism in south af rica have noted the influence that black thinkers in the af rican diaspora had on the development of the af rican nationalist tradition in the country (see, for instance, masilela, 2013). in the next section, i sketch out a broad genealogy of af rican nationalism and the idea of af rica in south af rica. genealogies of african nationalism and the idea of africa in may 1996, thabo mbeki, the deputy president of the republic of south af rica at the time, stood before the two houses of parliament of south af rica to deliver his now famous speech titled ‘i am af rican’ (mbeki, 1996). in giving a speech that affirmed his af rican identity and defined his own vision of the af rican continent although each of the african nationalists i discuss in this paper articulated their own idea of africa, one factor that was common across their scholarship was a vision of the continent which was fundamentally different from that espoused by missionaries of old or white politicians such as jan smuts or cecil joh rhodes. the africa they imagined—the new africa as they called it—was characterised by political equality, receptiveness to modernity brought by science, education and economic development, as well as criticism of political projects that sought to subjugate the peoples of african descent. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 12 and its peoples, mbeki was following in the footsteps of many af rican nationalists before him, who expended considerable intellectual and political resources in the imagination and definition of the af rican continent. ninety years before mbeki’s speech, another south af rican, pixley ka isaka seme, had delivered another speech on ‘the regeneration of af rica’ (seme, 1906). like mbeki after him, seme began his speech by declaring ‘i am an af rican’. in a tribute to seme’s speech, kwame nkrumah, a man who has been described as the father of af rican nationalism (birmingham, 1998), gave an opening address to the first international congress of af ricanists held in accra, ghana in 1962. instead of reading his own speech, nkrumah decided to read seme’s 1906 speech, ‘the regeneration of af rica’ because, he contended, its postulates were relevant to the condition that prevailed into the 1960s (ngqulunga, 2017: 17). by reading seme’s speech, nkrumah was directly or indirectly drawing a line between his own vision of the af rican continent to seme’s. by extension, mbeki’s speech in 1996, which evidently drew inspiration f rom both seme’s 1906 speech and nkrumah’s pan-af ricanism, tied together these different generations of af rican nationalists and their vision of and for af rica. reflecting on the significance of seme’s speech, masilela (2013: xiv) has argued that it (the speech) served as ‘an ideological position that gave intellectual authorization to the decolonization process’. furthermore, he argues that it was a significant moment, which marked a turning point in the development of what he has termed the new af rican movement (nam) in south af rica. considering the significance of seme’s 1906 speech to the development of the af rican nationalist tradition and the imaginings of af rica in south af rica (and perhaps the af rican continent as a whole), it is important to understand its content, context and the influence it has had on other af rican nationalists such as thema, msimang, lembede, dhlomo, jordan ngubane and numerous others. with regard to its context, it is worth noting that seme’s speech was influenced and shaped by important intellectual and political currents of the time. four years before, henry sylvester williams, a trinidadian barrister with strong links to south af rica and his collaborators including a south af rican black woman by the name of alice kinloch, had organised and convened the first panaf rican conference that took place in london in july 1900. the major political themes discussed at the conference are evident in seme’s 1906 speech, especially in w.e.b. du bois’s concluding rousing address at which he said the following: let the nations of the world respect the integrity and independence of the f ree negro states of abyssinia, liberia, haiti, and the rest, and let the inhabitants of these states, the independent tribes of af rica, the negroes of the west indies and america, and the black subjects of all nations take courage, strive ceaselessly, and fight bravely, that they may prove to the world their incontestable right to be counted among the great brotherhood of mankind. thus we appeal with boldness and confidence to the great powers of the civilized world, trusting in the wide spirit of humanity, and the deep sense of justice and of our age, for a generous recognition of the righteousness of our cause.1 although seme did not refer explicitly to the first panaf rican conference in his speech, its influence was clearly evident in the speech. similar to the idea of af rica presented to the world by the conference, seme’s vision of af rica was bold, self-confident, and just. it echoed du bois’s rousing closing address in which he projected an af rica that claimed its ‘incontestable right to be counted among the great brotherhood of mankind’. this positive characterisation of af rica would influence many af rican nationalists who came after seme and du bois and invigorate the anticolonial struggles throughout the 20th century. the emergence of af rican nationalism and debates over the meaning, status and role of the af rican continent were thus shaped and influenced by intellectual and political currents, especially coming f rom other parts of the af rican diaspora. in the case of seme’s speech in particular, it is clear that it was a contribution to a long running debate and discussion by leading thinkers in the af rican diaspora, especially those f rom the west indies and north america regarding their relationship with the af rican continent. among those participating in the debate were martin delany, edward blyden, and alexander crummell, to mention a few. crummell in particular appears to have influenced seme’s ideas on the af rican continent 1 see early beginnings of the pan-african movement (umass.edu) v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/pageturn/mums312-b206-i013/#page/1/mode/1up 13 and the fate of peoples of the af rican diaspora in particular. in fact, seme’s speech in 1906 was in all likelihood mainly a response to crummell, for its title was the same as the address crummell gave half a century before also called ‘the regeneration of af rica’. it was another crummell address, presented in 1861, to which seme’s speech may have been particularly a response to. in that address titled ‘the progress of civilization along the west coast of af rica’, crummell (2018) painted a hopeless picture of the af rican continent. in his view, af rica was a continent without any significant achievement in science, philosophy and art; it was blighted by ignorance and barbarism (ngqulunga, 2017). although crummell’s negative opinion of af rica was nothing new, having been quite popular with some missionaries and early european explorers on the continent, seme appears to have been compelled to present a radically different view. the idea of af rica that seme presented was more hopeful. it was of an af rica with significant achievements in the arts, science, statecraft and culture. this positive idea of af rica is evident in the following extract f rom his 1906 speech: the brighter day is rising upon af rica. already i seem to see her chains dissolved, her desert plains red with harvest, her abyssinia and her zululand the seats of science and religion, reflecting the glory of the rising sun f rom the spires of their churches and universities. her congo and her gambia whitened with commerce, her crowded cities sending forth the hum of business and all her sons employed in advancing the victories of peace—greater and more abiding than the spoils of war (seme, 1906: 408) seme’s hopeful vision for af rica echoed edward wilmot blyden’s one, who, unlike his contemporary crummell, believed that af rica had made significant contributions to human civilization; he was also committed to the regeneration of the continent (lynch 1964). like seme who wrote several decades after him, blyden (2010) was convinced that the regeneration of the af rican continent was imminent and that af ricans f rom the diaspora would play an important role in that regeneration. his campaign for af rican-americans in particular to return to the af rican continent was largely motivated by this belief. lynch (1964) states that blyden thought that liberia in particular would play a leading role in af rica’s regeneration, that the regeneration and redemption of af rica was imminent, and that af rican americans would play an important role due to their experience in the americas. furthermore, blyden’s concept of af rican personality and his conviction that af rican societies were inherently socialistic, became influential among af rican nationalists particularly amongst those in the congress youth league such as lembede and mda, who also believed that af ricans were unique both in personality and social organization (frenkel, 1974). i have dwelled on seme and the influences that af rica diasporic intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries had on his idea of, and vision for, af rica because of the central role he played in the emergence of the af rican nationalist movement in south af rica, as well as in shaping debates on the meaning and imagination of af rica. as masilela (2017) observes, seme’s connections to af rican diasporic intellectual and political movements were not the only ones that shaped the development of af rican nationalism in south af rica. the emergence of ethiopianism and independent churches in south af rica in the second half of the 19th century was connected to interchanges between educated black people in the country and their af ricanamerican counterparts (masilela, 2017). campbell (1998) points to the american methodist episcopal (ame) church in particular as having been critical to the emergence of the ethiopian movement in south af rica and in influencing the ideological orientation of early af rican nationalists such as charlotte maxeke, pambani mzimba and several others. these af rican diasporic connections brought about a new race-consciousness and a greater assertiveness in educated af ricans about their af rican identity. the connections were both organizational and personal. maxeke, for instance, bef riended nina gomer dubois and her husband w.e.b. du bois while a student at wilberforce university. although du bois’s influence on maxeke’s ideological outlook is unclear, what cannot be doubted is the impact of the american experience on her political activism upon the return to south af rica. in addition to dedicating her life to the struggles of af rican peoples, particularly black women, maxeke established two institutions in south af rica that she had encountered t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 14 in the united states: the ame church as well as the wilberforce educational institution in evaton, then southern transvaal. her establishing the wilberforce institution was an obvious attempt at recreating an educational institution similar to her alma mater and reflected the influence it had on her. the school’s focus on teaching vocational skills, pointed to the influence of another af rican-american thinker and intellectual, booker t washington. perhaps more than du bois or any af rica diasporic thinker and intellectual, washington had a profound influence in shaping the ideological perspectives of early af rican nationalists in south af rica. among those influenced by washington were leading af rican nationalist thinkers and leaders such as dube, don davidson t. jabavu, albert b. xuma, thema and seme himself. like maxeke’s wilberforce institution, dube’s school at inanda was modelled on washington’s tuskegee institute in alabama (hughes 2011). washington’s influence was evident in what can be described as the ‘moderate’ route to emancipation that most early af rican nationalists preferred and often advocated. but there was a lot more to it than a moderate political orientation. washington’s insistence on certain values such as hard-work, thrift, restraint, moral and political integrity, and honour came to be cherished by early af rican nationalists. these values were central to their imaginings and idea of the ‘new af rica’ that they considered their duty to build. a ‘new af rican’ who did not subscribe to those values was not considered worthy of serious attention. the important point to underscore is that the intellectual currents coming f rom the af rican diaspora were instrumental in shaping and fortifying the nascent nationalist sentiment among educated af ricans in south af rica. by the latter half of the 19th century, educated af ricans started to establish civic associations, newspapers, churches, and political organisations. some of the prominent organisations they formed in the late 19th century include the native educational association (nea) through which new af rican intellectuals such as john tengo jabavu, walter rubusana, mpambani mzimba, paul xiniwe and william gqoba, engaged in political and educational matters (walshe 1970; odendaal 2012). they also launched numerous newspapers including imvo zabantsundu established by jabavu in 1884. imvo, as the newspaper became popularly known, paved the way for other newspapers to emerge across the length and breadth of what became south af rica. the political organisations, civic associations and newspapers became forums through which educated af ricans f rom different parts of the country communicated and debated issues of concern and interest amongst themselves. through these interactions, a broader nationalist consciousness emerged and took the place of what were largely narrow regional interests (masilela 2013). by the beginning of the 20th century, educated af ricans started to imagine and mobilise a common af rican identity. they also established political associations that cut across regional and tribal identities. this movement towards a broader and more inclusive af rican nationalism found expression in the formation of national organisations such as the south af rican native congress (sanc) in the late 1900s, which was followed by the south af rican native convention established in 1909 (odendaal 2012; limb 2010). the formation of the south af rican national native congress (sannc) in 1912 was the outcome of this broad movement towards black national unity. what this brief rehashing of the history of af rican nationalism in south af rica demonstrates is that it was influenced, largely, by experiences and ideas originating f rom other parts of the af rican diaspora. these ideas and the political movements to which they gave birth, emerged in response to the condition of racial subjugation and exploitation that darker skinned peoples across the world conf ronted. faced with this experience, some af rica diasporic intellectuals started to think about creating their own separate independent republic (delaney), while others advocated for the return to the af rican continent (blyden), and many more sought to change the system of racial oppression f rom within the countries in which they lived (du bois and washington). in conf ronting these systems of racial oppression and exclusion, af rican diasporic intellectuals developed ideas about af rica that either elicited responses f rom their af rican counterparts or shaped their thinking. often, debates about the af rican continent revolved around the dichotomy of modernity and tradition. as already stated, af rica diasporic thinkers such as crummell considered af rica a backward continent without any credible contribution to human civilisation, while blyden and du bois, to mention just two, thought af rica had a proud history. the two polar images of af rica—modern or traditional—occupied centre stage in discussions and debates by af rican v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 15 nationalists of the first half of the 20th century. while most were committed to creating what they called the new af rica (masilela, 2007, 2013, and 2017), they advanced different ideas and imaginings of this new af rica. in the following section, i discuss in detail the ideas of r.v. selope thema, one of the leading af rican nationalist intellectuals of the early 20th century. i contrast thema’s with ideas of other nationalists such as solomon plaatje, seme, msimang, mda, lembede and dhlomo. the african modernity of selope thema in 1929, clements kadalie, the founder and leader of the industrial and commercial workers union of af rica (commonly known as the icu), established a newspaper for one of the three splinter groups of the icu he led called the independent icu. he named the newspaper new af rica. the decision by kadalie to name it as such was not surprising for two main reasons. a year before, a scottish missionary based in present day malawi by the name of donald fraser had published a book titled the new af rica in which ‘modern’ af ricans such as kadalie himself were praised as harbingers of an af rica emerging f rom backwardness. so pleased was kadalie by the publication of fraser’s book, and presumably his inclusion in the book, that he mentioned it in his memoirs published several decades after (kadalie, 1970). there was, however, a larger reason why kadalie might have found calling his union’s newspaper new af rica appealing. the idea of creating and forging a ‘new’ af rica f rom the ruins of colonial domination was important, as was a step away f rom what was considered by ‘new af ricans’ themselves to be the backwardness of af rican traditional societies, which was in vogue intellectually in the first decades of the 20th century. consistently making a clarion call for reimagining the af rican continent was richard victor selope thema, an af rican nationalist intellectual who gained prominence through his involvement in the early years of the anc. he took up the position of secretary general in place of plaatje who was absent in london, and was also as prolific in his output as a newspaper columnist and editor, f rom the 1920s into the 1950s when he died. thema’s ideas about af rica were shaped by various influences, including british philosophers and writers such as thomas carlyle, af rican-american thinkers such as washington and du bois, and black south af rican intellectuals such as elijah makiwane and seme. his writings in the 1920s in umteteli wa bantu newspaper in particular, reflected the tumultuous changes and events of that decade. some of the notable events included the entrenchment of racial segregation in south af rica, which increasingly marginalised black people in general and closed off opportunities for upward mobility for an aspirational black middle class to which thema belonged. partly in response to the state-sponsored project of racial subjugation, was an increasing political radicalization of black people, which resulted in numerous industrial protests (bonner, 1981). the social and political ferment of the 1920s provided fertile ground for the emergence and growth of organisations such as the icu and the communist party of south af rica. social upheavals enabled ideological influences f rom outside the country, such as garveyism, to find resonance and gain traction (masilela, 2013, and limb, 2010) within south af rica. although complex and varied in several respects, thema’s ideas, especially in the 1920s, centred around his fundamental commitment to and belief in black emancipation. considering thema’s vast intellectual output during a period that spanned over four decades on various subjects, the discussion in this section will focus on four central themes that foregrounded his ideas on the af rican continent and its peoples: modernity, civilization, tradition and christianity. in discussing his views on these topics, i will compare and contrast them to ideas and views articulated by other early af rican nationalists. thema’s decision to title his unpublished memoirs, out of darkness: from cattle-herding to the editor’s chair’, is revelatory about the forces that influenced him and those he held dear. evidently, the title of his memoirs was influenced by up f rom slavery, the autobiography of booker t. washington (1963), who was held in high esteem by thema and his contemporaries. that he chose to style the story of childhood and adult life on washington’s, also indicates the type of politics he espoused and the fundamental beliefs that animated and undergirded it. as the title suggests, thema did believe that the life he lived in the then northern transvaal, before his conversion to christianity and before being enrolled in formal education, was in many respects primitive and backward. in his memoir, he writes of how his life was changed fundamentally when he met two t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 16v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w missionaries f rom the cape: elijah makiwane and william stuart, who came to his village to preach. he singles out the prayer that makiwane made as having been transformational for him. makiwane, thema (2018: 63) notes, prayed for boys and girls ‘who were still in darkness’ to see the so-called light of christianity. he describes makiwane’s prayer as ‘having thrilled [him] and ‘stirred’ his imagination (ibid). from then on, he abandoned his grandfather’s plan of training him to be a traditional diviner and insisted on rather being sent to school and converting to christianity. the journey that began with his encounter with makiwane eventually led him on a life trajectory that landed him at lovedale college in the eastern part of the cape. thema describes his experience at lovedale by using once again the metaphor of the ‘veil of darkness’ being lifted f rom his eyes (thema, 2018: 88). it is important to quote thema’s experience of lovedale in full because, as he mentions in his memoirs, it changed his life greatly. he (2018: 88) states that his encounter with lovedale: … opened my eyes and made me see the suffering of my people which caused pangs of pain in my heart and eventually led to my revolt against tyranny and injustice. this story of how lovedale opened my eyes and set my mind in motion presents a moving picture in the history of my life. i was a boy of twenty years of age, and as it will be remembered, was just emerging f rom a barbarous life in the wilds of the northern transvaal. and yet when i left lovedale at the end of 1910 i had ceased to think as a barbarous boy and was already grappling with the problems of civilised life. thema’s views as articulated in the quotation above were the backbone of his world outlook throughout his eventful and illustrious public career, which saw him become a leading figure in the af rican nationalist movement, including succeeding plaatje as secretary general of the anc. in addition to a life dedicated to politics, thema was a prominent newspaper man, both serving as a prolific and influential columnist for various black newspapers such as abantu-batho, umteteli wa bantu, and ilanga lase natal. in 1932, he was appointed the founding editor of the bantu world newspaper, a position he held for more than two decades. during this period, he occupied numerous positions in political organisations such as the anc and the all-af rica convention (aac). he served also as a member of the native representative council (nrc), which was a body established in terms of the representation of natives act of 1936. his participation in the politics of the anc ended in the early 1950s, when he was expelled after establishing a faction called the national-minded group in opposition to the influence of communists in the anc, which he considered a betrayal of its af rican nationalist origins. perhaps more than any other af rican nationalist of the early 20 century, thema wrote extensively on the idea of af rica and his understanding of the continent’s position in history and in humanity as a whole. the cornerstone of thema’s beliefs, ideas and indeed politics was his unshakeable commitment to christianity. he believed that religion was critical in building and fortifying character in individuals and in laying a firm foundation upon which the progress of societies is anchored. in an article he published in umteteli wa bantu newspaper on 11 november 1922, thema stated his ‘firm’ conviction that ‘no race can make any appreciable progress without religion’ n his mind, christianity ‘was the only religion of all the religions of the world, that is capable of pointing the way towards the civilisation and progress whose purpose is the eventual attainment by the human race of a god like state of perfection’.2 in the same article, he expressed alarm that fewer black people in south af rica were converting to the christian religion. he thought that the decline of influence of the christian faith undermined the progress that he thought black people had made. by progress, thema meant movement towards education, science and what he and his contemporaries referred to as modernity. one fundamental aspect of the af rican modernity they imagined and aspired to, included abandoning a life similar to that which he lived in his village of mafarane, where in his view superstition and what he described as the ‘veil of darkness’ prevailed. thema’s faith in christianity, modernity, civilisation and progress poses important questions regarding his idea of af rica. in other words, if christianity represents light and progress, what does that mean for his idea of af rica? the first point in addressing this question is to point out that thema and some 2 thema, r.v. s. ‘the bantu and christianity’, umteteli wa bantu, 11 november 1922, p.3. 17 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 a closer look at thema’s writings on the idea of af rica reveals a complex and at times confused and confusing picture. as already mentioned, he believed that af ricans had made significant contributions to ‘the gathering achievement of the human race’ which he called civilisation. as proof of af rica’s contribution to human progress, he cited the ‘buried civilisations on this continent found in the ruins of zimbabwe, timbuktu, carthage and many other cities that were once the centres of an af rican culture’.9 by pointing this out, thema disputed the argument made by many white politicians in south af rica at the time, which was that af ricans had not contributed to civilisation and were not entitled to or ready for what was often considered its benefits. moreover, thema questioned the claim made by certain white politicians in south af rica such as barry hertzog and jan smuts, who stated that white people were standard bearers of civilisation, and that af rican ‘barbarism’ was its death knell. he pointed at the strangeness of the ‘civilised’ white people, who in south af rica showed the: superiority of their civilisation to us by kicking and bullying us in public and in private. there seems to be a curious idea that the civilised european should impress the uncivilised af rican by trampling upon him , treating him with discourtesy and calling him all sort of names.10 although a firm believer in christianity and very appreciative of the role played by missionaries in showing af ricans the ‘light’, thema sought to expose the dark side of the missionary enterprise. while praising early missionaries whom he argued believed in the equality of man, thema claimed that their successors bought into schemes of white supremacists whose sole purpose was ‘to exploit af rica and her children’.11 by adopting the political project of subjugating af ricans, missionaries lost the confidence of black people, who began to perceive them as ‘veritable pharisees’ whose sincerity should be doubted.12 9 thema, r.v. s. ‘“a common heritage”’, umteteli wa bantu, 4 october 1924. 10 thema, r.v. s. ‘the superiority of civilised man’, umteteli wa bantu, 13 august 1921. 11 thema, r.v. s. ‘the bantu and christianity’, umteteli wa bantu, 11 november 1922. 12 ibid of his contemporaries defined themselves as new af ricans (masilela, 2013). by emphasising this identity, they tried to set themselves apart f rom what they considered the ‘old’ af rica, which in their view, was organised and anchored on tradition, superstition and backwardness. although conceding to the veracity of evidence around af rica and af ricans being involved in science long before their encounter with europeans (as he often pointed out by referencing the ruins and civilisation of the great zimbabwe3), thema believed that the encounter of af ricans with europeans represented progress notwithstanding the plunder and subjugation colonialism had brought to the af rican continent. moreover, he believed that the southern af rican region’s long association with what he called western civilisation positioned it as playing a leading role in ‘carrying the torch of western civilisation and culture to the wilds and jungles of this dark continent’.4 the idea and image of af rica that emerges f rom thema’s writings is in many respects similar to the negative stereotypes propagated by early missionaries and explorers. while such an assessment is true in some respect, thema’s understanding of civilisation and modernity was a lot more nuanced than his general reference to western civilisation suggests. in the first instance, thema argued that the foundations of what had come to be known as western civilisation ‘were laid on the soils of af rica and asia’.5 furthermore, he contended that what was considered western civilisation was in fact a product of ‘the gathering achievement of the human race’.6 in arguing for af ricans to fully claim and embrace what he considered to be a civilised way of living, he was basing this belief on it being their civilisation too. he opposed the notion that ‘western civilisation is the exclusive achievement of the white race’7 and argued that it would be ‘a gross injustice to exclude us f rom the benefits of civilisation to which we have made a distinct contribution’.8 3 thema, r. v. s. ‘the white hills of the rand, umteteli wa bantu, 24 november and 3 december 1923. 4 thema, r.v. s. ‘hertzog’s native policy’, umteteli wa bantu, 17 may 1924. 5 thema, r. v. s. ‘parallel institutions, umteteli wa bantu, 3 october 1925. 6 ibid 7 ibid 8thema, r.v. s. ‘to be or not to be?’, umteteli wa bantu, 14 june 1924. p e e r r e v i e w 18 despite his critical stance on the idea of western civilisation as an exclusively european project for the benefit of white people only, thema at times saw western civilisation as an essential force to drive the ‘veil of darkness’ f rom the af rican continent, which he considered backward. in this connection, he repeated ideas of some af rican diasporic intellectuals such as crummell who believed that the road to af rica’s redemption was through its christianisation and adoption of european culture. in support of this view, thema argued: we cannot as a race hold our own against the conditions of life which the planting of western civilisation in our midst has created unless we assimilate western ideas and adopt and learn the white man’s ways of doing things. it was thought some time ago that our contact with european civilisation would be detrimental to our very existence; but it has been discovered that we are a virile race, capable of looking the white man in the face and of living in spite of oppression and enslavement. for through the roll of ages the af rican has been subjected to one or other form of slavery, but throughout of all this period of unspeakable suffering he has not only survived the debasing influence of this institution but has also attained to a position in the affairs of mankind which is giving thoughtful men restless days and sleepless nights.13 13 thema, r.v. s. ‘to be or not to be? umteteli wa bantu, 14 june 1924. as the statement quoted above demonstrates, thema believed that it was no longer possible for af ricans to revert to the life they lived before, what masilela (2013: xiii) describes as, the violent entry of ‘european modernity’ into af rican history ‘through the social formation of capitalism and the political systems of imperialism and colonialism’. like other new af rican intellectuals, thema ‘thought that a more viable alternative was to master the complexity of european modernity with the intent of subverting it into a form of modernity that would emerge f rom the democratic imperatives of af rican history’ (masilela, 2013: xiii-xiv). thema thought the experience of af rican americans held important lessons for their brothers and sisters in south af rica and the rest of the continent. in his view, af rican americans were exemplary for their ability to overcome extreme adversity in the form of slavery and other political projects of subjugation. he praised booker t. washington in particular ,whom he described as ‘the man who founded negro civilisation and progress’14 for anchoring their progress on the foundation of education and character building. demonstrating once again his staunch belief in the significance of religion for individuals and societies, thema contended that ‘the building up of character without religion is an utter impossibility’.15 religion’, he added, ‘is the cornerstone of human progress and civilisation’.16 having concluded that the presence of ‘european modernity’ on the southern tip of the continent was irreversible, thema thought that af rican intellectuals such as himself held a responsibility to mediate, so to speak, its entry and influence in other parts of the continent.17 in his view, the future of the af rican continent depended on the extent to which countries, in which the encounter with ‘european modernity’ was deep such as those in the southern af rican region, should chart a path towards an af rican modernity. for thema, south af rica in particular should shoulder greater responsibilities because it was, according to him, the ‘leading civilised state in af rica’.18 south af rica’s role, then, would be to carry the torch of the civilisation he thought irreversible to the rest of the 14 thema, r.v. selope ‘are we fit?’, umteteli wa bantu, 2 february 1924 15 ibid 16 ibid 17 thema, r.v. selope ‘the relations of white and black’, umteteli wa bantu, 12 may 1923. 18 ibid having concluded that the presence of ‘european modernity’ on the southern tip of the continent was irreversible, thema thought that african intellectuals such as himself held a responsibility to mediate, so to speak, its entry and influence in other parts of the continent. v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w peer review 19 t h e t h i n k e r consequence of the imposition of western civilisation upon af rica and her people that insisted on af ricans abandoning their religions and customs, destroyed institutions and customs that bound them together, and insisted that they should adopt a way of life foreign to them. the consequence of that was, he contended: … we have become a race without religion, custom or principle. they see us degenerating, demoralised, and point to these weaknesses as signs of our natural incapacity to cope with the new conditions. in their councils they form resolutions to keep us in our place—a place of imbeciles, irresponsible, who have to be kept in subjection for all time. character among our people is failing because we discarded that which makes it and upholds it.22 while msimang emphasised the imposition on af rican people of european modernity through a system of ‘forced labour’, ‘the pass laws’, ‘the poll tax’, and ‘the bible’, which altogether drove af ricans to urban centres, he agreed with thema that the consequence of all of this was the raising of a new consciousness among af ricans. it was a an ‘awakening’, a ‘new light’ and a ‘new vision’ that could no longer be reversed.23 having lived together with europeans for three centuries, af ricans had evolved a hybrid civilisation—an af rican modernity—that combined the elements drawn f rom their culture and experience, as well as some taken f rom their encounter with europeans. the new af rica arising f rom the imposition of european modernity and the responses of af ricans to it, was a permanent reality that msimang felt defined modern af rica.24 by emphasising the hybrid nature of the civilisation that should be at the heart of the new af rica he advocated for, msimang echoed the position outlined by seme in 1906 when he called for the regeneration of af rica. what is distinctive about seme’s vision of af rica, as outlined in that speech and many of his writings, is that it posits an idea of af rica that does not scorn its past but takes pride in it and seeks 22 msimang, h. s. ‘the religion and civilisation of the bantu’, umteteli wa bantu, 7 october 1922. 23 ibid 24 msimang, h. s. ‘bantu destiny’, umteteli wa bantu, 16 july 1927. continent in order to ensure that af rica contributes more to human progress and civilisation. thema’s views and ideas about af rica, although controversial at times, capture the broad worldview of early af rican nationalists. this was a social group that still carried with it the ideological imprint of its origins in christian missions and the position it occupied under colonialism. as a social group, they saw the disintegration of af rican social, economic and political life under the onslaught f rom colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. the fundamental question that they conf ronted was how af rica and af ricans should respond to the changed reality. thema’s answer was that af ricans need to adapt by adopting, largely, the fundamental aspects of european modernity, including its education system and christianity. he argued that if af ricans failed to do so, they risked facing irreversible social disintegration. while accepting the permanence of social, economic and political systems introduced violently to af rica by europeans, other af rican nationalists did not accept the full extent of thema’s argument. for instance, his close f riend and fellow intellectual, selby msimang, contended that af ricans needed to evolve what he termed a ‘better civilisation’, which would sustain them under the new conditions.19 he was concerned that the social habits that af ricans were adopting in the name of western civilisation were those practiced by the worst elements of white society. what af ricans needed to learn, he argued, were those habits and traditions that have helped europe succeed so that they could apply them to the new af rica they sought to build.20 msimang’s position on af rican spirituality and religion was also slightly different f rom thema’s. while thema compared af rican religions unfavourably to christianity, msimang argued that ‘for the most part, the religion of the bantu tallied somewhat with the christian faith in its fundamental principles’.21 for msimang, it was the arrival of missionaries and the intrusion of western civilisation that rendered af rican religions and progress stagnant. he argued that the social disintegration witnessed in af rican communities did not reflect their inferiority as a people or a backwardness. on the contrary, it was a 19 msimang, h. s. ‘our social life’, umteteli wa bantu, 24 june 1922. 20 ibid 21 msimang, h. s. ’the religion and civilisation of the bantu’, umteteli wa bantu, 28 august 1922. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 20 to build f rom it. where thema and crummell, for instance, saw an af rican jungle, seme saw an af rica that would add a ‘new and unique civilisation’ that is ‘thoroughly spiritual and humanistic’ (seme quoted in ngqulunga, 2017: 29-30). as masilela (2013) notes, seme and other af rican nationalists such as plaatje saw value in indigenous cultures and institutions. their idea of af rica was not of a continent disembowelled of its institutions and cultures like thema thought; rather, they believed af rica’s progress lay in its ability to combine its ancient cultures, traditions and institutions with a ‘western’ mode of life. this belief was most evident in seme’s idea of the anc, which in its constitution combined the two traditions: euroamerican and af rican. as already mentioned, other af rican nationalists supported seme’s proposition that af rica’s prosperity depended on its ability to meld their culture with european culture. others such as plaatje were in fact sceptical that the new af rican civilisation that they so eagerly sought could be anchored and driven by what he called a ‘new native’. for plaatje the new natives or new af ricans could not be relied on because they were ‘insidious and lethargic’. their fathers and forefathers, the ‘old af ricans’, were, in plaatje’s opinion, wiser.25 if there is one dominant point, in this discussion on the idea of af rica held by early af rican nationalists, it is how divergent their views were. on the one hand was thema who accepted, perhaps grudgingly at times, western culture and religion and believed that af rica’s progress depended on it adopting what he often referred to as western civilisation. at the other end of the spectrum were af rican thinkers such as seme and plaatje, who found great value in af rican history, culture and institutions and advocated for an af rican modernity that would combine the best elements f rom european and af rican culture. despite these differences, early af rican nationalists had one thing in common: their idea of af rica was largely elitist. in other words, there was not much room provided for the role that ordinary af ricans should play in the “new af rica’ or in bringing it into being. central to the idea of af rica was the role that af rican intellectuals or leaders should play. following on cape intellectuals such as elijah makiwane26, thema and msimang believed 25 plaatje, s.t. ‘”the good new times” and the “new native”’, umteteli wa bantu, 9 november 1929. 26 see, for instance, makiwane, e. ‘educated natives’, imvo zabantsundu, 26 january 1885. that educated af ricans should play a leading role in forging the new af rica.27 seme, plaatje, john dube, and zacchaeus mahabane, saw a greater role for chiefs and traditional leaders.28 although influenced by the founding generation of af rican nationalism, the next generation of af rican nationalist thinkers— those who are known for founding the congress youth league in 1944—took a different view on the status and role to be played by the af rican masses. in the next section, i focus briefly on the ideas of three of the leading intellectuals of this generation: herbert dhlomo, anton lembede, and ashby mda. the african modernity of herbert dhlomo in his periodisation of black intellectual history in southern af rica, masilela (2007, 2013, 2014, and 2017) identifies the 1860s as the decade during which what he calls the new af rican movement (nam) emerged. this cultural, intellectual and political movement, at the heart of which was the ideology of af rican nationalism, would occupy centre stage of black social and political life for a century (1860 to 1960). among the early founders of this movement were intellectuals such as tiyo soga, elijah makiwane, pambani mzimba, william wellington gqoba, john tengo jabavu, samuel e.k. mqhayi, charlotte maxeke, nontsizi mgqweto, to mention a few. these new af ricans, as they called themselves, were joined by 27 see, for instance, msimang, h. s. ‘bantu intellectuals’, 12 and 19 september 1925 and 17 october 1925. 28 for a representative view of this perspective, see mahabane, z. ‘to the bantu paramount chiefs and chiefs of southern africa’, umteteli wa bantu, 5 march 1927. v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 despite these differences, early african nationalists had one thing in common: their idea of africa was largely elitist. in other words, there was not much room provided for the role that ordinar y africans should play in the “new africa’ or in bringing it into being. central to the idea of africa was the role that african intellectuals or leaders should play. p e e r r e v i e w 21 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 others such as seme, plaatje and others that have been mentioned in this essay. masilela singles out thema as having been instrumental in linking the early cape intellectuals with the natal intellectuals, such as jordan ngubane and the two dhlomo brothers, rolfes and herbert. thema served as a bridge not only between intellectuals f rom two regions, but by employing several natal intellectuals to work on the bantu world, a newspaper that he edited. he thereby linked the generation of early founders of the af rican nationalist movement and the heirs of this tradition in the congress youth league. herbert isaac ezra dhlomo(commonly known by his initials, h.i.e.) was in many respects a direct descendant of thema’s tutelage. although quite young in the 1920s, having been born in 1903, dhlomo started contributing to debates in the umteteli wa bantu newspaper by the mid-1920s.29 writing consistently in the newspaper alongside him were two outstanding intellectuals of the founding generation of af rican nationalism, thema and msimang. their influence on dhlomo’s political and cultural thought is evident in his early writings on the umteteli wa bantu newspaper. his october 1925 contribution to umteteli wa bantu, coincidentally appearing on the same page as thema’s, addressed the experience of af rican americans with slavery and the role slavery played, in dhlomo’s opinion, in bring about their ‘unity and f raternity’.30 dhlomo took the line of early af rican nationalist intellectuals such as thema, msimang, plaatje and dube, who felt that the af rican-american experience held important lessons for black south af ricans. similar to them, he argued that what was needed were ‘men who can and will lead our people wisely—men who are elevated above others in sentiment rather than in situation.31 this view of history, in which great men led their people into salvation or redemption, was popular among early af rican nationalists. it reflected the influence that scottish thinker, thomas carlyle, and his ‘great man’ theory of history had on af rican nationalists of the time (carlyle, 2017) 29 one of dhlomo’s first articles in umteteli wa bantu appeared in 1924 when he was 21 years old. see dhlomo, h.i.e. ‘hardship and progress’, umteteli wa bantu, 18 october 1924. 30 ibid 31 ibid thema’s influence on dhlomo is evident in his early writings on the role played by christianity and missionaries in particular in transforming the af rican continent. like thema, he moved f rom the premise that life in af rica was backward and ‘dark’ before the arrival of christianity. in an article he published in august 1930, he had the following to say on the subject: when that greatest of all missionaries, dr livingstone , decided to give his life to af rica and its people, the old, dark continent was transformed into the new, glorious af rica of today. no intelligent person can deny the continent’s indebtedness to his noble work and that accomplished by other missionaries who sought to bring light among primitive peoples.32 while dhlomo made these statements regarding the af rican past, he was careful to note that the history of af ricans was not well known. the little that was known, he observed, was distorted by prejudices held by those who wrote it.33 despite making this concession, he, like his intellectual predecessors, appears to have been too impressed by the spirit of ‘new af ricanism’ to the extent that he was too eager to paint the af rica of the past, the old af rica, with a prejudicial brush of backwardness and darkness. this idea of af rica, popular at the time, would not last long in dhlomo’s writings. by the 1940s, his writings evinced a positive disposition towards af rican history and culture. this was most evident in a series of essays he wrote for the ilanga lase natal newspaper in the 1940s. his ‘three essays in tribal culture’, which were published by the newspaper between october and december 1947 deserve a special mention.34 in the essays, dhlomo engaged with af rican history and culture in detail. although still married to his ‘new af rican’ world outlook, what is remarkable about the essays is that the dhlomo of the 1940s appears to have abandoned the stereotypical view of af rican history and culture, which paints af ricans as having been backward. in his first essay in which he addresses the fascination that zulus had with beads, and their contribution to what 32 dhlomo, h.i.e. ‘bantu and the church’, umteteli wa bantu, 23 august 1930. 33 dhlomo, h. i.e. ‘the evolution of the bantu’, umteteli wa bantu, 14, 21 and 28 november 1931. 34 dhlomo, h. i.e. ‘three essays in tribal culture’, ilanga lase natal, 4 and 11 october and 6 and 13 december 1947. p e e r r e v i e w 22v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 today would be considered visual culture, he says the following: here we have chiefs whom history daubs as savages and war obsessed tyrants talking incessantly and with great enthusiasm about decorative art. this prompt, instinctive and intellectual marriage to beads proves that the zulu was no mere savage. he had trappings of culture and deep love of the beautiful. it is often said that the zulu is conservative and does not readily take to new things and practices. yet here we find him eagerly and instantly adopting bead culture. this raises the old question of who are the bantu?35 dhlomo’s essays delve into other areas of af rican culture and history, including the importance of the shield in af rican social life (11 october 1947), as well as the significance of cattle in af rican culture (13 december 1947). there are two other important points to mention about dhlomo’s writings in the 1940s. the first is a marked shift f rom the perspective he advanced in the 1920s and early 1930s, which appeared to be too enthusiastic about the influence of what was often referred to as european modernity and too sceptical of af rican culture and history where he advanced the idea of af rica as backward. the second point is that the observable shift in dhlomo’s idea of af rica was not isolated. it reflected a serious re-assessment of af rican history, culture and institutions by new af rican intellectuals, which started in the late 1930s and gained momentum in the 1940s. with regard to af rican nationalist intellectuals based in kwazulu/ natal, the pivotal moment in this shift happened with the decision to establish what became known as the zulu language and cultural society, which was launched in 1935 to promote zulu culture and language (ngqulunga, 2022). another wellknown af rican intellectual, benedict w vilakazi, was also writing essays in ilanga lase natal newspaper at the time defending the legacy of shaka zulu and projecting him as a great leader, who promoted progress and unity among af rican people.36 35 dhlomo, h.i.e. ‘three essays in tribal culture’, ilanga lase natal, 4 october 1947. 36 vilakazi, b.w. ‘shaka’s plan of freedom and reconstruction’, ilanga lase natal, 31 july, and 7, 14 and 21 august 1943. one of the most significant contributors to debates on the idea of af rica among the congress youth league group of af rican nationalists was anton muziwakhe lembede. while dhlomo’s intellectual lineage can be traced mainly to thema, lembede’s (and perhaps mda’s to some extent) is traceable to seme.37 lembede’s association with seme ran deep. not only did lembede served his articles as a candidate attorney with seme, but they also became partners in a law firm when he qualified. what is not clear is the extent to which seme’s politics influenced lembede’s. lembede’s strong af rican nationalism was in tune with seme’s long -standing association with the af rican nationalist tradition. there is a faith in af rican culture and institutions in lembede’s political philosophy that is very similar to seme’s. this is notwithstanding the differences in their political perspectives, with lembede’s af rican nationalism being quite radical as opposed to seme’s more moderate (and at times conversative) approach. lembede’s view contrasts with af rican thinkers such as thema and dhlomo, who celebrated af rican nationalist thinkers in their own right, but tended to take a more af rican position on ‘old af rica’. a few years before he died unexpectedly in july 1947 at only 33 years old, lembede wrote numerous articles published principally in the ilanga lase natal and inkundla ya bantu newspapers on the subject of af rican nationalism or af ricanism.38 in an article he published in inkundla ya bantu, lembede outlined his vision of af ricanism/ af rican nationalism at the heart of which was his idea of af rica. in the paper, he advanced seven propositions about af rica and his idea of af rica. he started the article by making an 37 incidentally, another congress youth league african nationalist and intellectual who claimed intellectual and political descendance to seme was jordan kush ngubane. ngubane is known for having been, together with lembede, the main author of the congress youth league manifesto that declared african nationalism as the ideological fulcrum of the league as well as the liberation struggle in southern africa. 38 inkundla ya bantu newspaper was established in the last 1930s. for a time, its editor was govan mbeki, but for a long time in the 1940s and early 1950s it was edited by jordan ngubane, one of the founders of the congress youth league. it came to be known as a mouthpiece, and several leading thinkers of the league generation of african nationalists such as lembede himself, ngubane, and a.p. mda published some of their work there. ilanga lase natal on the other hand was established by joh langalibalele dube in 1903 and published its first issue on 10 april the same year. it arose as part of the rise of the african nationalist movement in southern africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. like its companion newspapers of the time such as imvo zabantsundu, izwi la bantu, tsala ea becoana and several others, it became a voice and mouthpiece of the new african nationalist movement. while umteteli wa bantu became the most influential forum for african nationalist thought in the 1920s despite its foundation having been sponsored by the chamber of mines; ilanga lase natal in the 1940s became the most exciting and influential forum for black political and cultural thought. at the time it was edited by r.r.r. dhlomo, the elder brother of herbert’s. p e e r r e v i e w 23 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 argument that ‘the history of modern times is the history of nationalism’.39 for him, nationalism was the ‘only effective weapon, the only antidote, against foreign rule and modern imperialism’.40 lembede saw the same spirit of nationalism spreading through the af rican continent. moving f rom this premise, he argued that ‘af rica is a black man’s country’41, and that af ricans were the natives of their country. af rica was their ‘motherland f rom times immemorial’.42 his second proposition was that af ricans were one people. although conceding that they were constituted by ‘heterogenous tribes’43, he advocated for one af rican nation to emerge f rom those tribes. this would be achieved by the emergence of af rican nationalistic feelings that should unite af ricans. lembede also believed in the self-determination of af ricans by insisting especially that af ricans should be led by other af ricans. that was his third proposition. fourthly, his idea of af rica distinguished between af ricans and what he called ‘other non-europeans’. by this he meant people of asian descent who lived in south af rica and so-called coloured people. while he supported cooperation between the two categories, lembede believed that the cooperation should not undermine the unity and singularity of af ricans. for lembede, the destiny of af rica and af ricans was national f reedom. failure to achieve it, he contended, would lead to their extermination. the last two propositions concerned the progress and advancement of af ricans: he believed they should aim for advancement and that the af rican character was socialistic. these principles constituted the backbone and crucible of lembede’s idea of af rica. because of his influence, they became the ideological fulcrum of the congress youth league of which he was the founding president. and through the 1949 programme of action, these principles were adopted by the anc as its ideological perspective. it is important to comment on how lembede’s af rican nationalism compared to seme’s. perhaps reflecting the radicalisation of af rican politics in the 1940s, lembede’s nationalism was less accommodating than seme’s. although proud of his af rican identity, seme’s af rican nationalism was 39 ibid 40 lembede, a.m. ‘policy of the congress youth league’, inkundla ya bantu, may 1946. 41 ibid 42 ibid 43 ibid perhaps more inclusive in the sense that it imagined other social groups such as white people as belonging to the new af rica he advocated. lembede defined those he considered as not indigenous af ricans despite having lived in af rica since time immemorial as not belonging to af rica, or perhaps entitled to certain privileges associated with belonging to af rica. his proposition regarding af ricans leading themselves is a case in point. the other difference between his af rican nationalism and seme’s was their attitude to the masses. seme’s af rican nationalism and his idea of af rica was distinctly elitist in the sense that he saw leaders, be they chiefs or educated new af ricans, as playing a leading role. lembede on the other hand saw a larger role for the af rican masses. this position was evident in an article he published in ilanga lase natal newspaper where he argued ‘nationalism is essentially an ideology of the masses because it stirs the deepest human feelings’.44 he added ‘the af rican masses today are becoming imbued with the spirit of nationalism’.45 the shift to the masses reflected the turn towards popular mobilisation in af rican nationalist politics, which was championed by the congress youth league. notwithstanding differences on certain aspects of their nationalism, seme and lembede held an idea of af rica that in many respects affirmed its history, culture and identity. though slightly divergent f rom the ideas of other leading intellectuals such as thema, this faith, if not in the past of af rica but in its present and especially its future, is one of the defining principles of the af rican nationalist idea of af rica. thema might have believed the idea advanced by early missionaries and colonists on af rican past defined by a backwardness and ‘darkness’, he, however, felt strongly that af rica’s future was bright and that the new af rica and new af ricans he imagined would contribute significantly to human civilisation and progress. conclusion the purpose of this article has been to discuss various ideas of af rica as articulated and advanced by early af rican nationalist thinkers. i have argued that the 44 lembede, anton m. ‘african nationalism and the new african masses’, ilanga lase natal, 21 june 1947. lembede wrote this article a few weeks before his untimely death. 45 ibid p e e r r e v i e w 24v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 af rican nationalist tradition in south af rica was influenced largely by debates in the af rican diaspora. the main conduit of these ideas and debates was seme, who brought them into south af rica especially through his 1906 speech. the article has also examined various ideas of leading af rican nationalist thinkers such as thema and msimang. despite certain differences in their political thought, the fundamental idea that tied them together was their belief in what they called the new af rica. it was the same idea that was inherited by the congress youth league af rican nationalists such as lembede, mda and dhlomo. unlike their predecessors of early af rican nationalism, the congress youth league generation of af rican nationalists propounded a more radical idea of af rica in which the af rican masses played a leading role in shaping human history. the af rican nationalism that won f reedom in south af rica towards the end of the 20th century can be traced to the early af rican nationalism and the ideas of af rica it advocated. references birmingham, david (1998) kwame nkrumah: the father of african nationalism. athens, oh: ohio university press. bonner, phillip (1981) the transvaal native congress, 1917-1920: the radicalisation of the black petty bourgeoisie on the rand. africa perspective, 20, 41-62. blyden, e.w. (2010) west africa before europe and other addresses: delivered in england in 1901 and 1903. whitefish, mt: kessinger publishing. campbell, j.t. 1998. songs of zion: the african methodist episcopal church in the united states and south africa. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press. carlyle, t. (2013) on heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history. new haven: yale university press. crummell, a. (2018) the future of africa: being addresses, sermons, etc., etc., delivered in the republic of liberia. sagwan press frenkel, m.y. (1974) edward blyden and the concept of african personality. african affairs, 73(292), 277-289. hughes, heather (2012) the first president: a life of john l. dube, founding president of the anc. auckland park: jacana media. kadalie, clements (1970) my life and the icu: the autobiography of a black trade unionist in south africa. london: frank cass and company limited. limb, peter (ed.) (2012) the people’s paper: a centenary history and anthology of abantu-batho. johannesburg: wits university press. limb, peter (2010) the anc’s early years: nation, class and place in south africa before 1940. pretoria: unisa press. lynch, hollis r. (1964) edward w. blyden, 1832-1912, and pan-negro nationalism. phd thesis, soas, university of london. masilela, ntongela (2017) a south african looks at the african diaspora: essays and interviews. trenton, nj: africa world press. ________________(2014) the historical figures of the new african movement. trenton, nj: africa world press. ________________(2013) an outline of the new african movement in south africa. trento, nj: africa world press. ________________( 2007) the cultural modernity of hie dhlomo. trenton, nj: africa world washingtonpress. mbeki, thabo (1996) debates of the constitutional assembly, no. 1, 29-8 march 1996, cols 422-7. ngcukaitobi, t. (2018) the land is ours: south africa’s first black lawyers and the birth of constitutionalism. cape town: penguin books. ngqulunga, bongani (2022) turn to tradition: colonialism, class and the making of zulu identity. in david boucher (ed.) language, culture and decolonisation. pretoria: hsrc press. ______________(2017) the man who founded the anc: a biography of pixley ka isaka seme. cape town: penguin books. nkrumah, k. (1962). africa’s glorious past: address delivered by osagyefo dr kwame nkrumah, president of the republic of ghana to mark the opening of the first international congress of africanists held at the great hall of the university of ghana, legon, on 12th december 1962. ministry of information and broadcasting, accra. odendaal, a. (2012) the founders: the origins of the anc and the struggle for democracy in south africa. auckland park: jacana media. seme, p. (1906) the regeneration of africa. african affairs, 5 (xx), 404-408. thema, r.v. s. [edited and introduced by alan cobley] (2018) from cattle-herding to editor’s chair: a forgotten founder of the anc. cape town: kwela books. walshe, peter (1970) the rise of african nationalism in south africa. craighall: ad donker publisher. washington, b.t. (1963) up from slavery: an authoritative text, contexts, and composition history, criticism (2nd edition). new york: bantam books. p e e r r e v i e w 54v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract t he literary turn in african studies is conceptualized here not as entailing the shift to textual/ discourse analysis pioneered by edward said, but as how african literary figures have contributed to the advancement of decolonization/ decoloniality in african studies. its point of departure is the “decolonial turn”, which refers to the varied patterns of decolonial thought emerging from different geographic and epistemic sites. although there are sometimes divergences among these patterns of thought, the salient point of convergence is their acknowledgement of coloniality as a problem haunting the world today, and of the task of decolonization/ decoloniality as unfinished. there is, however, a tendency among certain scholars to trace the genealogy of decolonial thinking, ignoring the various contributions to decolonial thinking from other sites. this article attempts to fill this crucial gap by accounting, specifically, for an african literary genealogy of decolonial thinking through the lens of the concept of “generations.” the ideas of generations and turns in literary studies in particular, and african studies in general, are complicated by the overlapping ideological dispositions of the writers. key terms: africa, (anglophone) african literature, decolonial turn/ thought, generations, literary turn by kelvin acheampong a literary turn in african studies: the contribution of three generations of african writers to the advancement of decoloniality in african studies 55 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction the 21st century is justifiably the age of insurgent and resurgent decolonization (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020b). black people are reminding us of a fact which should have been too obvious: that their lives matter! in cape town and oxford, young activists mobilised for the dismantling of colonial iconography (i.e., the statue of cecil rhodes). globally, those referred to by fanon (1963) as “the wretched of the earth” are forming epistemic alliances in a shared “insurgent and resurgent spirit of decolonization/ decoloniality” (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020a, p. 23). the battle also rages fiercely in the academic arena. the “westernized university” is charged with a twofold invidious crime, namely, its complicity in the superiorizing of eurocentric knowledges, on the one hand; and the inferiorizing of non-eurocentric ones, on the other hand (cupples, 2019; grosfoguel, 2013). university curricula have come under keen decolonial scrutiny, as evinced, for example, in the “why is my curriculum white?” campaigns in cambridge and leeds university. the spotlight has been put on research methodologies as gatekeepers who are anything but objective, innocent and neutral (smith, 2021). that knowledges are always situated; and that no single knowledge can offer “universal truths about the world” is no longer a myth (mpofu, 2014, p. 17). appeals to “a-perspectiveness”, objectivity, or “zeropoint hubris” (castro-gomez, 2021) are now seen as attempts at concealing one’s situatedness, and therefore, an indulgence in “gladiatory scholarship” (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2021b). these epiphanies fuel the demands to decolonize knowledge, power, being, gender; to unmask—as walter mignolo (2011) puts it—the “darker side of modernity”; and, ultimately, to bring the unfinished business of decolonization to completion. this resurgence of decolonial struggles in the 21st century is in part due to the proliferation of latin american scholarship on (de)coloniality/ modernity, which takes as point of departure the fact that colonial systems were not necessarily dismantled merely with the attainment of political independence by formerly colonized countries. as such, scholars such as walter mignolo, ramón grosfoguel and anibal quijano elect to use “coloniality” rather than “colonialism” to describe the continuation of empire well beyond the retreat of physical empires. this has engendered an erroneous idea among certain scholars that (de) coloniality is an originally latin american idea. in this article, i respond to this misconception by posing the question, “what is the contribution of af rican literature to decolonial thinking?” this question is necessitated not only because of the tendency among scholars to side-line the immense wealth of contributions to decolonial thinking f rom af rican scholars, but also because even in af rican studies, the contribution of af rican literature to decolonization is hardly emphasized, although it was researchers in literature who were among the foremost to critique the postcolonial condition in af rica (zeleza, 1997). in the following parts of the article, i examine what maldonado-torres (2011) calls the “decolonial turn”, emphasizing its heterogeneity and emergence in various geographical and epistemic sites (beyond latin america), before progressing to discuss the literary turn, which i conceptualize as the contribution of af rican writers to decolonization/ decoloniality as read through the lens of three generations of af rican creative writers. in the conclusion of the article, i make a case for why af rican literature (and its contribution to af rican studies) ought to be taken more seriously than is usually done, while also acknowledging that the various decolonial turns existing in various sites does not weaken the liberatory thrust of the decolonial turn. the decolonial turn according to maldonado-torres, the decolonial turn refers to “massive theoretical and epistemological breakthroughs in the works of third world figures,” which serve as a counterpoint to the “colonizing turn” in western thought (2011, p.p. 1–5). if, as blaut (1993, p. 10) explains, the colonizing turn is eurocentrism (otherwise known as “the colonizer’s model of the world”), then the decolonial turn entails struggles for epistemic f reedom that aim at undoing/ reversing the work of the colonizing turn/ eurocentrism (ndlovugatsheni, 2021c). however, considering the vast wealth of thought that serve as a counterpoint to the colonizing turn, it 56v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w is impossible to homogenize the decolonial turn. as maldonado-torres reminds us, it is heterogeneous, rather than a “single theoretical school” (2011, p. 2), a point which is accentuated by the metaphors used to describe the decolonial turn: a church/ a cocktail (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020a, p. 34); a family (maldonadotorres, 2011, p. 30); and an “umbrella” term under which a diversity of approaches gathers (gallien, 2020, p. 37). this elucidation is useful particularly because of the tendency to (re)package contemporary decolonial discourses f rom latin america as novel and (as a result) trace the genealogy of decoloniality f rom only latin america. in “postcolonial and decolonial dialogues”, for example, bhambra (2014) attributes the genealogy of decoloniality to the “work of diasporic scholars f rom south america” (2014, p. 115), ignoring the colossal contributions of af rican intellectuals. a logical defence would be that bhambra was not aware of the scholarship of these af rican scholars, but such defence is not as potent as it seems because it proves all the more “how scholars f rom af rica [especially those based in af rica] in particular experience epistemic injustice in the form of their work not being taken seriously and treated as though it does not exist at all” (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2021a, p. 168). 1 a more telling example involves anibal quijano, the peruvian sociologist who is credited with having developed the concept of “coloniality of power” which has remained fundamental and influential in the fields of decolonial studies and critical theory. by “coloniality of power”, quijano was referring to “the structures of power, control and hegemony that have emerged during the modernist era, the era of colonialism, which stretches f rom the conquest of the americas to the present” (makuvasa & shizha, 2017). though useful, these seemingly novel insights only echo the thoughts of radical black thinkers such as kwame nkrumah and amilcar cabral, among others, whose works quijano engaged with. yet, in failing to “recognize the intellectual sources of his work”, quijano practiced an “epistemic extractivism/ racism”, thus “giv[ing] the wrong impression that coloniality was his original idea”, thereby “concealing its origins in the black marxist tradition” (grosfoguel, 2020, p. xviii). 1 to be sure, african complicity should not be ignored. tembo (2022), for example, has lamented the “uncritical import of concepts from latin america that carry insights already endogenous to african intellectual history” (p. 40) african contribution to decolonial thinking the illusion of the novelty of decolonial thinking is thus corrected once we take into consideration the fact that there has been a “strong af rican contribution” “f rom both academic and literary spaces” (hankela, 2020, p. 60), emphasizing that the 21st century call for decolonization is more appropriately appreciated as a resurgence, rather than a nascency. of course, the attempt to equilibrize this case of epistemic injustice (i.e., of privileging latin american scholarship on decolonial thinking) is also not a novel enterprise. ndlovu-gatsheni (2020b) has accounted for an “af rican genealogy of decoloniality” (p. 2) by foregrounding the salient but often-ignored contribution of af rican intellectuals such as ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, samir amin, leopold sedar senghor and kwame nkrumah. more recently, he has also mapped out three major turns in af rican studies: the colonizing turn, the nationalist/ marxist turn, and the postcolonial turn—the latter two resisting the former (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2021c). leon moosavi (2020) has also called for a rethinking of the genealogy of intellectual decolonization. although he does not focus specifically on af rica, he argues that literature on decolonization f rom latin america ought to be read harmoniously with those f rom af rica and asia. these interventions are crucial because, among other things, they show—contrary to the claim of scholars such as vambe and khan (2013, p. 304)—that the illusion of the novelty of decolonial thinking is thus corrected once we take into consideration the fact that there has been a “strong african contribution” “from both academic and literary spaces” (hankela, 2020, p. 60), emphasizing that the 21st century call for decolonization is more appropriately appreciated as a resurgence, rather than a nascency. 57 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w the concept of the decolonial turn in af rica is not “another form of intellectual structural adjustment programme” (i.e., an alien theory imposed on af rica to explain its realities). rather, the decolonial turn has long existed in af rica. a literary turn in african studies in this article, i pose a slightly different question f rom ndlovu-gatsheni’s (2021). rather than accounting generally for an af rican contribution to decolonial thinking, this article investigates specifically an af rican literary genealogy of decolonial thinking.2 if truly “af rican writers were among the first to note that the emancipatory potential of independence had been overestimated” (zeleza, 1997, p. 430), what has been the contribution of af rican literature to decolonial thinking? what have af rican literary figures understood as their task in decolonization/ decoloniality and how have they responded to it? recognizing the vastness of af rican literary production, i propose to answer these questions f rom the point of view of the concept of “generations”. it is true that this concept has been the subject of intense controversy ever since it was employed by mkandiwire (1995) in his seminal article on “three generations of af rican academics”. although the debates are too vast to recount here,3 they have largely revolved around the fluidity of generational categorizations, since the concept gives the impression that humans (including their thoughts, ideas and experiences) can be put into rigid boxes. still, i agree with scholars like adesanmi and dunton (2005), who explain that the generational approach remains one of the cornerstones of literary criticism largely due to the “possibilities it offers for a systematic understanding of literary trends and currents synchronically and diachronically” (p. 13). three generations of af rican literary writers have been acknowledged by scholars such as adesanmi and dunton (2005), nnolim (2009) and o jaide (2015).4 2 the focus here is on literatures written in english. of course, i am aware of the entry point of ngũgĩ’s decolonial discourse (i.e., that african literatures are those written in african languages). however, following maldonado-torres (2011), this article is underpinned by a conception of decoloniality that embraces diverse patterns of thought. thus, both achebe and ngugi’s position on the language debate, to me, are both decolonial, the difference being in the degree of radicality. 3 for more on this point, see garuba (2005) 4 again, these categorizations are not rigid. other scholars have talked about a fourth and fifth generation. this article is limited to the first three. in the following section, i will provide vignettes of the decolonial contributions of each generation of af rican literary writers, making brief references to literary works that typify the dominant ideological dispositions of each generation: osiris rising by ayi kwei armah (representing generation one), the tambudzai trilogy (i.e., nervous conditions, the book of not, and this mournable body) by tsitsi dangarembga (representing generation two) and americanah by chimamanda ngozi adichie (representing generation three). the goal is to open spaces for further and deeper exploration of the contribution of af rican literature to decolonization/ decoloniality. first-generation writing first-generation writers are comprised of writers such as ayi kwei armah, ama ata aidoo, sembene ousmane, chinua achebe, amos tutuola, wole soyinka, flora nwapa, kofi awoonor, and ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, who were mostly born during the first five decades of the twentieth century when colonialism on the continent was rife (adesanmi & dunton, 2005). it is to this group of writers that ashcroft et al. (2002) refer to in their discussion of the empire “writing back” to the imperial centre. as singh (2017) correctly explains, “first-generation literature [was] an act of reclaiming voice, narrative autonomy and agency.” these (new) literatures were challenging dominant traditional literature in which “af rica…[was] always being defined…by europeans who often saw the world in colour-tinted glasses” (ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, 1993, p. 21). because first-generation af rican literature, f rom the onset, was chiefly about “writing back” to europe— since “it was europe which introduced into af rica the problems which the [af rican] writer was attempting to solve” (achebe, 1976, p. 117)—the primary audience of this literature tended to be in europe initially. thus, the titles of some early af rican novels were taken f rom european poems. also, certain first-generation works responded specifically to particular european novels.5 the preoccupation of engaging with europe was mostly due to the aim of remedying eurocentric portrayals of af ricans as uncivilized and barbaric, 5 for a more in-depth discussion of this, see mukoma wa ngugi (2018). 58v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w and of af rica as the dark continent with no history. these writers were labouring at reinventing af rica. collectively, first-generation literature is called “literature of testimony” (harrow, 1994) and “literature of revolt” (ngugi, 2018). literature of testimony responded to derogatory representations of (and myths about) af rican culture by presenting a counter-discourse that valorised af rican culture. in that sense, this “literature of testimony” can also be referred to as “literature of cultural assertion” (okonkwo, 1991), given that it documents the history of af rica f rom an af rican point of view (harrow, 1994). by recapturing “the myth, folklore and the sum total of af rican cosmological perspective in their works”, first-generation writing, basking in a deep sense of af rican history, attempted to “make af ricans regain confidence in themselves” (osuafore, 2003)—a confidence that had been severely battered as a result of the colonial experience. accordingly, these literatures tended to be set in (or featured key scenes f rom) the pre-colonial af rican past. as literature of revolt, this literature also attacked racism and colonization. it presented africans as actors, rather than people who were always acted on (ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, 1981, p. 30). choosing epistemic disobedience, this generation of writers gifted us with characters who embodied the spirit of resistance against forces of dehumanization. famous among these characters are okonkwo (from things fall apart) and ezeulu (in arrow of god), who make their own history. okonkwo, in particular, chooses to die through “suicide rather than submit and live in a world where he is denied the right to make his own history” (ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, 1981, p. 30). such writings were geared towards avowing the value of african cultures in order to stress the innate dignity of the african (nnolim, 1989, p. 55).6 these writers, then, seriously engaged in a type of ameliorative historical revisionism. unlike what is sometimes thought, historical revisionism does not imply an obsession/ fascination with the past as a golden age of peace and harmony. first-generation writers understood the primacy of the epistemic dimension of colonization7 and, consequently, that 6 of course, negritude—the self-affirmation of blackness in a white world—is best read against this backdrop. 7 both the colonizing and decolonizing turns have been underpinned by the control/ (re)interpretation of history. decolonization would be shallow without “decolonizing the mind”, as ngũgĩ (1986) puts it. this privileging of the epistemic dimension of decolonization animates armah’s osiris rising. osiris rising takes its narrative structure from africa’s oldest source: the isis-osiris myth cycle. it is the story of ast, an african-american, who after gaining her phd in america, goes to africa seeking both love and her heritage. she finds both in the person of asar, who is at the forefront of an epistemic revolution. this revolution involves moving the centre of knowledge from europe to africa. those who think asar is a threat, as they find this idea repulsive, manage to kill him at the end of the novel. but if, indeed, the novel is based on the isis-osiris myth, then it is not wrong to conclude that asar’s death, although seemingly anticlimactic, is the necessary catalyst to birth the revolution of which he is at the forefront. significantly, armah’s characters unpack the inherent eurocentrism of what is known as “history” and invite us to embed studies on africa in a more subversive history, not as an “escapist indulgence” (soyinka, 1997, p. 355) or as an obsession with/ deification/ idealization of the past as a golden age of peace, harmony and prosperity, but rather in acknowledgement that the production of knowledge has never been neutral (history with lower case ‘h’). osiris rising explores the intersection of ontology and epistemology, revealing how the epistemological base one assumes influences knowledge production—hinting at issues of cognitive/ epistemic (in)justice. from armah’s perspective, historical revisionism is also imperative so that contemporary resistance to coloniality can find solidarity in historical precedents. part of armah’s strategy to reconstruct af rican history includes a reassessment of the place of egypt in af rica. references to egypt abound in armah’s creative and critical works. armah’s fascination with egyptology is seen not only in osiris rising, but also in his other creative works and critical essays. as imperfect though it is, it should be viewed as one of many quests by af ricans for epistemic f reedom, thus finding deep resonance with current scholarship on decoloniality. it seems that almost three decades ago, armah had already decoded that decolonization, “at its deepest conceptualization”, “entails a re-writing of human history” (ndlovu-gatsheni 2020a, p. 10). 59 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w second-generation writing second-generation literatures criticize neocolonialism and speak chiefly to the theme of disillusionment8, urging the reader to contemplate the real benefits of independence to af rican countries. as an online literary space succinctly puts it: “while the first generation writers were interested in challenging the images and stereotypes of [af ricans] that were perpetuated during colonial rule, second generation writers wrote highly critical literature and seemed to be more concerned with contemporary [af rica]” (bookshy, 2012). thus, while first-generation writers had a more culturally restorative bent, secondgeneration writers were more national disposed. second-generation writers were also born during late colonial times; consequently, “their formative years were mostly shaped by independence and its aftermath of disillusionment and stasis” (adesanmi & dunton, 2005, p. 14). this generation of writers, convinced that first-generation writing had been overly occupied with explaining af rica to europe, engaged more directly with af rica—usually by critiquing the postcolonial situation. secondgeneration writers therefore include writers such as niyi osundare, femi osofisan, tsitsi dangarembga, frank chipasula, tanure o jaide, isodore okpewho, nurudin farar, mandla langa, festus iyayi, jack mapanje, buchi emecheta, nawal el saadawi and ben okri, most of whom arrived on the literary scene in the 1980s and 1990s (adesanmi & dunton, 2005). moving away f rom the cultural nationalism/ valorisation and historical revisionism that had shaped first-generation writing, these writers foregrounded the plight of the “poor masses in a society in which the oppressed and the oppressor, the exploiter and the exploited, share unequal and uneasy coexistence” (nnolim, 1989, p. 58). dangarembga’s tambudzai trilogy is a textbook example of second-generation writing, which exposes the futility of thinking of decolonization in terms of the attainment of independence by af rican countries. although the reader navigates their way f rom british colonial rule in zimbabwe into the (period after the) 8 this is not a distinctly second-generation characteristic. some first (such as a man of the people, this earth, my brother, the interpreters, fragments and the beautyful ones are not yet born) and third-generation (such as we need new names and americanah) writings are examples of the so-called literature of disillusionment. attainment of independence, we look for significant transitions in the lives of the characters in the novels in vain. instead, an “oppressive sameness” (gulick, 2020) pervades the life of dangarembga’s main character, ever-questioning the “post-ness” of postcoloniality9 by foregrounding continuities rather than ruptures between the supposedly colonial and postcolonial era. this point is foreshadowed in the titles of the novels. the first novel explores the “nervous conditions” of the characters while the second novel takes a more existential turn. as saint (2020) argues, it is a quest for self, providing “an extended meditation on how colonial and postcolonial worlds affect the existential life of the colonized subject” (p. 450). the title of the last novel in the trilogy is no less foreboding: this mournable body that is no less gloomy irrespective of the fact that zimbabwe is now independent. these works “reject a national narrative that is premised on political independence as a moment of historical rupture” (gulick, 2020, p. 466), proving more poignantly that which grosfoguel (2007, p. 219) identified as “one of the most powerful myths of the twentieth century”—namely, “that the elimination of colonial administrations amounted to decolonisation of the world”—has long been a departure point for af rican literary figures. third-generation writing this group of writers include toyin adewale, lola shoneyin, chimamanda ngozi adichie, sefi atta, yvonne vera, calixthe beyala, amma darko, abdourahman ali waberi, and chris abani, representing, perhaps, the most diverse and eclectic group of writers in the history of af rica. thirdgeneration writers (especially those f rom francophone af rica) are sometimes referred to as “children of the postcolony” to emphasize their severance f rom the colonial event (adesanmi & dunton, 2005). easily detectable in the literature of the so-called thirdgeneration writers is a preoccupation with the exploration of themes of “identity and otherness, as conditioned by their location in the diasporic and/ or exilic space” (adesanmi, 2004, p. 236). their works also emphasize “diasporic identity, migration, transnationality and globalization” (krishnan, 2013, 9 the hyphenated post-colonial is used here as a time marker (i.e., the period after the attainment of political independence), rather than the unhyphenated postcolonial as a theoretical framework. 60v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w p. 74). according to krishnan (2013), because thirdgeneration writers are “displaced f rom the event of colonization and the turmoil of independence” and have been shaped more by “contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism, globalization, nomadism, and liminality than their predecessors”, their works have a “diminished concern with the colonial past” (p. 75). this also explains the reduced affinity with the nation-state. third-generation writing have therefore been indicted as being “so foreign and contrived that they fail to offer the kind of political dream that has always animated af rican writings” (edoro, 2008, p. 25). this appraisal, it appears, is based on a faulty perception that every work of af rican literature has to match a certain type of engagement—usually meaning that of first-generation writers. in reality, third-generation writers have been posing the same questions as first (and second)-generation writers, except that they are proffering different answers that reflect their own realities (edoro, 2008). for example, adichie has been grappling with issues of coloniality and identity. not only has she been advocating for us all to be feminists, but she also analyses how racism continues to manifest in everyday interactions, albeit in subtler ways. take americanah, for example, which grapples with asymmetrical power relations in america based on skin colour within a context of a supposedly postracial world. the idea of postraciality is reinforced by concepts such as “colour-blindedness”, and discourses such as “all lives matter” (as a response to “black lives matter”), and “the only race that matters is the human race” (as a denial of white privilege). ifemelu’s (i.e., the protagonist in americanah) polemic critique of postraciality reminds us of what miranda fricker (2007) calls “hermeneutic epistemic injustice”, which occurs when people experience “a gap in collective interpretive resources” because they are put “at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (p. 1)—in this case, the viability of race as a useful analytical category for determining who gets what, how and when. at the same time, these third-generation literatures also deal with post-independence disillusionment in a similar manner that authors like ayi kwei armah did in the beautyful ones are not yet born back in the 1950s. conclusion if, as craig (1975) writes, “the course of literary development—its lulls, peaks, dying branches and new shoots—is determined by the main course of history” (p. 137), then it is also true that “the literature of black af rica…[has been] mainly in response to the realities of colonialism” (okonkwo, 1991, p. 41). these three generations of writers have been posing the same questions regarding coloniality in its multifaceted forms, but have been proffering different answers.10 at the same time, the point must be made that these generational categorizations do not necessarily imply disjointedness. in fact, each generation’s task, although peculiar, “is made possible only by the foundational work of those who have gone ahead” (mwangola, 2008, p. 10). what these three generations of writers have in common is the redemptive thrust of their work. as mwangola (2008) further explains, “stripped of the specificities of the particular debates, africa’s intelligentsia has continued over different eras to respond more or less to the same core concerns” (p. 8). besides, the generational categorizations (although both epochal and thematic) themselves are very fluid. although “temporal coevality and ideological preferences are at the centre of generational determination in modern af rican literatures” (adesanmi & dunton, 2005, p. 14), some leitmotifs (such as the disillusionment of independence) run through all three generations. it is also because of this fluidity that there arise challenges about locating specific af rican writers. for example, although i present tsitsi dangarembga as a second-generation writer, gulick (2019) hints that she is a first-generation writer, while adesanmi and dunton (2005) classify her as a thirdgeneration writer. in fact, mukoma wa ngugi (2018) suggests that the so-called first-generation writers are better classified as the “makerere generation”, given that the term “first-generation” excludes the work of south af rican writers (such as samuel mqhayi, sol plaatje, ac jordan, thomas mofolo and rrr dhlomo) who were writing in (south) af rican languages long before writers such as achebe. this paper’s focus, however, is not as much on presenting 10 in fact, even within generations, writers usually disagreed on decolonial strategies. perhaps, the most profound is as touching the divergent positions firstgeneration writers such as ngũgĩ wa thiong’o and achebe took on the famous language debate. 61 a conclusive conceptualization of an old debate as much as it is on locating a decolonial turn within af rican literatures. the question of generations will remain open, requiring revisiting. the fluidity among the various generations also means that writing for writing’s sake has generally been a luxury too expensive for the af rican writer, regardless of which generation they belong to. zeleza correctly clarifies that “writing in independent af rica has been a deadly serious business” (1997, p. 434). af rican writers have continued to serve as social critics, educators and part of the struggle against social evils. the idea that art needs no justification, should serve no purpose, should be judged purely on its own terms, rather than on its relationship to social, political or moral values has been dismissed by writers such as achebe (1976), ngũgĩ (1991) and soyinka (1997), with achebe’s famous dismissal of “art for art’s sake” as a “piece of deodorized dog shit” (1976, p. 25).11 if for nothing at all, this should challenge us to give af rican literature a much more prominent place in social research than it is usually accorded (adeoti, 2005). the argument here has not been to discount the wealth of the latin american contribution to decoloniality, nor to privilege af rican genealogies of decolonial thinking. after all, the value of anything cannot be merely reduced to its origin. the point, instead, is to make a case for the necessity of reading decolonial contributions f rom various geographical and epistemic sources in concert, in line with maldonado-torres’ articulation of the decolonial turn. thankfully, the diversity of the various turning points will not necessarily weaken the liberatory thrust of decoloniality, but will instead, as ndlovu-gatsheni explains, provide “the necessary nuances, complexity, depth and expansion” (2020a, p. 21). references achebe, c., 1976. morning yet on creation day. s.l.:anchor books. adeoti, g., 2005. the re-making of africa: ayi kwei armah and the narrative of an (alter)-native route to development. africa media review, 13(2), pp. 1-15. 11 this is true even beyond art. as thuynsma 1998 explains: “africanists have never been able to afford scholarship for its luxury. in whatever field, african intellectuals have had to work their way out from under a number of historical boulders rolled over us by foreign interests” (p.185). adesanmi, p. & dunton, c., 2005. nigeria’s third generation writing: historiography and preliminary theoretical considerations. english in africa, 32(1), pp. 7-19. adichie, c. n., 2013. americanah. new york; toronto: alfred a. knopf. ashcroft, b., griffiths, g. & tiffin, h., 2002. the empire writes back: theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. london; new york: routledge. avid bards, 2018. unpacking race in “americanah”. 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african studies and crises. dakar: codesria. p e e r r e v i e w 36v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract in this essay, i deploy a liberation philosophical perspective in order to understand thabo mbeki’s decolonial imagining of an af rican in the af rican renaissance. it is my understanding that the af rican of the af rican renaissance is one who has awakened to the task of undoing coloniality in the af rican postcolony. for instance, that an af rican has to declare that ‘i am an af rican’ in af rica, as mbeki does, reflects the troubled and also troubling idea of being af rican in the af rican postcolony. it might seem that being human, and af rican in af rica, is an idea under question that must still be declared or defended. whether one is an af rican or not in the postcolony is not a given, as colonialism succeeded in changing the being and belonging of af ricans in af rica. through colonialism, settlers became local in af rica and af ricans became aliens in their own native territories. colonialism, especially in its apartheid expression in south af rica, questioned the humanity of black af ricans, displaced them, and dispossessed them of their land. it is the uprooted, displaced, and dispossessed af rican represented in mbeki who makes the remark that: ‘at times, and in fear, i have wondered whether i should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.’ this dehumanised af rican is the subject who travels f rom the dystopia of colonialism to the utopia of reconciliation and a renaissance of af rica. this is the af rican who was caught in the tragic optimism of the liberation ‘dreamer’, but was later to concede that after the end of juridical colonialism, south af rica remained ‘two nations’ racially and socially. even a globally celebrated democratic constitution did not come close to solving the political and social equation, the paradox, where south af rica remains the ‘most unequal country in the world’. for the af rican of mbeki’s representation and observation, the dream of liberation f rom colonialism collapsed into a nightmare of coloniality, and the starting point of an af rican renaissance is the decolonial effort to dare dream and imagine another af rica and other af ricans built f rom the ashes of the colonisers and the colonised. this essay is also an observation of the dilemma of a philosopher of liberation who was torn in between the necessity of justice for the victims of colonialism and the importance of reconciliation with the colonisers in the af rican postcolony. by william jethro mpofu thabo mbeki’s decolonial idea of an african in the african renaissance 37 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 af ricans were not named af ricans by themselves but by their colonisers – led mogobe ramose (2005: 4) to accept being called an af rican in af rica only ‘under protest’. mbeki’s speech was delivered at an uneasy time in the south af rican postcolony. it was a time when the black south af rican population had high expectations of liberation after the long years of apartheid. it was a time when white south af ricans were gripped by fear of the revenge of black people, who for very long had lived outside the mainstream economy and polity of the country. political leaders such as nelson mandela and mbeki had to negotiate high black expectations, while also allaying deep white fears at a time when the south af rican constitutional and democratic experiment was still young and f ragile. the language of forgiveness and reconciliation was, at the time, the currency of political trade in a south af rica that archbishop desmond tutu (1996) had christened the ‘rainbow nation of god’, where seemingly impossible forgiveness and reconciliation between the victims and perpetrators of apartheid was taking place. mbeki’s speech could not escape being infected or flavoured, depending on where one stands, by the political climate of the time. as such, the af rican that mbeki describes in his speech is an af rican who seeks to re-invent the self and the continent of af rica itself. for instance, valentin mudimbe (1998) described how af rica and af ricans needed to be re-invented after the continent and its people had gone through decades of ‘invention’ by colonialism. the idea of the af rican renaissance itself might, after all, be an idea about the decolonial re-invention of af rica and af ricans. re-inventing af rica and af ricans takes a decolonial imagination and a tragic optimism that is clear about the colonial invention of af rica and af ricans and can envision a re-invented af rica and new af ricans. that task, as represented by mbeki, takes an af rican who sees and believes in the utopia of forgiveness, reconciliation, and liberation – under a dark cloud of the real history of the dystopia of colonisation, dehumanisation, and oppression in the postcolony. that the af rican renaissance itself is an awakening is based on the reality that there was a colonial wound to heal and a colonial slumber f rom which af ricans must wake. introduction in this essay, i deploy a liberation philosophical perspective in order to understand thabo mbeki’s decolonial imagining of an af rican in the af rican renaissance. it is my understanding that the af rican of the af rican renaissance is one who has awakened to the task of undoing coloniality in the af rican postcolony. for instance, that an af rican has to declare that ‘i am an af rican’ in af rica, as thabo mbeki (1998: 31) does, reflects the troubled and also troubling idea of being af rican in the af rican postcolony. the idea of being af rican is troubled in that it is a search for true liberation and full humanity where liberation remains elusive, and the humanity of af ricans continues to be questioned if not denied. it is troubling in the sense that the insistence by af ricans that they are af rican and human haunts those who have sought to question their humanity and have benefitted f rom their dehumanisation. mbeki imagined the af rican renaissance as the awakening of af ricans in south af rica and beyond f rom a colonial slumber to decolonial consciousness that would lead to justice and liberation. the philosophical dilemma that conf ronted mbeki’s imagination is that true liberation and reconciliation between the former colonisers and the colonised could not be achieved without justice. mbeki, as the vice-president to president nelson mandela, presented the ‘i am an af rican’ speech on behalf of the af rican national congress (anc) in cape town on 8 may 1996, on the occasion of the passing of south af rica’s new constitution. the speech became a classic amongst many other speeches that mbeki presented as part of introducing the idea of the af rican renaissance. mbeki’s poetic declaration that ‘i am an af rican’ in south af rica might just indicate that being human, and af rican, in af rica is an idea under question that must still be declared or defended in the postcolony. so f ragile is being af rican in af rica that as part of his explication of the idea of the ‘postcolony’ in af rica, achille mbembe (2001) notes that being af rican, thinking about af rica, and writing about it has never come easy. it has never come easy because the postcolony is that uneasy place where colonialism has not really died, while liberation f rom colonialism struggles to be born. the long history of the dehumanisation of af ricans by slavery and colonialism – and the fact that p e e r r e v i e w 38v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 mbeki begins his ‘i am an af rican’ speech by invoking the name of the af rican in af rica as a victim of conquest and colonisation who is proudly prepared to march to a new future with some dignity. this is an angry and proud af rican who is only too aware of the depth of the colonial wound that continues to bleed, even after political independence has been declared. it is this af rican who says: i owe my being to the khoi and the san whose desolate souls haunt the beautiful cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives – in the struggle to defend our f reedom and independence and they who, as people, perished in the result. (mbeki, 1998: 32) as sisonke msimang (2000: 70) notes: ‘after three years of carefully constructed mandela speeches on the importance of ‘non-racialism’ there was something in mbeki’s affirmation of af rica that seemed to be alluding to a south af rica that was very different f rom the rainbow nation.’ this was the south af rica of the angry but proud af rican who still looked at the bleeding colonial wound and was not easily enchanted by the ‘sugar-candy mountain’ of reconciliation. however, as if unable to escape the enchantment of the ‘rainbowism’ of the political moment, in the same speech and same voice, mbeki turns around to describe another af rican who is not simply black and native to af rica, but rather an inclusive af rican whose ‘af ricanity’ accommodates others, including the white settlers themselves, ‘whatever their own actions’ in the history of south af rica. this other af rican who mbeki projects is a wounded but forgiving victim who dreams of a south af rican future that includes both the victims and the perpetrators of apartheid as fellow citizens who are prepared to pursue a future together: i am formed of the migrants who left europe to find a new home on our native land. whatever their own actions, they remain still part of me. in my veins courses the blood of the malay slaves who came f rom the east. their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture is part of my essence. the stripes they bore on their bodies f rom the lash of the slave-master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done. (mbeki, 1998: 32) in this essay, i write about this wounded but forgiving af rican. my observation is that this is not a f ragile af rican who espouses forgiveness and reconciliation f rom a position of defeat, surrender, and weakness. rather, this is an af rican with a liberation philosophy purpose: one who sees liberation beyond not only the conflict between the coloniser and the colonised, but also beyond the identities and positionalities of the oppressor and the oppressed. paulo freire (1993) refers to such liberation thinkers and political activists as great humanists who have the task not only to liberate themselves, but also to f ree their oppressors f rom the existential and systemic prison of being oppressors. the oppressors, freire notes, by virtue of being oppressors do not have the power to f ree their victims or themselves. they can only be f reed by the power that arises f rom the ‘weaknesses’ of the victims who are the ones who can forgive, even if they do not forget. sabelo ndlovu-gatsheni (2016) describes such political thinkers and activists as the ‘decolonial humanists’ who practice the ‘politics of life’, as opposed to the politics of revenge and death. it is such thinkers and political activists who can, in the midst of dystopias such as post-apartheid south af rica, dare to imagine the utopia of a working constitutional and democratic dispensation where former perpetrators and former victims can live under one republic, salute one flag, and sing one national anthem. as forgiving as these thinkers and political activists seem to be, they nonetheless retain a sharp memory and view of the colonial wound. they do not forget. it was mbeki, the philosopher of liberation (mpofu, 2012), who in the midst of his conciliatory p e e r r e v i e w my observation is that this is not a fragile african who espouses forgiveness and reconciliation from a position of defeat, surrender, and weakness. rather, this is an african with a liberation philosophy purpose: one who sees liberation beyond not only the conflict between the coloniser and the colonised, but also beyond the identities and positionalities of the oppressor and the oppressed. 39 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 speech could be un-forgetful enough to remember that post-apartheid south af rica would necessarily have to accommodate those who colonised south af ricans and those who continued to economically benefit f rom the proceeds of apartheid. in expressing the philosophical and humanist dilemma of accommodating former enemies, mbeki poetically noted that: ‘at times, and in fear, i have wondered whether i should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba, and the pestilential mosquito’ (mbeki, 1998: 31). the liberated south af rica of mbeki’s philosophical and poetic imagination was a south af rica where the af rican would share citizenship with dangerous monsters whose history and deeds resembled those of leopards, mambas, hyenas, and pestilential parasites such as mosquitos. in dehumanising the af ricans through colonisation and apartheid, the colonialists dehumanised themselves into wild animals, venomous snakes, and other creatures of the wild. as a forgiving but un-forgetting philosopher of liberation, mbeki remained clear about the violence of apartheid in the past and in the present. nonetheless, he remained dedicated to reconciliation and democracy. such forgiveness, as is required f rom the victim of colonialism and other crimes against humanity, is described by hannah arendt (1958) as impossible but necessary and therefore achievable by those who have the courage and the optimism to see brighter human futures in dark times. such forgiveness, arendt noted, is more religious than political in origins. arendt observes how forgiveness after large-scale crimes, such as holocausts and genocides, is actually a quality of god which only some brave human beings with great purposes can afford. the great purpose of re-inventing af rica and af ricans required not just humility, but also the courage to forgive the unforgivable. south af rica’s transition f rom apartheid to democracy involved the victims of apartheid forgiving their victimisers. this is why the transition was understood as a kind of miracle: because apartheid wounds were too deep, black expectations of liberation too high, and white fears of punishment too vivid. those who forgive might not forget, and some might forget but not forgive, remaining with deep anger bottled up in their psyche. mbeki, as the forgiving but not forgetting philosopher of liberation, made the bold observation that south af rica’s beautiful and democratic constitution, though celebrated worldwide, was unequal to the task of eradicating the social inequalities left behind by apartheid. on the occasion of the debate on reconciliation in the national assembly, cape town, on 29 may 1998, mbeki (1998: 68) delivered another historic speech: ‘south af rica: two nations’. in this speech, he pointed out that south af rica was still divided between rich white people and poor black people. the constitutional goal of ‘national unity and reconciliation’ in south af rica was a dream that had turned into a nightmare. the white south af ricans who had perpetrated apartheid and who had benefitted f rom its economic and political crimes against humanity did not seem to be interested in undoing the inequalities that apartheid had produced. mbeki (1998: 75) noted how ‘it comes about that those who were responsible for or were beneficiaries of the past absolve themselves f rom any obligation to help do away with an unacceptable legacy’. the mbeki who delivered the ‘south af rica: two nations’ speech was true to the philosophy of liberation that might forgive but not forget. in the midst of celebrating a beautiful constitution, he pointed out that, in postapartheid south af rica, the social inequalities created by apartheid were not a crime of the past, but rather a crime of the present that needed urgent resolution. in other words, mbeki insisted that apartheid was a present reality. south af rica was true to what mbembe (2001) has called the ‘postcolony’: a time and a place where the corpses of colonialism and apartheid insist on resurrection whenever attempts are made to bury them for good. the tragedy of the project of reinventing af rica and af ricans is that those who were supposed to be forgiven did not make themselves available for forgiveness, as they resisted giving away the privileges that they gained f rom apartheid. it was a tragedy of having to forgive those who were not willing to apologise for their injustices and crimes. this turned forgiveness into an even more difficult challenge that requires political and philosophical courage. even more tragic, perhaps, and requiring more courage, may be the attempt to forget apartheid when the social inequalities it produced are still very much alive. the two speeches ‘i am an af rican’ and ‘south af rica: two nations’ represent mbeki as an af rican renaissance philosopher who was as keen p e e r r e v i e w 40v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w to forgive as he was not to forget the injustices and crimes of apartheid. mbeki was vividly aware of the f ragility of reconciliation without justice, and of the shortcomings of a forgiveness and reconciliation experiment that was based on a politically-motivated collective amnesia. the philosophy of liberation and the african renaissance when friedrich nietzsche (2014) determined himself to look ‘beyond good and evil’ and to come up with a ‘philosophy of the future’, he opined that those who fight against monsters should be careful to not become monsters themselves. similarly, those who fought against apartheid in the south af rican liberation movement had to take care that they did not, once in power, practice a new version of apartheid against those who had oppressed them. while nietzsche was the direct opposite of a philosopher of liberation, because of his celebration of ‘will power’ (nietzsche, 1968) and his valorisation of the politics of domination, his present observation affirms the philosophy and politics of liberation. the philosophy of liberation, and the politics of liberation that it gives birth to, do not privilege the ideas and practices of retaliation and revenge. in his articulation of the af rican renaissance, f rom his background in the south af rican and af rican liberation movements, mbeki was aware that retaliation and revenge against the perpetrators and beneficiaries of apartheid were not sustainable options. revenge and retaliation can only produce new victims and new victimisers. nonetheless, he was also aware that those who enjoyed the political and economic privileges of apartheid were not going to easily forfeit those privileges. it became the existential and political dilemma of the leaders of the liberation movement to build a new democratic south af rica in which even the perpetrators and beneficiaries of apartheid would find home. the tragedy of the south af rican democratic and constitutional experiment, therefore, as expressed by mbeki in the ‘south af rica: two nations’ speech, is that the perpetrators and beneficiaries of apartheid did not only find home in post-apartheid south af rica, but also kept their power and privileges. as canonically described by enrique dussel (1969) and paulo freire (1993), the burden of the philosophy of liberation is that its humanist vocation compels it to look after not only the victims of oppression, but also the oppressors. liberation philosophers practice politics not as a profession of opportunists and tricksters, but as a vocation of liberators who are determined to make the world a shared place where people of different historical and political positionalities can co-exist. this did not eventually take place in south af rica, a country which remains racially divided, with white people monopolising the economy. this reveals the tragic messianism of the philosophy of liberation, which leaves the victims of oppression on the cross of history, crucified and sacrificed on the altars of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. the peace that arises f rom a reconciliation that is not accompanied by justice is a negative peace that amounts to the silence of the defeated who await the opportunity to return to conflict. the af rican renaissance, as articulated by mbeki, might then have been a return to the struggle of an aggrieved philosopher of liberation who was witnessing the durability of apartheid even after political independence had been declared in south af rica. in the narrative of endgame: the secret talks and the end of apartheid, willie esterhuyse (2012) describes how thabo mbeki was always ‘against war’ and for a negotiated liberation of south af rica that would liberate black people and also preserve the humanity of those who perpetrated and benefitted f rom apartheid. that south af rica remained ‘two nations’ after the negotiated settlement might therefore have come as tragic crucifixion for mbeki. it is the crucified mbeki who found in the idea of an af rican renaissance an avenue to return to the unarmed struggle for liberation in south af rica and in af rica. apartheid and colonialism were now to be fought through the re-invention of af rica and its people, through an af rican renaissance that was not interested in punishing perpetrators, but was rather interested in empowering victims. even as the af rican renaissance as represented by mbeki sounded only poetic and philosophical, it was still political and powerful in the way that its project was to re-invent what had been invented by colonialism. in that way, the af rican renaissance was the work of beauty and power as a philosophical idea. the idea of the af rican renaissance suffered the marxian limit, in which the impotence of philosophers lies in the fact that they describe the world, when in fact the point is to 41 special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 change the world for the better. in south af rica, the limits of the political messianism of the philosophy of liberation might have been the forgiveness extended by victims and their reconciliation with victimisers who were not interested in relinquishing their power and privilege. the african renaissance the reason why pitika ntuli (1998: 15) had to ask ‘who is af raid of the af rican renaissance’ is because the idea of an af rican renaissance threatens power and knowledge systems that have normalised af rica as a dark continent that is beyond repair. the idea that af rica is lost beyond recovery is comforting to the colonial ego. the idea of an af rican renaissance is also threatening to af ricans who have to carry out the cultural, economic, intellectual, and political tasks that will lead af rica to its long overdue awakening. the tasks ‘will involve [a] re-analysing of af rica’s past’, decolonising education in af rica, and paying attention to the diversity of af ricans in af rica and around the world (ntuli, 1998: 15). in other words, the idea of an af rican awakening is threatening to those who benefit f rom the af rican economic and political condition of slumber. in his reading and interpretation of the work of ngugi wa thiongo, ndlovu-gatsheni (2019: 3) understands the idea of an af rican renaissance as the hard work of af rican intellectuals and political leaders ‘re-membering’, in the sense of re-assembling the organs of an af rican continent and af rican people that were ‘dismembered’ by colonialism. this intellectual and political work is f rightening to af ricans themselves and is threatening to those who have benefitted f rom a dis-membered af rica. the call for an af rican renaissance is a direct challenge to western economic, political, and cultural imperialism. it is a call that ‘challenges the right of europeans to impose their cultural and spiritual values on af rican communities’ (nabudere, 2001: 11). dani nabudere (2001: 1) notes how the af rican renaissance idea seeks to ‘redefine a new political and ideological agenda of pan-af ricanism in the age of globalisation’ and that ‘the key pillars of the af rican renaissance are sociocultural, political, economic regeneration and improvement of af rica’s geo-political standing in world affairs’. in other words, the af rican renaissance is not seen as a simple awakening or coming to consciousness, but also as an insurrection against western cultural, economic, and political domination. in the first place, ‘the struggle against imperialism in af rica was a struggle for af rican independence and to that extent for an af rican renaissance’ (nabudere, 2001: 15). in that way, the poetic but also vigorous call for the af rican renaissance was a call by a philosopher of liberation who had been awakened to the reality that the end of juridical apartheid and colonialism in af rica did not necessarily entail the end of coloniality, hence the need to return to the struggle, even if it was an unarmed struggle. percy more (2002: 61) notes that ‘the concept of the renaissance has since brought into sharp focus the post-apartheid notion of the return’. regardless of whether the idea of return can be seen to be retrogressive and oppressive, it is in this case understood as progressive in the sense that aimé césaire pronounced return to the native land, and amílcar cabral made bold the call for a return to the source. it is in that way of the return to the centrality of af rica and af ricans in the world that the idea of the af rican renaissance shares at least some similarity with the ‘af rocentric idea’ that is proposed by molefi kete asante (1998), and which advances as its central idea af rican power, relevance, genius, and pride. another way of understanding the idea of the african renaissance, especially as articulated by mbeki, has been that it was a political way of returning south africa to africa and to the world after many years of isolation. peter vale (1998: 272) observes that the idea of the african renaissance was rooted in ‘south african diplomacy’ and the politics of return to the world comity of nations. the african renaissance had to do with ‘south africa’s destiny’ in the world and ‘the notion that their presence should feature in african affairs seems to have been a constant thread in the rhetoric of successive south african leaders’ (vale, 1998: 274). it is even thinkable that after mandela’s global fame and aura, his successor had to respond to the political and intellectual pressure to engage with south africa, africa, and the world in the grand terms of a renaissance. after all, the anc had to recover its place and name in the world as the african national congress. if the idea of the african renaissance had to do with south africa leading the continent in search for global relevance, then it might be true that the idea is an off-shoot of the pan-african ideal of a united continent that would become a meaningful global player. p e e r r e v i e w 42 the genealogies and goals of the african renaissance it is important to emphasise that the idea of the af rican renaissance was not in any measure an invention of mbeki who, in his own words, only saw himself as an heir of a long legacy of af rican intellectuals and political leaders. addressing the gathering of the second southern af rican international dialogue in namibia in 1998, mbeki poetically claimed his intellectual heritage f rom earlier af rican leaders, intellectuals, and pan-af rican activists: let me say something about myself and about some other people in this hall who belong to my generation. i am a product of the teachings and example of abdul gamal nasser of egypt, of ben belta of algeria, of habib bourgiba of tunisia, mohamed v of morocco, of kwame nkrumah of ghana, of medico keita of mali, of patrice lumumba of congo, of julius nyerere of tanzania and kenneth kaunda of zambia, of robert mugabe and joshua nkomo of zimbabwe, of eduardo mondlane of mozambique, of agostinho neto of angola, of sam nujoma of namibia, of seretse khama and ketumile masire of botswana, of albert luthuli, oliver tambo and nelson mandela of south af rica. (1998: 289) mbeki’s pronunciations about his and his generation of af rican leaders, as produced by former af rican heads of states, some of them intellectuals and others soldiers, was a pan-af rican performance that accompanied his articulations of the af rican renaissance. mbeki, in this and other speeches, was keen to project the pan-af rican and decolonial roots of the af rican renaissance. the speech was titled ‘stop the laughter’ (mbeki, 1998: 289) and its gesture was that af rican leaders should stop the corruption, despotism, ignorance, greed, and violence that made af rica’s former colonisers in europe laugh at the continent and its people. thus, the af rican renaissance was not only a movement against western imperialism in af rica but also against the rot in af rican post-colonial leadership that delayed the envisaged renewal of af rica. the paradox in mbeki’s celebration of earlier af rican leaders was the mention of genocidal tyrants such as mugabe, who had become native colonialists of their own countries in their use of colonial modes of rule that combined force and f raud. it is another tragedy of the af rican renaissance that it had to claim its roots f rom some earlier af rican leaders who had betrayed the cause of liberation with despotism, one-party state experiments, and a variety of claims to life presidencies. it is for that reason that kwesi prah (1999: 37) cautioned that the af rican renaissance should not fall to the temptation of ‘warlordism’ and other inimical forms of af rican leadership. the point that is not to be missed is that, in articulating the af rican renaissance, mbeki was standing on the broad shoulders of pan-af rican leaders, intellectuals, and some af ricanist historians of the previous decades. from south af rica, pixley ka isaka seme (1906) wrote of ‘the regeneration of af rica’ after years of colonial subjugation. later, f rom nigeria, nnamdi azikiwe (1937) wrote of ‘renascent af rica’ to pronounce a vision of an af rican continent that was bound to recover f rom colonial wounds and to claim its place amongst world civilisations. the senegalese intellectual cheikh anta diop (1966) produced a collection of essays ruminating on the af rican renaissance – towards the af rican renaissance: essays in culture and development, 1946–1960 – that claimed that af rica was the cradle of world civilisation. the af ricanist historian basil davidson celebrated the rise of af rican nationalism in his book the af rican awakening (1955). this was followed by roger woddis, who celebrated af rican trade unionism against colonialism in af rica: the lion awakes (1961). these works highlight the idea of the af rican renaissance as part of the pan-af rican and decolonial politics of a return to the continent. v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 mbeki’s pronunciations about his and his generation of african leaders, as produced by former african heads of states, some of them intellectuals and others soldiers, was a pan-african performance that accompanied his articulations of the african renaissance. mbeki, in this and other speeches, was keen to project the pan-african and decolonial roots of the african renaissance. p e e r r e v i e w 43 the idea of the af rican renaissance, in short, had a long history before mbeki. this history compels us to ask what happened to the earlier calls for the af rican renaissance and what might be the future of mbeki’s latest call. the suspicions that the idea of the af rican renaissance might be pan-af ricanism dressed in new words and charged with new agendas is compelling. while pan-af ricanism was generated as a philosophy of af rican unity against colonial divisions of the af rican continent, the af rican renaissance is trained against the coloniality that endures after the dethronement of juridical colonialism in af rica. sisonke msimang poses the question: ‘af rican renaissance: where are the women?’ (2011: 67). msimang argues that if women and their oppression are not centred in the af rican renaissance, then the liberatory potential of the idea is limited and compromised. the history of pan-af ricanism and its leaders has been associated with the exclusion of women. msimang contends that isolating the af rican renaissance to the elite circles of the south af rican polity, academy, and corporate sector effectively limits its decolonial stamina and reduces it to a political, intellectual, and corporate slogan. as a decolonial south af rican feminist, msimang enters the af rican renaissance debate with a scathing but constructive critique. her ideas rhyme with dani nabudere (2001), who suggests that af rican intellectuals, political leaders, and activists should come forward and transform the af rican renaissance f rom an idea to a continental policy and cultural agenda. the af rican renaissance, in other words, is too important an idea to be left to a few politicians, scholars, and elites. as a committed black south af rican feminist, msimang exercised political and intellectual activism in carefully reading mbeki’s speeches, critiquing them, and eventually gleaning what the goals of the af rican renaissance were. msimang (2000) notes how mbeki’s emphasis on ‘the importance of democracy and multi-party rule taking hold throughout af rica’ and ‘the need to counter negative outside perceptions of af rica’ were some of the prominent goals of the af rican renaissance. the need for economic reforms, including ‘the development of regional economic blocks’ and ending corruption (msimang, 2000: 72) are the other goals. these goals would only be achieved if af ricans observed the importance of peace and stability on the continent and stopped the trend of civil wars and military coups, for instance. in mbeki’s view, af rican leaders and af ricans at large should work on themselves and modernise their political and economic cultures in order to be equal to the grand task of af rican awakening. this awakening is aimed at eventually empowering af rica to participate as an equal amongst other continents in world affairs. the business of world affairs requires an af rica that has rid itself of tyranny, corruption, political violence, and disunity. mbeki optimistically envisioned af rica as a formidable player in the ‘new world order’ amongst other continents. as president of south af rica, delivering a state of the nation address on 25 june 1999, mbeki announced the drive towards af rica’s contribution to the new world order: gradually, af rica will work her way towards the resumption of her rightful place among the continents of our globe. where necessary, we will call on the services of such outstanding af rican statespersons as former presidents mwalimu julius nyerere, sir ketumile masire and nelson mandela to assist in the promotion of this agenda. as part of the world community of nations, we will make our due contribution to the construction of a new world order that will be responsive to the needs of especially the poor of the world. (mbeki, 1999: 11) mbeki interestingly talks of ‘a resumption’ of af rica’s ‘rightful place among the continents of our globe’ which betrays his belief in a great af rica of the past that was once influential in world civilisation. the af rican of the af rican renaissance, therefore, will be an af rican who is concerned as much with the glories of the past as with the goals of the future. this is an af rican who is concerned both with af rica’s ancestors and with its descendants. mbeki admits that the af rican renaissance will be ‘gradual’ and will benefit f rom the wisdom of past leaders. a decolonised and renascent af rica would be one that is rooted in itself as a continent, united and prosperous, and ready to be relevant and competitive globally. mbeki’s is the tragic optimism of a philosopher of liberation who was clear about the dystopia surrounding af rica, but was nonetheless confident that with intellectual and political will, the continent could navigate itself to becoming a formidable and equal player in world affairs. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 44 conclusion thabo mbeki’s ideas of the af rican renaissance are characterised by the tragic optimism of a philosopher of liberation who is clear about the dystopia of the history of colonialism, but who nonetheless retains a stubborn hope for a brighter future. the declaration ‘i am an af rican’ is at once a defence of af rican humanity and identity and a threat of the return of the continent to a significant place in global affairs. the af rican renaissance philosopher of liberation forgives, but does not forget, colonial wounds and injustices. the philosopher is impatient about the tyrannies, corruption, ignorance, and political violence on the continent. the af rican has to work on af rican weaknesses in order to be equal to the decolonial task of re-inventing the continent and recovering it f rom dystopia in order to restore it to utopia. the beauty of poetry and philosophy are mobilised in order to resist af rican dehumanisation and dispossession and to instead strive for the economic and political empowerment of the people and their continent. the dream of restoring af ricans to full belonging in the global human family and the restoration of the continent to prominence belongs to the messianism of the philosophy of liberation. this philosophy is willing to save the victims and the victimisers in order to achieve a fantasy of a paradisal world that might be more real in poetry and philosophy than in the present new world disorder, where the geopolitical and economic inequalities of the past are more pronounced than ever. references arendt, h. (2014). the human condition. chicago: university of chicago press. asante, m.k. (2004). ‘the afrocentric idea.’ in: r.l. jackson, ed. african american communication & identities: essential readings. california: sage publications, 16–28. dussel, e. (2003). philosophy of liberation. eugene, oregon: wipf and stock publishers. esterhuyse, w. (2012). endgame: secret talks and the end of apartheid. cape town: tafelberg. freire, p. (1993). pedagogy of the oppressed. london: penguin books. mbeki, t. (1998). ‘i am an african.’ in: africa: the time has come: selected speeches. cape town: tafelberg publishers & mafube. mbeki, t. (1999). state of the nation address. government communications. mbembe, a. (2001). on the postcolony. berkeley, los angeles, london: university of california press. more, m. p. (2002). ‘african renaissance: the politics of return.’ african journal of political science/revue africaine de science politique, 7(2): 61–80. mpofu, w. (2017). ‘thabo mbeki: understanding a philosopher of liberation.’ african historical review, 49(2): 48–71. msimang, s. (2000). ‘african renaissance: where are the women?’ agenda, 16(44): 67–83. mudimbe, v (1998). the invention of africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. nabudere, d. w. (2001). ‘the african renaissance in the age of globalization.’ african journal of political science/revue africaine de science politique: 11–28. ndlovu-gatsheni, s. j. (2016). the decolonial mandela: peace, justice and the politics of life. new york/oxford: berghahn books. ndlovu-gatsheni, s. j. (2019). ‘revisiting the african renaissance.’ in: oxford research encyclopedia of politics. oxford: oxford university press. nietzsche, f. (2014). beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future. trans. walter kaufmann. new york: vintage. nietzsche, f. w. (1968). the will to power. new york: vintage. ntuli, p. p. (1998). ‘who’s afraid of the african renaissance?’ indicator south africa, 15(2): 15–18. prah, k. k. (1999). ‘african renaissance or warlordism.’ african renaissance: 37–61. ramose, m. (2005). african philosophy through ubuntu. harare: mond publishers. tutu, d (2006). the rainbow people of god. cape town: juta and company. v o l u m e 9 3 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r81 outside africa by declan kearney the ongoing human carnage and misery caused by covid-19 was overshadowed last week by the wrongheaded decision of the us administration to withdraw funding f rom the world health organisation (who) in april 2020, whilst making unfounded allegations medical advice on how to combat the coronavirus pandemic. at the same time, the us itself now has the highest number of global deaths and cases, recording 40,000 fatalities, and approximately 750,000 detections. one writer in the guardian federal and state governments publicly challenge each other over their powers and responsibilities, over which appropriate public health strategies to adopt, and on the lack of emergency medical supplies. it is now clear that the us acted too slowly when the evidence was already emerging that a global pandemic existed. new revelations have reported that the british government also failed to respond fast enough, with catastrophic consequences. the british approach has proved to be a disaster. ten years of tory austerity had already brought the health service in britain and northern ireland to a crisis cliff edge. britain’s health service was economic interests must not take primacy over public health exiting the covid-19 lockdown © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 82v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 outside africa hugely underfunded, and did not have the beds or equipment to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. from the earliest indications, neither the leadership focus or necessary state of preparedness existed to face the onslaught of coronavirus. the british government’s pandemic policy was based upon planning for a flu pandemic and developing ‘herd immunity’, rather than focusing on the specificities of covid-19. even more alarming are the revelations that as early as 24 january 2020, a british government cabinet office briefing rooms (cobra) meeting received a report which confirmed the virulent, contagious nature of covid-19, and advised on the urgent need to achieve a 60% cut in the community transmission rate. this meant stopping contact between people and introducing a lockdown. this, however, was an economically unthinkable scenario for the british government, which on the same day had just signed the withdrawal agreement treaty f rom the european union (eu). a picture was already being painted. from the very beginning, both the us and british administrations have failed to follow the international advice of the who – which urged that community testing, contact tracing and isolation strategies should be implemented on a vast scale to hunt down where the virus was most contagious. the who cautioned that ‘you cannot fight a fire blindfolded’, and yet only some countries – such as china, germany, singapore, cuba, and south korea – heeded that advice. the attempt to try and cause reputational damage to the who is therefore much more than just an impetuous outburst. even in the eye of the coronavirus storm, some appear to be already shaping up for a later ‘blame game’. last week, announcements were made that lockdown restrictions would be extended in ireland and britain until after 5 may 2020, when a further review would be conducted. that news follows the extension of lockdown measures in other european countries, eurasia, the middle east, and af rica. those decisions are correct, even though they will cause more economic and social hardships, as well as psychological and emotional pressures for us all. the anguish being caused for so many who have been unable to mourn and bury their loved ones with dignity, or to visit graves and places of worship for quiet moments of reflection, or to meet up with f riends and family, is without precedent. the effects of isolation and lockdown measures cannot be underestimated. it is therefore important to conduct f requent reviews, allowing for the opportunity to reassess the threat posed by covid-19, giving some hope and reassurance that we may all eventually leave this tunnel, even if in a phased way. in the meantime, however, strong and united leadership across society which asserts the primacy of public health over all other priorities and political agendas is required in the fightback against covid-19.  any change or relaxation in restrictions before it is safe to do so will send out mixed messages, potentially resulting in complacency and our guard being dropped. the worst thing at this time would be to create the false impression that we, as a society in ireland – north or south – have got to the other side. we have not. covid-19 has not been beaten. disturbingly, the extension of lockdown in the short-term masks an argument which is being encouraged by some right-wing elements in the british cabinet, and also by some unionists in the north of ireland: that the lockdown measures should be relaxed, and that economic activity and productivity should be resumed. this is a typical capitalist reflex which puts the market economy first: corporate greed over public welfare, and the elevation of neo-liberal values and priorities above what’s actually needed at this time. it is precisely these contradictions which have taken centre stage in the us.  at a time when approximately 24%  of all global deaths have occurred in america, the corporate, industrial and financial elites are trying to lift lockdowns across the us, and to push for a return to the precovid-19 status quo. talk of getting back to normal, however, is completely misplaced. there will of course need to be preparations for economic reconstruction, it is now clear that the us acted too slowly when the evidence was already emerging that a global pandemic existed. new revelations have reported that the british government also failed to respond fast enough, with catastrophic consequences. t h e t h i n k e r83 outside africa but that must not take place separate to, or in isolation f rom, a strategic debate about the future of public health. free market economic interests must not be allowed to take primacy over the health priorities and wellbeing of wider society. this is one of the big ideological challenges which faces irish society beyond covid-19. irish republicans and other progressives need to shape discussions on how to democratise economic reconstruction, and how to guarantee the future of public health on an egalitarian basis. protection of the environment and ecology must also be central to these discussions. all of these issues will also be key priorities for the international, progressive left more generally. for now, more investment is still required to try and get on top of the immediate covid-19 emergency. however, even greater investment will be required to put in place universalised community testing and contact tracing programmes, underpinned by enabling technologies. in order for us to contain the pandemic for the foreseeable future, however, manual testing will be necessary – something which can only be staffed by a large cohort of public health workers. in the north of ireland, this is an area of work where the available staff and expertise of our largest sporting organisations, and most experienced community-based health projects, could and should be effectively mobilised. in wuhan, china, for example, there were 81 public health workers available for every 100,000 of the population.  research by johns hopkins university in the us has concluded that to bring a health crisis under control, where extreme transmission is occurring, a region would need 15–30 public health workers per 100,000 of the population. in the immediate term, we need to begin a detailed public health discussion on the use of masking, as well as the utility of temperature testing and swabbing checks in all public spaces, such as hospitals, care homes, community centres, shopping malls, airports, and ferry ports. it is obvious that our current model of public health will have to be completely overhauled, with a new emphasis placed on sustainable strategic investment, in all aspects of health and social care, staffing levels and training, equipment and resources. covid-19 has moved us beyond the two-tier health and social care systems. the major lesson f rom our experience of the coronavirus pandemic is that irish society, north and south, and indeed societies everywhere, should have access to universal, high-quality, properly-funded healthcare systems, which are f ree at the point of access. standards of care for all citizens must no longer be subordinate to the demands of f ree market interests. the future of public health in ireland depends on an all-island strategy, in the same way the fight back against covid-19 demands a common north/ south approach. just as brexit demonstrated that it is impossible to pull the north of ireland out of the eu without causing massive, negative repercussions and disruption for the regional and all-island economies, the challenge of economic reconstruction, north and south, beyond the pandemic, will require an all-ireland road map to sustainable economic recovery. the modern-day contradictions of ireland’s partition prove the negative impact of this island’s division upon the wellbeing, prosperity, and progress of |our citizens. coronavirus has changed everything. it will force us all to rethink how public health and economics are managed, not just in ireland, but across the globe. it has made the world a much smaller place. in recent months, all of us have been sharply reminded of how interdependent we are upon each other as individuals, regions, and nation states. this reality needs to be embraced.  our global community does not have the resilience to absorb continuous international power plays, economic blockades, sanctions, sieges, and conflicts. the only way forward should be on the basis of peaceful coexistence, global solidarity and international diplomacy. it is finally time to start shaping our collective future with new values which prioritise public health, economic justice, sustainable ecology, and multilateralism. ■ free market economic interests must not be allowed to take primacy over the health priorities and wellbeing of wider society. this is one of the big ideological challenges which faces irish society beyond covid-19. 61v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 unpacking the municipal demarcation application in south africa abstract the year 2022 marks the sixth democratic local municipal demarcation process in south af rica. the municipal demarcation board has invited the public to put forward their suggestions for the revision of local municipal boundaries based on the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) by the end of march. however, the legislative criterion that guides the process remains as complex as it was in 1998 and the public still questions how and why municipal boundaries are demarcated in south af rica. a direct product of the complexity is that many voices remain muffled and their f rustrations are displayed in public protests. these protests are to an extent due to municipalities being too large, lacking economic bases, and having poor governance structures to administer efficiently, resulting in many struggling to provide basic services and remain financially viable and sustainable. this article unpacks the application process that needs to be followed by the municipal demarcation board (mdb), the member of executive council (mec), and the public to motivate for the re-demarcation of local boundaries. the paper argues that the process is complicated and calls for its revision. furthermore, the paper suggests that smaller and more compact municipalities, at scale and proportional to economic base, might be the solution to the on-going crises of south af rican municipalities. by zaakirah iqbal jeeva, trynos gumbo, and juanee cilliers | peer reviewed p e e r r e v i e w 62 what is the issue? previously non-whites administrative areas located on the outskirts of urban areas were economically underdeveloped and inhabitants were forced to commute to city centres for commercial and employment purposes. furthermore, national policies ensured that population numbers within these administrative regions were controlled via influx control measures. with democracy, the national government sought to create more integrated and cohesive administrative areas in order to provide equal opportunities and a better quality of life for all. as a result, the peripheral residential areas which operated as independent administrative areas were integrated with the previous white urban areas to form unified local municipalities (rsa, 1998) (see figure 1 below). figure 1: spatial arrangement of municipalities according to race and level of development (authors’ own construction) it was believed that this inclusion would allow for the more efficient and sustainable management of the administrative region (rsa, 1998). however, the municipality was to be governed by a ‘one city, one tax base’ principal, which meant that each area within the municipality would be taxed the same and the local administration would have the discretion to decide how the funds would be used. this remains a challenging task considering that the region delimited comprised of developed, undeveloped and underdeveloped areas which were connected by unnatural functional linkages. additionally, with the termination of influx control measures, the newly formed municipalities welcomed large numbers of unemployed migrants from the former homelands and from other countries (kwenda, ntuli and mudiriza, 2020). this resulted in the newly elected local government, who lacked previous administrative experience, having to manage larger municipalities that were unequally developed and experiencing rapid in-migration of individuals, who demanded free access to basic services and houses, as was promised by the national government (see reconstruction and development programme (rdp) policy). additionally, the post 1994 national government promoted bottom-up planning, which forced the new local administration to conduct public participation meetings with local communities, before decisions affecting the local public were made. this resulted in a structural reform in south africa which was not merely physical, but was also riddled by many socioeconomic, functional, and administrative challenges (refer to figure 1) (national treasury, 2021). irrespective of these challenges, the democratic government remained loyal to creating a racially and spatially integrated country that comprised of municipalities which extended from coast to coast or wall to wall. however, the manner in which these municipalities were to be delimited remained the question. the newly elected national government was faced with the choice of whether to pursue economic growth or social development in order to develop their local regions. on the one hand, the underdevelopment of the non-white areas within the municipality required municipal funds to be utilised for social upliftment and basic service provision (equality) (see rdp policy) t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 63v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 (rsa, 1994). this required the delimitation of smaller and more intensively developed municipalities to ensure that underdeveloped regions would be developed effectively and efficiently. consequently, in 1996, the green paper on local government proposed that rural and urban areas be delineated as separate administrations to allow for each to be intensively developed (rsa, 1996). however, the separation of the former white urban areas and the non-white rural areas raised questions around segregation, exclusion, and cohesive development – the very principals the government wanted to represent. consequently, during the same year, the growth, employment and redistribution policy (gear) promoted economic development by enhancing areas of economic potential (former white areas) with the hope that it could attract investments and bring in further funds into the municipality (capitalism or unbalanced development) (department of finance, 1996). however, for the benefits to be shared, larger and more integrated municipal regions needed to be created (extensive development) (turok and borelsaladin, 2013). subsequently, in 1998, the white paper on local government proposed that urban and rural areas that were functionally related be integrated, as one municipality, to provide economic equity and offer a more socially balanced development approach (rsa, 1998; salga, 2018; mdb, 2019) (refer to figure 2). figure 2: effects of policy to achieve equality, equity, and capitalism (source: olson, 2019) consequently, in 1998, the municipal structures act (117 of 1998) and the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) both conceded to the equity approach and passed formal criteria on how municipalities should be demarcated and categorised in south af rica. subsequently, section 24 and 25 of the municipal demarcation act prescribed a one-size-fits-all criteria that needed to be followed during the demarcation of municipal boundaries (refer to table 2). meanwhile, the municipal structures act (27 of 1998) provided the criteria on how municipalities should be categorised as either category a (metropolitan), category b (local), or category c (district) municipalities. this categorisation depended on their adherence or nonadherence to the criteria and the discretion of the municipal demarcation board (mdb) (rsa, 1998). this policy opinion piece seeks to unpack the criteria used to demarcate municipalities in south af rica, 22 years later. it aims to determine if these criteria are actually easy for the public to understand, to motivate against, and to monitor. as a result, the paper does not go into theoretical discussions around the literature that informs the criteria, but rather investigates how these can be interpreted by the public. the following section briefly looks at the requirements of the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) which was recently updated to the municipal demarcation bill (2020). demarcation criteria in 1998, the white paper on local government (rsa, 1998) called for the creation of ‘developmental local government’ which would address the needs of the community in an efficient and effective manner. this was to be achieved through the appointment of an accountable local government (koma, 2012). this combined with the principle of integrated cohesive societies of the white paper of local government, the balanced development economic approach f rom gear, and the criterion as stated in the municipal demarcation p e e r r e v i e w 64 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 act 117 of 1998 (refer to table 2) (rsa, 1996; rsa, 1998). as a result, the mdb opted to demarcate fewer but spatially larger municipalities in 2000. the rationale behind this was that the integration of urban and rural would promote balanced regional development, thereby reducing administrative costs and providing economics of scale (rsa, 1998). the developmental aspect as such was left to the appointed council of the municipality to fulfil. however, according to sections 22 and 26 of the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998), the mdb can re-determine municipal boundaries every 5 years on request f rom the minister, the mec, the public, the municipality, or its own discretion. subsequently, the constitution also calls for the public to be actively involved in all decisions that affect them (rsa, 1996; parliament, 2019). according to parliament, public is defined as ‘anyone f rom community’, including interested or affected individuals, groups, communities, organisations, and civil society and government entities (parliament, 2019: 3). according to cogan and sharpe (1986: 284) public participation provides information and ideas on public issues. they further found that a public who feels heard will support planning decisions – resulting in increased trust between governing parties, a reduction in public protests, and more effective implementation. this should be a natural process, considering that the public elects the government to ‘work’ for them. in view of this, letlape and dube (2020) found that between 2000 and 2022 the mdb has received over 1,030 applications to re-determine boundaries within the country. each of these applications had to follow the entire legal demarcation process. however, to date, this has only resulted in 27 major adjustments (2000–2022) (refer to table 1 below). that is a 0.27% success rate. according to letlape and dube (2020), many of the applications received were unclear or did not provide reasons for the requests at all. nonetheless, there were numerous adjustments to boundaries over the 20-year period, not all of which resulted in the recategorization of municipalities. the mergers resulted in the number of municipalities declining f rom 284 in 2000 to 257 in 2016. the biggest decline occurred in local municipalities, which declined by 26 f rom 2000 to 2016; the number of district municipalities declined by three over the same time period. however, this decline resulted in the country receiving two more metropolitans over this period (refer to table 1 below). table 1: number of municipalities determined or redetermined since 2000 (source: adapted f rom mdb, 2022). according to the mdb (2019), the mergers and subsequent recategorizations of municipalities are expected to create more effective municipalities that are more efficient in delivering services to local communities. however, in 2019, the mdb found that after each delimitation there was an increase in community protests, conflicting leadership, and lack of administrative capacity. in defence, the mdb (2019) rightfully dissolved responsibility of the dysfunctional municipalities, since it is only responsible for the delimitation of boundaries and could not be held responsible for poor service delivery or maladministration, as these are shortfalls of the municipal administration (letlape and dube, 2020). additionally, the mdb states the public was involved in the delimitation process and there was large scale agreement, before formalization. regardless, the public dissatisfaction in terms of public protests does raise concerns on the delimitation outcome and this – together with the high rate of failed delimitation applications – brings into question the entire delimitation process. the next section unpacks the delimitation application as listed on the mdb website. year category a category b category c total 2000 6 231 47 284 2006 6 231 46 283 2011 8 226 44 278 2016 8 205 44 257 p e e r r e v i e w delimitation application in light of the upcoming delimitation, the mdb has invited applicants to put forward suggestions for the redelimitation of local boundaries. however, each application needs to motivate how the proposed delimitation would meet the requirements below, before the mdb would consider it after 31 march 2022 (refer to table 2). table 2: sections 24 and 25 of the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) 65v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 section 24 section 25 (a) the objectives of re-determining municipal boundaries are to enable the municipality, for that area, to fulfil its constitutional obligations, including: (i) the provision of democratic and accountable government for the local communities; (ii) the provision of services to the communities in an equitable and sustainable manner; (iii) the promotion of social and economic development; and (iv) the promotion of a safe and healthy environment; (b) enable effective governance, (c) enable integrated development, (d) have a tax base as inclusive as possible of users of municipal services in the municipality (a) the interdependence of people, communities and economies as indicated by (i) existing and expected patterns of human settlement and migration; (ii) employment; (iii) commuting and dominant transport movements; (iv) spending; (v) the use of amenities, recreational facilities and infrastructure; and commercial and industrial linkages (b) the need for cohesive, integrated and unfragmented areas, including metropolitan areas (c) the financial viability and administrative capacity of the municipality to perform municipal functions efficiently and effectively (d) the need to share and redistribute financial and administrative resources (e) provincial and municipal boundaries (f) areas of traditional rural communities (g) existing and proposed functional boundaries, including magisterial districts, voting districts, health, transport, police and census enumerator boundaries (h) existing and expected land use, social, economic and transport planning (i) the need for coordinated municipal, provincial and national programmes and services, including the needs for the administration of justice and health care (j) topographical, environmental and physical characteristics of the area (k) the administrative consequences of its boundary determination on (i) municipal creditworthiness; (ii) existing municipalities, their council members and staff; and (iii) any other relevant matter; and (l) the need to rationalise the total number of municipalities within different categories and/or different types to achieve the objectives of effective and sustainable service delivery, financial viability and macro-economic stability. p e e r r e v i e w 66 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 according to the mdb (2022) proposal form, the applicant has to first provide their name, position, email address and cell phone number. this information is used to motivate that the application came f rom a living person and was not just created. however, it compromises the anonymity of the application and could politicise the application. section b of the form requires background to the application and requires the applicant to provide advantages and disadvantages of the proposal. this provides the public opinion on why the application is considered important, in general. however, f rom section c the application gets technical and requires the applicant to determine the impact that the delimitation may have and how it would intrude the affected municipalities, in terms of: 1) budgets; 2) equitable share; 3) national and provincial grants; 4) tax base; 5) inf rastructure; 6) grading; 7) number of councillors; 8) administrations and human resources; 9) the transfer of assets and liabilities. this is the information the applicant would need to collect while lobbying the relevant stakeholders (mec of local government, salga, community leaders, municipal leaders) in the affected municipalities to agree with the delimitation proposal and provide their consent in section d (mdb, 2022; rsa, 2020). this creates biases and exposes the applicant. moreover, if the proposed application is not supported, the stakeholders could withhold their signatures and information – making the application obsolete. section e is rather complex and technical since it is based on the criterion as found in section 24 of the municipal demarcation act (117 of 1998) read together with section 25 of the municipal demarcation bill (2020) and section 152 of the constitution (refer to table 2). this section requires the applicant to motivate why the region to be delimited is interrelated in terms of existing and expected human settlement patterns, employment, commuting and spending trends, and the use of amenities. the applicant should also motivate regarding the region’s commercial and industrial linkages, and should ensure that the financial and administrative capacity of municipalities is interlinked and that settlements within the municipality are more interconnected with each other than with settlements outside of the municipality. theoretically, this is a functional urban region (fur). however, the manner in which a region can be determined as a fur is subjective and differs according to the interest of the applicant and the context (oecd, 2022). a seminar conducted between the hsrc and the mdb in 2019 revealed that currently there is no clear understanding on how this could be measured or determined – since the fur could comprise of only urban areas (fua), or only rural areas (fra), or a combination of urbanrural areas. furthermore, the distance between these settlements is not prescribed. nonetheless, the mdb is still obligated to look at all applications in terms of the legislative criteria, even if there is no objective data to prove that any of the abovementioned criteria are met (mdb, 2018; mdb, 2019). in light of this, decisions are based on motivations, viability, and public opinion. to complicate the process further, section f is based on section 25 of the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) and section 26 of the municipal demarcation bill (2020) and requires the applicant to provide all of the following: relevant data on demographics, interdependence of people, communities, and economies; their ability to share and redistribute financial and administrative resources – to save cost; the financial viability of the entity; motivation on how it could operate as a single, cohesive, unf ragmented area; land use patterns; human resource issues; credit rating; and how the municipality would fit in with municipal, provincial, and national programs in the future (rsa, 1998). upon investigation, section 25 is found to have too many criteria, some of which the outcome, though not entirely, can be seen through present-day south africa in the form of disrepair within cities and towns that were once the backbone of the economy, and through the backlog of basic service provisions (khambule, nomdo and siswana, 2018). p e e r r e v i e w 67v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 are duplicated f rom section 24. for example, criteria (b) and (c) can be consolidated since both look at administrative capacity and financial viability; point (f), (g), (o) and (p) can be combined as one point that looks at functional boundaries; and points (h) and (i) can be joined and labelled as planning issues (mdb, 2022). furthermore, the country as a whole has a national plan on how it wants to develop its administrative regions or which areas need to be developed strategically (see national spatial perspective (2007), the integrated urban development framework (2016), and the national spatial development plan (2020)). however, the policy and legislative f ramework exhibits cracks and gaps as the implementation of transformative growth and development projects are slow. it remains unclear what instruments provinces, districts, and municipalities have to guide the allocation, distribution and budgeting of resources for land development, administration and management purposes. therefore, it is also questionable how an individual f rom the public would know which data to collect and which policy to motivate against itself in terms of future strategic development. additionally, the applicant would have to further motivate section g and the capacity of the municipality in terms of section 85 of the municipal structures act (117 of 1998) in terms of finance, human resources, and inf rastructure. this is information that is not easily accessible to the public and makes the process complex and tedious although necessary. section h is only necessary for motivation for a category a municipality. on the whole, the above-mentioned process is technical, complex, multi-disciplinary, politicizing and time-consuming. as a result, the voices of many individuals f rom the public who have limited knowledge on how to file the complicated application remain muted and dissatisfaction on the process could and has continued. this can be deduced f rom section c of the mdb application, where it appears as if the voices of the public are only heard if they align with the technical requirements of the municipal demarcation act and if they are approved by the mdb, mec, and provincial ministers. however, the requirements and their adherence are subjective and case specific. in this manner, the administrative power of the mdb is dedicated to inciting, reinforcing, monitoring and optimizing the criteria prescribed in the legislation, without really considering alternatives (see foucault, 1979). this brings into question the sovereignty of the state, the agency relationship between the mdb and the government, and the power that the public actually has to bring about change, even though they are included in the process. this surely cannot be constitutional and the f rustration can clearly be noted by the public protests that occur. a point that seems to become apparent through the analysis of the demarcation criteria is that the ideology of developmental local government is being lost in the attempt to create integrated municipalities. none of the criteria look at the quality of life in the municipality, the level of unemployment, the level of education, access to health care, birth and death rates, or access to basic services. the outcome, though not entirely, can be seen through present-day south af rica in the form of disrepair within cities and towns that were once the backbone of the economy, and through the backlog of basic service provisions (khambule,  nomdo and siswana, 2018). all the same, the social administrative challenges which include corruption, lack of adequate skills to run municipalities, political interferences and the culture of non-payment also play a contributing role in the poor nondevelopmental condition of our municipalities (mdb, 2019). in light of this, one could also question if municipalities might not be too big to be sustainable, effective, eff icient, and development orientated? the literature reveals that larger municipalities are supposed to be more economically eff icient and allow for better social and physical integration and growth (oecd, 2018). however, in the south af rican case, integration and functional linkages are based on the unnatural linkages formed during apartheid. this means that the area demarcated might also be unusually and unnaturally large, hindering service delivery (dube and radikonyana, 2020). as a result, the question arises regarding whether smaller, more inclusive, and more developmentoriented municipalities would offer the solutions to these multi-faceted problems. however, the criteria as found in the municipal demarcation act (refer to table 2) does not allow an applicant to p e e r r e v i e w 68 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 suggest de-amalgamation, even if they are found to be dysfunctional. this is something that requires further research. lastly, it should be considered that the delimitation of local boundaries every five years is costly and affects the financial viability and service delivery of municipalities (mdb, 2019). the shifting of local boundaries disturbs data collection, which is used to rationalise services, fees, tax rates, management costs, payroll systems, voters roll, and administrative and human resource policies (salga, 2018). this directly affects the service delivery in the area. it is suggested that a longer period, between delimitation, would allow the municipality to stabilise in terms of administration and would provide a clearer picture on whether the re-delimitation is required or not (mdb, 2019). furthermore, more research into the legal requirements is required to ensure that it is applied consistently and that applicants understand the objective requirements before filling it. in closing, local municipalities are the most important tier of government since they have direct contact with the citizens. the initial focus of creating cohesive municipalities has to a large extent been successful. however, the development orientation ideology that listens to the ‘will of the people’ is under scrutiny (rsa, 1996; rsa 1998; turok and borel-saladin, 2013; mdb, 2019). the 2020 auditor general report by kimi makwetu attests to the difficulties and challenges faced by municipalities in terms of administration, and to the resultant dysfunctionality – with only 8% receiving clean audits (makwetu, 2020). the power of well-thought-out boundaries around administrative regions should not be overlooked as they could assist in reducing the number of challenges faced by the administration and assist in making them more specialised and economically stronger. conclusions the south af rican demarcation exercise is unique in its own right. the democratic government inherited a spatially f ragmented, unequally developed, and economically unbalanced landscape. as a result, its attempts to create an integrated and cohesive society have been accompanied with numerous challenges. even though the democratic government has made provisions for the public to actively participate in the process, the process is too technical, complicated, and time consuming. as a result, many applicants are not successful in their proposed application, even though they have valid suggestions, creating dissatisfaction and public f rustration. maybe it is time to re-look at the application process and simplify it to actually make it public participation f riendly. for the fear is, if they continue to be silenced through technicalities and complexity, the country would not truly progress developmentally and become a nation that serves the most vulnerable. acknowledgements this work is based on research supported by the national institute for the humanities and social sciences. references cogan, c. and sharpe, g. 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(2012). ‘developmental local government issues, trends and options in south af rica.’ university of pretoria [online]. available at: www.repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/20621/koma_developmental(2012).pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y kwenda, p., ntuli, m. and mudiriza, g. (2020). ‘former homeland areas and unemployment in south af rica: a decomposition approach.’ iza – institute of labor economics [online]. available at: www.ftp.iza.org/ dp12941.pdf letlape, b. and dube, g. (2020). ‘the analysis of underlying causes in several requests received by the municipal demarcation board.’ [online] available at: www.demarcation.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/research-report-annexure-1-3.pdf mekwatu, k. (2020). ‘auditor-general releases municipal audit results under the theme “not much to go around, yet not the right hands at the till”. auditor general south af rica [online]. available at: www.agsa. co.za/portals/0/reports/mfma/201819/media%20release/2020%20 mfma%20media%20release%20final.pdf municipal demarcation board (mdb). (2018). ‘municipal demarcation board seminar report: categorisation of municipalities into metropolitans (metros).’ hsrc: pretoria. [online] available at: www. demarcation.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/seminar-latest-report-31jan2018-final.pdf municipal demarcation board (mdb). (2019). ‘seminar report: the impact of municipal amalgamations on service delivery.’ hsrc: pretoria. [online] available at: www.demarcation.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/municipal-amalgamtions-seminar-report_ 03dec2019_latest.pdf municipal demarcation board (mdb). 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(1998). ‘municipal structures act 117 of 1998.’ [online] available at: www.gov.za/documents/local-government-municipal-structures-act republic of south af rica. (1998). ‘white paper on local government.’ [online] available at: www.cogta.gov.za/cgta_2016/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/whitepaper-on-loca-gov.pdf republic of south af rica. (2007). ‘national spatial development perspective.’ [online] available at: www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_ document/201409/complete1.pdf republic of south af rica. (2016). ‘integrated urban development framework (iudf).’ [online] available at: www.iudf.co.za/ republic of south af rica. (2020). ‘national spatial development framework 2050.’ [online] available at: www.sacplan.org.za/wp-content/uploads/booklet-nsdf.pdf south af rican local government association. (2018). ‘study on municipal demarcation process and its impacts on good governance and financial sustainability for local government.’ [online] available at: www.salga.org.za/documents/documents%20and%20publications/ publications/p20/2018%20study%20on%20demarcation%20branded.pdf turok, i. and borel-saladin, j. (2013). ‘the spatial economy background research report for the integrated urban development framework.’ hsrc. p e e r r e v i e w 16 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract sweden’s relations with the south af rican liberation movements date back to the 1960s, when the swedish anti-apartheid movement arose. in addition to moral support and about $400 million dollars in f inancial support, sweden became the f irst western country to give off icial political support to the anti-apartheid movement. such was the relationship between the af rican national congress (anc) and sweden, that the latter became the f irst country outside of af rica to be visited by nelson mandela in 1990, after his release f rom decades of imprisonment. the aim of this contribution is therefore to provide a brief synopsis of the rich history of sweden’s solidarity with the south af rican liberation struggle and the role played by the swedish youth, the swedish antiapartheid movement, civil society, trade unions, and olof palme, former swedish prime minister, who was one of the most committed allies of the liberation movements. by anna-mart van wyk sweden against apartheid: a historical overview 17v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction the south af rican white minority government’s racial segregation policy, commonly known as apartheid1, featured for the first time in the united nations general assembly (unga) in 1952, ultimately leading to decades of harsh condemnation and the formation of the special committee against apartheid, which was tasked with coordinating efforts and mobilising international opinion against apartheid (bangura, 2018: 5). yet, despite apartheid being raised for many years before the united nations security council (unsc), concerted punitive action took a long time to be realised, due to great power politics and veto rights playing out in the larger cold war theatre. this prompted sweden to start acting unilaterally and in collaboration with other scandinavian states on their abhorrence of apartheid. the swedish people took exception to the apartheid system, denouncing its racist oppression and minority rule f rom their ‘selfimage as a people in solidarity with the disadvantaged countries and groups in the world’ (bangura, 2018: 1). this article is by no means an exhaustive account of sweden’s solidarity with the south af rican liberation struggle, nor can all individual role-players or entities be mentioned, due to space constraints. a detailed account of all sweden’s efforts can be found in tor sellström’s definitive books, sweden and national liberation in southern af rica, volumes 1 and 2, published by the nordic af rica institute in 1999 and 2002, respectively, and liberation in southern af rica – regional and swedish voices, by the same author (2002). other notable contributions include various compilations of speeches, letters, and other documents, by enuga reddy, an indian-born diplomat who led the anti-apartheid efforts at the united nations’ special committee against apartheid and its centre against apartheid. early protests and aid initiatives the earliest campaigns were initiated by the swedish national union of students (sfs), after apartheid was introduced at the level of higher education in south af rica. through donating blood, funds were collected in support of their victimised black south af rican student peers. building on this early campaign, the sfs succeeded in influencing the swedish social democratic government through active lobbying, resulting in foreign minister östen undén bringing the matter of apartheid to the attention of the unga in 1959, with specific reference to the ‘worsening situation’ of non-white students in south af rica (sellström, 1999: 98). outside of the student movement, the first organised swedish expression of anti-apartheid solidarity was initiated by csm missionary gunnar helander (sellström, 1999: 112). between 1939 to 1956, helander regularly informed the swedish public about the situation in south af rica. he was such a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime that he was not allowed to return to south af rica after a holiday in 1956. subsequently, in march 1961, he formed the swedish south af rica committee (ssak) with writer per wästberg and historian olof tandberg, amongst others. the ssak was intensely engaged in collecting money f rom individuals and trade unions for legal defence in south af rica and aid to refugees; influencing swedish political leaders; creating interest for the problems in south af rica in other scandinavian countries; and actively boycotting south af rican goods, together with the swedish youth organisation (skovmand, 1970: 4; sellström, 1999: 112–113; nordic af rica institute, internet). it was the sharpeville massacre of 21 march 19602 that really kick-started the swedish anti-apartheid movement. according to skovmand (1970: 1), the massacre came as a shock to the people of scandinavia, and ‘gave a lasting impression of the ruthless opposition of the non-white population of south af rica.’ in the aftermath of the massacre, international fundraising efforts to oppose apartheid and support its victims increased dramatically, and led to the establishment of a defence and aid fund in south af rica3 (houser, 1982: 18). the apartheid regime was condemned in harsh terms by swedish officials both in-country and in the united nations (bangura, 2018: 1). furthermore, f rom 1962, the swedish government started supporting refugees f rom south af rica, and swedish citizens made gradually increasing contributions to different funds. driven by strong public opinion against the perils of apartheid, and a position of traditional concern for refugees, humanitarian and educational assistance for refugees started flowing f rom sweden and other 18 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 3). renewed interest within the youth movements included the establishment of a coordinating committee for southern af rica to mobilise swedish opinion and to coordinate the work of the different movements. their efforts paid off when in 1969, student-led boycotts, together with public pressure, led to the swedish firm asea withdrawing f rom a consortium that would have constructed the electricity transmission inf rastructure f rom the cabora bassa hydro-electric dam project in the zambezi river, to mozambique and south af rica (sellström, 1999: 474–502; skovmand, 1970: 5). besides the ssak and youth movements, two other key anti-apartheid organisations in sweden were the af rica groups of sweden (ags), and the isolate south af rica committee (isak) (thörn, 2009a: 20). some af rica groups were originally organised under the ssak. in april 1974, local af rica groups in gothenburg, jonkoping, lund, stockholm, and uppsala formed the ags as a national organisation (nordic af rica institute, internet). its objective ‘was to support liberation f ronts in southern af rica against colonialism, imperialism and racism on the liberation movements’ own conditions’. its main activity involved fund-rasing, campaigns and information activities, in order to lobby decision-makers vis-à-vis southern af rican issues (nordic af rica institute, internet). the ags was successful in getting a number of established swedish non-govermental organisations on board. this included all political parties’ youth sections, except that of the conservative party. it was also successful in getting a platform for its anti-apartheid solidarity work accepted, based on the sole recognition of the anc. in 1979, the ags formed isak as a broad swedish anti-apartheid umbrella organisation, positioning it to become the dominating swedish anti-apartheid organisation in the 1980s and 1990s (thörn, 2009a: 21). sweden and the united nations following the arrest and trials of thousands of opponents of apartheid by the apartheid regime in 1963, the united nations for the first time called on member states to assist with contributions to the victims of apartheid (reddy, 1987: 6; houser, 1982: 18). eleven governments responded with announcements of contributions, with sweden giving 40,000 gbp in 1964 (houser, 1982: 18). in 1965, a united nations trust fund for south af rica (untf) was established, nordic countries4 f rom 1963 (reddy, 1987: 8; bangura, 2018: 1; skovmand, 1970: 5). meanwhile, following their early efforts, the scandinavian youth movements decided in 1963 to heed the call of a unga resolution calling for a boycott of south af rican goods. as they had established councils during world war ii to deal with common affairs, and broad cooperation existed between the different youth organisations, they were well suited to enact such a boycott (skovmand, 1970: 2). they were marginally successful in persuading cooperative chains that imported wine, canned f ruit, and oranges, as well as state wine monopolies, to not import south af rican goods. this resulted in imports of goods f rom south af rica being drastically reduced. however, the impact was not overly dramatic, given that such goods constituted only a small part of sales revenue. this led to some disillusionment, and other international problems also started occupying the minds of the youth, resulting in difficulty recruiting voluntary workers for anti-apartheid campaigns (skovmand, 1970: 3). at the government level, however, efforts continued, with contributions to different funds for the victims of apartheid sharply increasing (skovmand, 1970: 3). direct and official humanitarian assistance to the national liberation movements in southern af rica was endorsed by the swedish parliament in may 1969 (sellström, 1999: 17). sweden thereby became the first industrialised country in the west to forge a direct relationship with movements that other western countries shunned as ‘communist’ or ‘terrorist’ within the context of the cold war (sellström, 1999: 18; sellström, 2002a: 9). it was also the first industrialised country to give massive financial support and official political support to the anti-apartheid movement (wallström, 2015). this followed renewed interest in the problems of south af rica, which was increasingly regarded in the wider context of white domination in the whole of southern af rica. the guerrilla wars in angola, guinea-bissau, mozambique, and rhodesia were regarded as offering real possibilities of ending white minority domination and supremacy in the region. once more, students and left-wing oriented young people started participating in anti-apartheid movements, f rom a position that tended to look at the situation in southern af rica as part of ‘the rich white conspiracy against the third world’ (skovmand, 1970: p e e r r e v i e w 19 as well as an educational and training programme. at the same time, the unga started appealing for assistance to national liberation movements that were recognised by the organisation for af rican unity (oau) (reddy, 1987: 6). the basis for these appeals was that the un ‘recognised the legitimacy of the struggles of the liberation movements’ (reddy, 1987: 6–7) and also because the af rican liberation fund, established by the oau in 1963, had set a precedent for assistance by governments and inter-governmental bodies to liberation movements (reddy, 1987: 7). sweden and the other nordic countries furthermore started providing developmental aid on a substantial scale in the early 1960s, in response to the un appeals and as an expression of their solidarity with poorer countries (reddy, 1987: 7–8). sweden also contributed $100,000 each to the defence and aid fund and the world council of churches (reddy, 2008: 15). it was noted as consistently concerned with the problem of aid to prisoners and their families (reddy, 2008: 17). the aid was mostly directed to a limited number of ‘partner countries’ such as the frontline states in southern af rica and other independent af rican states neighbouring south af rica. in 1970, it contributed $80,000 to the united nations education and training programmes for southern af rica; $68,000 to the united nations trust fund for south af rica; and further contributions to the united nations education and training programmes (skovmand, 1970: 5). however, little of the support went to the south af rican liberation movements at that point (reddy, 2008: 66). since the late 1960s, the united nations appealed for global assistance to ‘the victims of colonial and racial oppression in southern af rica’ and ‘their national liberation movements’ (reddy, 1987: 2). sweden responded positively, pledging support along three lines of action, together with the other nordic countries (i.e. denmark, finland, iceland, and norway). these included sanctions and boycotts; humanitarian, educational, and economic assistance to national liberation movements and the oppressed people whom they represented; and promoting understanding and support for f reedom struggles, including action by the united nations (reddy, 1987: 2–5). prior to this, in 1968, the swedish government hosted a session of the united nations special committee on apartheid. anc president oliver tambo participated in the session as a guest of the ruling social democratic party. the liberal party also showed strong sympathies (skovmand, 1970: 6). indeed, sweden was always unequivocal in its statements against apartheid in the united nations, no matter which party was in charge. for example, a few months after the soweto uprising of 16 june 19765, the swedish representative, olof rydbeck, stated in the unga that it was clear that the political repression in south af rica was intensifying, confirming the ‘impression of a more and more desperate minority intent on maintaining its privileged positions’ (united nations, 1976: 12). reference was made to new security laws that were introduced by the apartheid regime, which enabled it to indefinitely detain anyone suspected of disturbing the law and order, and to step up plans to establish independent black homelands6 (united nations, 1976: 14). according to rydbeck, the apartheid regime used its homelands policy as a tool to continue the social and economic exploitation of black workers, and to consolidate white dominion (bangura, 2018: 1). rydbeck was very clear on the fact that sweden would not recognise the homelands in any form. he further emphasised that the apartheid system was inhuman and morally repulsive, and a system of violence, because it could only be upheld by the use of force (united nations, 1976: 14; bangura, 2018: 1). sweden also regarded it as the most systematic violation of the un charter, constituting a major challenge to the international community and a threat to international peace and security. as such, sweden regretted that more than ten years after the unsc recommended sweden and the other nordic countries furthermore started providing developmental aid on a substantial scale in the early 1960s, in response to the un appeals and as an expression of their solidarity with poorer countries (reddy, 1987: 7–8). v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w peer review 20 t h e t h i n k e r similar to the politicians, they demanded restrictions on swedish capital transfers to south af rica, in order to prevent new investment for as long as ‘swedish enterprises are profiting by the black, asiatic and coloured labor force through discriminating working conditions’ (bangura, 2018: 3–4). this coincided with the stabilisation of relations between the unions and the ags; however, the second largest union under the lo, the metal union, continued to strongly oppose the call for isolation of south af rica for fear of job losses (thörn, 2009a: 93). the concern of the international trade union movement was heightened following the 1976 soweto uprising, and after the apartheid regime banned or detained twenty prominent leaders and organisers of trade unions in november 1976. the swedish tco joined several other national trade union organisations around the globe to protest against the detentions and bannings, especially after being called upon to do so by sactu (united nations, 1977: 4–5). ultimately, the international protest culminated in a week of concerted trade union action against the apartheid regime, f rom 17–22 january 1977 (united nations, 1977: 6, 9). subsequently, the nordic trade union council (nfs) presented a list of fourteen points for further action against apartheid, viz: steps to ensure the adoption by the unsc of resolutions to stop new investments in south af rica; the implementation of an arms embargo against south af rica; the isolation of south af rica economically, socially, and culturally; measures to counteract south af rican economic influence over other af rican states; economic support to the education of south af rican refugees in lesotho and other neighbouring countries; a ban on new investment in south af rica; discontinuation of all state-controlled exportation and importation to and f rom south af rica; a ban on the use of nordic territory by south af rican ships and aircraft; assistance to workers who may suffer as a result of a blockade against south af rica; opposition to any sporting activity between south af rica and the nordic countries; organisation of trade union education to black and coloured workers in south af rica; increased legal, economic and humanitarian assistance to victims of apartheid; the spreading of knowledge about the oppression in south af rica, in the national school system and through other means; and opposition, in a suitable way, of tourism and emigration to south af rica and a mandatory arms embargo against south af rica on the initiative of scandinavian countries, vetoes by three unsc members have stopped a decision on the matter (united nations, 1976: 14). along the same lines, in march 1977, swedish ambassador anders thunborg noted in a speech at the unsc that the question of south af rica was taken by all political parties in sweden to be a major issue. he, too, believed that apartheid was a threat to international peace and security, and voiced his support of an internationally coordinated effort to halt further foreign investment in south af rica (bangura, 2018: 3). two months later, the swedish minister of international development cooperation, ola ullsten, voiced his disappointment regarding the fact that the unsc had not yet considered steps that would inhibit further investment in south af rica (bangura, 2018: 3). swedish trade union action against apartheid initially, there was an internal divide within the swedish trade union movement over what strategy to follow regarding south af rica. as thörn (2009a: 37) notes, ‘the unions were…sceptical towards the anc and its call for the isolation of south af rica.’ part of this skepticism was rooted in the fact that the main ally of the anc was the south af rican congress of trade unions (sactu), which in turn was affiliated to the world federation of trade unions (wftu), which was ‘communist-dominated’ (thörn, 2009a: 38). this did not sit well with the swedish trade union confederation (lo) and the central organization of salaried employees in sweden (tco), which were under the umbrella of the strongly anti-communist international confederation of trade unions (icftu). another reason for the skepticism was that punitive measures against south af rica by the swedish government would have a negative impact on the business interests of swedish companies, with the knock-on effect of unemployment in sweden (thörn, 2009a: 38). in an effort to resolve the impasse vis-à-vis strategy, a study delegation of the lo and the tco reported, after a tour of south af rica in 1975, that they strongly detested apartheid and the social system in south af rica. subsequently, they called on the swedish public and all organisations to join in a common cause to support the struggle against the apartheid regime. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 21 south af rican territories (united nations, 1977: 11, 19; harriman, 1977: 8). the lo and the tco believed that close co-operation between governments and trade unions were essential in fighting the evils of apartheid (united nations, 1977: 11). they therefore submitted the fourteen action points to the united nations special committee against apartheid and called upon the latter to organise a conference consisting of both governments and trade unions (harriman, 1977: 8). subsequently, sactu and the organisation of af rican trade union unity (oatuu) announced that it would sponsor a solidarity conference in collaboration with swedish trade unionists in 1978, in a country neighbouring south af rica, ‘to highlight the problems facing workers in south af rica and to discuss plans for action’ (united nations, 1977: 17). it must be noted, however, that unions affiliated to the lo never joined isak and the issue of the isolation of south af rica remained a hot debate due to the potential of job losses in sweden (thörn, 2009a: 21, 93). by 1984, internal resistance in south af rica was rising, and the frontline states were weakening, exemplified by the nkomati accord that mozambique was obliged to sign with the apartheid regime, following devastation f rom south af rican aggression and destabilisation. swedish prime minister olof palme recognised the need to find ways to support the united democratic front and independent trade unions, and other resistance movements inside south af rica, as well as the need for greater political and material assistance to the frontline states. in 1986, assistance to the frontline states had increased rapidly, to more than 300 million dollars, and sweden had also become the principal source of support to resistance movements in south af rica, in the face of brutal suppression by the apartheid regime (reddy, 1990: 11). most of this support went to the anc, arguably courtesy of palme, who was one of the strongest swedish political voices against apartheid. sweden and the anc it could be argued that sweden’s relationship with the anc was fueled by the f riendship between palme and the anc president-in-exile, oliver tambo, since 1966. palme had invited tambo to his home in a gesture of recognition of the anc as a liberation movement, and marched with tambo in the may day parade in 1966 (reddy, 1990: 7). subsequently, tambo would often visit sweden. yet, in contrast with direct and official humanitarian support to other af rican liberation movements f rom 19697, the anc only received its first, modest allocation in february 1973. in the two years after, support to the anc represented only 2–3% of the total channeled to the paigc and frelimo. despite the fact that the anc had established close ties with the social democratic government by this point (thörn, 2009: 436–427), de facto recognition of the anc was only extended in the mid-1970s (sellström, 2002b: 398). in early 1974, sobizana mngqikana arrived as the first chief representative of the anc to sweden and the other scandinavian countries (thörn, 2009: 426–427). this delay corresponds with the fact that the ags only recognised the anc as ‘the leading liberation movement in south af rica’ (sellström, 2002b: 398) in november 1974. mbaqikana was tasked with broadening the anc’s support in sweden, but it was no easy task. the social democratic party had decided not to look at the anc through the lens of the cold war, and gave the organisation its full support (thörn, 2009: 428). it is important to note at this point that the anc was the only south af rican nationalist organisation to be recognised de facto by social democratic and non-socialist governments in sweden, under off icial, bilateral agreements. it wasn’t without obstacles, however, mainly because the social democrats did not want to focus entirely on the anc only, by their own admission. instead, they opted for a pluralistic approach (sellström, 2002b: 398). v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 it could be argued that sweden’s relationship with the anc was fueled by the friendship between palme and the anc president-in-exile, oliver tambo, since 1966. palme had invited tambo to his home in a gesture of recognition of the anc as a liberation movement, and marched with tambo in the may day parade in 1966 (reddy, 1990: 7). subsequently, tambo would often visit sweden. p e e r r e v i e w 22 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 between the mid-1970s and early 1990s, the swedish government assisted anti-apartheid activists – mostly anc – with about $400 million in humanitarian aid. stipends and scholarships were provided to exiled south af ricans, and humanitarian aid made its way to anc exile camps in the frontline states. furthermore, anc development projects such as farms, handicraft and educational centers, were also funded, as were the families of detainees in south af rica, and a host of human rights, cultural, legal aid, religious, labour and civic groups inside the country. the funds were disbursed by sweden’s development aid agency, sida, and smuggled into south af rica by a large network of anti-apartheid activists and sympathisers (duke, 1996). one thing that was made very clear by all swedish governments was the policy not to assist in the use of violence. in march 1979, then-swedish foreign minister hans blix emphasised that while there was understanding for a decision of despair by majorities that have persistently tried persuasion, reason and peaceful pressure to resort to force, sweden supported non-violent solutions to political problems, as violence inevitably brings suffering (united nations, 1979: 1). as such, sweden never rendered direct military support, or supplied military equipment, to liberation movements. however, the value of this stance in the bigger scheme of things is debatable, given the huge sums of monetary support that were given to liberation movements that were engaged in armed struggles in southern af rica. later anc leaders consistently paid homage to sweden for its ‘commendable contribution to our anti-apartheid struggle’, and noted that they equally valued ‘our historical ties forged under the rubric of international solidarity’ (south af rican government, 2011). in 1988, oliver tambo, who could be regarded as a key roleplayer in building the close relationship with sweden due to his f requent visits and engagements with swedish politicians and civil society, described the relationship as follows: there has […] emerged a natural system of relations between southern af rica and sweden, f rom people to people. it is a system of international relations which is not based on the policies of any party that might be in power in sweden at any particular time, but on the fundamental reality that the peoples of our region and those of palme’s land of birth share a common outlook and impulse, which dictates that they should all strive for the same objectives (sellstrom, 2002a: 9–10). the role of olof palme according to roberts (2020), palme was one of the liberation movement’s most committed allies. born into a prominent and wealthy family in january 1927 (reuters, 2020), he became appalled by the evil of racism while studying in the united states in 1948. this experience, together with travel to india and other asian nations in 1953, as leader of the swedish student movement, strengthened his feeling of solidarity with the poor and oppressed (reddy, 1990: 5–6). he joined the social democratic party in the early 1950s, after graduating with a law degree f rom stockholm university in 1951 (clarity films, n.d.). he began his political work vis-à-vis south af rica while he was still a student, by joining the blood-donation drive and transferring the funds he received to the opposition against apartheid in south af rica (clarity films, n.d.; reddy, 1990: 5–6). he rose quickly through the ranks of the left-wing social democratic party and was elected to the swedish parliament in 1958 (clarity films, n.d.; reuters, 2020). he became a member of the cabinet in 1963, and henceforth participated in decisions that placed sweden at the foref ront of action against apartheid in the western realm, and in the support of af rican liberation movements (reddy, 1990: 7). he became the prime minister of sweden in 1969 (reuters, 2020). this coincided with a turbulent time in southern af rica. a white minority regime under ian smith in southern rhodesia had declared unilateral independence f rom britain, while simultaneously, armed struggles had been launched against colonial authorities in angola, mozambique, and guinea-bissau. the liberation movements were facing greatly increased needs as a result of this, prompting a decision by palme in 1969 to provide direct assistance to these movements (reddy, 1990: 8). as leader of the social democratic party and as prime minister, palme consistently and effectively, through words and action, demonstrated his solidarity with oppressed people around the globe (reddy, 1990: 5). throughout his life, he repeated his conviction that apartheid was p e e r r e v i e w 23v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 by nature a system of violence which can only be maintained by force and by the oppression of the black majority…it is also a system of social and economic exploitation which separates workers f rom workers on the basis of the colour of their skin, at the same time as almost two million black people are unemployed. a society which responds to demands for human dignity and decency with brutal police action and indiscriminate killing must not only be condemned; it is also doomed to permanent division and conflict (palme, 1977: 2). palme left no stone unturned at the united nations and in every international forum open to his participation, to urge world powers to recognise oppression under apartheid, and the illegal occupation of namibia, as a threat to peace (palme, 1977: 1). together with other entities in sweden, and international anti-apartheid movements, he took whatever action necessary to compel the world to listen and to take action against apartheid (reddy, 1990: 3). he pointed out how the apartheid regime was ‘reinforcing the machinery of oppression, strengthening its defences and endevouring to gain assurances of wider international support’ (palme, 1977: 1), with the 1976 soweto massacre serving as proof that the regime would not hesitate to use brutal violence (palme, 1977: 2; bangura, 2018: 2). he was particularly aghast at statements by rhodesia’s ian smith, and the apartheid regime’s john vorster who demanded external aid to enable it to ‘fight for the interests of the f ree world’: haven’t these people learnt anything? let us make it very clear. democratic socialists will never accept smith’s perversion of western democracy. we will never include vorster’s oppression and racism in a f ree world…smith and vorster are doing the very opposite to democracy. they are denying the peoples of zimbabwe, namibia and south af rica the most fundamental human rights which are a pre-condition for democracy (palme, 1977: 2). under palme’s leadership, generous assistance was provided by sweden to the victims of repression and liberation movements, as well as new independent states in af rica. he never grew tired of promoting international action against apartheid, especially in the aftermath of the 1976 soweto uprising, and the critical period after 1984, when the increasing popular resistance and violent township protests in south af rica forced the apartheid regime to declare a state of emergency (reddy, 1990: 5; saho, 2019). he constantly challenged other major western powers that continued to obstruct international action, and played an instrumental role in obtaining a firm commitment f rom socialist international, to support the af rican liberation struggle (reddy, 1990: 5). according to reddy (1990: 6), he was always abreast of what was happening in southern af rica; met f requently with leaders of the liberation leaders; and paid great attention to their views in a nonpaternalistic manner. he emphasised that af rican people had to be helped in the context of their choices (reddy, 1990: 5). he addressed many conferences on southern af rica, where he consistently stressed that neutrality was not possible in the region; that no middle ground existed between the oppressors and the oppressed; and that reform of apartheid, or a compromise with apartheid, was not possible, thereby denouncing moves by major western powers to give assurances to the apartheid regime, in exchange for co-operation in negotiated settlements in rhodesia and namibia (reddy, 1990: 9). according to the leader of the british anti-apartheid movement, the rt. revd. trevor huddleston, cr, in reddy (1990: 3), palme repeatedly stated his conviction that apartheid is irreformable. that persuasion, dialogue and diplomatic pressure are themselves incapable of destroying what is basically evil in itself. that there can be no such thing as ‘constructive engagement’ with a tyranny. the only way is to destroy the tyranny itself and replace it with democratic rule. in order to destroy the tyranny of apartheid, palme proposed a specific policy for social democrats globally to pursue. this included: support for a binding un arms embargo against south af rica; material and political support to already autonomous states and to the liberation movements; better coordination of efforts in the united nations for an effective policy of isolation and sanctions against south af rica, including persistant refusal to recognise the bantustans; determined efforts to bring about an end to south af rica’s illegal occupation of namibia; reconsidering new investments and the export p e e r r e v i e w 24 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 of capital to south af rica and namibia; support to black trade unions and student movements in south af rica, namibia, and zimbabwe; and setting up parliamentary committees to ensure that internationally acknowledged working practices were in effect in companies with subsidiaries in south af rica (bangura, 2018: 2 –3; palme, 1977: 4). in 1979, palme also became one of the sponsors of the world campaign against military and nuclear collaboration with south af rica, launched by the exiled south af rican, abdul minty (smith, 1980: preface). the world campaign was set to work in close cooperation with the united nations, the oau, anti-apartheid and solidarity movements, liberation movements in southern af rica, and the frontline states, in ensuring full implementation and strengthening of the unsc mandatory arms embargo of 1977 (minty, c1981; reddy, 1990: 10). palme also minced no words on what he felt was complacency on the part of the west. in this regard, huddleston admonished the world to listen to what palme had to say: his words are a massive assault on the complacency of the western powers in their attitude to the monstrous evil of apartheid. not least on those countries in europe who for so long sustained the pretoria regime in its tyranny by trade, investment and collaboration (reddy, 1990: 3). palme was shot in the back at close range on the night of 28 february 1986, as he walked along a busy street in stockholm. a second bullet grazed his wife, lisbeth. she survived; palme didn’t. thousands of people were questioned and more than 130 falsely confessed to the crime. in 1996, an allegation was made that the murder was carried out on the order of apartheid-era security forces, due to the deep enmity they had for sweden. despite all of this, noone was ever convicted (reuters, 2020; duke, 1996). but palme’s legacy remains. he fought apartheid until the very end. a week before his assassination, he addressed the swedish people’s parliament together with tambo (roberts, 2020). palme’s lifelong message is encapsulated in the following quote: ‘we must live up to our responsibility for bringing this repulsive system (of apartheid) to an end’ (reddy, 1990: 11). palme’s death was mourned by thousands of oppressed south af ricans, with the delmas treason trialists (roberts, 2020) and anc stalwarts like oliver tambo and later deputy president kgalema motlanthe unanimously praising him and his government for their repeated and unequivocal expressions of abhorrence of apartheid. tambo called him ‘one of us, a fellow combatant who has made an inestimable contribution to the struggle for the liberation of south af rica’ (reddy, 1990: 5), while motlanthe described him as ‘a tireless campaigner for peace, equality, human rights and f reedom’ (south af rican government, 2011). his crusading efforts were also appreciated by the oau and the un. this is particularly exemplified by the gold medal he was awarded by the un in 1978 in recognition of his contribution to the international campaign against apartheid (reddy, 1990: 11). ultimately, all the efforts by the various entities and individuals in sweden culminated in the next phase of the campaign against apartheid: punitive sanctions. swedish sanctions sweden introduced measures against apartheid south af rica before most other countries. from 1967, no export credits f rom public funds were granted, and there were few cultural or sporting contacts with south af rica, due to a prohibition on public funds being used to subsidise such contacts. visa requirements were introduced for south af rican citizens in 1978. from 1982, these visas became a highly restrictive practice that de facto barred south af ricans f rom visiting sweden, unless they could show that they were opponents or victims of apartheid (conlon, 1986: 9). in the late 1970s and 1980s, the swedish government and organisations such as isak persistently proposed the introduction of an effective and mandatory policy of sanctions on south af rica, as well as the application of total trade boycotts (ruyter, 1990: 4; reddy, 1990: 3). the swedish government also became an active co-sponsor of un resolutions (conlon, 1986: 9). this put the country, along with norway and denmark, at loggerheads with great britain in the 1970s over how to manage their relations with the apartheid regime. the three scandinavian states, in a highprofile southern af rica policy, advocated loudly for p e e r r e v i e w 25v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 unsc sanctions to be imposed on the white minority governments in south af rica and rhodesia, in order to increase pressure for reform. britain, on the other hand, was concerned about soviet influence in the region backing majority rule, and britain’s own economic and social interests in the region. hence, they proposed a slower and more careful approach (svenbalrud, 2012: 746–747). such was the discontent that the british foreign and commonwealth office (fco) wanted punitive measures imposed on norway and sweden, ‘to sanction their position in south af rican matters’ (svenbalrud, 2012: 747). this, despite sweden sharing many basic foreign policy positions with britain, such as containing soviet communism and supporting the post-war international liberal order (svenbalrud, 2012: 748). it was only in 1979, however, that sweden prohibited new investments in south af rica (sellström, 2002b: 398). in the face of the veto rights of permanent members of the unsc, which severely limited the range of actions that could potentially be taken against south af rica, foreign minister blix proposed unilateral action by the swedish government (united nations, 1979: 2). on 7 june 1979, a swedish law was passed that banned investments and loans to south af rica and south-af rican-controlled namibia (united nations, 1979: 2; conlon, 1986: 9; united nations, 1989: 15). the law was revised and extended in 1985, to prohibit certain types of lease-back agreements for capital equipment (conlon, 1986: 9). the 1979 action was the first example of sweden acting unilaterally against south af rica, outside of unsc resolutions (gauhar, 1980: 638). aside f rom the unsc veto issue, however, there was also another reason for the late introduction of a ban on new investments in south af rica, as alluded to earlier: resistance f rom trade unions, in particular the metal union, and swedish companies with business interests or subsidiaries in south af rica, who feared unemployment in sweden in the face of south af rica’s isolation. further action by the swedish government would only follow in 1985, earning it sharp criticism f rom isak, who continuously lobbied for sanctions and the isolation of south af rica and publicised the involvement of swedish companies in south af rica (thörn, 2009a: 80). in october 1985, sweden and the other baltic states adopted formalised strategic guidelines for general policy coordination. ultimately, all five governments went beyond the guidelines, in their respective national applications. the overall purpose was to gradually wind down new investments in south af rica by nordic states; to work with the private sector towards informal agreements with the respective governments to restrict their activities in south af rica; to gradually wind down trade relations with south af rica; and the implementation of unsc resolutions 558 (1985) and 569 (1985) (conlon, 1986: 6). in addition to previous laws and measures, as alluded to earlier, sweden also introduced the following: an end to trade in arms and military equipment in both directions; a ban on the buying or selling of kruger rands; no collaboration in the nuclear field; a ban on exports of computer equipment that could be used by the south af rican army for military purposes and/or adaptations thereof for use by the police; no trade promotion; opposition to loans by the international monetary fund (imf); discouragement of technology transfer; restrictions on relations in the fields of sports, culture and science; and joint nordic guidelines for visa regulations for south af rican citizens (conlon, 1986: 6–9; terry and bell, 1988: 6; united nations, 1989: 22, 29). the only measure that could not be enacted at a national level was a ban on air traffic with south af rica. this was because the governments of denmark, norway, and sweden were the joint owners of scandinavian airline systems (sas) (conlon, 1986: 7; ruyter, 1990: 11). hence, the three countries together responded to the call for an air traffic ban with south af rica. in accordance with a ministerial agreement of p e e r r e v i e w sweden went beyond the unsc resolutions of 1985 by enacting an absolute ban on the import of an extensive range of agricultural products from south africa (conlon, 1986: 9). by 1987, this special law had been replaced by a general trade ban, which entailed that no person domiciled in sweden could render marketing or consulting ser vices on a commercial basis to any person or entity in south africa 26 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 27 june 1986, sas would abrogate its 1958 agreement on air traffic with south af rica and end its flights to johannesburg f rom september 1985 (conlon, 1986: 7; ruyter, 1990: 11; united nations, 1989: 30). sweden went beyond the unsc resolutions of 1985 by enacting an absolute ban on the import of an extensive range of agricultural products f rom south af rica (conlon, 1986: 9). by 1987, this special law had been replaced by a general trade ban, which entailed that no person domiciled in sweden could render marketing or consulting services on a commercial basis to any person or entity in south af rica (united nations, 1989: 23, 31). furthermore, provincial and local authorities were asked by the swedish parliament in 1985 to boycott south af rican products and goods for a period of one year, for reasons of solidarity, and penalties for contravention of all measures were strengthened (conlon, 1986: 9–10; united nations, 1989: 8). sweden’s board of trade was commissioned to submit an impact study on the effects of an eventual interruption of south af rican supplies of specialised metals, and to draw up contingency plans. shipping companies were asked to avoid traffic via south af rican harbours, and to rather use ports in frontline states. the swedish business community was requested to disengage itself f rom commercial dealings with south af rica, and to follow a un decree that called for the protection of namibia’s natural resources. furthermore, a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ was reached with major coal importers in sweden, in march 1985, to phase out imports f rom south af rica (conlon, 1986: 10; united nations, 1989: 22; working group kairos, 1989: 6). it took a while though for this to materialise, as considerable volumes of south af rican coal were still transshipped to sweden f rom dutch ports – a trick by coal traders to hide the south af rican origin of the coal (working group kairos, 1989: 17). another far-reaching measure enacted by sweden in 1985 was that swedish companies had to consistently report on the activities of their subsidiaries in south af rica to the board of trade. this was done in order to comply with the provisions of the ban on new investments. detailed data of capital transactions between the parent company and subsidiary was required, including on the conditions of employment in, and certain activities of the south af rican subsidiaries. the board of trade had to summarise these reports and issue an annual report to the swedish parliament (united nations, 1989: 9–10). sweden and the other nordic countries turned the screw even tighter f rom 1 january 1988, when they implemented comprehensive measures intended to counteract apartheid and reduce the dependence of the countries of the southern af rican development coordination conference and the frontline states on south af rica (terry & bell, 1988). the law that allowed provincial and local authorities to boycott south af rican products and goods for a period of one year had now been replaced by the general trade ban (united nations, 1989: 8). this ban was furthermore expanded to include namibia, and other economic measures were also expanded (terry & bell, 1988). this meant that by 1989, sweden had a total ban on all trade and new investments with south af rica and namibia, and any persons or entities based in sweden were prohibited f rom acquiring portfolio investments in south af rican or namibian commercial enterprises (united nations, 1989: 28). the transport of oil on all nordic-registered ships was also almost totally banned (united nations, 1989: 5). epilogue by april 1991, despite brutal and meaningless violence continuing, south af rica had made some progress towards political transformation. the nordic foreign ministers, however, agreed that economic sanctions could only be revoked after the abolishment of the apartheid system, and a comprehensive political assessment of the situation (united nations, 1991: 2–3). that said, the nordic foreign ministers nonetheless felt that the encouraging changes taking place in south af rica already justified some steps on their part to promote dialogue and the process of democratisation. in this regard, the special guidelines applicable to the granting of visas to south af rican citizens would be abolished. however, restrictions that were required to ensure the implementation of nationally applicable sanctions would remain (united nations, 1991: 3). meanwhile, due to widespread concern about continuing violence in south af rica, and the prospect of f ree and fair elections in 1994, sida allocated considerable resources for various peace and election monitoring initiatives (sellström, 2002b: 27 special edition v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 861). furthermore, in november 1993, the swedish government decided on a final contribution to the anc, which was paid over in october 1994. the amount of 6,5 million swedish krona brought 21 years of close cooperation between sweden and the anc as a liberation movement to an end (sellström, 2002b: 858, 861). up to this point, sweden had disbursed a total of 4 billion swedish krona as official humanitarian assistance to liberation movements in southern af rica (sellström, 2002a: 9). of this, 896 million swedish krona had gone to the anc (sellström, 2002b: 861). this support was characterised by carl tham, the head of sida f rom 1985, as ‘one of the most important foreign policy and cooperation efforts carried out by sweden’ (sellström, 2002b: 869). in closing, william minter in sellström (2002a: 9) aptly describes sweden’s momentous support to the liberation movements as follows: in the 1980s, the international right wing was fond of labeling swapo and anc as ‘sovietbacked’. in empirical terms, the alternate, but less dramatic, labels ‘swedish-backed’ or ‘nordicbacked’ would have been equally or even more accurate, especially in the non-military aspects of international support. bilateral relations between sweden and south af rica were normalised in december 1993. this was marked by anc president nelson mandela, and the last apartheid president, f.w. de klerk, visiting stockholm after being jointly awarded the nobel peace prize in norway. it was the first time ever that a south af rican head of state visited sweden. in march 1994, sweden reciprocated, when swedish foreign minister margaretha af ugglas visited south af rica (sellström, 2002: 861). not long after that, between 26 and 29 april 1994, peaceful elections brought a formal end to apartheid and white minority rule in south af rica. the long struggle for f reedom and inclusive democracy in south af rica was finally over, and thousands of liberation fighters could probably resonate with the sentiments of anc stalwart james ngculu: the support we received raised morale because sometimes you sit in the camps and all that happens is that the sun rises and the sun sets. the books, the games, the clothing and everything we received f rom the solidarity movement sustained most of us. and the radios – you could listen to the news and music. a small thing but so important (roberts, 2020). notes 1. an af rikaans word meaning ‘apartness.’ 2. the sharpeville massacre followed a non-violent anti-pass protest campaign orchestrated by the pan af ricanist congress (pac). on the morning of 21 march 1960, a crowd of people chanting f reedom songs and calling out campaign slogans, approached the sharpeville police station, where a heavy contingent of policemen awaited them. the leaders asked the police to allow them to go through to the police station, where they wanted to surrender themselves for refusing to carry passes, in line with the campaign slogan of “no bail! no defence! no fine!” by midday, the crowd had grown to 5,000 people, faced by 300 policemen. a small scuffle led to a policeman being pushed over and the crowd advancing to see what was happening. the police started firing with live ammunition, later claiming that they did so because the protesters had started throwing stones at them. the two minutes of firing on the crowd left 69 dead and 180 people seriously wounded (saho, internet). 3. helander was also one of the founding members of this organisation. 4. the author acknowledges that other nordic countries in addition to sweden supported south af rica’s liberation struggle. for more information, please refer to the liberation af rica project undertaken by the nordic-af rica institute. 5. the soweto uprising was triggered by the apartheid regime’s introduction of the socalled ‘bantu education act’ in 1953. in 1976, af rikaans was made compulsory alongside english as a medium of instruction, leading to a gradual mobilisation of students. between 3,000 and 10,000 students mobilised in soweto on 16 june 1976 for a peaceful march against the government directive. the students were met by heavily armed police, who used teargas and later live ammunition against them. a widespread p e e r r e v i e w 28 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 revolt erupted, quickly turning into an uprising that spread across south af rica and continued into 1977 (saho, internet). 6. a total of ten self-sufficient, ethnically defined homelands (also called bantustans) were planned by the apartheid regime (mukonoweshuro, 1991: 171). three and a half million people were forcibly removed to these homelands between 1960 and 1994. sham independence was granted to these territories in the 1970s, but poverty was rife and many returned to the cities of south af rica to work as labourers (apartheid museum, n.d.). 7. 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(1976). ‘nordic countries support action against apartheid in south africa.’ notes and documents, no. 32/76. jstor [online]. available at: www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1976_43 united nations centre against apartheid. (1977). ‘international trade union action against apartheid: recent developments.’ notes and documents, 16/77, january. jstor [online]. available at: www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document. nuun1977_17 united nations centre against apartheid. (1979). ‘strategies in the struggle against apartheid.’ notes and documents, no. 3/79. jstor [online]. available at: www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1979_03 united nations centre against apartheid. (1989). ‘implementation of national measures adopted against south africa.’ notes and documents, no. 2/89. jstor [online]. available at: www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1989_02 united nations centre against apartheid. (1991). ‘nordic statement on south africa at the conclusion of a meeting of the ministers for foreign affairs, held at karlshamn, sweden, on 22 and 23 march 1991.’ notes and documents, no. 8/91. jstor [online]. available at: www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1991_08 wallström, m. (2015). ‘swedish-south africa links go back a long way.’ government offices of sweden [online]. available at: www.government.se/opinion-pieces/2015/04/swedish---south-africa-links-go-back-a-long-way/ working group kairos. (1989). south african coal streams via the netherlands, 1985–1986. utrecht. p e e r r e v i e w https://www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1976_43 https://www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1977_17 https://www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1977_17 https://www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1979_03 https://www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1989_02 https://www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.nuun1991_08 https://www.government.se/opinion-pieces/2015/04/swedish---south-africa-links-go-back-a-long-way/ https://www.government.se/opinion-pieces/2015/04/swedish---south-africa-links-go-back-a-long-way/ 77v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract sweden and south africa are two major transnational destinations and attract large numbers of refugees and migrants, primarily due to their ease of immigration policies. besides their unique historical relations which can be traced back to as early as the 1890s, both countries continue to experience high volumes of mass migration and forced mobility which peaked in 2015. following the so-called ‘syrian refugee crisis’, sweden witnessed the second largest asylum applications in europe. at around the same time, south africa experienced its highest backlog of asylum applications. it is against this backdrop of a long and diverse history of relations and ongoing migration that we seek to engage with the responses of both countries to mass migration using a comparative approach. the article presents a historical perspective of migration between sweden and south africa and examines their ongoing migration policy debates. it concludes with an analysis of current political contestations and some key lessons for each country. by pragna rugunanan and celine meyers exploring sweden and south africa’s responses to mass migration during the period 2015–2019 78 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction mass migration into sweden and south af rica is not a new phenomenon. in 2015, both countries welcomed an unprecedented number of refugees in search of protection. refugees are defined as ‘those who are unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’ (united nations human rights commission, 1951: 14). the socalled ‘syrian refugee crisis’ or ‘european refugee crisis’ sparked considerable media and scholarly attention across the globe (jones and shaheen, 2015; müller et al., 2016). more than 4.5 million refugees fled f rom an outbreak of conflict and violence in syria, which signalled the largest refugee exodus in recent history (unhcr, 2022). of the 4.5 million refugees, sweden attracted the second largest asylum applications in europe (approximately 163,000) primarily due to its championship earned as a historically refugeef riendly country (statista, 2016; tanner, 2016). similarly, south af rica attracts numerous migrants and refugees f rom the southern af rican region (unhcr, 2016). statistics f rom 2016 showed that an estimated 90% of all migrants in south af rica hailed f rom the af rican continent, of which 85% come f rom the southern af rican development community (sadc) (masuku, 2020). the following year in 2017, asylum seekers originated predominantly f rom the democratic republic of the congo (drc), zimbabwe, bangladesh, ethiopia, somalia, pakistan and nigeria. while data on undocumented migrants remain inaccurate in south af rica, the department of home affairs (dha) estimates that there are approximately two million undocumented migrants, constituting a large component of af rican descendants in the country (ferraro and weideman, 2020). data for refugees and asylum seekers are slightly more accurate. in 2015, there were an estimated 110,000 refugees in south af rica, which declined in 2016 to an estimated 97,000 refugees (ferraro and weideman, 2020). south af rica is particularly attractive to neighbouring countries as a result of its status as the second ‘economic powerhouse in af rica’ following nigeria (stats sa, 2021; kamer, 2022), and as an economic hub in the southern af rican region. the country is considered a haven by those escaping extreme poverty, political violence, and civil war. over time, south af rica has issued several special dispensation permits to migrants f rom countries such as angola, lesotho, and zimbabwe. prior to 2009, for instance, zimbabwean nationals enjoyed exemption permits (yu, 2022). however, recent announcements suggested that these permits would expire in december 2021 with a grace period of 12 months (yu, 2022). comparatively, sweden has recently engaged in a series of high-profile diplomatic disputes. since 2015, harsher measures were enacted by both countries to combat the growing number of asylum seekers and refugees in the respective countries. the participation of foreigners in the south af rican economy is an important political and economic issue within south and southern af rica. sweden has characteristics that present a suitable case for a comparative study with south af rica. despite the two countries’ relations, and similarities in culture and politics, there exists a continuous pattern of similar migration policies. for many years, sweden maintained a liberal and inclusive approach to immigration and cultural diversity, taking a strong stance against racism (hagelund, 2020). while sweden enjoyed the status of europe’s most welcoming country for refugees, border control policies changed significantly after 2015. growing anti-immigrant sentiments were exacerbated by rising violence in migrant communities after the newly elected government in sweden tightened border control policies (gavlak, 2022). south af rica’s immigrant policies have never been as liberal as sweden’s, but both countries recently aimed to reduce the arrival figures of newcomers. while sweden and south af rica shared common policy goals after their mass migration influxes, they legitimised and operationalised these policies differently. it is against this backdrop that we seek to examine the responses of sweden and south af rica to mass migration using available media reports and desktop research. we primarily relied on a literature and policy review which was appropriate for this study. this article briefly examines the historical links between the two countries and their ongoing migration policy debates. it concludes p e e r r e v i e w 79v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 with an analysis of current political contestations and some key lessons for each country. the article contributes to the current literature by comparing the migration policies of both countries. the article also presents a historical perspective of migration between south af rica and sweden, which is an under-researched area. migration between south africa and sweden: a historical perspective sweden and south af rica share historical links dating back to the 1890s (gerdov, 2016; kuparinen, 1991). research documents how members of the scandinavian corps (countries comprising denmark, norway, finland, and sweden) supported the boer side briefly during the south af rican war (1899–1902) (gerdov, 2016). this support was met with contention, and most of the scandinavians residing in south af rica were opposed to the corps at the time. scandinavian immigration to south af rica peaked around the 1890s and again around 1900 (gerdov, 2016). we can assume that swedish nationals were among this group of early migrants to south af rica (kuparinen, 1991: 13). there are few historical materials that record the early migration of scandinavian nationals to south af rica. kuparinen (1991) notes that earlier records were listed in only a few lines of migration to south af rica. the south af rican state did not keep proper records of early immigration streams and only introduced statistical records for immigration in the early twentieth century. further historical links of swedish nationals can be traced back to the 1930s (sellström, 1999). migration to south af rica was seen as a new choice destination with economic opportunities creating a strong pull factor for the early scandinavian immigrants. the formation of these relations intensified considerably during the south af rican democratic elections in 1994 when sweden was the only western country in europe to extend official political and financial support in efforts to promote an antiapartheid movement (department of foreign affairs, 2003; wallström, 2015). during this period, more than 50% of the anc’s civilian budget came f rom sweden (julin, 2020). a bilateral partnership was officially celebrated in 1999 and south af rica has since remained one of sweden’s strongest coalitions in af rica (sellström, 1999). south af rica and sweden share a strong belief in the rule of law, non-discrimination, respect for human rights, gender equality, and public participation. alongside this, the two countries also share ambitions in regional as well as international settings, with a targeted focus on democracy, human rights, and poverty within the structures of the af rican union (au), new partnership for af rica’s development (nepad), european union (eu), and united nations (un). bilateral relations between south af rica and sweden continue to expand and intensify, and the two countries cooperate on regional and multilateral issues of mutual concern (department of international relations and cooperation, 2022). with a shared history and a firm belief in the same fundamental values, there is a solid ground for further discussions on how to meet future migration challenges (julin, 2020). migration policy debates in sweden and south af rica f rom 2015 to 2019 both countries are engaged in continuous discussions about migration policies after key episodes of migration influxes in 2015. the time period of 2015 to 2019 provides a useful f ramework for understanding the contested political issues in both countries, at least until the covid-19 pandemic. p e e r r e v i e w both countries are engaged in continuous discussions about migration policies after key episodes of migration influxes in 2015. the time period of 2015 to 2019 provides a useful framework for understanding the contested political issues in both countries, at least until the covid-19 pandemic. 80 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 migration policy discourses in sweden migration policy discourses in sweden are described as ‘never-ending’ and are represented as the ‘harshest’ paradoxical anti-refugee debates the country has ever witnessed (byuengtsson, 2020; sorensen, 2017). sweden accepted far more asylum seekers per capita than other european state member countries in 2015 (tanner, 2016). sweden was only second to germany in terms of the numbers received for asylum applications: it received approximately 163,000 applications (tanner, 2016). following the unprecedented influx of refugees entering sweden in 2015, major shifts f rom a relatively liberal asylum stance to a highly restrictive law and policy were seen (skodo, 2018). these shifts raised numerous disputes in the country which reinforced perennial debates about the end of ‘swedish exceptionalism’ (rothstein, 2014; rydgren and van der meiden, 2018; schierup and ålund; 2011; tomson, 2020). as sweden remained known for its liberal migration policies for the longest period, boasting as the only european country with an open-border policy, the origination of the syrian refugee crisis led to a ‘f ragmented’ and contradictory response to temporary asylum measures and family reunification laws (skodo, 2018). in 2016, newly-arrived refugees were subjected to temporary laws initiated in june which allowed them to stay for three years, if indeed they were classified as ‘real’ refugees. in the case of those migrants needing protection, they were afforded only thirteen months of protection (rabo, tun and jörum, 2021). this policy was in line with the prime minister’s view that european countries should bear the burden of the refugee crisis. from late 2015 onwards, sweden had taken a disproportionate number of migrants and the other european countries subsequently had to bear a larger share of the burden. in 2016, these laws underwent significant modifications to restrict permit residence opportunities for asylum seekers and their families (government offices in sweden, 2016; skodo, 2018). many of these modifications resulted f rom political contestations between major government parties that concentrated on making sweden less accessible and less attractive to immigrants. the common belief was that muslim refugees f rom ‘war torn’ countries like syria posed considerable political and societal challenges in the country (skodo, 2018). some of these issues were narrated as directly related to the surge in violent crime in the country as well as the increased ‘financial burden’ on the swedish welfare system (tomson, 2020; traub, 2021). high crime rates in sweden were blamed on incoming refugees, resulting in the country – once known for its low rate of crime – being considered as one of the highest gun violence hotspots in europe (henley, 2021). the gangs were identified as primarily second-generation immigrants f rom the horn of af rica (traub, 2021). the gang violence is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon and, as such, there is little support to specifically point out migrants f rom the horn of af rica. these incidents led to several paradoxical debates since 2015. on the one side of the debate, the green party together with the left party argued that the new proposed laws would segregate immigrant families and limit lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) refugees who cannot reside with their partners in their origin country to enter sweden. a major critique centred on the deprivation of healthcare to refugees who resided in the country on temporary permits (tomson, 2020). conversely, the swedish democrats and liberal-conservative moderate party raised high levels of dissatisfaction and requested that harsher measures be put in place. to do so, these parties advocate that immigrants return to their origin countries, while restricting those who are attempting to enter sweden (bengtsson, 2020). the remaining political parties and migration experts in sweden argue that these measures pose paradoxes that contradict the united nations convention signed by swedish officials (bengtsson, 2020). as such, very little agreement between swedish political parties could be reached due to two opposing views on immigration policies. there is unanimous agreement on the implementation of a stricter policy, with the exceptions of disagreement f rom the green and the left parties. the overall picture is that the migration policy has turned in a much more restrictive direction, but the support for this turn is large. the two major parties are in favour of a strict policy and two of the smaller non-socialist parties are also in line with this. sweden has embodied a feminist gender equality policy that strives to eliminate gender discrimination in society. it has enacted family-f riendly policies to achieve its dream of a gender-equal society. p e e r r e v i e w https://www.ips-journal.eu/about/writers-and-contributors/writer/jesper-bengtsson/ 81v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 more recently, gender equality is curtailed by social issues of class and ethnicity (lane and jordannsson, 2020). as of october 2022, the new right-wing government announced that it would be ‘ditching’ the ‘feminist foreign policy’ implemented by the previous government (the guardian, 2022). in 2016, when sweden’s policy on migration and refugees was amended, it effectively halted any reunification between refugees and their family members. this is in contradiction to the gender equity policy of the swedish government. in addition, women have been underrepresented in receiving residence permits in sweden with 44.8% and this figure continues to decrease owing to threats to family reunification (helbert, 2018). restrictions to the right to family reunification for refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection in sweden came with numerous legal, practical, and financial obstacles. these amended laws were particularly challenging for women refugees in sweden (edenborg, 2020). research by mangrio et al. (2019) reported that most recently arrived refugee women experience a lack of access to the swedish language and culture. this lack of access was most pronounced in the areas of education, health care, and employment. separation f rom their loved ones and the lack of access to resources led to significant feelings of loneliness and depression. family reunion is also a strong element in support of successful integration strategies and programs, as well as an important factor in reducing mental health issues among refugees. the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) expressed great disappointment that the family reunification mechanism, as a legal pathway, has been curtailed to such a great extent. uddin (2022) points to twelve cases of family segregation between syrian refugee parents and their children. the most recent case of family separation was amplified through a social media campaign that raised awareness on how swedish officials prohibited syrian refugee parents f rom connecting with their children on account of claims related to physical and psychological harm (uddin, 2022). the family’s last-born child was only five minutes old when the baby was taken away f rom the refugee mother, gaining widespread social media attention in an effort to reunite the children with their parents. this is one example that showcases the threat of family reunification laws in sweden. unhcr strongly believes that supported and well-managed access to family reunions enables many women and children to access protection safely (nicholson, 2018). effective and prompt family reunification procedures help discourage communities f rom resorting to criminal smuggling networks, remove the risk of undertaking dangerous journeys, and ensure more gender equity in terms of access to protection. the current legal f ramework in sweden may inf ringe on the rights of the child, as outlined by the committee on the rights of the child (crc) and the european court of human rights (echr). it may also risk negating the positive right to family reunification provided for in the eu directive on family reunification. migration policy discourses in south africa current migration policy debates in south af rica remain contested and equally contentious (van lennep, 2019). political contestations in south af rica are characterised by continuous paradoxical discourses on the f reedom and inclusion of af rican migrants into the social and economic welfare system (van lennep, 2019). while the country has been able to hold onto its position as a haven for af rican migrants, several political parties and civil society organisations have been vocal in their opposition to the south af rican migration policy. the south af rican government has been accused of being too soft on migrants and unable to control mass migration into the country, leading to a rise of social intolerance amongst local citizens (mukumbang, ambe and adebiyi, 2020). more recently, incidents of xenophobia against af rican migrants have surged dramatically, indicating an increased intolerance against foreign nationals. as such, south af rica has been facing pressure f rom social activists1 and political parties to introduce a tougher and more restrictive migration policy to address the social and economic challenges associated with mass migration into the country (peralta, 2022). during the apartheid era spanning f rom 1948 to 1991, immigration in south af rica was tightly controlled by the aliens act of 1991. this law was designed to prevent the spread of non-white races to south af rica. immigration typically took place through a twogate policy where the ‘f ront gate’ welcomed certain ‘desirable’ white immigrants, while the ‘back gate’ p e e r r e v i e w 82 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 was for those deemed undesirable af rican migrants for temporary residence. the policy was primarily enforced by the south af rican police services (saps). the aliens act of 1991 was repealed in 1995 by the immigration act of 1995. subsequently, the refugee’s act of 1998 was introduced to allow asylum seekers to move f reely, work, and study in the country. in response to concerns over the misuse of immigration acts and the accusation that apartheid-era legislation was still in place, despite south af rica’s transition to democracy in 1994, amendments followed in 2008, 2011, and 2017 to curtail these rights (kavuro, 2022). the 2017 white paper on migration (department of home affairs) highlighted that irregular migration was a threat to the security of the country and that the use of the aliens act of 1991 and the refugee’s act of 1998 was not consistent with the spirit of the constitution (kavuro, 2022). national debates largely centred on the issue that the asylum system in south af rica is no longer regulated but rather abused by unauthorised migrants seeking job opportunities in the country (white paper, 2017). this has led to the south af rican government putting new measures in place such as the border management bill of 2020 to enforce securitisation. the growing anti-sentiments steer policy makers in south af rica to adopt these dissuading positions rather than inclusivity toward migrants (maunganidze, 2021). while the policy and law applying to refugees in south af rica is progressive, this approach is circumscribed by the growing anti-immigrant sentiments and the barriers refugees face in terms of accessing their rights to social protections such as legal documents, social grants, and the security of stay. these are some of the reasons that explain why the south af rican government’s progressive ideas are seldom reflected in implementation plans. current implementation plans suggest that special permits will be terminated by the end of 2022 and those seeking to remain will be evaluated based on skills that are required in the country (bekker, 2022). threats to break up families are high on the agenda, in addition to a lack of access to basic services such as education and health care. further consequences of this threat are that the current policy is not able to address the root causes of the problem (bekker, 2022). the south af rican government has been trying to address the issue of competition and migration in the country by implementing a variety of policies. these include the introduction of the border management bill of 2020 which can also lead to the loss of property, jobs, and livelihoods. these are just some of the consequences for refugees in south af rica. south af rica places a strong emphasis on gender equality and has one of the highest numbers of women represented in parliament. the committee on the elimination of discrimination against women (cedaw) commended south af rica for its ‘strong political will’ in advancing women’s rights (united nations human rights commission, 2021). however, the increasing intensity and violence against women is the highest globally. while the south af rican government has ratified many important international conventions and charters, it has not ratified the international convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families. without legal documentation, many zimbabweans, mozambicans, somalis, and several other af rican migrant populations are subject to what is often referred to as ‘medical xenophobia’ or ‘medical outcasts’ in the public and academic discourse (crush and  tawodzera, 2011; richter, 2015; batisai, 2020). these terms stand in stark contrast with south af rica’s national health act no. 61 of 2003 (section 27) which guarantees unconstrained access to basic health services and support to all persons, p e e r r e v i e w viewed as ‘burdens’ and ‘disease carriers’ on several media platforms such as news articles and social media platforms, migrants and refugees live in constant fear because of insensitive xenophobic stereotypes. on the other hand, african women migrants who access healthcare at public medical institutions tend to experience violence while giving birth. 83v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 including non-nationals who may require emergency medical treatment (department of health, 2003). several media representations show how migrants are repeatedly conf ronted with health exclusions, discrimination, stigma, abuse, and homophobic attacks f rom both health care personnel and local citizens (alfaro-velcamp, 2017; fox, 2018). some of the main assumptions and views held in these media discussions are the country’s inability to provide f ree health to non-nationals and the idea that local citizens should be prioritised. viewed as ‘burdens’ and ‘disease carriers’  on  several media platforms such as news articles and social media platforms, migrants and refugees live in constant fear  because of  insensitive xenophobic stereotypes. on the other hand, af rican women migrants who access healthcare at public medical institutions tend to experience violence while giving birth. for instance, a 30-year-old zimbabwean woman’s baby fell to his death at mamelodi hospital in pretoria east in 2019 (mahlangu, 2019). it is alleged that the migrant woman gave birth standing after the nurses refused to help, despite her bleeding and the fact that she had informed the nurses that she was in pain and felt as if the baby was coming. her cry for help was met with xenophobic utterances: ‘this is not zim…close your legs and go there...’ (mahlangu 2019). these denials of care violate human rights and have a gendered, racial, and class impact – with poor, black women enduring the most of this discrimination (willie, 2018). national laws need to be able to cater for the complex realities of women migrants’ varied activities within the lower end of the informal economy – the woman braiding hair in an open market while trading beauty products and occasionally working as a domestic worker. normative references to men workers can also function to restrict women’s ability for family reunification. discussion this article has examined the current political contestations regarding migration in sweden and south af rica. in doing so, it has looked at the different ways in which the two countries have responded to the current migrant crisis. since 2015, there has been a dramatic shift in the migration governance of both countries, reflecting the turn towards tighter control of migration policy after the syrian refugee crisis. the move to more right-wing conservatism globally influences the nationalistic overtones in both countries. the rise in negative sentiment towards refugees and asylum seekers both in sweden and south af rica could be attributed to the use of social media platforms, where xenophobic and nationalist sentiments fuel inflammatory sentiments against migrants. refugees and asylum seekers become targets for the social ills experienced in both countries. this is evidenced by the persistent and rising xenophobic attacks, particularly against black af ricans, in the south af rican context and a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the case of sweden; protests, physical assaults and the burning of inf rastructure have resulted in a tightening of asylum legislation (tanner, 2016). the syrian crisis also sparked an increase in the securitisation of nation states, evident also on the af rican continent. one of the emerging global outcomes of the syrian refugee crisis is the increase in the securitisation of countries by reinforcing their border security. this is enacted by using third countries as buffer states (segatti, 2011; mueller et al., 2022). through monetary incentives, the eu outsources its border security to authoritarian regimes of north af rica to prevent subsaharan and other migrants f rom crossing into the eu. schapendonk (2012) and zaiotti (2016) report that these regimes accept large sums of money to bolster and fund their border security. in turn, violence is meted out to sub-saharan migrants to prevent them f rom crossing over into the eu (mueller et al., 2022). more research on the state’s role in border externalisation f rom a south af rican perspective needs to be undertaken. given south af rica’s largely progressive constitution, this emphasis on border externalisation has perpetuated the view that south af rica is unwelcoming to migrants and remains exclusionary. similarly, eu states that outsource their border security to those north af rican states create a false narrative about their liberal policies of inclusion. mueller et al. (2022: 4) argue that these states perpetuate a ‘weaponization’ of migration issues and put migrants further at risk. the coercive nature of these authoritarian regimes reflects poorly on the af rican states, who carry the brunt of their destructive actions, while the eu states escape f rom the public eye. the move to more far-right nationalist policies of exclusion and anti-immigrant sentiments has p e e r r e v i e w 84 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 continued in the post-pandemic era after 2020. the covid-19 pandemic, which effectively brought the world to a standstill in 2020, resulted in the increased securitisation of many nation states and tightening migration policies that restricted access to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. the election of the new centre-right government might have severe implications for sweden’s image as a progressive leader in migration policy and gender equality. in october 2022, the new government quickly rescinded its feminist foreign policy, a policy that foregrounded sweden as a leader in the european union (eu). the new government is expected to make far-reaching amendments to its progressive immigration policy by reviewing and restricting benefits to immigrants which will have implications for family reunification, curtailing immigration laws and restricting entry (dw, 2022). since 2016, sweden has re-introduced border controls. in south af rica, a new border management system was implemented in 2022, seeking to tighten the porous border control of the country (bekker, 2022). the revision and tightening of migration policies and the policing of border controls have implications for family reunification for migrants. these aspects should be given attention as both countries traverse the changing pathways of migration management amidst fluctuating political dynamics, the insidious ukrainian war, and rising inflation across the world. both countries need to consider sustainable solutions for family reunification with a targeted focus on migrant women’s needs and vulnerabilities. notes 1. for example, the operation dudula movement, which stands for ‘force out’ in zulu, is a resistance movement targeted at ‘putsouthaf ricansfirst’. it is an anti-foreigner, anti-illegal immigration group which started in 2021 around soweto in johannesburg. references akik, c., semaan, a., shaker-berbari, l., jamaluddine, z., saad, g.e., lopes, k., constantin, a., ekzayez, a., singh, n.s., blanchet, k., dejong, j. and ghattas, h. 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https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2022/3/623055174/eleven-years-mounting-challenges-push-displaced-syrians-brink.html https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/migration-v-policy-recommendations-for-the-south-a https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/migration-v-policy-recommendations-for-the-south-a 30 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract in this article examines the legacy of the swedish anti-apartheid movement on their post-apartheid bilateral economic relationship with south africa. focusing on developments within the south african economy from a swedish perspective, the article studies sweden’s ambitions and efforts to develop their economic cooperation. the study is built on mixed methods where the main bulk of data is collected through semistructured interviews with swedish experts on the bilateral relationship. through an analytical framework built on embeddedness theory and soft power, the article examines the impact of the trust and influence that stems from sweden’s support of the south african liberation movement. the article finds that the deep trust and influence established during apartheid had a major impact on the early cooperation between sweden and post-apartheid south africa, which focused on strengthening the institutional base to expand future cooperation sideby-side with a transitional humanitarian aid program. it is further found that the relationship has cooled down over time, which is attributed to the change in context as apartheid was dismantled. personal ties have faded as politicians have been replaced, and the discontinuation of the swedish financial aid program in 2013 meant a substantial decrease in the funding of their institutional cooperation. trade became the focus of the economic partnership as the bilateral development cooperation gradually diminished in size. sweden has worked actively for increased trade in both directions through programs targeted at creating personal relationships between firms and developing their institutional networks. the results suggest that the post-apartheid relationship was imprinted with an unspoken debt of gratitude from the south african side. it is found that the swedish influence that ensued has decreased over time, and there are indications that a contributing factor is the improprieties found following a controversial military deal in 1999. the importance of the trust and influence stemming from the apartheid-era cooperation has diminished over time. its main legacy is the broad institutional networks created to foster trust and increase the economic activity between the two countries. by tove sternehäll trust, power, and partnership: a study of the evolution of sweden’s bilateral economic partnership with post-apartheid south africa1 31v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction it was not an accident that sweden was the first country outside the af rican continent to be visited by nelson mandela after his release f rom robben island in 1990 (swedish foreign ministry, 2015). rather, mandela’s visit was highly symbolic of the close relationship forged between the leaders of the south af rican liberation movement and both the swedish government as well as its civil society. this was an outcome of decades of swedish economic and political support of the south af rican liberation movement, across all levels of society. while reports of the reality of apartheid2 had reached sweden in the previous decade, it was the sharpeville massacre in 1960 that really brought it into the swedish consciousness and caused national mobilisation (magnusson, 1974).3 on the governmental level, a substantial aid program held almost unanimous support in the swedish parliament. sweden was in fact the first western country to support the anti-apartheid movement financially, at the same time as other influential states such as the united kingdom and the united states branded them as terrorist organisations (sellström, 2002b: 753). on the regional and local levels, grassroots organisations throughout sweden organised under the isolate south af rica committee (isak). this aimed to raise domestic awareness of the south af rican situation and to pressure the swedish government to do more to support the anti-apartheid movement. they also raised funds for the liberation movement and carried out several consumer boycotts of south af rican goods, aiming to put economic pressure on the apartheid regime (magnusson, 1974). the development of the apartheid-era relationship has been covered thoroughly by previous research in a broad array of academic fields, including economics, economic history, international relations, and political science (magnusson, 1974; hermele and palmberg, 1990; bjereld, 1995; bangura, 2004; thörn, 2006; silén, 2007). in addition to this, tor sellström released three publications in 2002 under the project ‘sweden and national liberation in southern af rica’ which constitutes a comprehensive documentation of sweden’s agency in the fight against apartheid (sellström, 2002a; 2002b; 2002c). meanwhile, the post-apartheid literature has almost exclusively focused on the controversial 1999 weapons deal between the af rican national congress (anc) and svenska aeroplan aktie bolag (saab), also known as the jas-deal.4 this article contributes to the field by assessing how sweden has cultivated the special relationship that was built with the south af rican liberation movement, to establish the nature of its heritage on their post-apartheid economic relationship. the study ends in 2018, to exclude any impact caused by the covid-19 pandemic. the focus of the article lies on the south af rican economy f rom a swedish perspective. it begins with a brief history of the south af rican economy, followed by a section on the analytical f ramework which centres the impact of trust and influence on the post-apartheid cooperation. the subsequent section introduces the methods and methodology. the results are introduced by a section on sweden’s initial ambitions in a liberated south af rica before looking closer at swedish aid and development cooperation in south af rica, as well as sweden’s trade and investment cooperation with south af rica. the latter is in turn structured around sections covering swedish export promotion; the development and stability of the post-apartheid south af rican economy; swedish exports and investments in south af rica; the apartheid-era’s heritage on the bilateral the article finds that the deep trust and influence established during apartheid had a major impact on the early cooperation between sweden and postapartheid south africa, which focused on strengthening the institutional base to expand future cooperation side-by-side with a transitional humanitarian aid program. p e e r r e v i e w 32 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 cooperation; and the lasting consequences of the jas-deal. background: the south african economy when gold was found in the witwatersrand in the 1880s, it boosted the south af rican economy which had previously relied on an inefficient labour-heavy agricultural sector (feinstein, 2005: 2–3). the mining industry became the colony’s new engine of growth and attracted international investments through its domestic potential – the access to valuable raw materials, combined with its relatively refined economic sector and its substantial system for logistics and transports. in addition, it granted them access to regional markets on the af rican continent. the mining industry also attracted droves of migrant workers f rom neighbouring states with less stable economic situations. however, due to the diminishing quality of the available ore, the colonial government needed to find a replacement for gold – and they targeted the manufacturing sector (ibid: 131). the south af rican manufacturing sector was – like their agricultural sector – expensive, inefficient, and lacking in capital and technology. it was a heritage f rom dutch colonisation in 1652, when the colony was restricted to only produce for its domestic market to avoid competition with dutch manufacturing (ibid: 113). these restrictions were removed as the united kingdom captured the colony in 1795, but the new colonial government struggled to develop the manufacturing industry due to its many inherent weaknesses (ibid). these were a combination of the poverty wages paid to the black majority population, which decimated the local demand, while the exorbitant wages for the white population made their products uncompetitive on the global markets. this was worsened by the manufacturing sector’s dependency on imports of primary goods (ibid: 131). the result was an unproductive and expensive manufacturing sector dependent on high tariff protection and the continued export of gold (ibid: 128, 135). the structural problems of the south af rican economy got worse after the 1948 election. while the previous government faced pressure f rom the business sector to ease the racial restrictions due to its harm on the south af rican economy, the national party managed to rally enough support for the implementation of apartheid (ibid: 181). the increased violence and austerity that followed the 1948 election led to an escalation within the domestic resistance movements (lowenberg, 1997: 70). this had a significant impact on foreign direct investment into the country, which was especially problematic due to south af rica’s chronic balance of payment deficit. it forced the government to make further cuts to their public spending, which in turn increased the political instability (ibid). figure 1 below visualises this vicious cycle, which put increasing strain on the regime. figure 1: the vicious cycle of the apartheid economy (source: the author) to make things worse, expanded racial restrictions on education and jobs worsened the shortage of skilled labour while increasing the poverty rate among the af rican population (feinstein, 2005: 129). leading up to liberation in 1994, south af rica had one of the highest gini coefficients in the world, with members of the af rican population earning approximately 9% of the average white south af rican (lundahl and petersson, 2009: 1). the situation got worse in 1985, as international economic sanctions strategically targeted these pre-existing weaknesses, which put further strain on their economy (lowenberg, 1997: 69). this led to an external debt crisis in the late 1980s where the south af rican government was forced to put a moratorium on their short-term international loans (aravinitis, 2005: 64). there is consensus in the literature that apartheid ultimately fell because of the unsustainable state of its economy, in particular its inefficiency and high maintenance costs (lowenberg, 1997; thompson, p e e r r e v i e w 33v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 2001; feinstein, 2005). racial restrictions were withdrawn, and political resistance organisations were legalised in the lead up to the 1994 election. the result was a liberated anc-led south af rica tasked with increasing the quality of life for its marginalised black population, while restructuring their highly inefficient and expensive economy. if successful, they would be able to stabilise their economic sector and take advantage of its inherent strengths, such as its wellestablished banking and transportation sectors. analytical framework when looking at the impact of the apartheid-era heritage on the post-apartheid relationship between sweden and south africa, this article focuses on two key factors: trust and influence. the analysis of the impact of trust is derived from granovetter’s (1985) embeddedness theory, acknowledging the central role of trust in all economic behaviour. it considers how a close social relationship will deter misconduct due to the moral incentive of not betraying one’s close ally, in addition to the harm it could cause for future cooperation (ibid). trust is also strengthened by the implementation of institutions aimed at reducing social uncertainties, managing expectations, and regulating misconduct (granovetter, 1985; polanyi, 2001; north, 2005). embeddedness is in this article utilised by considering the trust that is embedded in the bilateral relationship, and its impact on the development of that relationship. the analysis of swedish influence relies on rothman’s (2011) reconceptualization of joseph nye’s (1990) ‘soft power’. it is utilised to highlight the nuances of how economic, institutional, and rhetorical power can be applied in the context of bilateral relations. this article focuses on the soft power that stems f rom sweden’s moral activism against the apartheid state, and its impact on south af rican policy implementation following the 1994 election. in addition, it includes an analysis of the utilisation of economic influence on the postapartheid relationship, and the impact it has had on their bilateral economic relationship. table 1 below visualises the factors and indicators that are applied to interpret the evolution of their economic relationship, and to analyse the apartheidera’s heritage on their bilateral cooperation. table 1: operationalisation of the theoretical framework (source: the author) methodology this article’s research design relies on a methodology built on mixed methods. it is based on eight semistructured interviews with swedish professionals with experience or knowledge of the bilateral economic cooperation between sweden and south af rica before and after liberation. this is complemented by a conceptual content analysis of two types of swedish policy documents regarding their economic cooperation, as well as descriptive statistics to quantify the economic flows between them. due to the unique nature of this historic relationship, the article focuses on the dependability and consistency of the data, rather than on reliability and validity. triangulation is combined with a comprehensive context to enable the judgements of transferability to other cases. the semi-structured interviews make up the main bulk of data for the article. interviewees are kept confidential to allow them to express themselves candidly. the eight sources include professionals representing several swedish government institutions, including the foreign ministry, the swedish international p e e r r e v i e w theoretical framework factors indicators embeddedness trust personal relationships institutional networks economic cooperation economicand soft power political influence personal relationships policy implementation economic influence financial aid 34 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 development agency (sida), the swedish embassy in pretoria, export promotion agencies, as well as representatives f rom the civil society and private sector. the analysis of policy documents regards country strategies (hereafter cs) produced by sida and land risk analyses (hereafter lra) composed by the swedish export credit agency (ekn). these reports provide a broad picture of the post-apartheid economic cooperation, mainly covering the early years following south af rica’s liberation. lastly, the article includes descriptive statistics intended to quantify and contextualise the bilateral economic flows between sweden and south af rica, highlighting the broad strokes of their trade and non-trade cooperation. these are collected f rom open aid, the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) and statistics sweden (scb). results sweden’s initial ambitions in a liberated south africa the south af rican transition into a non-racial democracy constituted the greatest catalyst for change in sweden and south af rica’s economic relationship since the 1960s. the state of the south af rican economy at the time of liberation meant that it could benefit f rom a transitional period of financial aid, to fund crucial reforms and investments in its labour force. due to the optimistic outlook for south af rica’s economy, the intention was that the relationship would gradually shift to a normal bilateral cooperation (cs, 1999: 10). therefore, sweden prioritised the creation of forums for dialogue and future partnership side-by-side with its aid-funded development cooperation. the long-term strategy for the swedish-south af rican partnership would be built on common commercial interests, exchanges of experience, and transfers of technology between the two countries (cs, 1999: 12; cs, 2004: 1; cs, 2009: 1). the stated intentions of the swedish government have been consistent, although the nature of the relationship has evolved over time. swedish aid and development cooperation the cs (1999: 10) establishes that sweden’s invitation to cooperate on sensitive reforms of the post-apartheid south af rican state was a result of the trust built through their previous partnership with the anc. this relied in part on the pre-existing personal relationships between anc leaders and the heads of many swedish institutions, which provided a beneficial point of departure for the bilateral development cooperation (ibid). the importance of these relationships is corroborated by interviewee 1 who discussed the swedish ambition to take advantage of these close bonds, while adding that sweden benefitted f rom its lack of colonial baggage in af rica. this further strengthened the trust and constituted a good base on which to build a relationship between equals. the transitional nature of sweden’s official development assistance (oda) program meant that it was set up as a springboard for the south af rican economy to get back on its feet, before being phased out by 2013.while this caused a substantial decrease in volume, swedish oda continued to reach south af rican organisations throughout 2018. interviewee 2 explained it as the result of regional non-governmental organisations’ (ngos) tendencies to establish their headquarters in south af rica because of the country’s f reedom of speech, f ree press, and access to information. figure 2 below visualises swedish oda directed to south af rica in terms of total value and number of new projects per year between 1998–2018. these are divided into three categories, indicating the type of implementing agency used for each project. the the long-term strategy for the swedish-south african partnership would be built on common commercial interests, exchanges of experience, and transfers of technology between the two countries (cs, 1999: 12; cs, 2004: 1; cs, 2009: 1). the stated intentions of the swedish government have been consistent, although the nature of the relationship has evolved over time. p e e r r e v i e w 35v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 figure shows a declining trend in the number of projects beginning in 2002, where governmental projects were the main recipients of the cutbacks. further, it visualises the continued funding for regional ngos as the bilateral program ended. figure 2: yearly swedish oda to south africa according to implementing agency, 1998–2018 (source: open aid, 2021) interviewee 1 explained that the initial support was mainly directed towards traditional humanitarian development projects, to build houses and provide support for south af rican institutions. interviewee 3 saw this humanitarian cooperation as a natural continuation f rom the apartheid period, as large parts of the population still lived in utter poverty. they also discussed the swedish ambition to ‘contribute to the rebuilding of the south af rican economy, to make it possible for them to take advantage of its many inherent strengths,’ which included drastic reforms in the manufacturing sector. a close institutional cooperation between governmental agencies in both countries constituted a major part of the post-apartheid development program. interviewee 1 mentioned several such examples, including the police, the military, statistical agencies, and tax authorities. there was also an extensive program for municipal cooperation and dialogue which took place between around 20 municipalities (ibid). the cs (1999) highlights the early cooperation between the port cities gothenburg and the nelson mandela bay municipality.5 for the twentieth anniversary of this partnership, a celebratory booklet was released which credits the partnership to the deeply entrenched relationships that were established as a direct result of sweden’s support of south af rica’s liberation movement (mccarthy and botha, 2019: 2). it further emphasised the crucial importance of the sida-funding that served as their initial f inancier. interviewee 2 highlighted that education and research programs have been highly prioritised throughout the bilateral cooperation, which has remained the focus of the oda-funded regional cooperation taking place since 2013. the impact of this can be seen through the fact that south af rica has continued to be sweden’s biggest educational exchange partner throughout the period studied (ibid). this subsection has shown the declining trajectory of the non-trade economic bilateral cooperation since the late 1990s. while it has coincided with a lesser need for close personal relationships, the broad cooperation that came out of the swedish development assistance has created institutional p e e r r e v i e w 0 5000000 10000000 15000000 20000000 25000000 30000000 35000000 40000000 45000000 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 m ill io n se k n um be r of p ro je ct s gov. agency, tota l value of aid ngo, tot al value of ai d other, tota l value of aid gov. agency, number of projects ngo, number of projects other, number of projects 36 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 networks at the local, regional, and national levels of swedish and south af rican societies, of which several remained active by the end of 2018. trade and investment cooperation in the interview with interviewee 2, they discussed the difficulty in calculating the value of the bilateral economic relationship, in part due to the complex structures of multinational corporations’ value chains. another factor is that swedish trade with south africa can benefit their economic sectors without impacting their trade statistics, for example through investment in human capital or the creation of jobs in their domestic markets. the interviewee added: ‘it is safe to assume that a swedish company active in south africa has a positive impact on the bilateral economic relationship, regardless of whether it shows up in the trade statistics or not.’ due to these problems, figure 3 below should not be seen as the complete picture of the trade relationship. it does, however, provide an indication of the economic terms of trade between the countries. figure 3: sweden’s annual commodity trade with south africa, 1994–2018 (source: scb, 2022a; scb, 2022b) further, interviewee 2 discussed the sectors and firms of special interest for swedish trade and investments in south africa. historically, the mining sector has been of major importance for swedish mining firms such as sandvik and atlas copco, but also producers of mining equipment, an area in which sweden is well established. another sector of historic importance is logistics and transportation where ‘volvo and scania have a firm grasp of the south african market.’ a newer addition is consumer goods where h&m is the biggest swedish firm active in south africa. while most of these products have a high added value, south african exports to sweden have historically been focused on agricultural goods. this is the main factor behind the imbalance in their terms of trade. export promotion at the time of south africa’s liberation, sweden’s ambitions for its future bilateral cooperation hinged on creating broad channels for mutually beneficial trade. several interviewees highlighted the binational commission started in 1999, which interviewee 3 described as a direct outcome of the close relationship that had been established between former south african president thabo mbeki and former swedish prime minister göran persson. interviewee 2 explained the aim and structure of the economic branch of the commission: it includes a trade and economy committee with two main objectives: one is to discuss global trade politics […] the other is to come up with ideas and proposals to improve the bilateral trade relationship between both countries. beside this mutual program, the swedish government works actively to promote swedish exports globally. one example of this is the swedish open trade gate, a program established in 2005 to increase swedish imports f rom developing countries (kommerskollegium, 2022). interviewee 2 discussed its aim as ‘to f ind a model to increase south af rican exports to sweden. we have started in the agricultural sector since it is already established. p e e r r e v i e w 37v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w the aim is to diversify our imports to a wider variety of goods.’ business sweden, an organisation tasked with helping swedish firms expand their trade and investments abroad, was established in south af rica following the 1994 election. interviewee 4 explained that their consultants worked side-by-side with sida employees, a cooperation which continued until the oda program was dismantled in 2013. one example of their activity in the newly liberated south af rica was a mentor-program where they established contacts between managers f rom south af rican businesses that expressed an interest in increasing their management skills and exchange knowledge, which were paired with suitable managers of swedish firms. another form of swedish export promotion is the export guarantees provided by the ekn.6 these were prohibited in south af rica between 1965 and 1993, as a reaction to sweden’s growing opposition towards apartheid (lra, 1993). figure 4 below displays the number of ekn guarantees active and granted per year in relation to the total value of all outstanding ekn guarantees each year and visualises the considerable size of the jas-deal approved in 1998. it further shows that the ekn approved a smaller number of new guarantees yearly leading up to 2008, after which there was a sharp increase in the number of new and total guarantees in south af rica. at the same time, the total value of ekn’s engagement began to decline. this indicates that the approved engagements pre-2008 consisted of larger short-term guarantees, enough to offset the yearly payments towards the jas-debt. meanwhile, the declining total engagement and rising number of outstanding guarantees post-2008 demonstrates a sharp increase in long-term engagements of smaller sizes. figure 4: ekn engagements in south africa, 1994–2018 (sources: lra, 1996–2010, 2012–2015; sturinge, 2022) the south african economy from a swedish perspective although the collapse of the south af rican economy was the main cause for apartheid’s eventual demise, there was a strong global interest in cooperating with them after its fall. this was in part a result of the promising outlook for the south af rican economy, in addition to their pivotal role on the af rican continent. interviewee 5 explained that ‘south af rica is an important hub for international companies that want access to sub-saharan af rica, especially for the countries in southern af rica.’ this is in line with previous literature, in which the south af rican market is viewed as a gateway to further expansion to the continent (uddhammar and stein, 2019: 177). ekn’s analysis of the south af rican economy displays some common themes for the years studied. the public finances and banking sectors are deemed strong and healthy, and the government policies and institutions are considered stable. there is one 38 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 it as ‘a catch 22, where one problem causes the other – it is hard to escape the structural problems when a country has low growth caused by structural problems […] it makes it hard for south af rica to get out of it.’ from the 2011 lra report and onward, it is consistently mentioned that the swedish experience in guaranteeing exports for south af rica has been of good nature. while there were some problems resulting f rom the global financial crisis in 2008, it only caused a minor inconvenience for the ekn and swedish firms (lra, 2011: 5). the impact of south african economic policies on swedish exports and investments the interviewees were asked about the impact that domestic economic policies in south af rica might have on swedish investments and trade in the country. one problem that arose was how the south af rican economy might be perceived to be less stable or secure for swedish companies that are not yet established there. one example is the discussion surrounding land reform, which could allow the south af rican government to claim private land as government property, discussed by interviewee 2: personally, i believe that this fear is exaggerated. [taking over private companies’ land] is not really the government’s ambition. but the mere fact that this discussion is taking place and the questions that arise f rom it creates concerns, exception to this, the year leading up to the election of jacob zuma as president of south af rica in 2009, during which there was some caution among international investors (lra, 2008: 1). the impact of the turbulence f rom the power struggle within the anc is seen in the literature as well, where it was found to cause larger companies operating in the region to turn to markets outside of south af rica (uddhammar and stein, 2019: 172). interviewee 4 concurs that the political climate got worse under jacob zuma, and that it had an adverse effect on swedish firms’ willingness to establish themselves in south af rica: ‘swedish media made south af rica sound like a circus […] which made it harder to get through to swedish companies that there was potential here.’ however, the turmoil caused by zuma did not have a direct effect on the risk premiums, displayed in figure 5 below. figure 5: ekn’s country risk assessment of south africa, 1994–2018 (sources: lra, 1994–2015; sturinge, 2022; oecd, 2021).7 [figure shows ekn’s risk assessment of the south af rican economy on a scale of 1–7, divided along the lines of short and long-term contracts. 7 indicates the highest risk.] the increase in south af rica’s risk classification since 2015 has been based on structural problems within the political and economic spheres, mainly the high rate of unemployment, poverty and the health crisis caused by the aids pandemic. interviewee 5 explains p e e r r e v i e w 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 long-term guar antees short-term g ua rantees 39v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 which in turn can affect swedish companies that might be interested in investing in south af rica. interviewee 4 identifies another common problem as ‘local laws and regulations that can make it hard for these firms to reach their full potential. they might need substantial support to understand and adapt to this legislation.’ this is found to be especially problematic in the mining and energy sectors. interviewee 6 echoes the sentiment, stating that while there is an ‘enormous potential in south af rica for swedish trade,’ there is a need to implement economic reforms to enable swedish companies to reach their markets. a prominent case is the black economic empowerment (bee) policy aimed at encouraging the economic participation of the disenf ranchised black population to decrease the extreme racial inequality inherited f rom the apartheid-era.8 interviewee 6 used the following example to explain how this policy can backfire: one problem that has arisen due to the bee policy is that it is increasingly difficult for international firms to gain visas. when a company starts up their business here, the long-term goal is that south africans will take over, but in the beginning, there is often a need to bring in experienced personnel that know the firm and have experience in such expansions […] this kind of problems can cause a firm to choose to direct their business toward other countries and markets. another issue brought up by interviewee 2 regards the policy’s inefficiency at accomplishing its objective of decreased inequality: ‘what difference has it made to the south af rican problem of racial inequality to have black south af ricans as part-owners of swedish firms? nothing at all. what it has done is create a black elite.’ this is in line with the literature on the south af rican economy (thompsson, 2001: 302; habiyaremye, 2022: 26). interviewee 7 makes a connection between the ownership clause and corruption within the anc: when companies need to have black people in their management and as owners, what do firms do? they invite anc-leaders to sit on their boards. they are given stocks, ownership, and money, which makes it a driving force for corruption. it is legalised corruption. interviewee 2 describes another part of the policy that can have a negative impact on swedish companies’ interest to invest in the south af rican market: the bigger proportion of the production process that is situated in south africa, the more benefits they receive in the form of premiums […] the more parts of the value chain that is located domestically, the better – because it generates local jobs […] the downside is that it is expensive for swedish companies to create customized production processes for the south african market, and in some instances, it leads to the companies backing out. it is just not worth the costs. in the 2003 lra report, it is noted that the bee policy is becoming increasingly important, which might become a problem as suitable business partners are increasingly hard to locate. however, the same report states that this policy had not been shown to have any adverse effect on international investments to south af rica at the time (lra, 2003: 1). in summation, the collected view is that there are several south af rican policies that have had a deterrent effect on swedish firms’ willingness and ability to establish themselves in south af rica. however, these policies are not found to have impacted swedish exports toward south af rica. p e e r r e v i e w in summation, the collected view is that there are several south african policies that have had a deterrent effect on swedish firms’ willingness and ability to establish themselves in south africa. however, these policies are not found to have impacted swedish exports toward south africa. 40 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the apartheid-era heritage on sweden and south africa’s economic relationship when asked to discuss the impact of sweden’s historic relationship with the anc on the development of the two countries’ economic relationship, interviewee 2 identifies institutional networks as the main heritage: the bilateral relationships are well-established, numerous and broad. this can be found in the special relationships between municipalities and in exchange programs for schools. it is our, by far, biggest research cooperation program. it is also found in our economic cooperation and business sector relationships. there are deep and established cultural exchanges. i think the broadness of our relationship is the inheritance of our previous efforts. there is a consensus that the countries have drifted apart over time. interviewee 3 explained that ‘the engagement for cooperation diminished f rom a swedish perspective. and f rom a south af rican perspective – it was mutual.’ they added that the election of a swedish government led by the moderate party in 2006 could be a contributing factor to this change: ‘thabo mbeki had a strong relationship with and trust in the swedish social democrats. as they left the government, i do not think the engagement was as strong for him.’ interviewee 2 has a similar view but points out that there were other forces at hand: it was mutual. of course, our focus changed with different governments in sweden […] but i would say that it was more due to global developments that we drifted apart […] we are one of many countries for south af rica and south af rica is one of many countries for us, but we are still important for each other. interviewee 2 further credits this transformation to the internal changes within south af rica that came with the fall of apartheid. interviewee 3 agrees that it was a natural, and predictable, change: ‘sweden has shifted toward being one of many eu-countries […] we understood that this would be the case since we were neither a big nor strategically important country for an anc-government.’ in their interviews, both interviewee 7 and interviewee 8 brought up the early dialogue between swedish firms and the anc that began in the 1980s, building the base for future cooperation and trust. interviewee 6 is sceptical about drawing a causal link between sweden’s apartheid-era efforts and swedish firms’ engagement in the post-apartheid period: ‘my guess would be […] that when swedish businesses had the best offers, they would win the bid, if they did not, they would most likely not win it, regardless of their historical bond.’ interviewee 7 would, on the other hand, claim that the swedish support of the liberation movement has had an important impact on the post-apartheid trade between the countries. in their interview, they discussed the existence of an unspoken debt of gratitude, stating that ‘the anc-elite was subject to strong pressure’ to enable the re-establishment of swedish businesses inside south af rica. jas 39 gripen and corruption in 1999, the south af rican government bought military aircrafts f rom swedish saab, in a deal that caused controversy due to the discovery of corruption and bribery in the procurement process (resare, 2010: 210). a major part of the criticism relates to how sweden utilised the personal and historical relationships established through the anti-apartheid movement to tip the scale for the benefit of saab’s bid (coetzee, 2021: 103). in fact, resare (2010: 85–86) finds that they received the lowest ranking throughout the procurement process, and that despite several changes being made for the benefit of the swedish bid, they ended up winning on a pure technicality. interviewee 7 expressed disappointment in how the swedish government used its strong ties to the anc in the jas-deal: ‘it was unjust of göran persson and the social democrats to kidnap the engagement and use it to sell weapons […] the politicians made the entire bilateral relationship revolve around and support the weapons deal.’ reflecting on the government’s participation in the jas-deal, interviewee 6 stated that ‘in that kind of deal where the south af rican government is the buyer, the size of the deal is so substantial […] and there are strict regulations on sales of military products, it is inevitable for the swedish state to get involved in some capacity.’ p e e r r e v i e w 41v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w the interviewees were asked to share their perception of the impact the jas-deal had on the bilateral economic relationship between sweden and south af rica. in these discussions, some general themes can be found. interviewee 3 and interviewee 8 both agree that the media coverage of the corruption accusations had an adverse impact on the relationship between the anc and the swedish government. in the words of interviewee 3, ‘the continuous publications that exposed corruption in relation to the jas-gripen deal […] likely dampened the relationship somewhat.’ when asked how the controversy impacted the support of swedish firms in south af rica, interviewee 6 stated that they ‘don’t think it has made the swedish state less interested in helping swedish companies when they have the opportunity.’ the interviewee added that the deal itself continues to have an impact on the economic relationship: ‘if you look at swedish exports to south af rica at around 7 billion sek, about one third of it can be linked in some way to jas.’ this is in line with interviewee 2’s experience, that the main impact today is noticeable through the investments that resulted f rom the deal: it does not impact the everyday economic relationship, but the legacy of the deal is still present in south af rica. the planes are still there, and some of the companies that were a part of the offset-deal are still there. interviewee 7 shared that their ‘perception of the weapons deal is that it […] included several changes of the procurement rules to benefit certain bids. one component in this is, without a doubt, the bribery. another is, i believe, a ‘thank you sweden.’’ this is in line with the literature on the topic (resare, 2010: 55; coetzee, 2015: 8). it is also corroborated by interviewee 3, who stated that they are ‘prone to think that it was seen as a way to pay back the support sweden had shown them […] there are reasons to believe that there were some political motives behind the south af rican decision to go for saab.’ further, interviewee 7 brings up suspicions that the jas-deal, in addition to the controversy surrounding bribery, might have steered the anc down a bad road: i have talked to members of mandela’s first term and members of anc’s national executive committee, who have corroborated that they are convinced that the bribery […] tilted a normal procurement process, which infected the party f rom the top down. summary this article has evaluated the apartheid-era’s heritage on the economic relationship between sweden and post-apartheid south af rica through an analytical f ramework built on embeddedness theory and soft power. the former focuses on the trust built through personal relationships, institutional networks, and economic cooperation, while the latter concerns the political and economic influence gained through personal relationships, policy implementation, and financial aid. it finds that the invitation for sweden to cooperate on sensitive reforms in the early years of the postapartheid era is an indication of the deep trust that had been established f rom decades of support and partnership, and the political influence sweden gained through their moral activism. in addition to the personal relationships developed between the anc and swedish representatives, it provided a strong institutional base for a close bilateral economic relationship. the political relationship between sweden and south af rica has, in many aspects, cooled down since the 1994 election. this is found to be a natural course of events, where the close personal ties that were established in the previous period have gradually disappeared. the main reason for this is that the context changed: with the end of apartheid, there was no need to continue the earlier cooperation as their common enemy was defeated. another factor is that politicians have been replaced as the time has passed. one such example is how the close personal relationship between president mbeki and prime minister persson led to the establishment of several new channels for dialogue and cooperation. their f riendship added an extra dimension of trust and influence to the bilateral relationship, which disappeared as they were replaced by their successors. a similar trajectory has been found in the economic relationship. the termination of the financial 42 special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 aid program in 2013 meant that the institutional collaboration it had funded became weaker, and so did the economic influence that the oda had provided sweden. as the bilateral development cooperation gradually decreased in size, trade became the focus of the economic partnership. sweden and south af rica have over time established several means to promote mutually beneficial programs to strengthen this relationship. these platforms create and intensify the trust between firms through the establishment of personal relationships and institutional economic cooperation. while the south af rican market is of high interest for swedish firms, the structural problems facing their economy serves as the main obstacle for increased investments. while the swedish anti-apartheid movement was carried out in solidarity, in cooperation and between partners, the literature and interviews indicate that the relationship was imprinted with an unspoken debt of gratitude f rom the south af rican side. it can be argued that the discoveries of improprieties which followed the jas-deal decreased the power imbalance between the two countries, which in turn had an impact on their continued economic cooperation. the swedish government under persson used up the influence and trust that was engrained through their close relationship with the anc and mbeki, for a deal that without a doubt had – and still has – a great impact on their economic relationship. the goodwill that was earned during the apartheid era is seemingly of less importance today, but its legacy of broad economic cooperation is still active and can be found in the binational committee, the deep educational partnership, and the many networks that are still present at national, regional, and local levels. notes 1. this article is based on the author’s master’s thesis carried out at stockholm university in the spring of 2021. 2. apartheid was a policy of total racial segregation, enacted by the national party elected in 1948 to further increase the brutal oppression of the nonwhite population. citizens’ rights were based on the colour of their skin, with black af ricans being worst off, forced into crowded reserves, and being stripped of their civil rights. it was met with a fierce domestic resistance campaign (thompson, 2001: 190). 3. magnusson (1974) does not have numbered pages. 4. the military deal was based around aircrafts of the model jas 39 gripen. the swedish government was highly involved in the procurement process on behalf of saab, which became problematic when the deal was followed by substantiated reports of bribery and malfeasance (coetzee, 2015: 12). 5. the nelson mandela bay municipality was at the time of liberation known as the city of port elizabeth. 6. the ekn works to absorb the risk of swedish exports. it enables foreign buyers to be provided with financing f rom commercial banks, where the ekn provides a guarantee to cover 95% of the risk in case the buyer fails to make their payments. it is funded by a premium that is based on the ekn risk assessment of the country and partner firm, which is paid by the swedish exporter. ekn works closely with the swedish export credit corporation (sek) which provides funding for commercial banks that might need cover for the funding of large deals with long payment plans (ekn and sek, 2021). 7. in 1998, the oecd implemented a joint risk assessment and common risk premiums for longterm export guarantees, to enable companies f rom all member countries to compete on the same terms (lra, 1999: 1). this reduced the opportunity for member states to use low risk assessments strategically to subsidise their own exports, which ensured healthy competition among the member states. it had previously been up to the ekn’s assessment. 8. the bee (also known as the broad-based black economic empowerment policy, bbbee) was enacted to decrease the nation’s racial inequality by elevating ownership and management among the black population, encouraging them to take on roles that were previously restricted to whites. p e e r r e v i e w 43 it introduced structural rules that demanded a certain proportion of black stakeholders in companies that applied for government contracts and promoted 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(2019). svenska företag i afrika: från slavhandel till it-revolution. santérus förlag. v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w https://www.ekn.se/globalassets/dokument/broschyrer/the-swedish-export-credit-system.pdf/ https://www.kommerskollegium.se/en/open-trade-gate/ https://www.oecd.org/trade/topics/export-credits/documents/cre-crc-historical-internet-english.pdf https://www.oecd.org/trade/topics/export-credits/documents/cre-crc-historical-internet-english.pdf https://openaid.se/en/activities/overview?year=2020&recipient=za https://openaid.se/en/activities/overview?year=2020&recipient=za https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/start__ha__ha0201__ha0201g/impexpsitc94ar/ https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/start__ha__ha0201__ha0201g/impexpsitc94ar/ https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/start__ha__ha0201__ha0201d/oimpexpsitc4ar/ https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/start__ha__ha0201__ha0201d/oimpexpsitc4ar/ www.regeringen.se/debattartiklar/2015/04/swedish---south-africa-links-go-back-a-long-way#:~:text=one of the proudest moments,swedish anti%2dapartheid movement arose www.regeringen.se/debattartiklar/2015/04/swedish---south-africa-links-go-back-a-long-way#:~:text=one of the proudest moments,swedish anti%2dapartheid movement arose www.regeringen.se/debattartiklar/2015/04/swedish---south-africa-links-go-back-a-long-way#:~:text=one of the proudest moments,swedish anti%2dapartheid movement arose 53v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract the un security council is the world’s most established forum for safeguarding international peace and security. it has, however, suffered from significant deficiencies in legitimacy and effectiveness. the permanent five (p5) members control the council’s agenda and block action on conflicts because of their own national interests and geopolitical rivalries. new research (see graham, 2022; olsson, muvumba sellström, and chang, 2021; and for example, bode, 2018; pay and postolski, 2022; and farrall, loisell and prantl, 2020) suggests that the elected ten (e10) members are, however, able to project their own interests and preferences, and shape decisions from inside the council, particularly on conflict situations and themes that affect africa. indeed, conflict in africa makes up two-thirds of the council’s workload, and 85% of un military peacekeepers are deployed to the continent. this short article explores the recent memberships of sweden (2017-18) and south africa (2019-20). elected states have played an active role in terms of promoting cross-cutting themes, including strengthening africa’s peace and security architecture (apsa) and the women, peace, and security (wps) agenda, to varying degrees. elected members can distinguish their short tenures on the council by signalling their contribution to global affairs through thematic events and resolutions. by presenting south africa and sweden’s record of conduct on these themes, the article explores differences and similarities in e10 practice. the main contribution is an illustration of how elected states pursue a common agenda, using diverse methods of engagement. this variation is important for understanding the unsc, since it demonstrates the council’s pluralist nature, and the interplay of its least powerful members through policy practices of specialization and interdependence. by angela muvumba sellström and suzanne graham south africa and sweden in the un security council 54 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction the non-permanent members have little real weight as their time on the united nations (un) security council is fleeting, two years only, and this makes it difficult to build up institutional memory in this forum as well as little opportunity to settle into, and adapt to, the working methods of the council. yet, some of the ten elected (e10) members strive to influence council deliberations, decisions and debates and have a comparative impact on unsc resolutions and decisions and are essential players in the formal and informal practices of the council (martin, 2020; langmore and thakur, 2016). previous research and popular analysis tend to treat the council as a unitary actor, with most attention on the permanent five (p5) states or on hot conflict issues, and to ignore the expertise being built up by the e10. eclectic scholarly literature on the un security council has underscored the gaps in knowledge about its permanent and nonpermanent members (see schia, 2017; einsiedel, 2016; and schrijver and blokker, 2020) while highlighting its work on a range of thematic policy areas such as the responsibility to protect (r2p) (for example bellamy, 2015); women, peace, and security (davies and true, 2019); or climate change (scott, 2015). to the extent that scholars have addressed the shared and competing interests among unsc members, research has examined the five permanent members’ institutional leadership (see, for example, on china in fung, 2018; and on britain and france in hill, 2016). the result is a fuzzy image of weak and powerless elected states, subservient to the most powerful states and their preferences. the reality, however, is different. many elected states have their own priorities and agendas, and are increasingly vital to the working methods of the council and to the progression of important regional and thematic priorities. on this basis, this article compares the objectives and actions of two recent non-permanent memberships – south af rica and sweden. their e10 tenures offer insight to the shared and different means of navigating the council. this article aims to explore e10 behaviour to deepen understanding of the unsc f rom the perspective of non-permanent states. its ambition is to highlight the variation in the conduct of these states and their converging and diverging praxis in the thematic work of the council. it is an exploration and an initial empirical step forward. it also raises insight into how the unsc is pluralist and not a unitary actor. the purpose is not to theorise e10 behaviour or to raise critical perspectives. this article is about something other than whether or not e10 states are pursuing particular agendas authentically or effectively. instead, it contributes to the burgeoning discussions about what e10 states do, independently of their inbuilt handicap of impermanence and a lack of veto power. it seeks to facilitate a better understanding of e10 choices in their engagement. indeed, even on relatively universally accepted policy issues, they choose differently.  the structure of the analysis is based on questioning  how  the e10 state implemented its approach toward thematic issues. the article focuses on the cross-cutting themes because of their increasing prominence in council work, and as the locus of visible efforts by elected states to contribute to the unsc memorably and markedly (olsson, muvumba sellström and chang, 2021). the article focuses on af rica’s peace and security architecture (apsa) and the women, peace, and security (wps) agenda, two themes that are prominent on the council’s workload (see adebajo and muvumba sellström, 2022) with two-thirds of its resolutions dealing with af rica and the majority of its deployed military peacekeepers on the continent. typically, the wps agenda is taken up as a part of elected member campaign promises (jormanainen, kurath and muvumba sellström, 2022), and its founding resolution 1325 was adopted under namibia’s presidency of the council in october 2000. while the us and britain hold the pen for this thematic area, e10 members have strengthened the council’s working methods on these issues to advance its implementation. the article presents south af rica and sweden’s conduct records on these themes and explores differences and similarities in approaches. the main unit of analysis is the state’s membership, and the article covers the range of thematic work undertaken through formal and informal methods. it draws in crucial relationships between the e10 state and its domestic politics and regional homes. it thus compares aspects of south af rican and swedish interests and stakes at home and with other af rican and european states and their respective regional organisations.  55v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w south af rica’s1 situation is unique in that it is rare for an elected 10 (e10) member of the united nations security council (unsc) to be re-elected three times in such a short period of time (2007–2008; 2011–2012; 2019–2020). similarly, the south af rican government has remained unchanged over that period in as much as the governing party, the af rican national congress, has remained in power since 1994 (graham, 2022). this has helped the republic adjust to the un system without the added disadvantage of constant change and discontinuity. in the lead up to south af rica’s latest council term, in the united nations (un) general assembly vote, 95% of the members supported the republic’s bid to join the council for a third time (brosig, 2018). this signals a continued and significant degree of trust on the part of the un members in the republic’s ability to be re-afforded the chance to fill an af rican seat in this platform. indeed, for the latest un vote, south af rica was the only country endorsed by the continental body, the af rican union (au). sweden’s most recent membership in the un security council in 2017–2018 was secured in the first round of voting in the general assembly, with 69% of votes f rom the body for one of the two seats available to the group of western european and other states. the term was its fourth in the organisation’s history. its previous memberships took place over an average of twenty-year intervals in 1957–1958, 1975–1976 and 1997–1998. importantly, swedish membership is also anchored in nordic multilateralism and a coordinated policy of fielding a nordic candidate to the unsc for every second two-year mandate. as countries with small populations heavily integrated into global trade and security networks, the nordic countries are sensitive to unpredictable and chaotic developments on the international scene. they prefer multilateral solutions to complex problems that affect them but over which they may have limited influence. for these states, issues such as forced migration, unabated conflict, and the impacts of climate change need addressing transnationally. nordic countries see financial support to the un and to peace and security as part of their respective national interests (jakobsen, 2018). the swedish government led by the sweden social democratic workers party f rom 2014 ramped up sweden’s campaign and eventual membership objectives, strategies and initiatives along these lines, striving to also promote its own feminist foreign policy on the global stage of the un security council. south af rica and sweden offer insight into the support of two important thematic foci of the unsc, namely af rica’s peace and security and the council’s relationship with the au and the women, peace and security (wps) agenda. both foci have come to be integral to the work of the e10. in the case of south af rica, efforts to strengthen conflict management and peacekeeping by the au have been a persistent trend in its memberships, and featured prominently. south af rica announced in 2019 that it would use its third term to prioritise the women, peace and security agenda (graham, 2022). the republic also expressed a drive to continue conversations around bringing the un and au peace and security architecture even closer together, building on this theme f rom its previous terms on the council. sweden, on the other hand, has deferred to european union (eu) and af rican preferences though promoting regional cooperation (engelbrekt, 2020). it chose, however, to centre its 2017–2018 membership on the integration of wps into the everyday business of the un security council (olsson, muvumba sellström and chang, 2021). south af rica, a proponent of wps, has been less prone to systematic implementation of the gender equality theme. these nuances in emphasis are opportunities for mutual support and joint action. for e10 states, the way forward will be to use respective areas of strength to bolster common interests while in the council. south africa the south af rican government’s position at the un security council, throughout its three terms on the council in 2007–2008; 2011–2012; 2019–2020, has been dedicated to advancing af rican interests, including through conflict resolution efforts and the promotion of women in peace and security initiatives, amongst other initiatives (graham, 2022). south af rica’s goal for its third term was to build on the legacy of nelson mandela, especially since 2018 served as the centenary of mandela’s birth, and so a renewed faith in what mandela stood for carried south af rica into its third term on the council. by the end of 2020, south af rica’s minister of international relations and cooperation, naledi pandor, highlighted the republic’s attempts whilst on the council to silence the guns in af rica, the emphasis on preventive diplomacy and inclusive dialogue shining through quite prominently, and building on the wps agenda (pandor, cited in dirco, 2021). 56 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w democratic south af rica has since 1994 advocated in its foreign policy for a rules-based international order, driven by multilateralism2 and democratic values (see nel, taylor and van der westhuizen, 2000; spies, 2010; de carvalho, mutangadura, and leijenaar, 2020; hendricks and majozi, 2021). it continues to view the un as the best platform within which to promote these foreign policy goals. in 2020 in madrid, south af rica was part of a joint statement by many countries expressing a renewed commitment to multilateralism in its ‘reinforcing multilateralism together building on the united nations 75th anniversary declaration’ (the presidency, 2020). indeed, as de carvalho, mutangadura and leijenaar (2020) contend, ‘multilateral institutions like the un are important as they allow countries to pool resources and exchange ideas. they provide the space to debate and reach compromises on common approaches to development, stability and collective security’. moreover, as spies (2010: 89) argues, south af rica can have influence in global governance platforms if it uses its ‘multilateral specialist’ persona to harness diplomatic niche areas such as conflict resolution, for example. this suggests that even e-10 members can contribute to the outcomes of the unsc despite innate challenges linked to time and experience on the council. however, hendricks and majozi (2021: 65) criticise south af rica’s implementation of its goals in practice, arguing that although currently the republic is in ‘a position to be a thought leader in key multilateral institutions, such as the united nations (un) and the af rican union (au), especially on peace and security’, it may come to nothing if ‘the country does not invest in the necessary research and dialogue needed to achieve this’. in relation to south af rica in this article, the two key themes highlighted by south af rica’s department of international relations and cooperation (dirco) as important areas for the republic at the unsc in 2019–2020 are explored (pandor, cited in dirco, 2021; nap, 2020). the themes are: the advancement of the un-au peace and security architecture (apsa) and the women, peace and security (wps) agenda. was south af rica able actively to contribute to these themes during its latest unsc term and can these be regarded as diplomatic niche areas for south af rica in its socalled ‘multilateral specialist’ role? south af rica and apsa at the unsc af rican peace and security architecture (apsa) refers to the primary tools, at the disposal of the af rican union, for dealing with conflict resolution and the promotion of peace on the continent. the central pillar of the apsa is the au’s peace and security council (psc) which was launched in 2004. prior to this, the predecessor to the au, the organisation of af rican unity, held the view that the main responsibility for peacekeeping in af rica lay with the united nations (williams, 2009). this was problematic though as the un ‘proved reluctant to take the lead in resolving af rican conflicts’ (williams, 2009: 605). the psc became operational as the au organ committed to responding to af rica’s conflicts. however, over the years, it has become more necessary to align the unsc and au psc peacekeeping efforts, priorities, and planning, and to avoid duplication, considering that: ‘the un and au are the two most important decision-making institutions for crisis management in af rica, accounting for about 70% of the crises tabled for discussion by the former’ (psc report, 2021). south af rica was instrumental in using its unsc presidency in january 2012, to emphasise the need to strengthen the relationship between the un and regional organisations, in particular the au, in the maintenance of international peace and security. unsc resolution 2033 was adopted unanimously to strengthen cooperation between the two bodies. south africa was instrumental in using its unsc presidency in january 2012, to emphasise the need to strengthen the relationship between the un and regional organisations, in particular the au, in the maintenance of international peace and security. unsc resolution 2033 was adopted unanimously to strengthen cooperation between the two bodies. 57v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w previously, south af rica had also been heavily involved in the successful adoption of unsc resolution 1809 (2008), adopted with a similar goal of bringing the un and au closer together (graham, 2022). during its 2019/2020 unsc term, south af rica continued to advocate for the need for the un and au to work together in resolving conflict in af rica. the republic supported unsc resolution 2457 in 2019, which echoed previous resolutions on the working relationship between the au and un. however, in his explanation of vote, south af rican ambassador mxolisi nkosi emphasised ‘the principle of comparative advantage, complementarity and burden-sharing’ between the two bodies and the controversial debate over how to pay for peace operations in af rica, by using united nations assessed contributions, which ambassador nkosi argued: ‘provides the most reliable, sustainable and predictable means for united nations-mandated au peace operations’ (s/pv.8473, 2019: 22). unfortunately, south af rica was unable to make headway on the peacekeeping finance debate during its third term. as mentioned earlier in this article, south af rica had helped to pass resolution 1809(2008) that would ‘enhance the predictability, sustainability, and flexibility of financing regional organizations’ peacekeeping operations under a un mandate’. however, the debate lingered for years without any real progress. more recently, in january 2020, the unsc failed to reach agreement on a resolution, that: would see a 25:75 funding split between the au and un using un-assessed contributions for council-authorised au-led missions, threatening the unsc and au psc relationship. south af rica and other a3 members were caught off guard when addis ababa stalled the resolution to afford its heads of state an opportunity to ascertain what the 25 per cent would mean for the au in reality at the february 2020 summit (graham, 2022: 19). south af rica had failed to fully consult the au, when in july 2019 the republic had led an a3 delegation to washington to seek support for its new draft resolution on this issue. south af rica was out of step with addis ababa’s thinking, indicating that despite au support for south af rica as a representative of af rica on the council, this support should not be misconstrued as blanket approval for south af rica’s independent actions. south af rica had more success, although hard-won, on its interests in the wps agenda. south af rica and the wps agenda at the unsc despite elements of patriarchy remaining in south af rican domestic society, as well as alarming stories of femicide and gender-based violence3 across the republic (mail & guardian, 2022), there also exists a strong and longstanding women’s movement that advocates for and ensures positive change. this translates into south af rica’s foreign policy agenda too. in its first national action plan (nap) on women, peace and security 2020–2025, the nap (2020: 2) set out to ‘create a safer and peaceful south af rica, af rica, and world for women [and] girls…[to] enable meaningful participation for women in peace processes; and prioritise their needs, experiences and agency in all conflict and non-conflict contexts’. historically, democratic south af rica has been an active participant in international forums promoting the interests of women. at the global level, the republic has ratified the 1995 beijing platform for action (bpfa), approved at the un’s fourth world conference on women, as well as the un convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, amongst others. the unanimous adoption of unsc resolution 1325, in october 2000, on women and peace and security set the stage for further similar resolutions at the council. the wps agenda is ‘a policy f ramework that recognizes that women must be critical actors in all efforts to achieve sustainable international peace and security. wps promotes a gendered perspective and women’s equal and meaningful participation in peace processes, peacebuilding and security’ (riascos, 2022). although south af rica could be criticised for the long delay in enacting its nap on wps, considering that the resolution 1326 was passed two decades ago, the republic has ‘actively worked to improve women’s participation in peacebuilding and their protection in situations of armed conflict’ during its latest term on the unsc (de carvalho and kumalo, 2020). south af rica took the lead during its october 2019 unsc presidency to sponsor unsc resolution 2493 which reinforced the organisation’s commitment to resolution 1325 and to all forthcoming wps resolutions. previously, 58 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w during its first unsc term (2007–2008), south af rica had actively supported unsc resolution 1820 (2008) focusing on sexual violence in situations of armed conflict (graham, 2022). whereas other states, such as sweden, have openly and publicly declared their position on wps in multiple platforms, south af rica is overdue in indicating to the wider community what the government’s wps plan is and in implementing its own plan. nevertheless, de carvalho and kumalo (2020) contend that despite this: south af rica’s plan is … unique, as it’s neither entirely a foreign policy tool nor a domestic policy – it’s a mix of both. it acknowledges that the country’s international engagements on women, peace and security cannot be separated f rom the violence women experience within its borders. it is an important step in ensuring that progressive foreign policy improves the lives of south af rican women. south af rica’s minister of international relations and cooperation, naledi pandor, chaired the open debate before the resolution was adopted and the republic had to lead very difficult negotiations to enable the resolution to pass through a council consensus. by taking a very public stance in pushing through unsc resolution 2493, the south af rican government was able to demonstrate its investment in the wps agenda. it is important to note that ‘informed consensus and dialogue became important for south af rica, which together with sweden, had led an initiative since late 2018 for e10 members to get together and up to speed on council working methods. south af rica saw this as a way to strengthen the role of the e10. even after south af rica left the council, it continues actively to host these monthly meetings in pretoria, and globally, to engage e10 diplomats in following council themes and debates’ (graham, 2022: 18–19). sweden sweden’s objectives for its most recent tenure on the council in 2017–2018 centred around strengthening the rule-based international order. it placed four themes or priorities as its guiding strategy: international law, human rights, gender equality and a humanitarian perspective. the swedish bid for a council membership was announced in 2004, but its campaign only took real shape in 2014 (engelbrekt, 2020: 34). the overall campaign promised a swedish tenure that would concentrate on creating opportunities for the council to work effectively. it underscored that ‘the council’s agenda was sweden’s programme of work’ (government of sweden, 2017: 2). the overriding problem for sweden and indeed, the nordic viewpoint, was that at a time of global turbulence and change, the unsc was underutilized, increasingly perceived as irrelevant, and hostage to the geopolitical preferences and strategies of the p5. membership in the council also had an intrinsic benefit to sweden’s foreign policy capacity. engelbrekt (2020) notes that a term in the unsc places extra demands on a state the size of sweden, requiring additional government financial and human resources and prioritization of the council in the foreign policy arena. arguably, however, the experience of the unsc membership is considered by swedish diplomats as integral to developing the foreign service’s competence and building up its global networks and thus, an investment for the future. during the swedish membership period the council adopted 115 resolutions and 48 presidential statements and issued 180 press statements (government of sweden, 2019: 6). sweden and apsa at the unsc the swedish engagement on apsa was also hinged upon its overall development strategy and policies. the gambian crisis started off sweden’s term, coinciding with its first presidency month in january 2017. swedish representatives supported cooperation among the council; the un office for west af rica and the sahel (unowas); the economic community of west af rican states (ecowas); and the au (government of sweden, 2019: 54). its permanent mission also worked closely with senegal’s (a member of the council during 2016–2017) on the resolution supporting adama barrow, who was the winner of the december 2016 elections. the resolution reflected the position of ecowas and the au and was passed unanimously in the council (resolution 2337, 2017). among the other conflict situations featured in the council’s work were south sudan, the democratic republic of the congo (drc), the horn of af rica, and the sahel 59v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w (government of sweden, 2019). in these situations, the council acted to address peace processes and peace support operations, and these were not particularly controversial. indeed, peacekeeping operations in côte d’ivoire and liberia were terminated during sweden’s membership. in addition, the security council lifted sanctions against eritrea in november 2018. sweden, in its second presidency month of july 2018, promoted cooperation between the un and the au and the inclusion of af rican civil society. during this presidency, sweden’s foreign minister margot wallström also participated in a joint trip for the un and the au to the sahel region of west af rica (chad and niger). the one challenge faced by sweden was the need to follow up on the murders in the drc of un experts zaida catalán, a swedish national, and michael sharp, an american (government of sweden, 2019: 118).  sweden’s approach was also further complicated because it was strongly aligned with af rican states but shared european perceptions about the f ramework for financing af rican peacekeeping. in 2017, the secretary-general, antónio guterres, offered a set of proposals on un-au decision-making and un financing of af rican peace support operations. stockholm agreed with various proposals – also f rom the af rican elected members, generally f rom senegal in 2017 and more specifically f rom ethiopia in 2018 – for concrete steps towards cooperation, including access to un financing f rom its budget (government of sweden, 2019: 44). it saw the importance of access to regular, and predictable funding for peacekeeping but sided with the broader eu set of conditions for accountability to human rights principals (government of sweden, 2019: 45). in the end, however, this position undermined support for financing as envisaged by several af rican states, and eventual withdrawal of the au’s trust in a good faith effort by the more affluent countries on the council. on a broader scale, sweden strove to promote e10 dynamics, which became a priority of its membership. these efforts were central to stockholm’s concern that the p5 dominated formal and informal tools of the council in their favour. in november 2018, sweden initiated a meeting of the then and incoming elected members with the secretary-general. such an engagement aimed to encourage regular and routine informal briefings f rom the secretariat on situations that were not already on the council’s working agenda (government of sweden, 2019). finally, sweden supported security council reform and increased geographical representation, primarily of af rica. these policy stances about membership and capacity were af rica-centric and ultimately part of sweden’s conception of how best to promote the shoring up of af rica’s peace and security. sweden and the wps agenda at the unsc sweden aimed to make the council a more credible and consistent force for protecting and promoting international peace and security. significantly, as the first country in the world with a feminist foreign policy, sweden sought to achieve this broader aim by incorporating gender equality into its objectives, strategy and choices. furthermore, in every negotiation, discussion and result of the council, it would pursue integration to make the wps agenda ‘core unsc business.’ previous e10s, such as spain (2015–2016), already preferred to forego introducing new wps norms for implementation. this was taking it one step further. the strategy called for systematic integration of gender in work with the council in country-specific conflict or country situations. stockholm believed that its efforts would be more meaningful if focused on implementation within the context of addressing sweden aimed to make the council a more credible and consistent force for protecting and promoting international peace and security. significantly, as the first country in the world with a feminist foreign policy, sweden sought to achieve this broader aim by incorporating gender equality into its objectives, strategy and choices. 60 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w substantial gaps facing women and girls and men and boys in clear and pragmatic ways rather than generating new thematic priorities. the focus on specific situations was characterised by proposals to increase women’s meaningful participation and inclusion in conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding and to prevent or stop patterns of conflict-related sexual violence. in concrete terms, sweden would pursue wps integration in all unsc outcomes – press statements, presidential statements, resolution texts and all other documents and activities (olsson, muvumba sellström and chang, 2021). olsson, muvumba sellström and chang (2021) have carried out a systematic analysis of the swedish engagement on wps. first, they underscore sweden’s strategic and systematic approach to wps. second, the approach produced achievements primarily in normalising the integration of a gender perspective into council decisions. in their view, the membership translated into two new realities. first, it led to greater accountability for gender in reports f rom the secretariat, improved mandates and feedback f rom un departments and representatives of the secretary-general about how wps was being implemented. second, it created a new standard of integration of concrete, context-specific, operational language in council resolution drafts, presidential statements, press statements, committee reports, reports of the secretary-general and briefings to the council. the integration approach involved persistent, tailored navigation of the formal and informal working methods of the council. swedish representatives regularly and consistently ‘raised their hands’ about gender. the study by olsson, muvumba sellström and chang (2021) shows that un staffers started to pre-empt swedish questions by reporting on gender issues in the first year of the membership. regarding putting the language in council resolutions, sweden was not tied to the previous language approved for resolutions by the theme’s penholders – the uk (for wps broadly) and the us (for conflict-related sexual violence). instead, swedish representatives canvassed advice, evidence and ideas f rom civil society in conflict situations, other member states, and their foreign service experts to provide credible and timely advice. sweden also championed the idea of having more women civil society briefers, and it was during its second presidency in july 2018, that the council first achieved gender parity in briefers. sweden also sought to engage officials in the council early on and to propose wps language at the early stages of drafting. evidence of success includes changes to the language in new resolutions for conflicts with older mandates, including in the drc and mali. the legacy of sweden’s wps approach is not secure since the robust language in unsc resolutions may not necessarily lead to implementation on the ground. however, since the end of 2018, there has been a persistent increase in wps language in council resolutions (as noted in adebajo and muvumba sellström, 2022: 5). discussion this article has highlighted the different ways that e10 states approach their respective aims on the un security council. it contrasts south af rican and swedish memberships in relation to af rica and apsa; and to gender and wps. the presentation of these elected member strategies and approaches in two important thematic praxis demonstrates the variation in conduct of e10 countries, even on similar priorities for their memberships. the variation can be depicted as a reflection of the plural nature of the council, and points to specialisation and interdependence by elected members. while south af rica’s approach to apsa was integral to its identity as a f requently elected af rican state on the council, its achievements can be traced to particular outcomes in earlier membership terms, particularly with regard to cooperation with regional bodies, and relations between the un and the au. in its 2018–2019 term, pretoria continued to pursue better collaboration in favour of af rican interests and to support specific unsc decisions – evident in terms of particular resolutions. sweden also actively supported engagement with af rican regional organisations. however, on un financing of au peacekeeping, it conditioned its support and remained rooted to european f raming on the issue. on wps, south af rica continued to use a strategy of key resolutions, proposing unsc resolution 2493 that sought to reaffirm the normative f ramework of wps. in contrast, sweden, instead focused on integration of wps into unsc resolutions. it is difficult to say which approach, for which theme, will yield the most lasting and meaningful results. south af rica’s membership included signature, thematic 61v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w measures on both apsa and wpa; while sweden had an integrated approach albeit to a lesser degree on apsa than on wps. each country leveraged its capacities and preferences differently. the analysis of the south af rican and swedish memberships would benefit f rom further comparative research on other e10 states and their tenures, and yet, the differences in approach to apsa and wps suggest that one can discern that the non-permanent membership can involve specialisation and that states’ varied approaches, certainly on thematic issues, nonetheless allow for interdependence within the e10 group. on apsa, there is clear specialisation on the part of south af rica. its sense of ownership on building better unau cooperation, utilising its turn in the presidency for special apsa thematic work, and supporting various resolutions, is evidence of pretoria’s prioritisation of apsa. however, its leadership on peacekeeping financing for af rica, including leading a delegation of the a3 in negotiations in washington, suggests more. south af rica was specialising in the apsa theme, including by setting out on its own approach, beyond the au’s own guidance and preferences. sweden also specialised, but on wps. stockholm’s approach of integrating wps into every resolution and outcome of the council, rather than on a signature event was critical to its own identity as the first country in the world with a feminist foreign policy. its decision to try to mainstream rather than to engage in thematic special events or signature resolutions meant that it was also applying some of its own expertise in weaving gender analysis into the everyday work of foreign policy and development assistance, and pointedly was an attempt to fundamentally advance the wps agenda at the council; much as south af rica boldly went its own way on apsa and financing for peacekeeping. these specialist approaches, however, did not mean that south af rica and sweden were working entirely independently. their approaches fit neatly within stated ambitions of other e10 states and broader thematic priorities. this demonstrates the interdependence of e10 thematic work. given the short two-year terms available for enacting their priorities, e10 state agendas and strategies appear to be in sync with general praxis of themes, over time. sweden’s wps work was built also on the lessons f rom spain, indonesia and going back to the first state to host a special session on the theme, namibia, in october 2000 (olsson, muvumba sellström and chang, 2021). south af rica engaged the other af rican members of the council in its apsa work (graham, 2022). both countries’ respective thematic work on af rica and gender, apsa and wps, should also be understood as mutually reinforcing and complementary. debate and discussion about the un security council’s elected members tend to pivot toward the issue of the unsc’s reform (see, for example, adebajo and muvumba sellström, 2022; and security council report, 2022). a consensus seems to be emerging, however, with important p5 countries such as the us, china, and russia openly agreeing that af rica should be allocated a permanent seat on the council (security council report, 2022). notwithstanding the relatively novel shift toward reform of the council, non-permanent membership plays a vital role in the context of global governance systems. nonpermanency in the unsc sets up its members for relative accountability to peer states, converging at times with a global audience of council-watchers such as the media and civil society. small, middle power, and emerging states are equally subject to rigorous processes. the system of rotational tenures ensures that countries must campaign for election and that their legitimacy is derived f rom a vote by secret ballot in the un general assembly. the twoyear terms are distributed across geographic regions, and the election process is intense and competitive. members are therefore also keen to demonstrate their ability to be on the main stage of international peace and security. elected members regularly introduce new issues, voices and processes into the council, championing thematic issues such as climate and security, wps, and human rights issues. while observers often focus only on p5 dynamics, the e10 as a group is increasingly vocal and visible, and its members host special sessions, joint media engagements and, increasingly, common positions. while they do vote primarily in their interests or regional affiliation and have yet to perform as a coherent group by utilising their joint veto, e10 membership is an opportunity to display leadership. some key non-permanent states are also keen to build up institutional memory and intra-group relations of the e10 group. the possibility that an e10 state can accomplish all of its objectives is unlikely. the term in the council is a short two years, with f requent interruptions and crises 62 and an evolving agenda. the p5 have institutional mastery of unsc working processes due to their permanence, their veto power and their dominance over the ‘penholder’ system and thus, the drafting process for security council resolutions. elected states are often left only to chair working committees and face an avalanche of diplomatic bureaucratic administration in these bodies. finally, elected states are simply less well-resourced, with small and global south countries least likely to have sufficient human resources to substantively cover all the conflict situations, thematic debates and managerial matters that are within the remit of council membership. it would help if they could bolster their capacities individually and collectively through informationsharing and cooperation. south af rica and sweden sought to see the group of the e10 work better together and jointly convened elected members at the capital level, outside new york, in pretoria, in november 2018 (government of sweden, 2017; olsson, muvumba sellström and chang, 2021). the ambition was that this gathering would become an annual meeting and provide an opportunity to strengthen e10 cohesion and prepare incoming members. perhaps, through such initiatives, e10 states may leverage their comparative advantages in policy knowledge and expertise, networks and resources to jointly advance their respective and collective agendas. conclusion this short article explores the recent memberships of sweden (2017–18) and south af rica (2019–20) in the un security council. it focuses on the work each state enacted in two cross-cutting themes, apsa and the wps agenda. new research (see graham, 2022; olsson, muvumba sellström and chang, 2021; for example, bode, 2018; pay and postolski, 2022; and farrall, loisell and prantl, 2020) contends that e10 states are active participants in the unsc and project their own interests and preferences, particularly on conflict situations and themes that affect af rica. thematic work is a significant aspect of nonpermanent membership. it is beyond the confines of geopolitical rivalry and institutional dominance of the permanent members, who control the penholder system and have outsized roles in determining outcomes for the council’s work on conflict situations. thematic work does allow e10 states to demonstrate their leadership in global affairs. af rican peace and security, broadly, is ideally suited to thematic emphasis. most of the council’s workload is on conflict situations in af rica, and the body’s cooperation with the au has advanced significantly. the wps agenda is universally proclaimed as a priority of every elected state. by presenting south af rica and sweden’s records of conduct on these themes, the article explores differences and similarities in e10 practice. it illustrates the variation of the e10 and explores how elected states pursue a common agenda while using diverse approaches. this variation demonstrates how the un security council is pluralist and highlights the specialism and interdependence of e10 engagement. notes 1. in this article, reference to south af rica will be used to represent the government of the republic of south af rica. 2. multilateralism in foreign policy refers to a specific choice by at least three or more states (and other actors) to advance international cooperation, usually through an arranged institution or organisation, in order to respond to common challenges. dervis (2020) weighs in on the continued value of multilateral organisations such as the un. he states that ‘the universal u.n. membership…is uniquely valuable in allowing countries with different political regimes to cooperate, provide global public goods and achieve important 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(2017). ‘horseshoe and catwalk: power, complexity, and consensus-making in the united nations security council.’ in: r. niezen and m. sapignoli (eds.) palaces of hope: the anthropology of global organizations (cambridge studies in law and society, pp. 55–77). cambridge: cambridge university press. doi:10.1017/9781316412190.003 schrijver, n. j. and blokker, n. m. (eds.). (2020). ‘elected members of the security council: lame ducks or key players?’ leiden, the netherlands: brill /nijhoff. doi. org/10.1163/9789004425392 security council report (scr). (2022). ‘new orientation for reformed multilateralism: open debate.’ security council report [online]. available at: www. securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2022/12/new-orientation-for-reformed-multilateralism-open-debate.php spies, y.k. (2010). ‘south africa’s multilateral challenges in a ‘polypolar’ world’. the international spectator, 45(4): 73–91. doi:10.1080/03932729.2010.5271 03 the presidency. 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https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3794245?ln=en%22 %5cl %22record-files-collapse-header https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3794245?ln=en%22 %5cl %22record-files-collapse-header http://www.jstor.org/stable/24539058 http://www.jstor.org/stable/24539058 doi:10.1017/9781316412190.003 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425392 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425392 https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2022/12/new-orientation-for-reformed-multilateralism-open-debate.php https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2022/12/new-orientation-for-reformed-multilateralism-open-debate.php https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2022/12/new-orientation-for-reformed-multilateralism-open-debate.php doi:10.1080/03932729.2010.527103 doi:10.1080/03932729.2010.527103 https://www.gov.za/speeches/joint-statement-reinforcing-multilateralism-together-building-united-nations-75th https://www.gov.za/speeches/joint-statement-reinforcing-multilateralism-together-building-united-nations-75th https://www.gov.za/speeches/joint-statement-reinforcing-multilateralism-together-building-united-nations-75th t h e t h i n k e r10 what is a revolution? a revolution is change that happens over a length of time. this type of change is driven by human beings. it starts as an idea in the minds of a few, and then spreads out into the minds of more people so that it gains momentum to force a change in the world. a political revolution is often forced through protests or policies, where the majority of the affected people drive this change in their desired direction. an industrial revolution is a change in economic power, where the main driver of the economy is changed from a certain technological sector to another. industrial revolutions’ main fields the various industrial revolutions have always depended on changes in the main technological fields. during the first industrial revolution, the mechanical engineering field was the main driver of the revolution. during the second industrial revolution, the field of electrical engineering was the main driver (in collaboration with mechanical). during the third industrial revolution, computers were the main drivers (in collaboration with mechanical and electrical engineering). in today’s fourth industrial revolution, the internet and ai are the main drivers (in collaboration with mechanical, electrical and computers). each industrial revolution then contains elements of the previous ones and thus builds upon them. what influences these changes or industrial revolutions that happen over time i believe that these changes are natural. the various industrial revolutions are a result of natural changes, or in scientific terms, these changes are called evolution. the source of innovative ideas are a type of intellectual evolution as technological advancements or developments are part of leaps in thought. every revolution is then part of the evolutionary process. evolution is not just about natural changes over millennia but it is also about change in human behavior over a shorter period of time that can be witnessed by people over the course of their lifespan. this can be illustrated with current ideas of generations: we have the silent generation (born 1945 and before), baby boomers (born 1946 – 1964), generation x (born 1965 – 1976), millennials (born 1977 – 1995) and generation z concepts a beginner’s guide to the fourth industrial revolution in africa: by abel matheba and debates pan-african © s to c k .a d o b e .c o m 11v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african (born in and after 1996). all of these generations have a different view of life, they approach life in different ways and that is why people of certain generations usually think that people belonging to a different generations are ‘weird’. this kind of change in human behaviors is influenced by nature (evolution), and it first starts in the mind (where every type of change is initiated). so by simple definition, a revolution can be seen as basically the evolution of consciousness. adapting to a revolution (change) charles darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest still applies to revolutions in industrial ages; he defined it this way: “it is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change” (vergata, 1994). we have witnessed the rise of various nations who have been able to take advantage of or adapt to the changes in technology that each industrial revolution brought about, in order to become the powerful nations in this world. africa has largely been behind with these developments, and that is partly why africans have been spectators rather than leaders for so many years. africa’s history of subjugation has led to this predicament. it started with the international slave trade, when europeans used more technologically advanced means of transportation and weaponary to subjugate and then transport millions of africans across the world as slaves. had they found africa with similar weapons, africans’ international enslavement would have been difficult to establish in the way it was done. if africa had had more advanced technologies for the mining of minerals, it would have been a wealthier continent as it is a fact that europeans found africans already mining for minerals (mapungubwe’s golden rhinoceros being the evidence) (moffet, 2014) when they arrived on the continent. china is one of the leading nations in terms of technology globally today, and they have been investing and loaning funds to many of african countries. some analysts see this as a strategy that china is using to recolonize africa, just in a friendlier way (kinyondo, 2019). this begs the question of what the african continent would look like with its own technological innovations. shaping africa for the 4ir african leaders today have to be careful when it comes to working with other nations in the wake of the 4ir that is, if they want to lead the continent into a better position, where it could be a globally competitive continent and have no other nations colonizing it again in any form. this new industrial revolution can work to africa’s advantage, since africans are now exposed to technological information and education which they were deprived of during the past industrial revolutions. to achieve this, african leaders must give more attention and invest more in technologies and innovations in africa. an example of such technological innovation is ‘libby’ – a robot that was introduced at the university of pretoria’s library in south africa. south african developed, ‘libby,’ is used to help students with library usage such as to finding books or accessing content. the fact is that while this robot has put some jobs at risk as there is no longer a need to have a human do this kind of work manually, there are other benefits to be had here. if the robot is developed and manufactured locally, it would create more jobs for the manufacturing and maintenance of the robot. this means that while one job sector shrinks, another grows. the method of relying mostly on locally produced innovations will be the beginning of africa’s self-reliance, which is one of pan-africanist ideologies’ important goals. one of the other disadvantages of relying on technologies from elsewhere is that we are not sure if we are going to be ‘friends’ with these nations forever. machines and ai in particular can be controlled from afar, so what will happen if we are no longer on good terms with whatever country a machine came from? is it not a risk that the behavior of these machines can be remotely controlled and they become our enemies? we have already witnessed this kind of interaction happening between america and china with the huawei scandal. this type of trade war could have a huge impact on everyday life if the scale this new industrial revolution can work to africa’s advantage, since africans are now exposed to technological information and education which they were deprived of during the past industrial revolutions. to achieve this, african leaders must give more attention and invest more in technologies and innovations in africa. an example of such technological innovation is ‘libby’. t h e t h i n k e r12 expands. since we know that connection to the internet is based on transnational undersea cables running from continent to continent, what could potentially happen with the main servers based in, and owned by, other countries? if the countries in charge of the servers decide to stop africa from using the internet due to political reason, what would happen? imagine life without the internet… how will we communicate since we have already adapted to this kind of communication? decolonizing technology african leaders need to start giving more attention and invest more funds in local innovators working on new technologies relevant to this 4ir. i am talking about prioritizing investing in local research and innovation in the technological field. we are already educating people in this new age of technology where some institutions, like the university of johannesburg, have placed 4ir technologies at the forefront of education. this innovative approach is part of a long history of calls for the decolonization of knowledge from the african continent. both robert sobukwe and steve biko called for self-reliant economies in africa. this idea is not limited to land politics, but can also be achieved through a different way of using the 4ir to drive african economies into a better state. in fact, africa is in a better position to turn things around than ever before by investing time, money and energy, however limited, in locally produced technologies. the problem with the many analysts in this 4ir age is that they are talking about the impact this new industrial age will have on our lives, and not how africans can use this new age to our advantage to take africa forward and make it a better continent. but what can be done in using 4ir to improve africa? africa is an economically poor continent and young innovators need to work at any job that they can find in order to merely eat, leaving little time for invention. most african governments, south africa included, are investing more money in conventional businesses than innovations, but conventional business models like the ubiquitous tender system in south africa do not create real jobs. many of the people running these tendering companies are not problem solvers and are more interested in gaining material wealth for themselves than actually creating value for the people that they are meant to serve; in addition, this system has proven to be filled with corruption as the zondo commission has exposed and therefore this sort of business model does not really solve africa’s economic problems. another problem that delays africa’s progress in general is corruption, but that is a topic for another day. centers like the innovation hub in south africa that are aimed at supporting innovation among youth, but they do so at a very slow pace and with very minimal funding. they initially cover the funding needed to pilot an idea, but do nothing to support the innovators’ personal expenses, even basic ones, at that time. in reality, personal expenses are of extreme importance in poorer countries where most young people do not have surplus income from their families to support them through this process, regardless of the veracity of their ideas. this is a short sighted approach as innovation has long term potential to uplift people and countries out of poverty. in technology leading countries like china, it takes a shorter time to take an invention from idea stage to commercialization stage, while in africa it takes longer and that is only if the innovator does not lose hope and give up (rees, 2018). this results in a lag for african countries in general when it comes to developments. african governments should give more support to innovators if they really want to take this continent forward and, they must do so at this early stage of the 4ir. this new industrial revolution is taking place at an exponential speed as compared to the previous revolutions, where a waste of more time will only lead africa to becoming worse off as change will not wait for it. the only constant thing that remains unchanged in this world is change itself. nothing remains the same forever. what we need to do as africans is to adapt to this change as early as possible, and then drive it in our own direction for our own benefit. ■ references kinyondo, a., 2019. is china recolonising africa? some views from tanzania. 182(2), pp. 128-164. maserumule, m. h., 2016. sobukwe’s pan-africanist dream. the conversation, 16 february. moffet, a., 2014. iron age mining links ancient sa to the world. mail & guardian, 22 august. rees, l., 2018. innovation is crucial to africa’s development. daily maverick. vergata, a. l., 1994. herbet spencer: biology, sociology, and cosmic evolution. in: sociology of sciences. s.l.:springer, dordrecht, pp. 192-229. pan-african _goback t h e t h i n k e r61 a semi-desert country in southern af rica, botswana has historically never had any economic significance – a narrative supported by how the country became a british protectorate in 1885, as opposed to the normal trend at the time of being forced into becoming a colony. the rationale behind this was that the then bechuanaland had no significant natural resources, unlike south af rica and rhodesia. because of its lack of natural deposits, bechuanaland was one of the world’s poorest nations and its transition to independence in 1966 went smoothly, as the british saw no reason to hold on. shortly into her independence, botswana discovered diamonds, which went on to become the propeller of the country’s economy – helping her to transition f rom being one of the world’s poorest countries to an upper-middle-income country by the late 1990s, a status shared with only a few other af rican countries (lock, 2019; jefferis, 1998). botswana has continued to enjoy relative economic success, which has aided its development in different spheres, due largely to its prudent political leadership. this transformation has been a consistent story, with the exception of a few hurdles, such as the 2008 global economic meltdown. the common denominator in any instance that the economic prosperity of botswana has slowed has been the international diamond market. in his 2020/2021 budget proposals, the minister of finance and economic planning projected a revenue of bwp 62.4 billion – with revenue f rom the diamond industry being a significant contributor. a month after these february proposals, the spread of covid-19 f rom its wuhan epicentre gathered pace and by mid-march the economic repercussions of the pandemic were evident, as economies around the world closed and governments directed their efforts and finances towards combatting the virus. developed economies took a significant hit, and it was only a matter of time before the same happened to botswana’s economy, with a significant loss of revenue. as countries imposed lockdowns and markets tumbled, consumption patterns changed and the demand for luxurious goods, such as diamonds and its related by-products, fell sharply. a diamond-reliant botswana is therefore in for a long, rough ride. this piece examines the economic impact of covid-19 on the diamondreliant and f ragile economy of botswana and how this economic meltdown will impact all aspects of the country’s development. the paper will by kalo makaloba covid-19 the reverberations of the covid-19-hit international on botswana diamond market © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 62v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 conclude by suggesting economic reforms that should be a priority for botswana as she recovers and faces the future. botswana and diamonds – a fragile prosperity the discovery of diamonds in 1969 spelled a new story for botswana and as a result she became the world’s fastest growing economy for a period of over 20 years. mineral revenue reached highs of 80% of her total income in some financial years (acemoglu et al, 2001; armah, 2015). botswana has relied on her diamonds for over 45 of her 53 years of independence, but the magic of these gems has not come without warnings of unsustainability. through various policies, the country has targeted economic diversification, but with very little success – botswana’s economy is still largely reliant on diamond revenue. there exist two types of diamonds in the country. the first are industrial diamonds used in the manufacturing of industrial machinery, found and mined in orapa and letlhakane. these diamonds do not carry the same financial value as gem stones used for jewellery and other delicacies in modern-day fashion. gem stones are the second type of diamond, and are botswana’s main source of income, found mostly in the jwaneng mine (lock, 2019). these two sets of diamonds continue to propel botswana’s economy, despite diversification efforts that have seen very little success. early warnings the covid-19 pandemic is not the first threat to the international diamond market and consequently to the economy of botswana. the most significant and recent reminder of the f ragility of botswana’s diamond-reliant revenues is the 2008 financial meltdown. this most recent economic recession brought most economies to their knees, resulting in a downward spiral of the consumption of luxury goods such as diamonds. this had a direct hit on botswana, with the country suspending its national development plan 10 in 2009. when it was resumed a year later, most development projects had fallen behind, forcing the government to introduce an economic stimulus package that took a toll on the country’s foreign reserves (botlhale, 2017; government of botswana, 2017). this was a warning sign of the unsustainability of the country’s reliance on diamonds. the story of ‘diamonds are not forever’ reminds us that this current reliance could translate into economic suicide in botswana’s future. this is anchored on two main arguments. the first is that diamonds could be extinct in the near future, a fact which botswana is well aware of. until the cut 8 mine expansion project, jwaneng mine’s predicted lifespan did not extend beyond 2025 (grynberg, 2013). the second is the introduction of synthetic diamonds, which have been poised to take the place of the natural gems, despite having a far lower market value (sunday standard botswana, 2014). these factors should have been warning signs for botswana to diversify its economy, but its 2020/2021 budget proposals reflect a continued reliance on diamonds, with mineral revenue led by diamonds expected to contribute bwp 20.2 billion (32% of the country’s total revenue). in this context, the covid-19 pandemic could not have come at a worse time for the country (matsheka, 2020). the economic impact of covid-19: an unforeseen hit in the 2020/2021 financial year, botswana’s economy was expected to grow at a rate of 4%, higher than the 3% global economic growth projected for the same period. the country expected a total revenue of bwp 62.4 billon, of which 32% was to come f rom mineral revenue led by diamonds (matsheka, 2020). this is consistent with the annual pattern of mineral and diamond revenues, as shown in the table below. as can be seen, the mineral and diamonds sector has been the largest contributor to botswana’s total revenue over the past few years, hovering covid-19 financial year mineral and diamond revenue (in billion bwp) contribution as % of the country’s total revenue 2015/2016 19 34.4 2016/2017 17 35.2 2017/2018 16.33 28.6 2018/2019 24.6 38.3 2019/2020 21.9 35 2020/2021 20 32 (sources: mathambo, 2015–2019; matsheka, 2020) t h e t h i n k e r63 consistently above the 30% mark. any change in this sensitive market therefore has a direct correlation to the income at botswana’s disposal. over the years, botswana has failed to diversify its income away f rom diamonds, meaning that this income continues to be extremely vulnerable. the projected loss of revenue in the current financial year has seen the country reduce its projected economic growth f rom the initial 4% to -13%, a record low. this loss of income will be felt directly by a number of economic areas, and the impacts have already started to show barely two months into the pandemic (matsheka, 2020). the government of botswana spends most of its budget on recurrent expenditure, as it has a sizeable public sector in relation to its economic size and population (matsheka, 2020). in 2019, the government had proposed a 6–10% salary increment across different salary scales for public servants, to be implemented over two consecutive financial years (2019/2020 and 2020/21). this was meant to cushion the implications of a long period without increments, due to the global meltdown. however, this decision has since been deferred until the economy stabilises, as the government has been unable to raise the required bwp 1.4 billion (mmegi online, 2020). this represents one of the few economic impacts that botswana will have to tackle due to the fall in projected diamond sales as a result of the covid-19 crisis. like most countries, botswana has had to introduce social protection nets to support those who have been directly hit by the implications of the national lockdown, which has now been in place for over a month. the government set up a bwp 2 billion fund, which is to be used for wage subsidies for affected companies, tax concessions and other social protection services (kgamanyane, 2020; botswana guardian, 2020). this will also take away f rom the already shrinking government coffers affected by the covid-19 pandemic. in addition to the loss of diamond revenue, botswana is projected to lose over bwp 1 billion in value-added tax, another major hit on the country’s economy (matsheka, 2020). after mineral revenue, the second largest contributor to botswana’s economy is the southern af rican customs pool, which was expected to contribute 27% of total revenue in the 2020/2021 financial year, although no official figures exist as yet. this is expected to take a major dive, as all the southern af rican customs union (sacu) countries have been on lockdown for over a month, meaning that there has been very little economic activity at ports of entry. south af rica, the biggest sacu economy, will have its own economic ramifications to deal with, as it is currently the af rican country that has been the worst affected by covid-19 (johns hopkins university, 2020). other sectors – such as public enterprises and corporate tax – are also expected to take a tumble, leaving botswana further stricken by covid-19. beyond covid-19: lessons for botswana covid-19’s projected economic impact on botswana is largely due to the country’s overreliance on its diamond industry. this overreliance has characterised botswana’s post-colonial economy. the government’s well-intended diversification drives have been ineffective for a number of reasons – one of which has been the reliability of diamond revenue. the covid-19 pandemic, however, has revealed the f ragility of the country’s economy. it is imperative that the government of botswana finds alternative sources of income. below, i present three main areas that botswana could turn to in this pursuit. tourism botswana is home to the okavango delta – the largest inland delta in the world and a unesco world heritage site. as well as the famed big 5, the delta boasts the largest herd of elephants in the world (chase et al, 2016). the excellent antipoaching strategies adopted by the country over the years have also enabled it to be a safe haven for rhinos and many other endangered species – contributing to its potential as a tourism hub. beyond the delta, botswana has many other tourism sites with massive potential, if the right investments are made. the tourism industry has the covid-19 pandemic is not the first threat to the international diamond market and consequently to the economy of botswana. the most significant and recent reminder of the fragility of botswana’s diamond-reliant revenues is the 2008 financial meltdown. covid-19 64v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 so far been dominated by foreign investment, with most profits leaving the country. with the right economic empowerment policies in place, the tourism industry can grow to become a significant contributor to botswana’s national revenue, following in the footsteps of countries such as kenya and egypt. knowledge-based economy with the onset of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), economies around the world are becoming increasingly knowledge-based. the education sector in botswana is one of the few in the world that is wholly government funded, and has the potential to become a key driver of the country’s economy. investments into the education sector and the information sector can therefore be improved, enabling the country to move towards a knowledge-based economy, as opposed to its current reliance on natural resources. re-awakening the beef industry the botswana meat commission is a stateowned enterprise that has held the status of af rica’s best performing public enterprise for a number of decades. however, the withdrawal of the european market has brought this sector to its knees, despite botswana having a cattle population of over 2 million (a ratio slightly above 1:1 to its human population). with the right management and the sourcing of new emerging markets such as china, this sector could become the mainstay of botswana’s economy, as it was before independence and the discovery of diamonds. conclusion in addition to its dire health impacts, covid-19 has collapsed many economies in the first quarter of 2020. botswana has so far not been severely impacted in terms of infections and fatalities, but the same cannot be said economically, as the country has had to endure the gruesome economic implications of the highly-affected global diamond industry. botswana’s overreliance on diamonds means that the country is facing a significant decrease in revenue, on top of the costs incurred by the pandemic. this moment in time should serve as a wake-up call to botswana to speed up its diversification process and to reduce the vulnerability of its economy by finding means of revenue other than its diamond industry. ■ references acemoglu, d., johnson, s., and robinson, j. (2001). an af rican success story: botswana. mit department of economics working paper no.01-37. available at: https://economics.mit.edu/files/284 armah, r. (2015). botswana and mauritius: a comparative analysis of an economic and political success story in the most unlikely region. minnesota state university theses, dissertations, and other capstone projects. available at: https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/416/ botlhale, e. (2017). restoring fiscal balances post the global economic crisis in botswana. international journal of public administration, 40(8), pp. 706–716. botswana guardian, (2020). gov’t unveils ambitious economic package to cushion businesses f rom covid-19 impacts. [online] available at: http:// www.botswanaguardian.co.bw/news/item/4378-gov-t-unveils-ambitiouseconomic-package-to-cushion-businesses-f rom-covid-19-impacts.html [accessed 03 may 2020]. chase, m., schlossberg, s., griffin, c.,bouché, p., d jene, s., elkan, p., ferreira, s., grossman, f., kohi, e., landen, k., omondi, p. peltier, a., selier, s. and sutcliffe, r. (2016). continent-wide survey reveals massive decline in af rican savannah elephants. peerj 4:e2354 [online]. available at: https://doi. org/10.7717/peerj.2354 government of botswana, (2017). national development plan 11. gaborone: government printers. grynberg, r. (2013). some like them rough: the future of diamond beneficiation in botswana. ecdpm discussion paper 142 [online]. available at: https://ecdpm.org/publications/future-of-diamond-benefication-inbotswana/ jefferis, k. (1998). botswana and the diamond-dependent development. in: w. edge and m. lekorwe, eds. botswana politics and society. pretoria: van schaik publishers, pp. 300–318. johns hopkins university, (2020). covid-19 dashboard. [online] available at: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html [accessed 04 may 2020]. kgamanyane, j. (2020). doubt over p2 billion covid-19 relief fund. the patriot on sunday. [online] available at: http://www.thepatriot.co.bw/news/ item/8088-doubt-over-p2-billion-covid-19-relief-fund.html [accessed 02 may 2020]. lock, n. (2019). jwaneng—the untold story of the discovery of the world’s richest diamond mine. journal of the southern af rican institute of mining and metallurgy, vol. 119(2), pp. 155–164. mathambo, k. (2015). botswana budget speech 2015–16. gaborone: government printers. mathambo, k. (2016). botswana budget speech 2016–17. gaborone: government printers. mathambo, k. (2017). botswana budget speech 2017–18. gaborone: government printers. mathambo, k. (2018). botswana budget speech 2018–19. gaborone: government printers. mathambo, k. (2019). botswana budget speech 2019–20. gaborone: government printers. matsheka, t. (2020). botswana budget speech 2020–21. gaborone: government printers . matsheka, t. (2020). the ministry of finance and economic planning response to covid 19. gaborone: ministry of finance and economic planning. mmegi online, (2020). govt defers public service salary increment. [online] available at: https://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=85338&dir=2020/april/25 [accessed 29 apr. 2020]. sunday standard botswana, (2014). botswana faces synthetic diamonds threat. [online] available at: https://www.sundaystandard.info/botswanafaces-synthetic-diamonds-threat/ [accessed 28 apr. 2020]. botswana’s overreliance on diamonds means that the country is facing a significant decrease in revenue, on top of the costs incurred by the pandemic. this moment in time should serve as a wake-up call to botswana to speed up its diversification process. covid-19 28 t h e t h i n k e r artificial intelligence as a ool of public diplomacy: communication between the united states and iran abstract iran and the united states (u.s.) have had a volatile relationship for decades, with continuous threats of violence, sanctions, and internet blocks. in the last decade, we have seen a third force at play as technology becomes an integral aspect of diplomatic relations. the last three u.s. administrations have displayed mixed attempts at salvaging diplomatic relations with iran. this article explores how artificial intelligence driven communication can be a critical tool in improving the relationship between the two states. utilising a desktop research approach, exploring primary and secondary literature, this article explores possible artificial intelligence solutions to improve the communicational aspect in the public diplomacy between iran and the u.s. it is evident that artificial intelligence has had negative implications on the public diplomacy between the two states as we witness the increasing use of deep-fakes and website blocks. however, processes such as natural language understanding allows governments to have more targeted foreign policy objectives and language translation creates a direct and enhanced line of communication between the state and foreign audience. by robyn williams and lisa otto | peer reviewed special focus 29 introduction public diplomacy (pd), understood as communication made by governments and other diplomatic entities towards a general audience (pigman, 2010), has become increasingly popular over the last fi e decades as governments attempt to influe ce foreign audiences, particularly through the mode of communication. making a sudden emergence in 1965, public diplomacy has encountered numerous shifts, often influe ced by technological developments, such as the establishment of the internet, radio and the introduction of social media platforms. now, it stands on the brink of yet another reawakening as artificial intelligence (ai) threatens to penetrate every sphere of life, presenting itself as an indefini e by-product of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). not in itself new, ai can yield both positive and negative outcomes, many of which are yet to become clear, and this is likely to also be the case in the world of diplomacy. this paper aims to explore how ai may impact public diplomacy and offer opportunities to improve communication in public diplomacy. given that the u.s. has presented itself as a f rontrunner of its use since the dawn of public diplomacy, it is a useful case study, notably also because it has a track record of employing new technologies in its diplomatic endeavours. specificall , this article draws on the bilateral relationship between the u.s. and iran, where such technologies have been used. using the method of comparative analysis and exploring qualitative literature such as officia policy documents, journal articles, conference proceedings and newspaper articles, it may be established whether ai has already improved communication in public diplomacy and, if not, how it may do so in the future. public diplomacy is discussed in reference to the two states, examining the relationship between them to answer questions around the role of ai as a public diplomacy tool. the limitations to the study are the fact that at the time, there is very little implementation of ai into communication processes for public diplomacy, in addition to the increasing hostility between the two states that sees their relations grow even further apart. in addition, most of the article focuses on trump’s administration as it coincides with the emergence of 4ir, and having served a full term, it is possibly to wholly focus and critique his use of pd. this article draws on the concept of political communication, which dahlgren (2004: 7) explains is ‘a vast, sprawling social � eld of almost in� nite variety, crisscrossed by the media and encompassing many different forms of associations and networks, actors, communicative contexts and styles, cultural f rameworks, and power relationships.’ the goal of the actor that produces the content is to influe ce, inform or persuade citizens. debray (2007: 3) indicates that political communication encompasses ‘tools of transmission’, now extending far beyond traditional media to include social media and other such emerging tools. finlayson (2019: 78) explores the continuous development of digital technologies altering the nature and idea of both political communication and political culture. this has resulted in the way people receive, interpret, and respond to information, ultimately intensifying ‘culture war(s)’ (rensmann, 2017: 127). unfortunately, three major issues arise in the digital public sphere when it comes to political communication: 1) resource-rich individuals, or states, often have significant power and undue influe ce on the public sphere or foreign audiences; 2) fake news [1] that misleads public perception; and 3) the unregulated aspect of online platforms that inadvertently allow for harassment and abuse (finlayson, 2019: 79). solgado (2019: 671) explains the dire imperative of avoiding generalisations in reference to studies of political communication and carefully selecting variables for comparative case studies. therefore, the u.s. was selected as it is a developed western country whilst iran, a developing state, represents the middle east and north af rican (mena) region. both states have been particularly welcoming to adopting new technologies in various spheres of society. rubin (2019) states that although iran has evenly partaken in the arms race within the mena region, iran has been the most progressive by integrating new technologies into society. in 2019, then-u.s. president donald trump announced that special focus v o l u m e 90 / 2 0 2 2 30 t h e t h i n k e r the u.s. was a f rontrunner of ai implementation and would aim to continue pursuing that status, ensuring economic and military security (white house, 2019). another element that makes the case interesting to explore is that u.s.-iran relations have been both tense and terse since 1979, when roughly 400 americans were held hostage for 444 days at the u.s. embassy in iran’s capital, tehran (kinzer, 2008). since then, the bilateral relationship between the states has ebbed and fl wed, resulting in the dynamic use of public diplomacy f rom both sides. understanding public diplomacy berridge (2015: 198) describes pd as ‘white propaganda’, where a government attempts to indirectly influence foreign audiences and governments. newspapers and photographs, in addition to radio and television broadcasting, are all historical tools of public diplomacy. however, more recently, the internet and social media applications such as facebook and twitter have become the typical tools of exerting public diplomacy on foreign audiences. pigman (2010) explains that the term public diplomacy was conceptualised by edmund gullion in 1965, who noted the increasing importance of public opinion to a government, not only domestically but also that of audiences abroad. gullion further understood that the role of the media would come to mean more in diplomacy, and the relationship between journalists and diplomats would become more signif icant over time. as stated by bjola and kornprobst (2018), the ultimate goal of public diplomacy is to influence a state’s foreign policy and/or domestic politics and policies. diplomacy is a tool used by states to execute its foreign policy (williams, 2021). according to zhang (2006), social influence is an integral aspect of public diplomacy, highlighting that it plays a critical role in government portraying a particular image. it requires a government in having some extent of power that is required to influence engaging citizens of a foreign state. pigman (2010) outlines the key factors for successful public diplomacy to occur, beginning with trust. foreign governments deemed deceiving will be able to successfully and adequately engage in public diplomacy with a foreign audience, presently or in the future. furthermore, he points out the importance of cultural diplomacy for effective public diplomacy. this may occur through sporting, educational and cultural exchange. lastly, pigman (2010) highlights the media, participation and hosting of events as integral aspects of public diplomacy. leguey-feilleux (2009) explores the rising forms of diplomacy that may be utilised by embassies, emphasising public diplomacy as one such mode, with the responsibility of extending the culture of its home state. understanding artificial in elligence ai, sometimes also referred to as robotic technology, can process and analyse large amounts of information and data sets. using robotics, it can imitate human behaviour and thought processes, aid actors in problem-solving scenarios and decision-making processes, and provide more accurate information at a far greater speed than the human brain is able to (shabbir and anwer, 2015). this can take place on a spectrum where on one end there is human assistance in task performance, and on the other where task performance is entirely automated. pagliarini and lund (2017: 271) state that the implementation of robotics, through ai, is already demonstrated in several fields. in healthcare, for example, robotics is already playing a major role in the safe delivery of medical supplies and assisting the medical practitioner in unique cases. a further well-documented and heavily debated area of its use is in the military sector, which has steadily increased in recent years using drones, spyware, autonomous vehicles, and so on. whilst ai technologies are mostly praised for their expansive capabilities, wisskerchen, biacabe, bormann, muntz, niehaus, soler and von brauhitsh (et al., 2017: 8) differentiate between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ ai, by explaining that strong ai can learn f rom its experiences. it acts and thinks like a human and may formulate a reaction according to a specific scenario and is the variant of ai that has inspired much science fi tion. on the other hand, weak ai can special focus 31 merely perform as it has been programmed to do. questions over which form of ai states should choose to integrate have also been rife due to the widespread implications for decision-making, legality based on where that decision-making lies (i.e., with humans or computers), job losses, and a plethora of other concerns. the use of technologies in public diplomacy: the case of the contemporary us-iran bilateral relationship looking back: reviewing the bilateral relationship public diplomacy is not at all unfamiliar in iran. amin (2015: 269) claims that one can trace the use of public diplomacy there to the late 1700s in the predecessor state of qajar, where media of the time was used as a diplomatic tool, alongside the integration of new technologies, such as the radio, into diplomatic protocol. fast-forwarding to the contemporary era, foreign governments, iran and the u.s. included, began to use technologies, such as the radio, to persuasively project their image in the state. radio has been a prolific tool employed in public diplomacy with mcmahon (2010: 26) noting that the u.s. continued to use the radio as a method for propaganda as late as 2010, funding two popular radio stations, which were in turn often jammed by the iranian government. when it comes to new and emerging technologies, iran illustrates promising prospects, ranking 14th in global ai-focused research (pargoo, 2019). the state understands the possibilities of ai, perhaps even powerful enough to end a longstanding economic drought, with its government even considering the establishment of a ministry of ai. the u.s., for its part, prides itself in being a leader of technological advancements and implementations, flaunti g the work of silicon valley, which is often at the foref ront of technological innovation. the diplomatic relationship between iran and the u.s. stems back multiple decades but was amplifie following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. the brutal terrorist attacks of 9/11 saw 2,977 lives lost and rendered relations between the u.s. and islamic states tense (cnn editorial research, 2019). fitzpatrick (2011: 7) highlights that the events have required the u.s. to move f rom a ‘message approach’ to a ‘relational approach’ of public diplomacy. this would become a task for future administrations. president george w. bush, who held off ice between 2001 and 2009, faced dealing with the event and its aftermath. in his 2002 state of the union address, bush labelled iran as a regime part of the ‘axis of evil’, thus implying their alignment to terrorist organisations (bush, cited in hamedani, 2008: pg). their mutual disregard of the taliban proved insuff icient to restore f riendly relations and served as a single point of collaboration. bush’s public diplomacy towards iran was mostly limited to promoting democracy in iran, particularly due to its uranium reserves and moves toward developing nuclear capabilities (akbarzadeh, 2011: 472). friendly interaction with the iranian people on the part of the u.s. was limited to congratulatory messages on the occasion of persian new year (bush, 2008), but, on the whole, bush’s messaging read as confli ting given a narrative of disenchantment with the iranian government yet deep respect for the iranian people. ultimately, the success of his public diplomacy may be best understood by perceptions of the iranian people towards him, which were hardly ever fond (world public opinion organisation, 2007). elected in 2009, president barack obama signified a sense of hope that friendly bilateral relations between the u.s. and iran may be revived under his leadership. obama infamously announced that if iran eased its approaches, the u.s. would extend a hand and attempt to persuade western counterparts that iran was not building a nuclear bomb, thus demonstrating a willingness to move the relationship to new ground (landler and cooper, 2009). from the onset, obama’s public diplomacy differed from that of bush as obama halted the promotion of public diplomacy and intervention in iran’s internal affairs. however, obama was sure to demonstrate that he should not be considered a walkover and that if iran failed to comply, military force remained an option before shifting his attention to sanctions (obama, 2013). furthermore, in several addresses obama subtly addressed iran and called out successive governments for their human rights offences but at all times ensured he emphasised mutual respect (obama, 2009). special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 32 t h e t h i n k e r in 2011, in an attempt for the u.s. to illustrate their willingness to directly engage with the iranian audience, it launched its fi st virtual embassy that remains active. the virtual embassy symbolised a rather progressive act of public diplomacy, allowing citizens to apply for visas, be notified of study and employment opportunities, in addition to it serving many diplomatic functions (slavin, 2013). the site includes links to official u.s. social media web pages, ensuring a direct line of communication between the u.s. government and the domestic iranian audience. however, this bold move was not received well by the iranian government, which blocked the site just days after it launched (reuters, 2011). internet censorship is extremely common in iran, with the government often blocking websites or shutting down the internet in its entirety, thus acting in rebellion towards a state or its own citizens. this was highlighted in november 2019 when iran shut down internet services during antigovernment protests (fassihi, 2019). the 45th u.s. president, donald trump, made his position on islamic states and members of the islamic community clear since he was elected in 2016, ordering widespread bans on muslim people entering the u.s. (holland and mason, 2017). trump has also labelled iran as a state responsible for global extremism and, in 2018, imposed sanctions on the state and abandoned their nuclear deal (landler, 2018). however, duncombe (2017: 546) states that the instantaneous nature of digital applications has allowed iran and the u.s. to swiftly solve confli t areas and communicate the resolutions that they have reached to foreign audiences within hours of the confli t arising. illustrated in 2016, u.s. navy patrollers were illegally patrolling in iranian waters, where they were soon caught and detained. then u.s. secretary of state john kerry, along with javad zarif, iranian minister of foreign relations, swiftly addressed the confli t and later confi med on twitter that all was resolved, and the u.s. patrollers were released. while many argue that if any single actor had a direct influe ce in the swift release, perhaps multiple actors and years of relations characterised by vacillating tensions between the two states were significant contributors to the progressively quick release. these tensions more recently came to a head after trump ordered an airstrike on 3 january 2020 to assassinate a commander of the islamic revolutionary guard corps (irgs), qassem soleimani (crs report, 2020), after having labelled the corps a terrorist organisation in april 2019 (trump, 2019). whilst trump followed the correct protocol ahead of the ‘precision drone strike’ that he had ordered by notifying congress, his actions shocked the world and resulted in a large-scale fallout between the two states (yeung, alfonso, kottasova and vera, 2020). according to macais and breuninger (2020), u.s. intelligence believed that qassem soleimani was preparing to attack the u.s., therefore, trump’s use of public diplomacy following the strike was direct and open. trump assured that the strike on soleimani was not intended to start a war with iran but rather prevent it f rom happening. graff (2020) reports that after days of hostility and global tension, president trump and foreign minister of iran, javad zarif, turned to twitter to ease the tensions. both attempted to reassure their counterparts and the global audience that neither country wanted to go to war but would defend itself if necessary. this modern display of public diplomacy highlights the power of instant communication in solving realtime confli t. whilst technologies have come to play a critical role in communication and public diplomacy at large, the u.s.-iran relationship demonstrates that better solutions are required. integrating ai into public diplomacy for the improvement of communication may reduce false propaganda in the media and bring forth greater coherence and understanding between iranian and u.s. leaders. breakthrough technologies ai-driven technologies offer endless possibilities and are accessible virtually in every corner of the globe to public citizens, government off icials and non-state actors such as terrorist groups. whilst iran and the u.s. have had a strained relationship over the years, there is yet the possibility that it could be improved through public diplomacy. communication evolves with technological trends and ai could be the key component to such special focus 33 an improvement. whilst communication may concern a range of subtopics, the aspects that will be discussed relevant to public diplomacy are limited to propaganda, deep-fakes [2], sentiment analysis [3], and virtual assistants. it should be noted that natural language processing (nlp) is a key driver in the evolution of communication in the 21st century and is discussed in reference to all subtopics. verspoor and cohen (2013) explain natural language processing (nlp) as the manipulation of unstructured input texts through an integrated system of components. it can instinctively extract the relevant information f rom expansive datasets and draw conclusions. each component is responsible for various aspects of the language process, such as adding structure and analysing concepts and relationships. marr (2019) provides examples of nlp, with those particularly relevant to the fiel of public diplomacy including instant language translation, and the extraction and summarisation of information. gracie, egger and malik (2019) explain that it is difficu t to establish patterns and draw conclusions in nlp given the unstructured nature of the data. sorting through an unstructured dataset is time-consuming and can delay governments in fi ding potential threats and acting promptly. nlp comprises several tools and consists of two subsets: natural language generation (nlg) and natural language understanding (nlu). the tools of nlp include the recognition of human speech, understanding and interpreting natural language, and generating interpretable texts (gracie, egger and malik, 2019). according to ibm (2019), nlu includes a ‘set of analytics features’ that extracts meaning f rom unstructured data. information can be extracted f rom different types of data such as emotions, relations, and entities. with nlu, users may learn the purpose of a sentence and once the nlu process is complete, nlg takes place by formulating a response. sentiment analysis, information extraction and topic modelling [4] are all considered integral aspects of nlu. latent dirichlet allocation (lda), a type of topic modelling, establishes latent patterns in unstructured data. drawing themes or topics f rom a vast field of information allows users to note particular patterns taking place and draw conclusions f rom such patterns (li, 2018). gracie et al. (2019) note that the u.k. government has begun utilising lda to better understand public opinion. heron (2016) claims that for lda to operate at its maximum efficie cy, it should begin the process by cleaning the dataset. unnecessary words like ‘it’, ‘and’ and ‘the’ are removed f rom the dataset, along with punctuation. all words are lemmatised [5] and normalised to ensure there are no minor spelling errors and ‘probabilistic spelling correction’ is applied. once nlu is complete and a dataset is structured, nlg can take place. reiter and dale (1995) describe nlg as a subset of ai, a constructed computational process that transfers non-linguistic information to interpretable texts. according to greyling (2019), nlg transitions the structured data to a new unstructured dataset, formulating a human-like response, which he refers to as a ‘conversational output in human language.’ sciforce (2019) explains nlg as a three-part process: 1) document planning, 2) microplanning, and 3) realisation. two and a half decades ago, reiter and dale (1995) provided examples of applied nlg, referring to accounting spreadsheets and airline schedule databases. today, however, the possibilities of applied nlg span much further than previously imaginable. automated insights (2017) recaps examples of nlg that humans may interact with daily such as ai-driven technologies offer endless possibilities and are accessible virtually in every corner of the globe to public citizens, government officials and non-state actors such as terrorist groups. whilst iran and the u.s. have had a strained relationship over the years, there is yet the possibility that it could be improved through public diplomacy. special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 34 t h e t h i n k e r automatically generated summaries on mobile gym-related applications and virtual assistants. graefe (2016) expresses the possibilities and pitfalls of automated journalism, which is briefly summarised as news generated f rom structured data, a process used by infamous news sources like forbes and the new york times. whilst automated journalism is only possible when algorithms consist of clean and structured datasets referring to repetitive topics, expanding the available information each time, it is hardly ever possible with limited or no information on a new topic and may result in poor results. algorithms for automated journalism can produce multiple news reports, in different languages, focusing on varied angles and tailored to the reader’s preference. in addition, automated journalism is a fast-paced process with minimal potential for error. graefe (2016) notes that the quality of automated news produced by algorithms may be below par compared to news produced by human writers, but may improve over time. automated news also cannot ask questions or explain new information, illustrating a lack of journalistic support. knight (2019) too states that concerns about the threat of fake news by automated journalism are legitimate. jardine (2019) explains how fake news and fake accounts are used in attempts to mislead or influe ce a targeted group’s behaviour or attitudes, recalling a similar use of fake accounts during the election period to shift voter preference. algorithms work by being fed inordinate amounts of information and after releasing outputs they are either positively or negatively rewarded. a programme is trained over time and may produce better outputs as it learns. however, it is trained to learn what is considered right and wrong, making it difficu t for the algorithm to establish fake information f rom authentic information, especially if targeted for misuse. ultimately, an algorithm mimics the news source that it is fed, be this fake or not. sentiment analysis is a process best used to judge human opinions, attitudes and feelings towards a particular topic, commonly used in social media analytics. according to chakraborty, battacharyya and hassanien (2019), sentiment analysis is a fi estep algorithmic process: the reviews or gathering of information followed by the recognition of sentiments; feature selection occurs, and sentiment categorisation takes place; and lastly, sentiment dissipation is calculated. while the terms ‘sentiment analysis’ and ‘intent analysis’ are often regarded as similar concepts, gupta (2018) argues that intent analysis goes a step further by exploring the intent behind the user’s message and distinguishes if it is a query, complaint, opinion, news or any other kind of message. challenges that arise in sentiment analysis include identifying sarcasm and compound sentences (farhadloo and rolland, 2016). however, the rapid growth and continuous improvement of ai and machine learning suggests that solutions to overcome such challenges are possible. baldwin (2019) describes ai-driven machine translation as a ‘game-changer’. while instant language translation is certainly not new and has been continuously evolving, the rapid development of ai has led to a point where it may remove the hindrance of language barriers and improve international relations as we know it. in january 2019, google launched its own language translator that titcomb (2019) describes as a turning point for instant language translation. at the time of launch, the application could translate 27 languages instantly, only requiring the user to speak their native language and select the language into which translation is needed. ai meets public diplomacy deep-fakes are digital audio or visual content that have been purposely manipulated to falsely portray an object, environment or individual and may take the form of facial replacement, re-enactment, generation or speech synthesis (centre for data ethics and innovation, 2019). the congressional research service report (2019) states that with ai, deep-fakes are becoming increasingly realistic and are often used as a tool by rebellious individuals or groups against the u.s. and its allies to influe ce public perception, manipulate diplomats and destroy public trust. although the u.s. department of defense has made continuous efforts in creating new and up-to-date technologies to combat deep-fakes, deep-fake technology has special focus 35 become increasingly advanced, often outsmarting forensic tools. venkataramakrishnan (2019) recalls the concerns expressed by mutale nkonde of harvard university, stating that iran may utilise deep-fakes as a tool against the u.s. whilst algorithmic advances are continuously occurring, it makes it increasingly difficu t to distinguish deep-fakes f rom true and valid information. stanton (2019) too expresses the implications that deep-fakes may have on international relations, potentially damaging diplomatic relations with the possibility of inciting political violence – an already visible reality for u.s.iran relations. johnson (2019) cited deep-fakes as a major concern for the 2020 u.s. election, regarding iran as a ‘top threat’ of deep-fakes against the u.s. government, which would naturally lead to further future hostility between washington and tehran. despite those concerns, mak and temple-raston (2020) state that deep-fakes were not present in the 2020 elections due to small deceptions. however, as deep-fake technologies continue to advance, it may prove to be a threat in future elections. an example of a deep-fake is the image spread by a group named ‘iran cyber security group hackers’, which depicted trump with a bloody mouth and a bruised face, along with a message pledging the group’s support for states in the mena region. intending to illustrate the possibilities that trump would face if he did not stop targeting iran, this deep-fake was only a partial indication of iran’s ai capabilities. the deep-fake illustrates how far iran is willing to go to protect the state and the lack of concern for any potential preserved diplomatic relations between the u.s. and iran (bbc news, 2020). perhaps in response to an awareness of the opportunity ai provides to manipulate content, iran is commonly known to employ what is known as ‘digital authoritarianism’, where it censors websites and content around particular topics, as it did when it censored the u.s. virtual embassy in 2011 (shahbaz, 2018). tajdin (2019) concurs, noting that independent foreign news sources and citizens have often been censored, notably blocked f rom popular social media platforms like twitter and youtube. for u.s. public diplomacy, social media has become an increasingly crucial means of communication and it is becoming tougher for the u.s. government to directly engage with the iranian audience. this comes partly due to iran’s government building domestic internet services and strictly securing a ‘national internet’ (tajdin, 2019). ai could, however, be used to overcome some of the hurdles to public diplomacy in this bilateral relationship, with sentiment analysis in particular showing promise. understanding the public opinion of foreign audiences may assist the u.s. in nurturing more beneficial sentiments among the iranian people. thrall (2011) states that, at the time of publication, iranians’ attitudes towards the u.s. were distrustful. if the u.s. utilises sentiment analysis, it may understand a deeper reasoning as to why iranians do not trust their government and thus tailor public diplomacy to shift such sentiment. elson and nader (2011) conducted a survey via telephone with iranians in an attempt to establish iranian attitudes towards the u.s ., among other things. the survey interviewed 1,002 citizens over an 18-day period in december 2009. it was, however, restricted to only those who have landline telephones and were willing to participate. although 1,002 individuals participated, roughly nine per cent were comfortable with the survey. external parties were invited as the interviewers and underwent rigorous training. it was concluded that a vast majority of iranians, mostly women and those who were less educated, were opposed to u.s .iran diplomatic relations but men and those of a higher social status with a greater level of education were welcoming of the revived relations. while the study provided a somewhat satisfactory outcome and allowed the u.s . to better focus their public diplomacy towards particular groups to improve foreign public perception, it remained flawed. the survey was time-consuming and excluded homeless citizens, cell phone users, and a large group due to their unwillingness to participate. in addition, telephone interviews were abruptly concluded due to iranian lines being cut and the events at the time (the death of nine iranians during protest clashes with the iranian military (tait, 2009)) may have resulted in skewed results. special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 36 t h e t h i n k e r elson and nader (2011) agree that social media observations may provide more accurate results, and that sentiment analysis may be better employed here. senno (2018) elucidates two major benef its of sentiment analysis that may be relevant to governments. firstly, sentiment analysis may be a measurement of the effectiveness of a campaign by the u.s. towards iranian citizens or vice versa; secondly, it may assist in improved crisis control, by identifying negative perceptions on social media ahead of time, allowing government to respond accordingly before it escalates. while the fi dings of thrall (2011) and elson and nader (2011) highlight the attitudes of iranians during obama’s administration, which mostly refle ts a hardly successful display of public diplomacy, thrilling (2017) provides a more recent idea of iranian public perception with 72% of iranians stating that their standard of living has not improved under the nuclear deal with the u.s. and simultaneously indicating a declining support for it. knox, dekeyser and christia (2019) offer more optimistic results, highlighting that most conservative iranians yearn to have greater ties with the u.s. while fouts (2006) boasts about the expansive dataset the u.s. possesses in terms of public opinion in the middle eastern region through survey research, he emphasises that the data is not rich enough to highlight causes for particular sentiment. intent analysis may thus be a small step toward better understanding what lies behind sentiment or public opinion. as stated, virtual assistants are becoming increasingly popular and may improve communication channels between governments and citizens, creating a direct communication channel with an immediate response. according to borfitz (2019), the u.s. government illustrates a growing fondness for virtual assistants, given that they present minimal risks and low chances of failure. nlp technologies are central to the everimproving conversation between virtual assistant and human user, becoming more personalised with each improvement and as datasets grow. the u.s. has implemented virtual assistants in the u.s. citizenship and immigrations services and the u.s. general services administration. however, it comes as a surprise that as recently as august 2021, the u.s. is yet to add a chatbot to its virtual embassy website with iran, a site to maintain direct contact between iranian citizens and the u.s. government (virtual embassy, 2020). a chatbot feature would allow for an iranian citizen and a u.s. staff member to have an easier and more direct channel of communication, in which one would be f ree to ask questions and would be able to receive information that may not be f reely available on the website. the u.s. has continually kept the virtual embassy up-to-date, providing travel warnings during hostile periods. on 10 august 2021, the embassy issued a stage four warning of american citizens to avoid travel to iran following the kidnappings and arrests of u.s. citizens (virtual embassy, 2021). while trump illustrated minimal-to-no-use of ai to improve communication between the u.s. government and iranian citizens, the president has used his twitter account threatening to hack 52 iranian websites regarded as ‘important to iran and iranian culture’ if the iranian capital acted on their threats of airstrikes on the u.s. (bbc news, 2020: 4). trump’s f irm, and public, stance displays little concern for the iranian people and their culture and would thus do little to assuage public opinion in iran. instant language translation may be extremely beneficial for public diplomacy to overcome language barriers (baldwin, 2019). however, as instant language translation may be extremely beneficial for public diplomacy to overcome language barriers (baldwin, 2019). however, as useful as instant language translation may be, these may often be literal and lose the value and meaning of the intended message, thus subtracting the personal touch from diplomacy. special focus 37 useful as instant language translation may be, these may often be literal and lose the value and meaning of the intended message, thus subtracting the personal touch f rom diplomacy. trump often chose to utilise twitter as a form of public diplomacy, which is a less personal alternative, albeit quick and far-reaching. two months into president joe biden’s administration, the newly elected president illustrated no rush in going back to the nuclear deal with iran. in addition, the new administration continued to utilise social media to extend their public diplomacy, tweeting that ‘iran is moving in the wrong direction’ and reverting back to a state of compliance (rad and mortazavi, 2021: 4). the virtual embassy website of the u.s. in iran offers a ‘translation’ option where it speedily translates the entire website to persian, the official language of iran (virtual embassy, 2020). whilst it may seem like a minimal feature, it illustrates the willingness of the u.s. to have a direct and understanding relationship with iranian citizens. on 17 november 2021, the u.s and u.k. accused iran of ongoing government-sponsored ransomware attacks beginning march 2021, targeting critical u.s inf rastructure such as transportation, healthcare and public health sectors (murphy and manson, 2021). the joint statement released by the cybersecurity and inf rastructure security network (cisa, 2021) details the activities and list of malicious tools including filezilla for file transferrals and mimikatz for credential theft. the report and expansive list of activities illustrate the sophistication of the iranian government and its people, further making a bold statement about how far it is willing to go to infli t damage on u.s inf rastructure and further taint the diplomatic relations between the two states. looking forward over time, as ai evolves and its complexity is learned in multiple fields, it may be adapted in different forms within diplomacy. it is imperative to note that ai is considered a moving target as it continuously adapts, develops, and quickly evolves. furthermore, it may be considered as an umbrella term for a pool of other technologies which also continue to develop over time. moreover, this expansive set of technologies may be applied differently depending on the context and the user’s intention. therefore, the inclusion of ai into public diplomacy may yield both positive and negative implications. states have begun integrating ai into foreign policy and international relations, utilising autonomous weapon systems, for international security and military power. as governments acknowledge the power that ai possesses and states attempt to lead in their ai capabilities, russia has expressed that, one day, ai will rule the world (amaresh, 2020). china, on the other hand, has applied the advanced technology to decision-making processes within foreign policy, illustrated by china’s application of ai to the decision-making process of the country’s belt and road initiative strategy. choi (2019) highlights that a plethora of possibilities lay ahead as ai and diplomacy continue to intersect, citing the possible prediction of future international events, impacting geopolitics, and monitoring warfare and hostile environments. the u.s. and iran have often illustrated their expansive ai capabilities and intelligence but have not yet come to implement it for the betterment of communication for public diplomacy purposes. notable trends between u.s. and iran public diplomacy include the use of deep-fakes; the u.s. virtual embassy to iran; censorship; and heavy reliance on social media. deep-fakes have had indefini e implications for public diplomacy between the u.s. and iran, demonstrating that it has the power to create a tense international environment and further becoming increasingly laborious to detect. over the last decade, the u.s. has continuously relied on its virtual embassy as its primary tool for public diplomacy with iranians. whilst its success cannot be measured, the iranian government has been quick to block the site in times of anger or dispute. while the website offers language translation and is often up to date, it lacks a chatbot feature that can further bridge the gap between the u.s. government and iranian citizens. iran’s continuous censorship of western media is harmful to u.s. public diplomacy and with advanced ai capabilities, it is an easy alternative for a displeased iranian government. lastly, social media, and more specifically twitter, has found a home in u.s. /iran special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 38 t h e t h i n k e r public diplomacy. it is now commonly used by governments to understand the general attitude of a foreign audience, using sentiment analysis, and may tailor its public diplomacy accordingly. moreover, president trump often turned to twitter to share his opinion and the stance of the u.s. and optimistically, it aids leaders in having real-time communication to solve confli t and ease tensions, an act that may comfort and reassure foreign audiences in times of hostile bilateral relations. neither iran nor the u.s. lack ai technologies or cyber capabilities and in fact pride themselves in being the f ront runners of ai advances in their respective regions and globally. however, perhaps the longstanding disdain between the u.s. and iran illustrates little efforts of public diplomacy in recent years, apart f rom a desire to win over the hearts of each state’s foreign audience. whilst the obama administration poured a significant effort into public diplomacy with iran, keeping it as up-to-date as possible, the trump administration demonstrated little willingness to do the same, perhaps even tarnishing the previous administration’s efforts. u.s. president joe biden, inaugurated in january 2021, has explicitly expressed his willingness to get the nuclear deal with iran back on track (rafati, 2021). the joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa) swindled during the trump administration as the u.s. imposed strict sanctions on iran, but biden has opted for the diplomatic route. future study may be built on f rom here, with the possibility of seeing a greater integration of ai into the communicational aspect of public diplomacy. it illustrates that it has the likelihood to improve communication in public diplomacy, irrespective of minimal ai-related concerns. notes [1] automated news generated by algorithmic processing f rom large datasets, that may be untrue and result in the spread of disinformation (knight, 2019). 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[online] available at: https://www. researchgate.net/publication/291179558_natural_language_processing https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7_158 virtual embassy. (2020). ‘why virtual embassy tehran?’ virtual embassy [online]. available at: https://ir.usembassy.gov/tehran/ williams, r. (2021). the implications of the fourth industrial revolution on diplomacy (masters dissertation). johannesburg: university of johannesburg. proquest dissertations & theses database [online] available at: https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/ vital/%20access/manager/repository?view=list&f0=sm_identi� er%3a%22http%3a%2f%2fhdl.handle.net%2f10210%2f477811%22 &sort=null wisskerchen, g., biacabe, bt., bormann, u., muntz, a., niehaus, g., soler, g.j., and von brauhitsh, b. (2017). artificial in elligence and their impact on the workplace. international bar association (iba) global employment institute. world public opinion organization (wpoo). (2007). ‘public opinion in iran and america on key international issues.’ principal investigator steven kull. world public opinion [online]. available at: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/jan07/iran_ jan07_ rpt.pdf yeung, j., alfonso, f., kottasova, i., and vera, a. (2020). ‘crowds swarm tehran to mourn slain iran military leader soleimani.’ cnn world [online]. available at: https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/ live-news/us-iran-soleimani-tensions-live-intl-01-05-20/index.html. special focus 75v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction when south af rica is covered in the swedish media, the focus is often on the history of south af rica, the role of sweden in the anti-apartheid movement and, in more recent years, the political and socio-economic landscape of postapartheid south af rica, marked by increased wealth gaps, social unrest, and corruption. how south af rica is covered by foreign media is important and politicians, as well as businesses and organisations such as investment south af rica, brand south af rica, and south af rican tourism, keep a keen eye on the media as a gauge for maintaining diplomatic relations, as well as for attracting foreign investment. as a former journalist who has covered south af rica for scandinavian media, i have had ample opportunity to ponder and research the media coverage of south af rica and the af rican continent in the swedish media, as well as scandinavian and wider international media. drawing upon my own experience, as well as an analysis of coverage of south af rica in the swedish news media, i ask what the image of south af rica is in the swedish media, how this has changed over the last 30 years and, importantly, what this might mean for south af rican-swedish relations? by ylva rodny-gumede hope springs eternal: the image of south africa in swedish media opinion 76 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 on an overall level, coverage of south af rica in western media has a significant impact on politics, foreign policy, diplomatic relations, and the country’s image of itself. positive coverage can help to improve the country’s image and reputation, while negative coverage can harm it. for example, coverage of south af rica’s political and economic progress can help to attract foreign investment and promote positive diplomatic relations. conversely, social unrest, coverage of crime, corruption, and other negative issues can harm the country’s image and discourage investment and tourism. in my current position as head of the international office at the university of johannesburg, i have first-hand experience of how negative media coverage of south af rica in international media impacts social structures and organisations in south af rica. the coverage of xenophobia, for example, hampers our quest to attract international students to south af rica. in particular, students and their parents often ask about the xenophobic violence that surfaced in 2008, widely covered in the international media, and the risk of further xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in south af rica. on the upshot, in relation to scandinavian and swedish media, south af rica is covered much more than any other af rican country. this is part explained by south af rica being seen as the powerhouse of the af rican continent, even though not without rivals. swedish media have also traditionally stationed their correspondents in south af rica – a practice which continues today. in addition, and importantly, the links between sweden and south af rica have always been very strong and historically this is grounded in the role that sweden played in the anti-apartheid movement. in general, the image of south af rica in swedish media can be seen as relatively positive and influenced by the role of sweden in the struggle against apartheid and the fact that many south af ricans, including high-profile political leaders such as oliver tambo, spent time in sweden. this is also reflected in what journalists themselves say about the way in which south af rica is covered. in 2014, i interviewed foreign correspondents for an article on awareness among foreign correspondents of alternative narratives and news f rames, as well as attitudes towards alternative practices and models for journalism in relation to the way in which south af rica and the af rican continent is covered. although these interviews were conducted almost ten years ago, the two swedish journalists interviewed had many interesting things to say about their relationships to the foreign desk, their editors, and their audience – comments which still resonate today. the then-correspondent for the swedish public broadcaster, sveriges television (svt), poignantly pointed out that: sweden by virtue of being a smaller country with a well-defined and quite homogenous audience, actually has more space for more nuanced stories and analysis. there is also a real focus on positive news f rom the continent in terms of development in various areas. (svt respondent, interview with author, 17 august 2014) this also related to a sense of ‘convention’ and how swedish news editors and audiences relate to coverage. the then-correspondent for sweden’s largest national newspaper stated that: [e]ditors back home and audiences i suppose like an intermediary, someone who speaks the same language and shares the same conventions for reporting. (dagens nyheter respondent, interview with author, 26 august 2014) this builds on the fact that the post-apartheid era is often highlighted as a period of progress and change in terms of political, economic, and social development. the role of nelson mandela and the af rican national congress (anc) in the fight against apartheid and the subsequent formation of a democratic society has also been f requently highlighted in the media. however, the media also covers other aspects of the country, and in later years, issues of increasing wealth gaps, raising poverty, gender-based violence, crime, and corruption are highlighted. the country’s high levels of income inequality and poverty, as well as its high crime rates, are often reported on, particularly in relation to their impact on the country’s development and political stability. corruption is also a topic of coverage in the swedish media, particularly in relation to government officials and business leaders. and, while in the immediate aftermath of the first democratic elections in 1994, media coverage was heavily centred on the peaceful political transition and the role of nelson mandela as the man who ‘ended’ apartheid and united south af rica, in recent opinion 77v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 years coverage has tended towards narratives centred on corruption and a failed post-apartheid state and an incompetent post-apartheid government. the aim of this article is to give insight into south af rica-sweden relations by looking at how south af rica is depicted in the swedish news media, and as this is, strictly speaking, not an academic article, also to provide some of my own impressions of how the news media has covered south af rica post-apartheid. this will inevitably include my own work as a foreign correspondent and a ‘running commentary’ on the media politics matrix that i have been part of for the last 25 years. the role of sweden in the anti-apartheid movement sweden played an important role in the antiapartheid movement, which aimed to end the system of racial segregation and discrimination in south af rica. the swedish anti-apartheid movement and the relationship between south af rica and sweden are often emphasised as fundamental to continuous diplomatic relations. sweden was one of the first countries to impose economic sanctions on south af rica in the 1960s, in response to the country’s policies of racial segregation and discrimination. these sanctions included a ban on arms sales, as well as restrictions on trade and investment. in addition to economic sanctions, sweden also supported the anti-apartheid movement through diplomatic means. the swedish government was a vocal critic of apartheid, and actively lobbied other countries to impose sanctions on south af rica. swedish prime minister olof palme, who was assassinated in 1986, was a particularly outspoken critic of apartheid and a strong advocate for sanctions against south af rica, something that was highlighted in the media as well and centred in theories around the murder of olof palme as a potential motive. sweden also provided support to anti-apartheid organisations and activists, both financially and through the provision of political asylum to those fleeing the regime. many anti-apartheid activists, including nelson mandela, were given political asylum in sweden. sweden also supported the cultural boycott of south af rica, which aimed to isolate the country culturally and to deny its artists and athletes the international recognition they craved. furthermore, the swedish government supported the united nations general assembly resolution 3151 (xxviii) which declared the policy of apartheid as a crime against humanity and that all states should ref rain f rom providing any form of support to the south af rican government. apart f rom state support f rom the swedish government, the af rica groups of sweden, also sometimes referred to as the isolate south af rica committee, formed in the mid 1970s, were particularly active in supporting the liberation movement and the struggle against apartheid. by the early 1990s the ‘af rica groups’ had about 1,500 members in sweden (af rican activist archive, n.d.). such a membership, taken together with a widespread support for the government policy of sanctions against the apartheid regime and the continued support for many of the core ideals of social democracy in south af rica, has contributed and continues to contribute to the support for the postapartheid democracy project in south af rica and, by extension, continues to influence media coverage. coming to south africa and the role of a foreign correspondent as stated above, this is not an academic research article; instead, it is a reflection that draws upon research as well as my own lived experience of covering south af rica. that said, i have also drawn on the swedish anti-apartheid movement and the relationship between south africa and sweden are often emphasised as fundamental to continuous diplomatic relations. sweden was one of the first countries to impose economic sanctions on south africa in the 1960s, in response to the country’s policies of racial segregation and discrimination. opinion 78 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 academic research, my own and others, and also conducted a desk top analysis of media coverage of south af rica in swedish media over the last 20 years. in doing this i have looked at the online archives of the main news media outlets in sweden, filtering my searches through a few keywords related to stories that have made headlines not only in scandinavia but globally, such as the release of nelson mandela f rom prison, the first south af rican democratic elections in 1994, the arms deal saga, and the many corruption stories surrounding former south af rican president jacob zuma. but there are many other stories that have attracted attention as well and the south af rican story is both well-covered and nuanced as reflected through the swedish media. i first came to south af rica in the late 1990s after falling in love with a south af rican journalist. at the time, i had been working on the balkans as a foreign correspondent and was enrolled in an ma degree in journalism at the university of utrecht in the netherlands. my first years in south af rica were exhilarating and there were quite a few swedish and scandinavian journalists stationed in south af rica at the time, mainly in johannesburg and cape town. in other words, there was healthy competition and this generated interest in the swedish media for stories on south af rica. however, as the years have gone by, the interest for south af rica waned and the demand for stories f rom south af rica dwindled f rom swedish as well as scandinavian media more generally. this coincided with me falling pregnant with my first son and, as i also covered stories f rom the rest of the continent and southern af rica in particular, i quickly realised that travelling was becoming more and more cumbersome. so, after a brief stint in the ngo sector, working for the u.s. national democratic institute (ndi) and the south af rican freedom of expression institute (fxi) amongst others, i completed a second ma degree in political science at the university of the witwatersrand and got my first university teaching job in the communications department at the university of south af rica (unisa). this was followed by a few years in london where i completed a phd at the school of oriental and af rican studies at london university before finally returning to south af rica in 2009 and taking up a position in the school of communication at the university of johannesburg (uj). during my years as a foreign correspondent, i always had a sense that foreign journalists stationed in south af rica had a genuine interest in the country and truly wished to see it succeed, as one of the last countries to gain independence on the continent. i had a sense that journalists, swedish and others, tried to report on stories that transcended the politics of apartheid and instead embraced a new democratic south af rica, full of hope and energy. of course, on the other hand, much critique has been levelled against coverage of the af rican continent, south af rica included, and the south af rican anc-led government has at times lashed out at the news media, local as well as foreign, accusing them of political bias and racism in their coverage. the news media f raternity, on the other hand, have often labelled this coverage as fair and as a true reflection of the current state of society and political affairs (rodny-gumede, 2015). studies have established that there is an overwhelming emphasis on war and conflict in the news media (bratic and schirch, 2007; carruthers, 2011; galtung and ruge, 1965; lynch and galtung, 2010; rodny-gumede, 2012, 2015) and critique has been levelled against the news media and foreign correspondents, postulating that the news media thrives on a logic that seeks out sensational stories, in particular those that emphasise conflict and ‘bad news’ (carruthers, 2011: 5). this is, however, somewhat mitigated by my own academic research conducted on foreign coverage and the work of foreign correspondents that shows that, in general, foreign correspondents covering and working on the af rican continent express a wish to report on other issues than politics, war, crime, illness and disease (rodny-gumede, 2016). rather than over-emphasise conflict, foreign correspondents understand their role as to report on what is seen and experienced, while staying clear of stereotyped and sensationalist coverage (ibid: 90). in my own writings and coverage of south af rica, i have had the great advantage of living in south af rica for the last 25 years and of being married to a south af rican author and journalist. this has given me unique access to a broad swathe of debates and sources over a long period of time, as opposed to coverage sourced either f rom swedish correspondents who are opinion 79v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 temporarily deployed and/or f rom international news agencies. when i first came to south af rica in the late 1990s, the south af rican story was as previously stated still full of hope and energy. i arrived in an era where i thought global leadership was forever going to be shaped by the polo-necked trio of thabo mbeki, tony blair, and koffi annan. but, of course, there was also the arms deal corruption story making headlines and allegations of corruptions and rumours of ‘deal sweeteners’ were circulating around the sale of the swedish saab gripen fighter jets to south af rica in 1999. of course, the arms deal and the corruption allegations surrounding it later resulted in the seriti commission of inquiry (2011–2016) which attracted considerable coverage f rom swedish and other foreign media. the biggest news story to have come out of south af rica in the last 30 years is of course the unbanning of the anc, the release of nelson mandela, and subsequently the first democratic elections in 1994. as this all happened before i came to south af rica, i missed out on these stories. i did, however, cover the death of former president nelson mandela. i also covered a story that backdates to the 1980s, namely that of the murder of swedish prime minister olof palme, a social democrat who embodied sweden’s anti-apartheid stance and the potential of south af rican involvement. this is a story that resonates hugely with swedish audiences as the murder remains unresolved; it is, in many ways, a swedish jfk story. for me, this was my first story for south af rica’s mail & guardian, and the story ran simultaneously in aftonbladet in sweden. it was also my first investigative news story. as stated earlier, south af rica has always gotten proportionally more coverage in the swedish news media than other af rican countries, and the coverage over the last 30 years has been fairly diverse. this said, there are a few stories that have dominated. the media image of south africa in sweden with the caveat that this is in no ways an academic article, the following is based on a very limited desktop analysis scanning the online archives of four major swedish newspapers: the liberal left-of-centre dagens nyheter (dn); the more conservative newspaper svenska dagbladet (svd); two tabloids, aftonbladet, with a social democratic political leaning; and the independent liberal expressen. in addition, the online archives of the swedish public broadcaster (svt) and commercial channel 4’s coverage of south af rica, filtered by using just the key word ‘south af rica’ in the years 1990–2020, generated over 40,000 news stories. these searches were followed up and additional keywords added to the search as patterns and/or themes of stories making the headlines emerged. in the main, though, these are my reflections, and mine alone. here it is important to note that while the south af rican news media are thought of as independent and f ree of any political leanings, the swedish news media have always been stratified along political lines, with news media outlets openly declaring their political leanings and stance. the editorial pages of the swedish newspapers directly reflect this. overall, the image of south af rica in swedish media is f ramed within a context of the history of south af rica and historical relations. the coverage has changed substantially over the years f rom the heady days of the 1990s, the first democratic elections, and the promise of a new and prosperous democratic south af rica, towards the increasing and ongoing challenges of growing poverty, inequality, and corruption. in later years, stories have also focused on issues related to land reform, the hiv/aids pandemic, race relations, and racism. there is still a strong focus on bilateral relations, highlighting historical and cultural ties, cooperation in different areas such as trade, investment, and development, and the potential for increased cooperation in areas such as renewable energy and sustainable development. to a lesser extent, the swedish media covers culture (including literature, art, and music), tourism, and wildlife. a prominent story in the last 15 years is the story of wildlife conservation and the threat posed by poaching, with a clear focus on the plight of rhinos and their diminishing numbers. most of these stories have a positive angle in the sense that they are focused on projects of conservation and the efforts put in place in the fight against poaching and the trade in rhino horns. what follows is an outline of some of the most notable stories over the last 30 years. by far the most prominent story is nelson mandela’s release f rom prison in 1990 and the subsequent end of apartheid. opinion 80 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 this was a major story covered by most foreign media representing a major turning point in south af rica’s history. the late nelson mandela, of course, has also become an international icon and symbol of hope, equality and justice, all aspect reflected in the coverage. there have also been some interesting shifts in this story f rom a focus on the armed struggle, support for, and/or condemnation of the swedish support to the af rican national congress (anc) and the armed struggle, to the focus on mandela the global icon of peace and reconciliation. out of the 40,000 stories, the search for ‘south af rica’ with the added keyword of ‘nelson mandela’ generated over 15,000 stories. in 2013, when nelson mandela passed away, he was the sixth most-searched-for ‘topic’ on google in sweden. this is an indication of nelson mandela’s status as a south af rican icon, and there is a sense that the man is, in some ways, more known than the country itself. this also come through in coverage where stories of south af rica often include a reference to nelson mandela. in terms of coverage of south af rican politicians, the coverage of the rise and fall of jacob zuma (president of south af rica f rom 2009 to 2018) has been less than positive. zuma’s tenure was marked by several controversies, including corruption scandals and economic mismanagement. his rise and fall as president were widely covered by foreign media, and his presidency had a significant impact on south af rica’s reputation and international relations. the swedish media has in the main focused on the corruption charges and supposed lack of accountability and failure to prosecute. equalling the coverage of corruption in the case of jacob zuma is the coverage of the zuma rape trial in 2006 in which he was later acquitted. some of these stories have also focused on clampdowns on media f reedom and jacob zuma’s criticism of the news media in the wake of the rape allegation as well as of corruption. the issue of land reform, and in particular the expropriation of land without compensation, has been a major topic of discussion in south af rica in recent years and has been widely covered by foreign media, including the swedish media. it is a topic that comes up particularly in relation to zimbabwe and analogies are often made of south af rica as ‘going the same way as zimbabwe’, with farm invasions and forced land appropriation without compensation to famers and landowners. however, history plays a big role here and while land reform in the british media for example is enmeshed in the colonial project of britain, in the swedish media coverage has instead tended to explanations citing historical injustices and economic exclusion based on race as the basis for the calls for land reforms. when analogies between south af rica and zimbabwe were made in swedish media, arguing that white farmers were being targeted in south af rica, the swedish public broadcaster’s af rica and south af rica correspondent johan ripas quickly refuted this, stating that instead we should be concerned by the treatment of unregulated, lowsalaried black farm workers (global portalen, 2018). issues related to economic reform and the inequities of the past also surfaced in the coverage of the marikana massacre. the marikana massacre, i.e. the shooting and killing of 34 miners (with a subsequent death toll of approximately 44 people and many more injured) at the lonmin mining company’s marikana mine in south af rica on august 16 2012 has gone down in history as the worst act of violence displayed by the south af rican police force (saps) in the post-apartheid era. the marikana massacre is seen as a major setback for south af rica’s image as a democratic and human rights-respecting nation. while the marikana massacre, when covered in south af rican media, generated different narratives around what actually happened on the day, why it happened, and who was to blame, particularly in the first week out of the 40,000 stories, the search for ‘south africa’ with the added keyword of ‘nelson mandela’ generated over 15,000 stories. in 2013, when nelson mandela passed away, he was the sixth most-searched-for ‘topic’ on google in sweden. this is an indication of nelson mandela’s status as a south african icon, and there is a sense that the man is, in some ways, more known than the countr y itself. opinion 81v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 following the massacre (rodny-gumede, 2015b), swedish media was very quick to label what happened a ‘massacre’ and did not shy away f rom highlighting the shootings by the police and putting the blame on structural injustices in the mining industry. another story that has made headlines in later years is the rise in xenophobia. in 2008 and 2015 there were widespread xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals living in south af rica. this was covered widely by foreign media and was seen as a major setback for south af rica’s image as a welcoming and inclusive nation. as with many other stories, headlines are made but then the story dies down. however, the idea of south af rica having gone f rom being the beacon of hope and the champion for racial integration and a global leader in promoting non-racialism has been severely dented. the explanations offered for the rise in xenophobia are in the main financial instability and increased poverty gaps, and several stories have been filed f rom 2008–2019 on the topic. in the lead up to the soccer world cup hosted in south af rica in 2010, these stories reflected a changing attitude towards south af rica and a post-apartheid democracy project in jeopardy. more recently, and as to be expected, coverage of south af rica decreased during the covid-19 pandemic and in particular during the many months of hard lockdown that the country experienced. however, when south af rican scientists first revealed the discovery of the new omicron variant this made headlines around the world and many countries, including britain and the u.s., banned travellers f rom southern af rica. when the south af rican government protested citing discrimination and racism, this was not immediately covered by the foreign media. the swedish media coverage, however, quickly picked up on the story. the travel bans and their consequences were covered with an emphasis on the unfairness and inequality of the restrictions imposed, as well as fears of future reluctance to report on new variants for fear of similar reactions. what does this mean for relations between south africa and sweden? globally, mandela has achieved a saint-like status, and it is important to note that, in the fight against apartheid, deliberate choices were made by the anc in exile to build up the name and myth of nelson mandela, the individual. these efforts, together with subsequent work to build mandela up as an icon, around whom the post-apartheid nation of south af rica could rally, ensure that what people say of mandela is difficult to separate f rom the myths about him (chasi and rodny-gumede, 2017: 345). the idea of pushing for favourable coverage is of course part of nation branding as well and the mandela brand is still closely linked to the south af rican nation brand. in addition, the lines are increasingly being blurred between journalism and public relations (koch, viererbl and schulz-knappe, 2021). to counter bad publicity and to promote a positive image of south af rica in the international media, organisations such as brand south af rica, south af rican tourism, and investment south af rica push for more favourable coverage. media coverage have a significant impact on the country’s politics, foreign policy, diplomatic relations, and importantly self-image. i came to south af rica during a time when there was still a strong sense of optimism among south af ricans about the country’s trajectory. equally, there was a strong interest in the swedish media for the south af rican story, a positive story in the main. sadly, this has changed. the south af rican story today is one marked by the country’s ascendance to topping the list of the highest gap between rich and poor in the world, lack of faith in governance, and the multiplying impact of global environmental and energy challenges, among many other challenges. this is impacting the global image of south af rica negatively. there is therefore an increasing pressure for south af rican institutions to find positive stories to promote in and through the international media, while at the same time these stories are becoming increasingly difficult to find. pressures are also put on foreign journalists who, at times, have been heavily criticised by officials within the south af rican government and other public figures in south af rica for reinforcing a negative image of south af rica abroad. while studies have shown that news media and foreign coverage in particular often put the emphasis on conflict and sensationalism and that bad news ‘sells’ newspapers, being a journalist is not pushing the good story, and for foreign correspondents, the role of journalism is simply to try to convey and interpret a different national reality and context to audiences back home (see rodnygumede, 2016). one explanation for a more balanced opinion 82 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 and less sensationalist coverage of south af rica in the swedish news media might also be attributed to the fact that there are so few swedish correspondents permanently posted in south af rica and/or southern af rica, which means less competition. this said, questions have been raised around the media image of south af rica in swedish media. south af rica was the theme for the annual swedish book fair in gothenburg in 2020 and petterson (2020) writes that the book fair left her with an overwhelming sense that swedish coverage of south af rica needs to become more nuanced and reflect the challenges facing the country better. she says that we need to move away f rom casing issues in nostalgia and what she calls ‘the special bond’ between the two countries and argues that the image of south af rica in swedish media is stuck in a sentimentality that contributes to a smug and rancid nostalgia. solidarity is important, but in celebrating what has been, it should also be possible to openly assess what has gone wrong postapartheid, she says (petterson, 2020). not working as a journalist anymore, and through being a media academic, i am privileged in the sense that i can take a step back and reflect on the state of journalism and the coverage of both south af rica and sweden in both countries, without having to make any editorial choices about what to write about or how to cover often very complex issues. this is a privilege, as it would pain me to have to write the contemporary south af rica story, yet swedish-south af rican relations are still steeped in a relationship in which hope springs 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(n.d.) ‘africa groups of sweden.’ african activist archive [online]. available at: africanactivist.msu.edu/organization/210-813-36/ chasi, c. and rodny-gumede, y. (2017). ‘of despots and saints: towards a nuanced understanding of african leadership through the analysis of eulogies of mandela.’ in: nelson rolihlahla mandela: decolonial ethics of liberation and servant leadership, edited by sabelo j. ndlovu-gatsheni and busani ngcaweni. new york: africa world press. global portalen. (2018). ‘ensidig medierapportering om sydafrika.’ global portalen [online]. available at: globalportalen.org/artiklar/ensidig-medierapportering-om-sydafrika koch, t., viererbl, b., and schulz-knappe, c. (2021). ‘how much journalism is in brand journalism? how brand journalists perceive their roles and blur the boundaries between journalism and strategic communication.’ journalism, 24(4): 749–766. doi.org/10.1177/14648849211029802 petterson, s. (2020). ‘debatt: dags att göra upp med bilden av sydafrika.’ globalbar magazine [online]. available at: globalbar.se/2020/10/debatt-dags-att-gora-upp-med-bilden-av-sydafrika/ rodny-gumede, y. (2015a). ‘an assessment of the public interest and ideas of the public in south africa and the adoption of ubuntu journalism.’ journal of media ethics: exploring questions of media morality, 30(2): 109–124. rodny-gumede, y. (2015b). ‘coverage of marikana: war and conflict and the case for peace journalism.’ social dynamics, 41(2): 359–374. rodny-gumede, y. (2016). ‘awareness towards peace journalism among foreign correspondents in africa.’ media and communication, 4(1): 80–93. opinion https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization/210-813-36/ https://globalportalen.org/artiklar/ensidig-medierapportering-om-sydafrika https://globalportalen.org/artiklar/ensidig-medierapportering-om-sydafrika https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211029802 https://globalbar.se/2020/10/debatt-dags-att-gora-upp-med-bilden-av-sydafrika/ t h e t h i n k e r40 sub-saharan af rica bears the highest disease burden in human and economic costs, but commands less than one percent of global health expenditure (aikins et al., 2010). strong health systems are fundamental to maintaining good health. difficult geography, a severe shortage of trained medical personnel, poor inf rastructure, a lack of critical care equipment and accompanying technical skills make it difficult to deliver the healthcare services people in af rica need to achieve good health. these weaknesses in the healthcare system have been compounded by the covid-19 pandemic. equitable and efficient healthcare provision requires properly balanced and managed resource inputs. there is a strong argument to be made for circular business models to optimise healthcare technology management strategies, to eliminate medical e-waste, and to establish a new, open niche market in af rica. healthcare technologies (physical resources such as fixed assets, equipment, consumables and personal protective equipment (ppe)) form the basis for the provision of all health interventions. the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (sars-cov-2) pandemic has overwhelmed some of the best healthcare systems in the world. while the global community races to slow down the spread of covid-19, shortages of critical healthcare technologies have grabbed the headlines and are a sore point for world leaders © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m by katharina gihring and nickey janse van rensburg covid-19 reviving decommissioned ventilators how a circular economy approach can assist in tackling the south african shortage of ventilators during covid-19 41v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 to answer to. similarly, in af rica, the virus has spread to dozens of countries within weeks, with governments and health authorities across the continent struggling to limit widespread infections to protect the region’s already f ragile healthcare systems. south af rica’s swift response has bought some time to prepare for peak infection and has been applauded by health authorities globally. patients who develop respiratory illness due to sars-cov-2 may need mechanical ventilation. as the world battles covid-19, most countries are facing a shortage of life-saving ventilators, crucial in assisting the most critically ill patients with breathing. in south af rica, 3% of active cases need intensive care (gerber, 2020), which is lower than the global average of 5% (who, 2020). the need for intensive care varies per country: while china reported 6.1% of all positive confirmed cases as critical, italy reported 12% of cases in need of intensive care (phua et al., 2020), buckling the healthcare system. the variation is caused by factors such as demographics, icu admission criteria and management, and number of tests conducted (cook et al., 2020). healthcare workers are faced with the challenge of an insufficient supply of ventilators and ppe while caring for the large influx of covid-19 patients (ranney et al., 2020). while wealthier countries can afford to considerably increase their intensive care beds – as done in germany (oecd, 2020) – or massproduce the required ventilators, af rican countries are faced with severe challenges to combat the spread of the virus without these resources (baker, 2020). the response to covid-19 – globally and in south af rica – has been to ‘flatten the curve’. the goal is to not overwhelm the healthcare system to avoid unnecessary death. in south af rica there are an estimated 7,195 critical care beds available in private and public hospitals (van den heever, 2020). equitable and efficient healthcare provision during this pandemic boils down to the availability of healthcare technologies to treat critical care patients and ppe for healthcare workers, both of which are currently not in place in south af rica (schütz, 2020). a combined 3,216 ventilators f rom the public and private sectors are available, which is half the estimated amount needed at peak infection, expected between july and september this year in south af rica (du toit & kowan, 2020). a national emergency ventilator project has been formed – led by the south af rican radio astronomy observatory (sarao) – to assist in managing the development, production and procurement of ventilators (sarao, 2020). the design and business model of this initiative will play a crucial part in how products are used, maintained, reused, refurbished, and recycled in the future. therefore, ways and tools to implement eco-design with end of life in mind are needed to ensure the transition to a circular economy and to establish a niche market in af rica. in all likelihood, the covid-19 pandemic will not be the last of its kind. policy interventions and future healthcare technology management strategies should never fall short again. a multidisciplinary, circular approach is needed to support the critical care technology development that is central to responding to the covid-19 crisis. responding to initial reports that between 40–70% of south af ricans could get infected with covid-19, depending on the national response to the crisis, the uj-process energy and environmental technology station (uj-peets) is coordinating efforts to further develop open-source ventilators, to make rapid prototyping facilities available to enable ppe and component manufacturing, and to support repair and maintenance efforts to bring out-of-warranty equipment into service. this is in line with the mandate to support small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) within the green and circular economy, which is proposed as a new business case for healthcare technologies that are in critical shortage on the continent. eliminating medical e-waste through a circular approach a circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design (korhonen et al., 2018). it is a new economic in all likelihood, the covid-19 pandemic will not be the last of its kind. policy interventions and future healthcare technology management strategies should never fall short again. a multidisciplinary, circular approach is needed to support the critical care technology development that is central to responding to the covid-19 crisis. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r42 paradigm which replaces the current linear economy, defined by take, make and dispose, resulting in globally interlinked environmental problems. it replaces the end-of-life concept with restoration, shifts towards the use of renewable energy, eliminates the use of toxic chemicals (which impair reuse and return to the biosphere), and aims for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, systems and business models (pace & wef, 2019; d’amato et al., 2017). a circular economy is based on many different schools of thought (e.g. industrial ecology, cradle to cradle, blue economy), which look at resource usage through different lenses (andersen, 2007; braungart et al., 2007). a circular approach aims to keep products, materials and resources at their highest value for the longest duration, to eliminate waste (by, for instance, feeding products and resources back into the system), to redefine services, and to rely on renewable energy sources (ellen macarthur foundation, 2013). this is proposed as a new paradigm to inform healthcare technology management strategies in af rica and the rest of the world. waste electrical and electronic equipment (weee), or e-waste, is the fastest-growing domestic waste stream in the world, estimated at 44.7 mt in 2016 and anticipated to tip the scales at 52.2 mt in 2021 (baldé et al., 2017). insufficient inf rastructure and waste management, as well as no legislative enforcement, lead to human health risks, environmental degradation, and the leakage of toxic and harmful substances into the environment. on the other hand, e-waste contains many valuable resources and can contribute to new decent and green jobs, unlocking an opportunity worth of over us $55 billion per year (pace & wef, 2019). within the paradigm of the circular economy and the waste hierarchy of integrated waste management, recycling is one of the last options, due to the down-cycling of valuable raw materials (pires et al., 2019). in descending order of preferability, the top method is pollution prevention, followed by re-use, recycling, treatment and disposal, while a circular approach adds the refurbishment and remanufacturing step before recycling. healthcare technology management has become an increasingly visible policy issue. the growing medical sector contributes to increased e-waste globally (who, 2019), while low to middleincome countries face the challenge of acquiring medical devices, which is currently illustrated by the desperately low number of ventilators across the af rican continent (maclean & marks, 2020). the good news is that decommissioned ventilators can be refurbished and reused. the refurbishment of medical devices can be defined as a process to prolong the lifetime of devices which have nearly reached their end-of-life stage (kane et al., 2018; thierry et al., 1995). importantly for medical technologies, refurbished devices need to be licenced to safely and effectively operate after refurbishment. compliance, data and future strategies ventilators fall under class c (moderate to high risk) of medical devices (act no. 101 of 1965, department of health; sahpra, 2019), which means that more steps, such as decontamination, cleaning, and testing (who, 2019), are involved to reinstate the medical device to its old functionality. in order to refurbish a medical device, a manufacturing licence f rom the south af rican health products regulatory authority (sahpra), which falls under the department of health, needs to be obtained (the medicines and related substances amendment act 14 of 2015, republic of south af rica; saidi & douglas, 2018). all the refurbishment steps taken need to also comply with the manufacturer specification for the model. south af rica imports 90% of its medical devices (deloitte & dti, 2014), which makes it dependant on other countries’ industries. to establish a circular economy, the business model for medical healthcare equipment must change and a compliant refurbishment network is needed. such a network would not only have the advantage of prolonging the life of decommissioned medical equipment, but would also contribute a circular economy is based on many different schools of thought (e.g. industrial ecology, cradle to cradle, blue economy), which look at resource usage through different lenses to redefine services, and to rely on renewable energy sources. this is proposed as a new paradigm to inform healthcare technology management strategies in africa and the rest of the world. covid-19 4 3v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 to safeguarding enough ventilators. adding maintenance-related skills for refurbishment and repair within circular economy business models increases south af rica’s professional technical service sector expertise. it also helps to close material loops by retaining functionality of critical medical technologies. at the same time, most current circular economy concepts concentrate on the products’ end-of-life stage. data on the number of decommissioned ventilators, let alone on their location, is not readily available at a national level. through a circular approach, a product is traceable through its entire life cycle, improving maintenance management and the eventual safe disposal of e-waste (see figure 1). in order to refurbish medical equipment, the first step will be to identify decommissioned ventilators. secondly, a refurbishment network needs to be created which allows for the technical feasibility and procurement of the right skillsets, such as medical engineers and technicians. it is critical that this network is established under the current national emergency ventilator project, and that principles of circularity are incorporated in future product design. after refurbishment has taken place, equipment will need to be distributed. if circular business models are designed and informed by local policy, the decommissioning of medical e-waste can support a sustainable healthcare system in af rica. the proposed refurbishment network can unlock an economic niche, which allows for capacity building and job opportunities. these actions will further contribute covid-19 maintenance reuse or redistribute refurbish or remanufacture recycle resources are kept circulating mining & materials manufacturing parts manufacturing product manufacturing product sales & services customers incineration or landfill resources are fed into the economy professional services reinstallation identify out of order equipment activate a circular approach refurbishment establish refurbishment network ce medical technologies maintenance strategies skills development and auditing improved traceability of equipment compliance and accredited facilities figure 1 activating a circular approach through refurbishment for ventilators (adapted from the ellen macarthur circular economy butterfly model (2013) and global medical imaging industry (2016)) to establish a circular economy, the business model for medical healthcare equipment must change and a compliant refurbishment network is needed. such a network would not only have the advantage of prolonging the life of decommissioned medical equipment, but would also contribute to safeguarding enough ventilators. adding maintenance-related skills for refurbishment and repair. t h e t h i n k e r44 to the creation of circular medical technology management strategies. the redesign and improvement of product design and business models for medical technologies need to take place, to extend product lifetime and support refurbishment and recycling in a more efficient manner (ertz & patrick, 2020). take-back schemes by manufacturers such as siemens, philips and ge (kane et al., 2018) can also curb e-waste production f rom medical devices, while contributing to better accessibility for required medical devices, creating an open niche market in af rica. uj-peets is in the process of establishing a refurbishment network to respond to the current pandemic. this network will feed back into the broader e-waste project to unlock the economic and entrepreneurial potential within the sector for south af rica. for more information or to support these efforts, contact peets@uj.ac.za ■ references aikins, a. d. g., unwin, n., agyemang, c., allotey, p., campbell, c., & arhinful, d. 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[online] available at: https://www.sarao.ac.za/ media-releases/sarao-mandated-to-manage-the-production-of-respiratoryventilators/ schütz, e. (2020). covid-19: sa’s looming ventilator shortage. [online] spotlight. available at: https://www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2020/04/06/covid-19sas-looming-ventilator-shortage/ [accessed 30 apr. 2020] thierry, m., salomon, m., van nunen, j., & van wassenhove, l. (1995). strategic issues in product recovery management. california management review, 37 (2), 114–136. van den heever, a. (2020). projections on sa health system and whether there are enough hospital beds to cope. daily maverick [online]. available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-03-16-projections-onsa-health-system-and-whether-there-enough-hospital-beds-to-cope/ [accessed 30 apr. 2020] world economic forum (wef) and the platform for acelerating the circular economy (pace). (2019). harnessing the fourth industrial revolution for the circular economy consumer electronics and plastics packaging [online]. available at: http://www3. weforum.org/docs/wef_harnessing_4ir_circular_economy_report_2018. pdf world health organisation (who), (2019). decommissioning medical devices [online]. available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/hand le/10665/330095/9789241517041-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y world health organisation (who), (2020). operational considerations for case management of covid-19 in health facility and community [online]. available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331492/who2019-ncov-hcf_operations-2020.1-eng.pdf through a circular approach, a product is traceable through its entire life cycle, improving maintenance management and the eventual safe disposal of e-waste (see figure 1). covid-19 85v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 david moore interview august 2022 interview t h e t h i n k e r86 rf: david, as an academic who has researched zimbabwe for many years, please tell us how and why you became interested in this country. dm: you could go back as far as 1971, when at the age of 15 or 16 i was skipping sunday school for some reason (yes, i’m a wasp – white anglo-saxon protestant raised in english canada, but a bit of a quiet dissident even then) and listening to a really good canadian broadcasting corporation current affairs radio show. this time it was about the pearce commission in (then) rhodesia, which was set up by the brits – who bore some responsibility for getting that nuisance ian smith and his white minority regime with its ‘unilateral (illegal) declaration of independence’ propounded to stave off the wave of decolonisation around them off the backs of those looking forward to being zimbabweans with full democratic rights, and preparing a guerrilla war in order to do so. some of the af rican nationalists and white liberals there had taken the commissions mandate to ‘consult the people of rhodesia’ literally, to include black af ricans, so this widespread consultation process started all over the place. i was fascinated by this apparent stalling and re-igniting of democratic ideals in this part of the world. i also had an assignment for my world politics class – taught by mrs cameron, one of the best high school teachers i ever had – due the next day or so. so there was a cool and unique story – i might even have had to present it orally – and i think i did quite well with it. as the years went on, the guerrilla war, with all of its contradictions, proceeded, to reach its apogee in 1980, as my revival of a delayed undergraduate degree after some time in the ivory coast was reaching its end. the radical ferment in the universities those days had perhaps also approached its climax, and by the time i started post-graduate work i met my soonto-be supervisor john saul, who had been teaching in tanzania and mozambique. he was enamoured with samora machel of mozambique’s front for the liberation of mozambique and frelimo’s socialist potential, which in the midst of robert mugabe’s rise to power within the zimbabwean af rican national union (zanu went on to rule zimbabwe and still does, albeit with the slightly different nomenclature of zanu-patriotic front: there is quite a story behind that), which at the time he was in touch with machel was supporting a group of young marxist-oriented radicals who had been tasked with re-igniting the liberation struggle after a ceasefire whilst some illfated settlement plans were underway. one of their objectives was to unite the two main zimbabwean liberation movements. it was not long until mugabe – who for some time was under frelimo house arrest given the uncertainty of his provenance amidst the factional battles going on in zanu – got to the top of the political pole and with the help of machel imprisoned these ‘young turks’. they have since more-or-less been wiped out of the history books (although, ironically, as we talk the current regime is trying to make the leader of this short-lived and mostly ignored ‘youth movement’ a ‘national hero’, along with a few other – ideologically and strategically very different! – forgotten nationalists, in some sort of attempt to patch together a f ragmented ruling party as the 2023 elections approach). the book argues that this late 1976-7 moment marked mugabe’s leadership style forever. when he announced a new central committee in the wake of their side-lining he warned that “the axe would fall” on any further agents of what he thought was ‘counterrevolution’. but in the next moment he advised his co-leaders to get to the books to read up on marxistleninist-maoist thought. this instance signified his authoritarian ways mixed up in a melange of an attempt at intellectualism that marked his legacy for ever – ending with a sad, but soft, coup at 2017 came t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the book argues that this late 1976-7 moment marked mugabe’s leadership style forever. when he announced a new central committee in the wake of their side-lining he warned that “the axe would fall” on any further agents of what he thought was ‘counterrevolution’. but in the next moment he advised his co-leaders to get to the books to read up on marxist-leninistmaoist thought. interview 87 to an end. this is probably the main aim of the book – after what is about half a century of my engagement with it, in various contexts. rf: this book attempts to answer questions about robert mugabe in a more expanded way, including the affective economies that surround the man. can you tell us more about your aim in this book in that arena. dm: well the book is not really about the political economy of mugabe’s legacy, although there are parts of it that discuss the massive inflationary consequences of printing money to stave off the many crises coalescing in zimbabwe (and serve as a tricky way for those with access to official forex rates to get rich quick), and the epilogue gets into the current manifestation of them a bit. as south af ricans we are somewhat familiar with the effects of zimbabwe’s many crises south of the limpopo too: they contribute the xenophobia that has infected many south af ricans. some of the theoretical discussion in the book may however indicate some of the economies (in the sense that what some call ‘mugabeism’ may indicate something akin to a new sort of ‘mode of production and reproduction’ or what some anthropologists call a ‘mode of belonging’ that spreads far beyond zimbabwe) contingent with the way mugabe worked on the various fissures in an emerging ruling class – playing their agents off against each other with elements of coercion, consent, and corruption in a way that only a reincarnation of antonio gramsci could understand fully – led to his being persuaded by a section of the liberation ‘war vets’ in the late 1990s to follow through on his many promises to take over and parcel up a good proportion of the large capitalist farms owned by white zimbabweans. that was one of his last straws as opposition to his rule was on the cards in his own party, and fully displayed with the new movement for democratic change – with a working-class base and also in the wake of renewed liberalism, supported by ‘the west’, in post-cold war af rica. given that the forward and backward linkages between this capitalist agricultural sector and urban, industrial ones were tight, and many, the formal economy spiralled down quickly (and there went the working class and tne mdc’s social democratic stance, to a great extent). given a whole host of other global and local contradictions that last straw broke zimbabwe’s economic back. as thabo mbeki wrote in a fascinating 2001 anc document this ‘mugabeist’ mode of rule had led the country to the effective rule of the ‘lumpen-proletariat’! one could say that the type of ruling class arising out of this process is a ‘lumpen-bourgeoisie’ with very little grasp of productive strategies, consensual leadership, or even a very solid hold on the levers of force. we have what many anthropologists and political economy scholars rf: there is already quite a bit of scholarship on mugabe and zimbabwe. what intervention are you trying to make with this book in that area of scholarship? dm: over forty year of scouring the archives, interviewing scores of actors, and visiting zimbabwe many times – this is sort of a long-term ethnography of a ruling class-in-the-making, some of its best critics, and their formative moments since the 1960s – provides new empirical material with an historical depth and contemporary width that should be worthwhile and even unique amidst what is indeed a plethora. one of the reasons i moved to teach here in south af rica was to be closer to my favourite country. furthermore, i think some of the theoretical interventions in the book – running f rom my ‘development studies 101’ riff on the holy trinity (the father is primitive accumulation – of course, karl marx; the son is a hybrid of gramscian and weberian takes on hegemonic construction and state formation; and the holy ghost is this wide-ranging idea of ‘democracy’ in both its deep and shallow manifestations) to what might be interesting discussions of ‘truths and false truths’ – and discussions of ‘states of exception/emergency’ – as they relate to the many real and imagined coup attempts running through this history and the conceits of this rapacious and often feckless ruling group might add some flavour based in recent theoretical discussions of a world in the midst of a long interregnum (bringing to mind recent thinking on gramscian ideas of all the morbid symptoms within these long periods of liminality). i think the book builds on some of the best of what is an excellent core of a lot of zimbabwean scholarship: only some of it is marred by some fairly obvious examples of partisan politics and that nearly eternal v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 interview 88 moment of the nationalist myth bereft of decent class analysis and political economy. it could also be said that the af rican arguments motif is to present relatively short and accessible books that will suit both academics and interested ‘lay’ folks ranging f rom activists to other people whose roles gramsci would have interrogated as ‘organic intellectuals’. if mugabe’s legacy manages very tough task it might be unique, too. rf: while this book focuses on mugabe and zimbabwe, what lessons and connections can be established f rom this research on a global scale. dm: as i look back on the book and its subjects i think we need more interrogation of the ideas of ‘mode of production’ that people such as harold wolpe wrote about in his path-breaking work on south af rica’s particular manifestation of the articulation of these modes here, in the crises of the 1970s as apartheid reached the beginning of its end. we are in crisis mode now too. it is manifested by new ways of thinking within a decentred intelligentsia ranging f rom decoloniality (which may get too centred on a romantic past) to the deader ends of ‘neopatrimonialism’ among the liberals and conservative scholars stuck in their decades of af ro-pessimism: any of their optimism in the ‘neo-liberal’ (so often just a platitude of the ‘left’ with not much more to offer either) solution to the world-wide crises of the seventies (as the golden age of capitalism came to a close) must have been quelled by now, given the dual challenges of the post-covid recovery and the joblessness promised by the so-called 4th industrial revolution. there are no solutions on offer as we have reached the cul-de-sac of any political-economic model – ranging f rom the debris of the old-soviet style systems to the rise of the right embedded in the rule of trumps and bolsonaros all over. come to think of it, the current instance of this global shift and its uncertain end – that being the war between russia and ukraine – impels us all to look much deeper into the histories of authoritarian rulers such as putin (he has his rasputins, and of course they reach far back), to get back at the fantasies inherent in the american dream/nightmare, and many on this continent. one of the aims of the book is to warn against the teleological views of history and futures – it’s a bit of a contradiction because so much of the weight in the holy trinity of development is wrapped up in these certainties. if anything, mugabe’s legacy should warn us that uncertainty is what rules interregna that have no pre-determined end: this actually should enable open-ended thinking and arguing about what kind of future we could imagine out of the potentiality that is inherent in crises. rf: the relationship between mugabe’s zimbabwe and post-1994 south africa has been complicated and controversial. how do you understand this relationship? dm: i think i noted this in my thoughts on mbeki’s 2001 treatise. if anything these relations indicate the difficulties of what might be a ‘regional hegemon’ exercising leadership in the wake of a crisis of the southern af rican liberation legacy. as the promises of the holy trinity break down on one’s borders, ones borders cannot hold them off. from cosatu’s support for the working class in zimbabwe in the early 2000s to ‘mbekian despair’ (not a do-nothingness but actual support: f raudulent elections were lauded as fair-enough; a negotiated ‘government of national unity’ in the wake of the 2008 rampant ruling party violence ended up giving zanu-pf breathing space to recoup; and the 2017 coup was more-or-less t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 there are no solutions on offer as we have reached the cul-de-sac of any politicaleconomic model – ranging from the debris of the old-soviet style systems to the rise of the right embedded in the rule of trumps and bolsonaros all over. come to think of it, the current instance of this global shift and its uncertain end – that being the war between russia and ukraine – impels us all to look much deeper into the histories of authoritarian rulers such as putin to get back at the fantasies inherent in the american dream/nightmare, and many on this continent. interview 89 supported as the only way to remove mugabe) to the current responses to xenophobic sentiments such as the cancellation of the zimbabwean exemption permits, all illustrates the actual powerlessness of an already shakily emerging system of rule. it should be remembered that the days of july 2021 indicate the deep f ractures in anc rule, so it can’t be expected that much can be done across borders. rf: can you explain how mugabe went f rom a f reedom fighter to a ruthless dictator over the course of 40 years? what mechanisms do we have to understand this transition? dm: i think i have gone though this above: perhaps the contingencies of his rise to power amidst an already f racturing new ruling group suggest the extreme difficulties of fashioning f reedom therein. but instead of working to fill the gaps, mugabe worked them to his advantage until he grew too old to manage them. rule by conspiracy and conceit leads to true and false coups. marxists (hard and soft ones) and weberians and most good social scientists never veered away f rom the violence inherent in changing modes of production and politics, but rulers hide f rom public acknowledgement of that reality while using it, simultaneously denying the means and ends of its use while it’s in open display. to be sure, there are scores of underlings and aspirants who augment these mechanisms in the hopes of gaining f rom them. perhaps when they find are forced to find their allies among the ‘subalterns’ instead of their commanders these mechanisms will change. rf: what do you think mugabe’s legacy is today, both inside zimbabwe and within a pan-af ricanist f rame? dm: i guess a true pan-af ricanism would threaten the states in which today’s rulers gain much of their power and wealth, so the way in which mugabe used an ‘anti-imperialist’ discourse did not do much to build that agenda. the struggles against such modalities of power and rhetoric are pan-af rican, as one sees f rom sudan to nigeria to here. there has always been a progressive legacy struggling f rom under ‘mugabeism’ but it if often crushed: this is the lesson of the youthful challenges in the midst of the liberation war that he quelled. rf: in terms of your own research, what is next? dm: i promised the ‘hero’ of mugabe’s legacy before he died in 2014 that i would edit and add to the second edition of his book (dzino: memories of a freedom fighter) so that should be done within a decade of his death. i have always been a theorist manqué so would like to see if the idea of an ‘af rican mode of production’ has any traction, and i would like to jostle with edmund burke’s ideas of ‘tradition’ with gramsci’s. i would also like to pursue the thoughts of richard wright as he moved f rom membership of the american communist party to his engagement with the leaders of the emerging ‘third world’ in his book arising f rom his visit to the bandung conference in 1955 – that book, the colour curtain, was published by a cia f ront. his 1940 native son is a stunning take on race and class in chicago with a strong marxisant take. this transition might say a lot about current ideological moves here and abroad. but i am supposed to be retired so should get to know what that is really like. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 interview t h e t h i n k e r70 the advent of the covid-19 pandemic has brought dire social, economic, physical and mental health consequences worldwide (world health organization, 2020). the rapid increase of covid-19 infections and fatalities has caused much concern around the world and has resulted in the implementation of various mitigation measures. covid-19 has taken everyone by surprise, and disrupted the world’s economy tremendously. south af rica has one of the highest covid-19 infection rates in af rica, and the south af rican government has embarked on a nationwide lockdown to minimise the spread of the virus. this decision was not welcomed by many people, especially unemployed youth, informal traders, post-graduate students at higher learning institutions, and matriculants. covid-19 has been proven to have an especially severe effect on people above the age of 60, and people who have compromised immune systems or other underlying medical conditions (world health organization, 2020). younger people in general do not face the same health risk f rom covid-19 as the elderly, but their educational, spiritual, physical, and economic development will be impacted by the pandemic. these adverse impacts on young people’s development will be the focus of this paper. according to delivorias and nicole (2020), people living in poverty will be especially hard hit by covid-19’s economic effects, as they do not have enough savings to protect themselves against financial catastrophe. furthermore, the global employment trends for youth (2020) highlight the impact that covid-19 will have on youth unemployment, as 77% of youth hold informal jobs and perform manual routine jobs with no security, making them especially vulnerable to the disruptions caused by covid-19. in addition, young people between the ages of 15–24 are more likely by thulani andrew chauke and rachel chinyakata covid-19 the effects of the covid-19 outbreak on the in malamulele, south africa positive development of young people © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 71v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 to be unemployed post-covid-19. according to unhcr (2020), unemployed youth are more likely to be impacted by covid-19 than employed youth. south af rica’s youth unemployment rate stands at about 52% percent of the country’s overall 27.6% unemployment rate. due to limited employment opportunities, many young people resort to informal trading and small businesses (duncan et al., 2019). the covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a temporary ban of operations for youth-owned businesses that do not fall under the essential services criteria. this has affected income generation in the lives of these young people. results f rom a study conducted by the centre for development and enterprise (cde) indicated that 233 registered entrepreneurs f rom six provinces in south af rica across 17 different industries showed f rustration in this period. more so, 95% of these entrepreneurs were worried that they could not afford to pay their employees, most of whom were young people. furthermore, the cde study indicated that 87% of the entrepreneurs could not work f rom home, resulting in an inability to take care of their families (cde, 2020). the covid-19 pandemic has led to many sectors of the south af rican economy closing. amongst these is the tourism industry, which largely employs young people, and contributes significantly to the economic development of af rican countries. south af rica is the third top tourist destination in af rica, attracting over 10 million visitors in 2019 alone (uneca, 2020). the closure of the tourism industry will result in many young people losing their jobs and their only source of income. in response to the rapid spread of covid-19, countries around the world have closed schools. evidence indicates that the closure of schools, especially in times of global crisis, is linked to negative outcomes for youth. kostelny et al. (2016) found that during the ebola outbreak the rate of sexual activities amongst youth increased because of the closure of schools, resulting in unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. furthermore, unfpa (2017) emphasised that in a time of global crisis hospitals and clinics may not prioritise the distribution of contraceptives, putting young girls at a higher risk of falling pregnant. the lancet (2020) and the centers for disease control and prevention (2019) have reported that pregnant women and new babies are at risk of covid-19 infection, indicating the need for social protection for these vulnerable groups. the positive development of young people is enhanced in school environments (taylor, oberle, durlak, & weissberg, 2017), and the closure of schools is likely to have a negative impact on young people who are in school (unesco, 2020). youth f rom disadvantaged and rural schools will be more negatively affected than learners who have access to e-learning technologies and remote learning opportunities. studies indicate that about 89% of learners in sub-saharan af rica do not have access to household computers, and 82% lack internet access. this makes it difficult for them to access education, thus increasing inequalities between the rich and poor. this inequality gap is a real threat to learning continuity at a time when most young people cannot go to school. the lockdown measures taken by governments worldwide have forced many people to be locked up with their families. for some this is an opportunity to spend time with their families, but for others it has become an opportunity to abuse their partners (time, 2020). reports have indicated an increase in domestic violence worldwide during the covid-19 pandemic (zhang, 2020). this might be attributed to the f rustrations felt by many families related to uncertainty about the future, poverty, and hunger, as many breadwinners are unable to work. according to scholars, there is an existing correlation between gender-based violence and poverty (karupiah and gopal, 2017; slabbert, 2017). the promotion of positive and holistic youth development is essential, as young people are the backbone of society and determine the future of any given society. the objective of this study was to explore the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on the positive development of youth in malamulele, south af rica, and to give recommendations youth from disadvantaged and rural schools will be more negatively affected than learners who have access to e-learning technologies and remote learning opportunities. studies indicate that about 89% of learners in sub-saharan africa do not have access to household computers, and 82% lack internet access. this makes it difficult for them to access education, thus increasing inequalities between the rich and poor. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r72 towards the well-being of youth during and after the covid-19 pandemic. methodology the study used a qualitative research approach to understand the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on positive youth development. through qualitative methodology, the meaning that people ascribe to social and human problems is understood as part of the development of solutions to these problems (creswell, 2014). de vos et al. (2011) indicate that qualitative research is important because its focus is on exploring realities f rom the perspective of participants. a qualitative approach was therefore essential for this study because it helped participants describe their own stories as influenced by their lived experiences. information was collected f rom participants using online semi-structured individual interviews, enabling participants to be interviewed in their natural context and allowing for an interaction between the researcher and the respondents. the interviews were conducted online because of the social distancing measures put in place by the south af rican government to minimise the spread of covid-19. the study looked at the experiences of eight young people between the ages of 18–35 living in malamulele township in limpopo province in south af rica. purposive sampling was used to select the participants by selecting the characteristics of the respondents to be included in the study. the researcher used thematic analysis to analyse the study findings. informed consent, confidentiality, privacy, and voluntary participation were adhered to in this study. the researcher explained the objectives of the study to participants, and no participants were forced to participate. results and findings the findings of the study indicate that the covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected the health and well-being of young people in malamulele township, as well as their educational, spiritual, economic, social, and emotional development. educational development the covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected the educational development of young people, as indicated in this study. education is one of the most important components of the development of a young person. all eight participants indicated that the 2020 academic year has been disrupted by the lockdown measures implemented by the government. p1 and p2 stressed that the lockdown has interrupted their studying patterns and therefore their exam preparations: p1: ‘i used to read early in the morning before i go to school and later at night before i go to bed but, now i hardly do it because am not even sure to when we are going to write our exams.’ p2: ‘closing of school was necessary but, something i guess should have been done to disrupt the exam because now our exam preparation is disturbed. we just read for the sake of reading.’ due to the fact that they are out of school and with the uncertainty surrounding exams this year, the participants indicated that they feel demotivated to study. failure to prepare for the exams might have a negative impact on their academic performance. the study further revealed that the initiative taken by the department of higher education to promote remote-learning is not working for some of the participants, as their home environments are not conducive for studying. as one participant indicated: p1: ‘i share my room with my brother, so even if i want to study my brother just wants to be around making noise. i can’t chase him away because it’s his space too.’ shared living spaces make study very difficult, unlike studying at a university library. a 2020 study conducted by unesco highlighted that young children f rom poor backgrounds found it difficult to study online because of the lack of resources and a conducive environment. the responses of participants in the study also indicated that most young people in malamulele township could not continue with their studies online, as they do not have e-learning materials such as computers and the internet. as one of the respondents commented: p2: ‘i find it difficult to study online because i do not have modern technology like other kids f rom rich families.’ covid-19 73v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 from the above statement, it can be denoted that the covid-19 pandemic has further exposed inequalities in south af rica, despite many initiatives taken by the democratic government to eradicate poverty. in addition, the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen. modern technology is needed for a young person to study f rom home and attend online classes, but this is out of the reach of many. according to unesco (2020), the effect of covid-19 is much worse for underprivileged learners who tend to have fewer educational opportunities outside of school, due to a lack of access to technology. furthermore, the disruption in education during the pandemic could result in a rise in child labour and child marriage, further impacting the growth and development of developing countries (un, 2020). participants in the study indicated that some institutions have ceased academic activities due to a lack of resources such as trained staff to deliver lectures online: p1: ‘at my institution everything has stopped, there is no communication whatsoever, no online lectures.’ p2: ‘i might not be affected as some full-time schoolers but, this time of year i thought i would have completed my studies.’ academic activities in some institutions have stopped completely, meaning that progress for many has also stopped, and that the 2020 academic year might be lost for some students. this will ultimately delay the completion of their studies, and their ability to achieve their set goals. nutrition the study also indicated that the nationwide lockdown has resulted in malnutrition for some young people, as it has cut off their access to school feeding schemes. as one participant explained: p3: ‘i am raised by a pensioner, who is always ill. i can sleep without food sometimes while am not at school. but school is open am able to get healthy food not now schools are closure are worried.’ according to unesco (2020), many children and young people rely on f ree or cheaper meals for healthy nutrition, and when schools are closed their nutrition is compromised. the closure of schools as a result of the covid-19 pandemic is contributing to the malnutrition of learners who depend on school feeding schemes. this consequently affects their overall well-being and functioning. spiritual development spiritual development is of significance in ensuring the holistic well-being of young people, as it promotes community participation, socialisation and personal development. participants were asked to reflect on how covid-19 is affecting their spiritual development. they gave varied responses, as indicated below: p4: ‘i usually go to church every sunday and wednesday, i am affected so much because at church i also do counselling session. i cannot fellowship with other believers who i call my other family because they support me.’ p5: ‘covid-19 it has helped me to stayed connected to god and gave the personal space i never knew i needed.’ p4’s response indicates that church is a source of social support, belonging, and security for the individual. participation in church activities promotes spiritual development, which is important for improved health and well-being. the covid-19 pandemic has robbed young people of the opportunity to take part in such activities. the church plays a central role in many young people’s lives, as a place of worship and as a place for emotional support, as some young people are more likely to confide in their pastors than in their parents. in contrast to this, p5’s response is interesting, as it indicates that the pandemic has helped some young people to reflect on their lives and to form a closer connection with god. responses f rom other participants indicated that the covid-19 pandemic has helped some the closure of schools as a result of the covid-19 pandemic is contributing to the malnutrition of learners who depend on school feeding schemes. this consequently affects their overall well-being and functioning. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r74 covid-19 young people to strengthen their faith, providing them with the opportunity to demonstrate resilience: p7: ‘i think in a time like this young people need to be strong and believe to this time shall pass.’ p8: ‘some parents and youth might lose income due to coronavirus pandemic, and it will hurt but they need to trust almighty god to will rescue our beautiful land.’ p7 and p8 shared words of encouragement in the face of a global crisis. they also both agreed that since churches are closed, parents should take the lead in ensuring the development of their children’s spiritual health. economic development south af rica has high levels of youth unemployment, which will be further exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. the study indicated that the lockdown is negatively affecting the economic development of young people. participants who are entrepreneurs were sceptical about the survival of their businesses post-covid-19: p5: ‘as an entrepreneur am fed up, do not know if my business will survive post this covid-19 thing.’ p6: ‘i run a salon but, my business is closed now because hairdressers are not providing essential service. i running a loss at this period and i hope soon we can return to work.’ entrepreneurial activities have been affected in malamulele township, as only essential services can remain open during the lockdown. this means that many young entrepreneurs are running at a loss and living in fear, as they do not know when the pandemic will end, and whether their businesses will survive. the world leading travel trade show (2020) attested to this finding by stating that young entrepreneurs in the travelling industry are worried about the future of their business post-covid-19. young people who run businesses as informal traders are more affected than those whose businesses are registered, as they do not fit the criteria to benefit f rom the government’s covid-19 relief funding for smmes. more so, even those entrepreneurs who are registered are finding it hard to apply for this funding, as there is a lot of paperwork required and some banks are taking advantage of the current situation to offer them loans which will leave them further indebted. the government’s relief funding is difficult to access, as it requires tax compliance, uif compliance and six months’ bank statements (cde, 2020). the study also revealed that even young entrepreneurs who run spaza shops (and who are therefore considered essential workers) are struggling to make a profit because the economic activities of their customers have also been disrupted due to the lockdown: p5: ‘i am running a spaza shop people are not buying items in form of cash, they just come and borrow and i can’t say no because people have no money at this moment. i fear that i might close the business when i run out of money to order new stock.’ p6: ‘i run a small business and i have hired two youth and now i have no money to pay them. am worried if post-covid-19 they will return to work or not.’ the responses above show that covid-19 is hindering economic activities that are essential to young people’s economic development and the overcoming of poverty. this finding concurs with a recent report by the cde, which indicates that young entrepreneurs are in distress during the covid-19 pandemic, as they do not know how they will pay their employees (cde, 2020). according to bouey (2020), the income for smes has dropped by more than 50 percent, with street vendors’ businesses hardest hit. social development social distancing is encouraged as a measure to minimise the spread of covid-19. this limits physical gatherings and socialisation with f riends, neighbours, and others in the community, which in turn affects social and behavioural development. as one participant commented: p1: ‘it’s really difficult because i am always inside the home. i cannot even socialise and play with my f riends. just staying at home is very f rustrating.’ from the above quotation, it can be denoted that the lockdown measures are negatively 75v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 affecting the social development of many young people. social activity and interaction have been limited, and this consequently results in the deprivation of emotional and social development of many young people. according to the un (2020), covid-19 is having profound effects on young children’s social development. social distancing is an important measure in the mitigation of the spread of covid-19, but measures also need to be taken to ensure that the social development of young people is supported. conclusion the covid-19 pandemic has caught the world by surprise, with its impacts being felt in all sectors of life. south af rica’s nationwide lockdown in response to the pandemic is having a negative impact on education, the economy, health, and the development of young people. this study indicated that the covid-19 pandemic is further exacerbating inequalities in education, as learners f rom disadvantaged backgrounds are unable to afford the e-learning technologies necessary for remote learning. the study also showed that the health of young people who depend on school for nutrition has been affected. the nationwide lockdown is affecting the social and religious development of young people, as many young people cannot socialise or attend religious gatherings, consequently leading to the deprivation of their holistic development. furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic has led to the temporary closure of many youth-owned businesses, and those that remain open have reported low profits. there is a greater need for specific youth development relief in south af rica to mitigate the negative effects of covid-19. the government must collaborate with different stakeholders to assist learners f rom disadvantaged backgrounds with e-learning materials and support so that they can adequately participate in remote learning. south af rican government departments should also have a specific youth development relief fund to mitigate the effect of covid-19 on the economic development of youth. government departments, districts, metros, and local government should prioritise youth 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[online] sixth tone. available at: https://www.sixthtone.com/ news/1005253/domestic-violence-cases-surge-during-covid19-epidemic.83 55 the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) and its effects on public service delivery in south africa abstract in recent decades, the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) has added a new dimension to change and has been exponential in its development. it is important to understand its effects in various environments, particularly the opportunities and challenges it brings to public sector functioning, where there needs to be a greater drive towards innovative service delivery. this article explores 4ir within the context of public sector service delivery, focusing on south africa as a developmental nation. it examines technological advancements of 4ir in line with some of the aims of local government, particularly in its mandate to be more responsive and effective in its service delivery. it also establishes how 4ir platforms are being adopted for effective citizen engagement, which is an essential goal of service delivery within the sphere of local government. it examines some of the gaps that need to be addressed around the essential practicalities required to integrate 4ir effectively and explores the readiness of the general public sector environment to respond to the demands of 4ir. key factors regarding what is needed to create a more enabling environment for local government service delivery and its prevalent developmental constraints are also discussed. by samantha layton-matthews and chris landsberg | peer reviewed special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 56 t h e t h i n k e r introduction ‘we must develop a comprehensive and globally shared view of how technology is affecting our lives and reshaping our economic, social, cultural, and human environments. there has never been a time of greater promise, or greater peril.’ —professor klaus schwab we are living in exponentially changing times where even the nature of change itself is changing. we are considered to be in a new age or revolution of change, and technological advancement is at its centre. information and knowledge were once limited to libraries, books, and learning institutions; now, they are abundantly available, and almost any question can be addressed via internet search engines such as google. this new industrial age of technological advancement can be perceived as a wonder, but can also appear overwhelming in its vastness and demands for rapid responsiveness. in recent times, the covid-19 pandemic has also highlighted how critical technology is in supporting communities, and driving economic progress when standard practices are challenged. the effects of the pandemic have altered how workplaces operate, and have indicated how important it is to be responsive to technological integration in order to function, even on a basic economic level. in many contexts, the agility factor required for creative and innovative responsiveness to this technological advancement is lacking. this is especially evident in many public sector environments, particularly in developing countries, who experience a critical shortage in resources, high levels of poverty and unemployment, a lack of education and skills, as well as limited access to technology within wider inf rastructural and geographical contexts. within the public sector, key questions lie in how technology can be harnessed and integrated in visionary, proactive, and cost-effective ways. at the same time, one must also establish how to effectively keep pace with more immediate priority service demands and how to sustain critical developmental needs. advances in technology provide for opportunities to enhance institutional practices, systems, and processes; at the same time, there is the need for highly adaptive methods for the effective and resourceful implementation of these technologies. technology is, to a large extent, shaping how growth and advancement occurs within varied contexts. thus, service delivery practices themselves are becoming more firmly lodged within the lens of technology. technological advancement presents opportunities in creating greater access to information, enhanced communication and networks, wider community participation, more capacity for access to goods and services, and a greater opportunity for innovation. at the same time, it also needs to be articulated and integrated into existing service delivery platforms and mechanisms in agile ways. this needs to be done in such a way that technology does not quickly become superfluous, thereby compromising the very service it is meant to support. the alignment of technology and service provision needs to be carefully considered. whilst technology can enhance service delivery in its innovative platforms, it also presents many challenges in its implementation. this is especially evident in the public sector environment, with its intricate bureaucracy and its complex structures. 4ir: overview, challenges, and opportunities the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) is more disruptive in its innovation edges in technological advancement than that of any previous technological revolutions. the first industrial revolution (circa 1760–1840) was marked by the construction of railroads and mechanical production and changed societies in how work was undertaken. the second industrial revolution was marked by mass production— eliminating certain jobs, whilst creating a lot of jobs in other arenas. the third industrial revolution introduced the ‘electronic age’, which focused more on innovations of technological systems and the integration of varied networks and the ‘interoperability of ecosystems’ (mbatha, 2019: 5). according to schwab (2016: 37), the 4ir is seeing great strides in developing technologies f rom ‘gene sequencing to nanotechnology, and f rom renewables to quantum computing.’ the amalgamation of these special focus 57 technologies is what causes the 4ir to differ f rom earlier revolutions. we can also learn f rom previous revolutions that progress in this new era will be proportionate to how society integrates it, and that there is a clear interaction between society and technology (mbatha, 2019: 4). just as with the previous industrial revolutions, it is essential to conceptualise a platform for technological integration for an ‘inclusive society’ (kaesar: 2018). this requires a radical review of political, economic, and social systems. further, there is a need to consider all critical environments, both external and internal, to the public and private sectors. this is to ensure that standards are raised and that socio-economic challenges are addressed in different and more responsive ways, and that sustainability is ensured. there also needs to be a radical review in how training and education is undertaken, as skills needs will be vastly different in the future. this in itself needs to be revolutionary (kaesar: 2018). the 4ir will affect every country in the world and this raises some significant concerns. according to schwab (2016: 40), these include: • addressing the question of how to harness the opportunity that the 4ir offers. evidence has shown that the required levels of leadership to understand and leverage the changes in innovative ways are not adequate. this is borne out in reviews of how leaders across the world have responded to the necessity to rethink social, political, and economic systems. • reviewing in what ways institutional f rameworks are not currently geared for innovative reinvention, and to transition the changes necessary to accommodate such revolutionary innovations that will be brought on in 4ir. • reviewing the gaps in leadership and how to establish diversity in their ability to create more communal narratives essential for empowering vast and diverse communities and individuals. • understanding the disruptions that the radical changes of 4ir will bring and how it will affect organisations thus, it is essential that public sector institutions establish a set of common values and operating principles that inform policy to integrate changes. such policy must not only create opportunity within technological advancement, but also create effective transitioning towards new systems to effectively sustain service delivery mandates. implementing 4ir within the public sector environment it is essential to review 4ir within the f ramework of the evolving public sector management paradigms. over the past two decades, public sector management has come under significant scrutiny in its modes of operation, recognising that there needs to be an evolution beyond traditional administration towards more innovative ways of managing the public sector service delivery. in an era of globalisation, serious challenges have been posed on how the public sector can become more competitive, agile, and innovative in its delivery and citizen engagement mandates. the public management paradigm, moving beyond the traditional administration paradigm, evolved in response to questions on how governments could become more responsive to its increasing discriminatory citizen demands. it also served to develop a more outcomes-based service delivery approach. however, the complexity of public administration and management have rendered the definitions of what this constitutes as somewhat vague. this is leading to thinking in public sector delivery that goes beyond the new management paradigm (npm), and rather a review of its relationship to ‘public value’ (bojang, 2021: 1–2). just as with the previous industrial revolutions, it is essential to conceptualise a platform for technological integration for an ‘inclusive society’ (kaesar: 2018). this requires a radical review of political, economic, and social systems. further, there is a need to consider all critical environments, both external and internal, to the public and private sectors. special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 58 t h e t h i n k e r the concept of government reinvention has been bandied about substantially in the past few decades. it has presented a significant debate, especially within the complexity of bureaucratic government structures and the multifaceted nature of the public sector. in addition, there are also ever-increasing demands for more innovative public service delivery with a more entrepreneurial and business-like ethos. this must be considered within a new era of democracy and what is required for greater citizen engagement (bojang, 2021: 2). essentially, the npm paradigm focused on several factors deemed pertinent to the public sector environment. this included greater levels of practical management, performance management, outputbased management, competitiveness, adopting typical management styles utilised within the private sector, and more effective resource management (hood in bojang, 2021: 4). but in recent times, the concept of what constitutes a value chain needs to be considered within the wider ecosystem of public management and ‘public value’. according to bojang (2021: 5), where before the npm paradigm sought to integrate typical private sector management practices into public sector management, evolving theorists of ‘public value’ identify and consider the differences that exist between private and public sector management. this emphasises the provision of service as a primary driver in the public sector environment. political strategies also feature significantly in the implementation of the ‘public value paradigm’ (pvp). the three primary ingredients to this paradigm include ‘legitimacy and support, operational capacity and public value account’ and centre on ‘services, outcomes and trust’ (bojang, 2021: 6). it is thus essential to consider 4ir applications and innovations within the context of these paradigms. the latter value paradigm points towards the need for a more transformative and integrated approach of e-government platforms that can support the delivery of public value. it is also essential to formulate e-governance policies that provide for effective integrative approaches across the complex and multifaceted disciplines with the public sector institutions. this links into mbatha’s proposition in 4ir thinking on a more inclusive citizen engagement in public sector decision-making and essential functioning around technology, as well as the integration of all the various environments or ‘ecosystems’ within which the public sector operates (mbatha, 2019: 4–5). e-government as a driver of public sector delivery and value outcomes in the era of 4ir within south af rica, a presidential commission on 4ir was established in 2019, recognising the significance and urgency in integrating 4ir into its public service strategy and goals. within this, e-government strategies must be considered as essential platforms to support public sector service delivery. e-government is essentially a set of multifaceted public sector technological platforms used to create and support government structures. these structures also enable service delivery to be delivered in efficient, effective, and accessible ways (bwalya, 2018: 5). in simpler terms, e-government is the ‘provision of routine government information and transactions using electronic means’ (marche and mcniven in mawela, 2015: 20). building on this, e-governance concerns the ways in which ‘decision and policy-making processes may be supported by information and communication technologies (icts)’ (mawela, 2015: 20). in further exploring the relationship between e-government platforms and e-governance, it is important to understand that e-government platforms can become ineffective without agile governance. evidence indicates that this is a concept that still requires more definition and can be wide in its scope. according to de oliveira luna et al. (2014: 134), agile governance can essentially be defined as: ‘the ability of human societies to sense, adapt and respond rapidly and sustainably to changes in its environment, by means of the coordinated combination of agile and lean capabilities with governance capabilities, in order to deliver value faster, better and cheaper to their core business.’ within literature theory and in defining e-government, it is perceived that there is still a lack in ‘knowledge integration across disciplines’ and this is limiting perspectives on the integrated public sector functioning. it is thus essential to special focus 59 there are a variety of e-government platforms and these are advancing all the time in the accelerated era of 4ir, building on more simplistic e-government platforms from the previous decades. ‘intelligence applications’ have been especially acquired in countries that have a developmental imperative. explore e-government by considering the nature of government in its essential democratic need of being ‘socially inclusive’. it is also necessary to establish what is required to develop a ‘systems architecture to ensure the efficient delivery of government services with transparency, reliability and accountability’ (khanra and joseph in malodia et al., 2021: 2). there are a variety of e-government platforms and these are advancing all the time in the accelerated era of 4ir, building on more simplistic e-government platforms f rom the previous decades. ‘intelligence applications’ have been especially acquired in countries that have a developmental imperative. such applications include big data to better support information processing and accessibility as a basis of an ‘analysis platform’. these are especially useful, for example, in establishing land usage and spatial patterns, determining inf rastructural needs, and analysing critical data that inform socio-economic developmental needs (bwalya and mutula, 2014 in bwalya, 2018: 240). the advent of 4ir has accelerated e-government platform development and, in addition to advances in ‘big data’ computing, the internet itself has advanced to better support processes that feed into valuebased service delivery and decision-making systems. thus this serves to go beyond the new government paradigm and integrate the proposed public value paradigm. this also adds value to intricate and multifaceted necessities in decision-making across many and varied platforms (bwalya, 2018: 248). other e-government platforms include creating advances in establishing ‘smart cities’, where the capturing of and the access to information is more effectively enabled. this is harnessed around the various socio-economic and developmental goals that need to be understood and implemented (bwalya, 2018: 250). other e-government platforms include citizen engagement tools such as ‘crowdsourcing’, which is key in the participative and transparent tenets of governance in its democratic aims. other new innovations expected to gain traction in the next while to support ‘socio-economic value chains’ include robotics, self-controlled technologies, ‘grid computing’ to advance access and better integrate inf rastructural networks and related data, open data systems around public value, engagement and transparency processes, and research platforms (bwalya, 2018: 251–259). digitisation and integration of varied e-government platforms is thus essential to supporting the public value paradigm within the goals of public sector service delivery. strides are being taken in south af rica to integrate innovation and technology into public sector service delivery strategies. for example, in august 2021, the gauteng provincial government launched a 4ir innovation strategy within the gauteng centre for excellence. this will serve to build purposeful connections in supporting new businesses with digital inf rastructural technologies. it will provide for transparent procurement platforms and also look at ways in which to advance competitiveness through the adoption of technologies. it will also support research goals around 4ir, especially in the area of service. it aims to identify the skills requirements for future digitalisation in work and social innovation. finally, it will also explore 4ir governance issues and make recommendations for better governance via digital platforms. this is a direct response to the need to understand the implications of 4ir in public sector service delivery that were identified in the industrial revolution sa digital economy summit, hosted by the gauteng government. the strategy will serve to better support citizens in the spheres of youth development, special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 60 t h e t h i n k e r small and medium businesses, and also for employees within the department (mailoane, 2021). a further proactive measure has been taken on the part of the province of kwazulu natal, where the office of the premier has initiated a digital transformation strategy for 2020–2025. its strategic priorities lie in digital skilling, information and knowledge management and information security, process automation, systems integration, and government digitisation. it is extending its strategies f rom cities to villages, adopting a top-down and bottom-up approach, and also takes cognisance of governance structures, monitoring and evaluation, and risk management within all departments (province of kwazulu natal, 2020). questions to be considered in implementing 4ir within the public sector context in south africa it is preferable to not focus on problems and complex layers that the 4ir presents, although these need to be carefully considered. rather, it is essential to ref rame questions that can lead to solutions for the integration of 4ir to advance service delivery. some of the wider contextual questions that were posed in the earlier stages of 4ir are still prevalent currently and those that need to be debated include (kemp in balkaran, 2016: 6): • how do we use current technology to help solve challenges? • how do we shape 4ir and influence it towards service delivery strategies and in the favour of vision realisation? • what are we doing to catch up and be part of this fourth industrial revolution? • how can we shift f rom questions focusing on minimising government failure rather to how government can leverage and maximise innovation? according to balkaran (2016: 3): ‘in order to create and shape technologies, government must be armed with the intelligence necessary to envision and enact bold policies.’ since work is an essential tenet of human development it is also important to take on the vast socio-economic challenges in proactive ways, and governments can only achieve this effectively by transitioning towards ‘technoeconomic paradigms’ (zhang et al. in balkaran, 2016: 3). south af rica is still in a ‘catch-up phase’ in adopting proactive strategies and policies to move into mainstream activities in 4ir. whilst it may seek to leverage this to gain exposure in evolving global developments, realistically the focus in the more immediate future is on achieving competitiveness and the need for inclusive growth (arnold, 2019). one of the key drivers in technological integration is a national strategy for competitiveness. this requires significant reviews of what it means to be innovative and a need to drive towards efficiency, without compromising quality. it is about finding shrewd and innovative ways to create value because this is where perceptions of competitiveness are formed. 4ir in the context of sustainable developmental governance in africa south af rica is a developing nation and has critical developmental challenges such as high levels of unemployment and poverty, which have escalated even more during the covid-19 pandemic. like many af rican countries, south af rica is also substantially dependent on developed economies. this has resulted in a majority of the population only engaging in a small proportion of economically-driven vocations (de wet in mamphiswana, 2020: 2). the question prevails as to how it can be responsive to the demands of 4ir within its developmental challenges. although there is a skills shortage in meeting 4ir demands, f rom a global perspective, governments in developing countries are still being enticed to integrate 4ir (shava and hovisi in mamphiswana, 2020: 3). perhaps a lesson can be learned f rom india, which has explored its rural challenges in 4ir integration, especially in the agricultural sector. india is facilitating citizen engagement and awareness programmes to better support rural inclusive growth more proactively (lele and goswami, 2017: 7–8) and has proven that digital platforms can provide for this via ‘smart physical systems’ and can be used to create more skilled jobs in rural areas, especially in the agriculture, energy, and inf rastructure sectors (lele and goswami, 2017: 7–8). it is indicating that, through ‘pro-rural digital policies’, there needs to be a ‘bottom-up and special focus 61 as mentioned, the 4ir revolution is critically hindered by existing developmental issues, especially in africa. within south africa, the greatest challenge is the lack of ‘adequate viable resources’, not only in digital technologies and infrastructural support, but also in its digital illiteracy. top-down’ approach in order to successfully integrate 4ir opportunities (mamphiswana, 2020: 3). south af rican public service delivery has a strong citizen engagement imperative in its local government inf rastructure. an advantage of 4ir is that it can speed up services and also create greater accessibility to services. this is advantageous in that it can better influence and form economies in the future and this in itself is opening up new opportunities (mamphiswana, 2020: 3). once again, ‘integration’ is a key factor. 4ir is affecting all economic sectors and an ‘interdisciplinary approach to teaching, research and innovation is now mandatory’ (xing and marwala in mamphiswana, 2020: 4). a few key factors that present challenges for the integration of 4ir and that must be considered in such developmental strategies includes job scarcity. digitalisation can compound this and make jobs that do exist redundant. secondly, there is a large skills shortage within the workforce and this is exacerbated in the fast-growing population and limited absorption of the population into the more effective economic sectors. this also reinforces the recent strategy of the gauteng provincial government to look at digital strategies that can better support the small and medium market sector and youth development. af rica is also suffering f rom ‘deindustrialisation’, which is limiting its competitive status globally. this, along with a lack of inf rastructure, as well as bias and discrimination f rom developed economies, is creating challenges for effective 4ir transformation and integration (mamphiswana, 2020: 8). south african readiness for 4ir integration as mentioned, the 4ir revolution is critically hindered by existing developmental issues, especially in africa. within south africa, the greatest challenge is the lack of ‘adequate viable resources’, not only in digital technologies and infrastructural support, but also in its digital illiteracy. this is causing inequalities where digital solutions are implemented, as it is widening the skills divide by side-lining the illiterate (olaitan et al., 2021: 2). however, south africa, in questioning whether developmental realities and frameworks are reviewed and integrated, is also measuring its readiness for 4ir integration (olaitan et al., 2021: 4). from this, it is evident that one of the greatest needs lies in the investment of skills upliftment and a ‘telecommunications infrastructure’ that supports transparency and openness in the ‘socioinstitutional component of the 4ir’ (olaitan et al., 2021: 3). the f rameworks under review have been integrated to monitor the country’s capabilities for 4ir integration. this focuses on the structure of the ‘drivers of production’, the ‘technological and social capabilities’ and, thirdly, the country’s ‘digital capability’ for greater competitive advantage (olaitan et al., 2021: 5). within these readiness f rameworks, it has been established that interventions such as artificial intelligence could stimulate 10% to 30% productivity in labour within the manufacturing sector in the next ten years. it is perceived that south af rica should transform more towards a knowledge-based economy on account of its rapid ‘deindustrialisation’ (olaitan et al., 2021: 6). the ‘viability’ f ramework has revealed that the covid-19 pandemic has escalated its already existing economic crisis. this means that it reduces the viability of south af rica in adopting new technologies and impacts 4ir readiness and responsiveness. this is further hindered in the lack of skills and literacy levels (olaitan et al., 2021: 6). lastly, in the ‘it inf rastructural’ assessment f ramework, it has been established that south af rica still needs special focus v o l u m e 9 0 / 2 0 2 2 62 t h e t h i n k e r to expend much on digital platforms, even in simple ‘universal broadband coverage’, especially in local communities. this is also exacerbated by the eskom inf rastructural challenges that have led to continual load-shedding (olaitan et al., 2021: 10). further factors that need to be considered are developing strategies that are ‘context-specific’, with the design of policies for innovation within the sustainable development goals (sdgs) and a review of the capacity for innovation (manda and dhaou, 2019: 250). integrating 4ir into the local government context in south africa south af rica has a strong drive towards citizen engagement, participation, and transparency in its local government structures. this is therefore an important conduit in driving 4ir advancement. it is a space in which to integrate e-government platforms to eradicate some of the developmental challenges that prevail. according to mawela et al. (2017: 149), municipalities are important in accelerating e-government programmes for all stakeholder engagement— including, amongst others, business, local communities, non-governmental organisations, and traditional leadership structures. it thus supports a cultural ethos and systematic governance process for local government goal achievement. it can allow for more accessible and engaging governance, supporting the indian model of the bottom-up-topdown approach and the integration of the multiple environments in values-based ways. a recent research project was undertaken to determine the effects of 4ir on local government, serving to inform a strategy for local government to support 4ir integration. it has reinforced various other research projects undertaken in that 4ir is adding to inequalities in a digital divide within developmental challenges. whilst it also indicated that certain job roles would likely become more automated—such as accounting, administration, ballot-voting counting, and internal auditing— other roles are anticipated to grow. such roles include the appointment of more specialists in digital transformation, developers and facilitators of business, automation of processes, and digital security monitoring (lgseta, 2020: 4). it is anticipated that 4ir does create an opportunity for south af rica to better optimise socio-economic development. the primary area of significance within local government will lie in its strategy and policy formulation, its citizen engagement, and service delivery focus. further, its organisational culture, human resources, risk and change management systems will also be important considerations for 4ir integration (lgseta, 2020: 5). local government is also key in supporting sustainable development goals on a very practical level and integrating e-government is critical to achieving this. within its service delivery mandate, priority areas for the integration of transformative digital support systems mean a review of services such as water and electricity supply, waste management and those governance structures that require less resources, but can link up more effectively in integration (lgseta, 2020: 83). the integrated development plans (idps) of municipalities identified need to take cognisance of the broader strategies of the goals and objectives for 4ir integration (lgseta, 2020: 84). to date, there is a lack of proactive integration of 4ir into idps, and digitalisation is still treated in isolation of other programmes, projects, and functions. the research recommendations point towards a policy-oriented focus to get municipalities to better encompass technological strategies in idps (lgseta, 2020: 92). some key priority areas that need to be more proactively addressed include the enhancement of ‘revenue collection’ systems and processes, customer relationship management (crm) systems, and communication technologies to expedite payment systems. further, there is a need to improve customercentre systems and expand fibre optics systems for more widespread and accessible communications systems (lgseta, 2020: 85). in line with this, the research recommendations highlight a need for local government to integrate and develop e-government more specifically for greater service delivery efficacy and accountability. this is also needed to better business culture and practices. these need to move beyond the constraints of previous redtape and inefficiencies. processes such as licencing, obtaining digital data and records management special focus 63 are already becoming more efficiently handled via digital platforms, although still need refinement. a greater integration of e-government platforms at local government level will ensure a more proactive modernisation of governance, innovation, and citizen engagement. greater stakeholder awareness and interaction must be implemented to better support effective 4ir integration (lgseta, 2020: 91). conclusion 4ir has brought about disruptive and rapid technological changes that are shaping functional services, offerings, and solutions. these exponential and multifaceted changes are forcing a more competitive agility in order not only to survive, but to remain on the innovative edge of change. these changes are not only technologically-centred, but also human-centred because they prompt serious reflections about how humans are engaging and responding to the world in which they live, urging us to find new ways to integrate the changes that have happened and will still happen over the next decades. in line with this, the public sector must allow for greater innovation in technological integration to better support its service delivery and citizen engagement. it needs to build on legislation and regulations to maximise technological advancements in the various government functions and contexts. south af rica is still playing catch-up with the rest of the world in integrating 4ir. whilst the implications of the changes of 4ir are unprecedented and farreaching, south af rica’s focus in integrating 4ir needs to, over the next while, be primarily driven for competitiveness and inclusive growth. this is especially the case since it is a developing country with high levels of unemployment, limited skills levels, and a struggling economy—all of which have been further exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. south af rica has in place key f rameworks to evaluate its readiness for 4ir integration. these f rameworks point towards it not being ready f rom capability, social, and inf rastructural perspectives. within local government, there is great potential and opportunity to integrate 4ir more proactively. however, it has been established that municipalities are not adequately integrating broader 4ir strategies into their idps. this is a concern in that digitalisation still remains isolated rather than integrated in essential local government strategies, functions, and disciplines. since local government is a priority in 4ir transformation to support essential public service delivery, it needs to become more responsive in integrating these strategies. this is especially important when considering that governments are in a constant state of reinvention and going beyond the new government paradigm (ngp) towards a value-based paradigm that questions what value means in service delivery to citizens. local government is especially important in addressing local economic development and is a key driver in eradicating developmental issues. thus, it is essential to prioritise 4ir on a very practical level, looking at key programmes and projects where e-government can better drive developmental mandates. delivering on 4ir strategies is not just about driving new technologies, but about creating an ethos, culture and environment to support new technologies. agility and innovation are essential to this and transformative goals need to be carefully considered in bringing about 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(2018). shaping the future of the fourth industrial revolution. new york: crown publishing group. schwab, k. (2016). the fourth industrial revolution. new york: crown publishing group. singh, s. and travica, b. (2008). ‘e-government systems in south af rica: an infoculture perspective.’ wiley online library [online]. available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ isd2.12030 vinod kumar, t.m. (2017). e-democracy for smart cities. singapore: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4035-1 special focus t h e t h i n k e r2 note from the editor t he university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 from dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-african issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the panafrican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome africa-centred articles from diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. prof ronit frenkel contributors to this edition – all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity asher austen fainman is completing a master’s degree in law at the university of bristol. he has a strong interest in technology law and has also been involved with start-ups in the sector. professor alex broadbent is the director of the institute for the future of knowledge at the university of johannesburg university of johannesburg. alex holds a b1 rating from the national research foundation of south africa (2019-2025) and is an alumnus of the south african young academy of sciences. alex is a philosopher of science, medicine and epidemiology, with particular interests in causal inference, explanation, and prediction, including the evolution of these abilities in humans and their implementation in machines. alex was a founding figure in establishing philosophy of epidemiology, and is a leading philosopher of medicine globally. alex has published three monographs, the most recent being philosophy of medicine (2019, oxford university press) and around 25 journal articles. prof maria frahm-arp completed her phd at warwick university in the uk. she is the author of professional women in pentecostal charismatic churches in south af rica (2010) and co-editor of development and religion f rom below: exploring religious spaces in the af rican state  (2010). she has written several articles and book chapters on pentecostal charismatic christians. in 2010 she participated in a templeton foundation africa wide research project of the catholic charismatic movement. prof frahm-arp has taught at wits university and st augustine college of south africa and is an anglican (episcopalian) minister. she is currently the executive director of the library at the university of johannesburg. pier paolo frassinelli is associate professor in the department of communication studies at the university of johannesburg. he has recently published borders, media crossings and the politics of translation: the gaze f rom southern af rica (new york: routledge, 2019). he is book and film reviews editor of journal of af rican cinemas and 2020 writing fellow at the johannesburg institute of advanced studies, where he will be working on a book project titled af rican cinemas: spaces, audiences and genres. ashraf jamal (cape university of technology) is a cultural analyst, author, editor, and associate in the visual identities in art and design research centre, university of johannesburg. he is the co-author of art in south af rica the future present, co-editor of indian ocean studies: social, cultural, and political perspectives. he is also the author of love themes for the wilderness, the shades, predicaments of culture in south af rica, and in the world: essays on contemporary south af rican art. shadrack m. kithiia, is senior lecturer, department of geography & environmental studies, university of nairobi. dr. kithiia is a member of the international association of hydrological sciences (iahs). he is a registered hydrologist and a lead expert on environmental impact assessment (eia). his research interest 3v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 includes, water quality assessment, control and management. he has taught physical geography at the university of nairobi for over 25 years. before then he worked as an hydrologist with the kenyan government since 1990. abel matheba is a mechanical engineering student at the university of johannesburg. he is a founder and managing director of noto technologies (pty) ltd, working on innovative ideas that use the 4th industrial age technologies to solve problems in education, health care, green economy, transportation, and socio-economic issues. zamanzima mazibuko is the senior researcher in the knowledge economy and scientific advancement faculty at the mapungubwe institute for strategic reflection (mistra). she obtained her msc (med) in pharmaceutics from wits university. dr steven mufamadi is the founder and managing director of nabio consulting (pty) ltd and holds a phd in pharmaceutics from wits university. francis onditi is aisa fellow at the human sciences research council (hsrc), pretoria, south africa. he is also head of department, school of international relations and diplomacy, riara university, nairobi, kenya. he was the lead editor for the recently published book, ‘contemporary af rica and the foreseeable world order’, rowman & littlefield, new york and london, 2019. dr. onditi is a conflictologist with specialization on regional & international conflict systems, and state relations. he is also a reviewer, mentor for young scholars, & strategy lead consultant. carolyn pedwell is reader in cultural studies at the university of kent, uk. she is author of transforming habit: affect, assemblage and change in a minor key (mcgill-queens up, forthcoming); affective relations: the transnational politics of empathy (palgrave, 2014) and feminism, culture and embodied practice: the rhetorics of comparison (routledge, 2010). email: c.e.pedwell@kent.ac.uk twitter: @drcarolynp dominic pretorius is a writer, based in cape town. he is currently completing a postgraduate degree in english literature at the university of cape town, while also working as a political analyst. his first novel, acts of vertigo, was recently longlisted for the 2020 dinaane debut fiction award. ylva rodny-gumede is the head of the international office and professor in the school of communication at the university of johannesburg. ylva is an nrf rated researcher and her current research focus is on transformation and innovation in higher education. email yrodnygumede@uj.ac.za lisa treffry-goatley (university of cape town) has over two decades of experience in educational publishing as a publisher, editor and materials developer. she is the senior publisher for the african storybook initiative, and a phd candidate in linguistics (school of african and gender studies, anthropology and linguistics) at the university of cape town. her research is concerned with multilingual children’s literacy practices, especially reading. contributors to this edition the journal for progressive thought www.thethinker.co.za publisher english department university of johannesburg kingsway campus, auckland park, johannesburg tel:+27 11 559 2553 editor prof ronit frenkel editor@thethinker.co.za design & art direction liesel van der schyf liesel@vdsdesign.co.za tel:+27 82 336 7537 advisory council dr ademola araoye (nigeria), professor puleng lenka bula (south africa), dr faisal devji (tanzania), professor chris landsberg (south africa), professor tshilidzi marwala (south africa), professor sabelo j ndlovu-gatsheni (zimbabwe), dr morley nkosi (south africa), dr francis onditi (kenya) professor eghosa e osaghae (nigeria), dr mzulcisi qobo (south africa), dr garth le pere (south africa), professor alioune sall (senegal), addai sebo (ghana), dr mongane serote (south africa), professor mammo muchie (ethiopia). material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without proper citation. views and opinions expressed in the thinker are not necessarily those of university of johannesburg. they can accept no liability of whatsoever nature arising out of or in connection with the contents of the publication. © 2019 university of johannesburg www.thethinker.co.za the thinkerthe thinkerthe thinker a p a n a f r i c a n q u a r t e r l y f o r t h o u g h t l e a d e r s mailto:yrodny-gumede@uj.ac.za mailto:yrodny-gumede@uj.ac.za _goback 54 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 abstract the fashion industry has long been in a battle to improve its sustainability, as well as its environmental protection efforts. in this conceptual paper, we unpack the different stories of sustainability and environmental challenges in this specific industry – which is very much driven by fast fashion. we contrast developing (south af rica) and developed (sweden) markets’ approaches to fashion sustainability, to uncover and understand broad overlapping dimensions of sustainability, and differences. the aim of this paper is to stimulate thinking and conversations about sustainable practices in developing nations as well as in developed nations. the review of the stories and the contexts presented suggests the need to shift the focus to the developing market’s consumer, and concludes with the proposal of including a fifth principle of sustainability: ref raming fashion. by beate stiehler-mulder and thea tselepis “re-tale” proposing a fifth principle in the sustainable fashion retail story p e e r r e v i e w 55v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction at the start of 2023, the global fashion industry is still under the magnifying glass about impacting the environment negatively, and it is argued that numerous stakeholders and customers will increasingly question and investigate how fashion brands convey their sustainability credentials (mckinsey, 2022). the general facts are that the size of the fashion industry was valued at around 1.5 trillion u.s. dollars in 2021 and is predicted to reach 2 trillion dollars by 2026 (statista, 2022). early 2021 till mid 2022 saw robust growth in the industry. however, hyperinflation and depressed customer sentiments impacted the growth rate f rom the second half of 2022 and is likely to continue in 2023 (mckinsey, 2022). nevertheless, the luxury fashion category has continued to do well, as wealthy consumers are less affected by the economic challenges and conspicuous consumption1 is therefore expected to grow. the south af rican fashion industry offers one of the largest fashion markets in af rica, accounting for more than 45% of the continent’s total spending on clothing and footwear (fitch report, 2022). the good news is that south af rican consumers are increasingly focused on local fashion brands with the country’s apparel industry growing at an average of 5.2% over the past five years (fitch report, 2022). south af rica’s market for luxury fashion is growing mainly due to the growing middle-income consumer segment (saruchera and mthombeni, 2023). however, south af rican consumers are becoming conscious of sustainable and ethical fashion options (taljaard and sonnenberg, 2019). in another context that is advanced in terms of sustainable fashion consumption, sweden is the leader in sustainable fashion consumption (gupta, gwozdz and gentry, 2019). sweden has tackled sustainable fashion from the manufacturing side with a fashion pact to request companies to reduce environmental impact and on the other hand has implemented various campaigns and initiatives that encourage consumers to think about the environmental impact of their purchases (brydges, 2021). these include choosing items from sustainable material, buying second-hand clothing, and avoiding excessive packaging. the swedish consumer is therefore well-informed about various principles and the consequences of their fashion consumption. from the above, we argue that the story of south african fashion consumption is still very much a story of consumerism and that some best practices of sweden may be applicable. moreover, a strong south african consumer narrative is that of conspicuous consumption and the display of abundance – in a time where the abundance of natural resources is not a truth for most countries (ahmed, asghar, malik and nawaz, 2020). in many instances, the guidelines to industry and consumers for sustainability are the four principles of sustainability: reducing consumption, reusing items or material, recycling materials, and recovering energy from waste (david, thangavel and sankriti, 2019). in this paper, we offer a critical dialectical engagement with existing literature on sustainable fashion in the south african and swedish contexts with the aim to present the story/tale of the application of principles of sustainability to support thinking and conversation about these important aspects. this conceptual paper commences with an overview of the general tale of sustainable fashion with the issues of fast fashion consumption as a main theme. the paper then continues to offer two contexts for sustainable fashion practice (south africa and sweden) and concludes with a recommendation of a fifth r in the four principles of sustainable fashion particularly applicable to south africa. a general review of sustainable fashion in this review of scholarship, we offer the facts on sustainable fashion to illustrate the story it tells. we apply our own critical voice to comment on the story and present relevant themes around sustainable fashion relating to some of the commonly referred to principles of sustainability. the three ps and the four rs of sustainability sustainability as an overall concept is proposed to consist of three dimensions or pillars, i.e. economic (profit), environment (planet), and social (people) (silvius, schipper, planko, van den brink and köhler, p e e r r e v i e w 56 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 2012), and were first documented around 1987 by barbier (purvis, mao and robinson, 2019). the three pillars are, however, argued to be vague in terms of how to effectively operationalise the concepts. this model is also critiqued for being more applicable to a developed market context, and the pillars’ complex historical origins suggests that the concept remains context-specific, as well as ontologically open. for this reason, it should be clearly described in terms of how it is understood (purvis et al., 2019). to position this within the purpose of this article, the authors lean towards the brundtland definition about sustainable development, which states that sustainable development is ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (world commission on environment and development, 1987). in terms of this definition, the authors extend sustainable development to the context of specifically fashion, by supporting the idea of focusing on the needs of the current fashion industry, in a manner that will not compromise the needs of the future. the authors therefore focus on the specific factors of reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering – as the principles applicable to the fashion industry. the four principles focus on reduction of consumption of fashion, reusing garments or leftover materials, recycling, and then reusing existing garments and/or materials and thereby also recovering energy from materials previously considered waste (david et al., 2019). the adoption of a circular business model, in the context of the three sustainability principles, may potentially support all three of these pillars in different ways. renewed business models (e.g. a circular approach) rooted in these four principles may support the economic pillar (profit), and the social aspect (people) through growth using a new model that may lead to further job creation. the reduction in consumption, recycling, reusing and recovering are principles that, if applied innovatively during the manufacturing process, may assist the environmental pillar (planet). the three pillars are unpacked and integrated with the fashion industry’s current state and challenges in greater detail in the following sections. the sustainable fashion tale from the environment’s perspective there are several factors that present challenges on the environmental impact of the fashion industry: petrochemical products are used to produce modern textiles and the industry is therefore estimated to be responsible for up to 10% of the global carbon dioxide output (dottle and gu, 2022). in comparison, the aviation industry is responsible for an estimated 2% of global carbon dioxide output (world economic forum, 2016). the fashion industry is also responsible for a fifth of the plastic produced globally, with polyester (a type of plastic derived f rom oil) having overtaken cotton as the predominant input for textile production (dottle and gu, 2022). polyester is not biodegradable, and together with other synthetic products also requires a lot of energy to manufacture (palacios-mateo, van der meer and seide, 2021; world economic forum, 2016). manufacturing practices regarded as unsustainable include polluting coastal areas with wastewater that contains dyes that pollutes water (muposhi, nyagadza and mafini, 2021). on the other hand, even a natural fibre like cotton uses a very large amount of water to produce fashion (la rosa and grammatikos, 2019). water as a source of life is a scarce resource in most countries (hofste, reig and schleifer, 2019). although one needs to acknowledge that some fibres are more environmentally f riendly, and strides have been made in the fashion industry to reduce the negative environmental impact with some interventions (nasir, wee, aris, abdullah and ismail, 2022), we agree with taljaard and sonnenberg (2019) who point out that the ‘tale’ of the environment and fashion consumption has always been a contentious one. in the bigger scheme of things, it is also about the volume of fashion that is consumed, and the manufacturing will not stop if the demand f rom the retailers and ultimately the consumers is constant! it is therefore our opinion that fashion is ultimately no hero f rom an environmental point of view – but that the socio-economic perspective of fashion might dictate the impact. the social-economic tale from a human perspective the story about sustainable fashion that is more positive usually takes on a socio-economic perspective. in this regard, the emphasis is on the contribution of fashion in terms of job creation, economic growth (goyal, esposito and kapoor, 2018; le roux, 2022), and of course the basic need for clothing: people need to cover their bodies and protect them against the elements. a critical question that we ask, however, p e e r r e v i e w 57v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 is ‘how the character “fashion” in such a heroic tale holds up against the anti-hero, when the tale is told f rom the environmental perspective?’ most authors on sustainable fashion agree that apart f rom the environmental damage contributed by textile and clothing production, there are also the challenges presented relating to labour, disposal, retail (models on turnaround), and consumerism (niinimäki, peters, dahlbo, perry, rissanen and gwilt, 2020; pedersen, gwozdz and hvass, 2018). these themes are unpacked in the following paragraphs. labour practices include aspects such as factory working conditions, wages for workers, and workers’ rights. the fashion industry is considered not vocal enough on labour practices and working conditions in factories which are aspects of sustainability f rom the socio-economic perspective (cernansky, 2021). disposal or recycling of fashion has been embraced successfully mostly by large international fashion brands, achieving this by moving f rom a linear to a circular business model where nothing is wasted – everything is reused, repurposed, and recycled (williams, 2022). in this regard, there seems to be an effort to improve current fashion systems to enhance sustainability in terms of manufacturing practices as well as disposal of clothing products. up to this point we are therefore optimistic about the manufacturing practices in the fashion industry that show some improvement over the past years. a logical question might therefore be: ‘what is the real issue and why is the fashion industry still an anti-hero in the sustainable fashion story?’ fashion retailers find themselves in a position where they must balance people, the planet, and profit. this balancing act can be difficult because on the one end the fashion buyers are considered the gatekeepers of consumer choice, and their selection of the product mix dictates the scope, as well as the type of consumer targeted by a company, thereby influencing a company’s bottom-line and future opportunities (zhong and mitra, 2020). on the other end, there is the constant pressure created by consumers who insist on buying the latest fashion worn by fashion icons and other influencers. the fashion retailer’s tale is therefore a tale of meeting demands in a world where the customer is ultimately king. this phenomenon is consumerism (panizzut, rafi-ul-shan, amar, sher, mazhar and klemeš, 2021) and in this tale the consumer seemingly drives the demand for the latest fashion and is ultimately the villain. consumers seem to be fickler and more demanding regarding a faster fashion turnaround (zhong and mitra, 2020). this continued pressure for a faster turn-around has sustainability implications, of which a major concern includes people not wearing their clothes for as long as they did in the past. this pushes up the rate of clothing production, which in turn results in tons of excess inventory and waste (oshri, 2019). this phenomenon is commonly known as fast fashion. fast fashion fast fashion encourages consumers to buy and wear new fashion and to throw away the old (choi, cai and shen, 2019). it is built on the fabrication of hyper trends, convincing consumers to accumulate more than is needed, and this is further fuelled by offering clothing that is not long lasting, therefore creating the need to buy more regularly (bédat, 2016). this business model gradually emerged because of the lowering of trade barriers between countries – eliminating or reducing quotas, tariffs, and subsidies between nations (majaski, 2022). fast fashion f rom a consumer’s perspective most authors on sustainable fashion agree that apart from the environmental damage contributed by textile and clothing production, there are also the challenges presented relating to labour, disposal, retail (models on turnaround), and consumerism p e e r r e v i e w 58 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 therefore creates the opposite situation of reducing and reusing clothing. instead, this story is about avoiding looking ‘so yesterday’ at all costs. the fast fashion story has its roots in 1947 after world war ii, where an agreement known as the general agreement on tariffs and trade (gatt) was signed by 23 countries, and by the 1990s had grown to include 125 countries. this agreement was further refined over time and lead to the creation of the world trade organisation (wto) in 1995 (majaski, 2022). the intention of this agreement was to boost economic recovery. this economic recovery involved the creation of opportunities for fashion brands to source the production of clothing in countries with lower labour costs, in turn providing brands with financial incentives, and consumers with the opportunity to buy more clothes, yet spend less (bédat, 2016). the result of this story is that the consumer today is conditioned to want cheap things and suffers f rom a constant drive for the new (corrigall, 2022). unfortunately, this fast fashion business model means fast production, followed by rapid waste disposal (muposhi et al., 2021), the use of more energy, and this has over time turned into problematic consequences for the environment. the implementing of sustainable practices has therefore become more important over the years (osheri, 2019). from the above, it is evident that a story of fast fashion leaves little space for the reduce principle of sustainability, particularly with reference to consumerism. to tame the monster that was created by consumerism and retail models such as fast fashion, some sustainable practices have emerged, particularly f rom the manufacturing side. however, as with any tale, the context matters. the next section therefore offers some important themes in various contexts and what one may learn f rom both. the emergence of sustainable fashion practices in different contexts some of the world’s most renowned fast fashion brands like h&m, zara, uniqlo, stella mccartney and adidas (choi et al., 2019; williams, 2022) have embarked on a new business model, known as the circular economy in order, to address fashion sustainability issues. the focus of this business model is to change the traditional supply chain f rom a linear to a circular chain. this new circular structure is targeted at eliminating any potential waste in the supply chain by repurposing, recycling, or reusing items (williams, 2022). as af rica is one of the continents that is largely fuelling the current and future growth of the fashion industry (zhong and mitra, 2020; williams, 2022), many of these international fashion brands have entered this market, preferring to do so via south af rica, which has been considered the gateway to the rest of af rica for a number of years now (saai, 2012). there are, however, differences in how developed, emerging, and developing nations view and implement sustainable fashion practices (cao, scudder and dickson, 2017), as well as the aspects and level of importance assigned to different sustainability practices (euromonitor, 2022a; euromonitor, 2022b). as argued by purvis et al. (2019), the original three pillars of sustainability are not always as applicable to developing as developed markets. sustainable fashion is a growing trend in developed economies (cao, scudder and dickson, 2017), with a good example being the swedish fashion brand h&m – currently one of the world leaders in the use of sustainable materials (fashion network, 2018) and having a sustainable fashion strategy in place since 2009 (choi et al., 2019). like other international brands, h&m entered the af rican continent in 2015 with its first stores opening in cape town and johannesburg in south af rica (douglas, 2015). even though this brand is perceived as one of the leaders in sustainable fashion, it finds itself operating in an emerging market (south af rica) where sustainability seems to remain a niche (cao, scudder and dickson, 2017) and where unsustainable manufacturing practices are more prevalent (muposhi, nyagadza and mafini, 2021). these two countries have therefore been identified to serve as examples of sustainable practices and principles in two contexts to explore and contrast. sweden represents the developed context and south af rica represents the emerging context, and a comparison of the two countries’ approaches to sustainability may enlighten us with potential solutions to sustainability that may be shared or adapted. sustainability in the south african context stakeholders in south af rica are specifically calling on the large retail players to commit to a greater focus on social inclusion, the empowerment of females, as p e e r r e v i e w 59v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 well as a focus on environmental protection. retailers targeting the midto higher-income bracket are especially expected to grow their focus on both sustainability, as well as ‘glocalisation’ (euromonitor, 2022a). examples of this include brands such as adidas having dedicated store spaces for eco-f riendly ranges like primeblue, which has been designed in conjunction with the parley ocean plastic programme, as well as spaces dedicated to designs produced by both south af rican artists and influencers. similarly, the foschini group is investing heavily in local manufacturing, with a goal of producing 30 million local apparel pieces by 2026 – thereby greatly contributing to its long-term sustainability plan, as well as the acceleration of economic growth by creating employment (euromonitor, 2022a). south af rica is also seeing a growing second-hand clothing market, commonly known as ‘thrifting’. where thrifting was previously associated with bargain hunters and fashionistas, there are now several online stores where buyers can either sell or acquire second-hand clothes (corrigall, 2022). the market for repurposing or upcycling garments arguably remains small, with one designer commenting that supply seems to be a challenge, therefore not making upcycling a viable business model. a potential solution could be to put agreements in place with large retailers to obtain their overflow garments (shempers in corrigall, 2022). one could argue that in a country where opportunities for jobs are much-needed, this area could offer such opportunities if explored and driven by consumer demand. as far as applying the principles of sustainability is concerned, we commend the efforts to create consciousness on sustainable fashion in south af rica but offer a caveat that it is not yet enough. one might argue that in south af rica, the recover principle of sustainability probably causes a smaller issue f rom an environmental perspective simply because south af rica has a major energy crisis relating to electricity (aliyu, modu and tan, 2018). there are rolling blackouts that might in the long run affect the environment in a less harmful way, but the balance between people, profit and the planet is not there, causing one to ask how sustainable it is in any case? in addition, we also must acknowledge the contention between implementing sustainable practices around reducing, re-using and recycling in an emerging country where growth is the main aim. growth f rom the socio-economic perspective often translates to creating more in strategic plans. the problem with ‘more’, of course, is that conspicuous consumption is likely to be one of those growing/more aspects as confirmed by the statistics on south af rican fashion consumption (fitch report, 2022). one then needs to look at an example in a developed context that is a leader on sustainable fashion to compare the application of sustainability principle. sustainability in the swedish context the swedish market has an established consciousness of sustainability principles and is therefore very focused on ethical and environmental aspects (gupta, gwozdz and gentry, 2019). in addition, it has a strong focus on workers’ rights, as well as the reduction of waste and carbon emissions. examples of initiatives driving these focus areas includes the launch of an application called ‘coop’, a growing market for second-hand clothing, as well as existing garment recycling initiatives (euromonitor, 2022b). coop is a sustainability declaration tool (application or app), specifically designed to inform and educate consumers, so that they may engage in more sustainable purchasing decisions. the market for second-hand clothing is growing in four ways: direct re-selling of second-hand clothes, repairing and customising of second-hand clothes, the renting of clothing and clothing recycling. polarn o pyret is a brand that launched second-hand stores in sweden, norway, and finland – customers hand in and are compensated for the old clothes, which the store sells on to new customers (euromonitor, 2022b). gina tricot, in collaboration with repamera, take in consumers’ old denim jeans, and repair and customise and re-sell them. a brand called ‘newbie’ offers the opportunity to rent children’s clothing via a company called hyber. in 2020, h&m launched a concept called ‘loop’ where consumers are encouraged to bring their old clothing in store, where the garments are cleaned and shredded into fibres, followed by being spun into yarn and then knitted into new fashion items (euromonitor, 2022b). the examples f rom the swedish fashion retail story offer a strong tale of the application of the principles of sustainability. there is the consciousness p e e r r e v i e w of the environment. this suggests an area to find a connection between the developed and emerging markets’ outlook on sustainable responsibilities. the countries have different economic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and therefore its consumers experience different challenges and needs. operating by incorporating ethical practices, protecting workers’ rights, and reducing waste and carbon emissions (swedish) are all imperative to ensure that a holistic sustainability approach to fashion production is exercised (these address the economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainability), but the importance of social inclusion and women’s empowerment (south af rica) is very much reflective of south af rica’s challenges, suggesting that the country is not necessarily in a ‘holistic sustainable fashion practices’ space yet. south af ricans are especially cost-sensitive, and even though many buyers may want to support more sustainable products, they often simply cannot afford it, if these are at a price differential to other less sustainable options. the mid to higher income south af rican consumers are more concerned with sustainable practices, whilst the mass market remains price sensitive (euromonitor, 2022a; mckinsey, 2022). coming f rom a heritage of racial exclusion f rom the economy with the apartheid system only ending in the early 1990s, the country today still struggles to empower previously d i s a d v a n t a g e d individuals and is experiencing a massive unemployment crisis (lubinga, 2020). the need for a focus on social upliftment and inclusion f rom the fashion industry is therefore a logical theme. similarly, the country has a lot of challenges with low-income and unemployed females (msimanga and sekhampu, 2020) – explaining the need for female empowerment. the two countries’ needs in terms of sustainability can almost be 60 for the consumer perspective, as well as f rom a manufacturing and retailing perspective (socioeconomic). the result seems to be more sustainable practices around fashion consumption with reduced manufacturing due to the second-hand clothing market, reuse of materials, products and packaging, recycling of material and products, as well as some reduction of consumption with a combination of efforts such as the renting of clothes. some themes are overlapping with the south af rican context and others differ. comparing themes on sustainable fashion: south africa and sweden albeit not an extensive review, figure 1 presents some initial proposed sustainable focus areas for each country as identified or deduced f rom the discussions above. these focus areas are broad and contain dimensions that may be relevant to the principles of sustainability. figure 1: sustainable focus sa vs sweden source: the authors) from figure 1, it is evident that there is a shared theme on sustainable fashion for the protection south africa t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 61v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 contrasted as being at different levels of the maslow hierarchy of needs. consequently, the satisfaction of these needs is motivated either f rom an external force or an internal force. in this regard, the swedish consumers seem to be driven internally due to the governance of sustainable practices over years. fashion brands f rom developed countries could therefore take a dual approach with their sustainability practices – focusing on growing a holistic awareness of sustainability and best international practice, whilst also demonstrating commitment and sensitivity to country-specific sustainability needs. implementing such initiatives might, however, be easier said than done, as much of the success of any business remains at the mercy of the economic principles of supply and demand. with specific regard to the south af rican market, one can argue that as much as the sustainable aspects for the south af rican market exists, the drive for sustainability remains limited in practice (cao, scudder and dickson, 2017). as much as the fashion supply chain (f rom retail buyers, to the retailer, all the way to the manufacturer) exerts its own extent of influence on consumers’ levels of consumption, a change in consumer needs and expectations may offer a strong starting point for a country such as south af rica to gradually exert pressure backwards on the supply chain – forcing it to adapt and change. therefore, the consumers who keep to the same unsustainable practices become the culprits in an unsustainable fashion system. the south af rican consumers are described as cost conscious (mckinsey, 2022), conditioned to want cheap things, and their keen support of fast fashion shows with a big uptake in purchases f rom companies such as shein, that have recently overtaken zara in terms of the speed and pace of the release of new collections (corrigall, 2022). this situation can be extremely challenging to change. we argue for a call to gradually move the emerging consumer f rom fast to appreciation and slow fashion, by driving and applying the unique af rican heritage of storytelling (bailey, 2022). in this regard, every garment – like every consumer – has a story and these tales should be honoured. the argument is that if the tale of a garment and the person who wears the garment is honoured, such unique tales may counter the conspicuous consumption in a fast fashion retail context. conclusion in this paper, we argued that the application of all four principles of sustainability in the fast fashion retail model is very challenging in an emerging context where more and growth might be viewed as synonyms in relation to strategies that enhance socio-economic growth and upliftment. we have also offered a few of the most prominent themes in sustainable fashion in south af rica, illustrating that a reducing principle is usually applied to the context of the manufacturing of clothing while it could be like in sweden f rom a manufacturing, retailing and consumer perspective. south af rica can therefore work with sweden to learn f rom their practices, particularly on the retail of fashion, to apply principles of sustainability on another level as well. the very thought of reducing consumption for the sake of the planet particularly in an emerging context could seem daunting due to the socio-economic story that needs to be balanced with regard to how the people and the profit enables survival and the improvement of an unequal society. nevertheless, we have faith in the storytelling culture of af rica, and specifically south af rica, and call upon the storytelling fashion influencers to offer a new focus on the tale we tell in terms of our clothing/fashion. in this regard, the storytelling can be shared with fashion brands from developed countries could therefore take a dual approach with their sustainability practices – focusing on growing a holistic awareness of sustainability and best international practice, whilst also demonstrating commitment and sensitivity to country-specific sustainability needs. p e e r r e v i e w 62 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 sweden in collaborative fashion design or upcycle projects with south af rica. the four principles of sustainability seem simple and pockets of application to reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover may be evident in the south af rican context. nevertheless, we argue that consumers have the ability and the power to reframe the meaning of their clothing and for that matter the fashion that they consume. both south af rican and swedish consumers may benefit f rom the aspects around ref raming their viewpoints on fashion products. to ref rame what fashion could and should not be in the south af rican context also means to ‘re-tell’ the tale of the role that retailers play as well as their direct influence on what consumers wear, the same may apply in sweden. the title of this paper contains the word ‘re-tale’ as opposed to retail; with this term we wish to propose that ref raming (in a re-told story of fashion) is explored by fashion influencers to guide consumers to honour every story of every garment, be it a new garment, a repurposed or a thrifted garment. the uniqueness of our stories might best be captured by a mix of old and new and retailers need to consider a larger buy in mending/repairing (repurposing), reusing, and reselling those garments that are usually viewed as ‘last season’. influencers of sweden and south af rica may 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quotas https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2019/05/13/three-reasons-why-fast-fashion-is-becoming-a-problem-and-what-to-do-about-it/?sh=7137fb67144b https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2019/05/13/three-reasons-why-fast-fashion-is-becoming-a-problem-and-what-to-do-about-it/?sh=7137fb67144b https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2019/05/13/three-reasons-why-fast-fashion-is-becoming-a-problem-and-what-to-do-about-it/?sh=7137fb67144b https://www.statista.com/topics/5091/apparel-market-worldwide/ https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/36586 https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/36586 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/our-love-of-cheap-clothing-has-a-hidden-cost-it-s-time-the-fashion-industry-changed/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/our-love-of-cheap-clothing-has-a-hidden-cost-it-s-time-the-fashion-industry-changed/ 41v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 cultural devotion as depicted in j.c. buthelezi’s kushaywa edonsayo abstract this article seeks to analyse cultural devotion as it is portrayed in j.c. buthelezi’s novel, kushaywa edonsayo. it intends to pull together some examples of how cultural devotion is portrayed in this isizulu novel. it will firstly evaluate cultural conflicts that are demonstrated by characters. it will further explore cultural commitments among individuals in the society created by the novelist, and as applicable to real life society. the main subheadings in this discourse are: culture conflict and cultural commitment. the concept of culture will be defined as part of the introductory section of the article. again, a concluding section will be included towards the end of the discourse, where the summary, observations and recommendations are provided. the reason this study is conducted is the intensive illustration of cultural devotion in the novel under consideration. it is also the fact that not much has been done on this topic on the isizulu novel, in particular, and isizulu literature in general. the revelation of how buthelezi handles this aspect will add value to the study of isizulu and, even, af rican literature. by zilibele mtumane and nkafotseng laurencia motloung | peer reviewed p e e r r e v i e w 42 special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction j.c. buthelezi depicts cultural devotion in his novel titled kushaywa edonsayo (1993). however, so far, very little research has been conducted analysing this aspect of the novel. motloung (2020), on whose masters’ dissertation this article is based, is probably the only one who has done so, by including a chapter on it in her study. the objective of this paper, then, is to analyse and reveal cultural devotion as it is illustrated in buthelezi’s novel. culture generally refers to attitudes and behaviours that characterise a particular social group. graymanshimpson (2017: 2) maintains that culture is a joint meaning-making structure which is a group of history that is conveyed through generations. holding a similar view is spencer-oaley (2012: 1), who states that culture refers to merits possessed by people of the same social group. deducing f rom these scholars, culture is shared, learned and transmitted through generations. it is a socially shared concept. culture conflict as maintained by jaja (2012: 84), there is a predicament developing among af ricans, between maintaining their culture and adapting to universal cultures. af ricans are at the heart of globalisation, mainly because they are a legacy of colonisation. af rican societies, at large, are faced with culture conflict due to the adaptation of western values. within this context, conflict refers to an opposition between two groups: traditional conservative af ricans and modern af ricans. in the novel kushaywa edonsayo, j.c. buthelezi explores the intoxication of urban life and the perceived stagnation of rural existence. the main character, bhekani mchunu, is faced with a dilemma of being more western, yet his life circumstances require him to preserve his traditional role of maintaining his father’s home in the rural areas. according to diop (2012: 223), there is pressure escalating in af rica with diverse elements that contaminate the af rican version of life. in this case, bhekani’s pressure is a result of his act of abandoning his rural home, to dwell in the alluring city. as a result of abandoning his responsibility to the family and the farm, misfortunes beset him. this is in line with the general belief, among af ricans, that misfortunes do not just befall one but are instigated by a certain cause. bhekani faces the tragedy of losing his mother, years after his father’s passing away. after a few years of living in the city (ethekwini), he reflects on his mother’s wishes that he is assumed to fulfil. before passing away, his mother utters to bhekani: uze ungalilahli futhi ungalifulatheli ikhaya (do not abandon nor turn your back towards your home) (buthelezi, 1993: 14). these words imply that bhekani has to leave the urban ethekwini and everything that he has worked hard for and go back to rural jonono to take care of his home. as he is not content with his mother’s wishes, these words continue to torment him. after the funeral, on bhekani’s way back to ethekwini, buthelezi narrates a conversation between bhekani and samvu (bhekani’s wife): bhekani: umama wathi ngize ngingalilahli futhi ngingalifulatheli ikhaya. (mother said i must neither abandon nor turn my back on my home.) samvu: pho ukhathazwa yini kula mazwi bheki-bheki? ... wayeqinisile umama, akufanele, akulungile ukufulathela ikhaya. ikhaya likhaya bhekani… (so, what is bothering you with that instruction bheki-bheki?... mother was telling the truth; it is neither right nor acceptable to abandon home. home is home bhekani…) bhekani: ngingeke ngakuphikisa ukuthi ikhaya likhaya ngisho abazali sebashona, kodwa wena awulazi leli khaya engikhuluma ngalo. awuyazi imimango nemiqansa engibhekane nayo ngaleliya khaya … ngangibahlonipha abazali bami besaphila. ngibahlonipha kakhulu manje uma sebengekho, kodwa la mazwi kamama ayengithusa. kungathi kuzobanzinyana, ngizohluleka ukuwagcina nokuwahlonipha… p e e r r e v i e w 43 (i will never deny that home is home even when parents are no more, but you do not know the home i am talking about. you do not know the quarrels and hardships that i am faced with about that home… i respected my parents while they were still alive. i respect them more now that they have passed away, but my mother’s words are scarring me. it seems it will be difficult; i will not be able to fulfil and respect them.) (buthelezi, 1993: 14) in the extract above, bhekani is in denial of fulfilling his deceased mother’s command. instead of following his mother’s wishes, he explicitly states that, even though he respects his parents, it seems that it will be difficult to fulfil their wishes, although he is certain of what his parents wanted. he finds it easy to abandon his responsibility for the family that is composed of his siblings as well, and the farm. justifying his decisions, he states that he will not be able to deal with the quarrels and the hardships that come with jonono. according to brown (1999: 227), south af rica is a microcosm of the basic cultural conflict because it faces the battle between protecting the interests of culture or central rights of the individual. it is within his rights for bhekani to choose the life that he wants for himself as an individual. however, his rights are in quarrel with his culture. in the above quotation, bhekani states that he respects his parents more now that they have passed on. from these words, it can be concluded that he respects and acknowledges ancestors. therefore, it is anticipated that he follows their instructions. instead, bhekani maintains: mina samvu ngizohluleka ukushiya umdubane nobucwecwebe bawo, ngishiye usamvu wami, ngiyobutha inhlakanhlaka, ngiwole imvithimvithi, ngikhongozele, ngibuthezele, ngilungisa izigwegwe ezikade zagoba emzini kababa. (samvu, i will not be able to leave durban and its luxury, leave my samvu, to go pick up the pieces and fix the wrongs that were long there in my father’s home.) (buthelezi, 1993: 15) sibani (2018: 66) is of the view that the changes that are evident among af rican cultures are influenced by the socio-cultural evolution that has occurred world-wide, in favour of western culture. the main concern raised by bhekani, which prevents him f rom going back to jonono, is the luxurious life that he has in durban. currency is another major influence on cultural change, even though currency is not necessarily part of af rican culture. at the heart of the life of luxury is money. bhekani is now prioritising currency and luxury. moreover, his reasons are influenced by the western culture that he has adapted to. this attests to sibani’s (op cit.) view that there are changes within af rican cultures that are influenced by the socio-cultural evolution. bhekani no longer sees his home as his responsibility. the author further outlines his thoughts: uyise wayethe ikhaya lakwabo ngaleli gama lejourney’s end ngoba kunguyena uyise owayezophelela kuleli khaya. wayengaziboni-ke ubhekani izindlela zakhe ziphelela kuleli khaya ejonono, emaphandleni kwantuthu … (his father had named his home journey’s end because it was him (his father) whose life was to end there. bhekani then never imagined himself ending up in jonono, at the rural areas, where there is smoke…) (buthelezi, 1993: 22) bhekani has been consumed by western culture. as a result, he no longer sees himself as part of rural and traditional areas. notwithstanding that he grew up in jonono, he stresses that his father had decisively named jonono journey’s end because he v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 sibani (2018: 66) is of the view that the changes that are evident among african cultures are influenced by the socio-cultural evolution that has occurred world-wide, in favour of western culture. the main concern raised by bhekani, which prevents him from going back to jonono, is the luxurious life that he has in durban. p e e r r e v i e w 44 (his father) wished his children not to grow old there. to him, going back to rural jonono, where there are no modern developments, is not an option. however, being in denial of his parents’ commands brings him bad dreams. ever since his mother’s burial, bhekani has never slept peacefully. sibani (2018) maintains that cultural adaptation results in great negative impacts on af rican tradition. it is af rican culture to fulfil ancestral commands. however, due to cultural evolution, bhekani does not realise the significance of fulfilling his ancestor’s wishes. consequently, misfortunes torment him. he is continuously involved in car accidents and he loses his job. parkash (1993: 2) claims that the traditional af rican and modern (western) cultures, that came into contact through colonisation, differ in philosophy and social structure. how af ricans embrace life is different f rom how westerners embrace it. yet, due to systems such as colonisation, the af rican way of life has been contaminated. buthelezi narrates bhekani’s concerns: ubhekani wayezibuza eziphendula ukuthi kodwa unina umamkhize wayemsukele ngani emfumbathisa lesiqalekiso sokuba abheke ikhaya. (bhekani had unanswered questions; asking himself why his mother mamkhize had given him the curse of watching over the home.) (buthelezi, 1993: 36) in af rican culture, ancestral commands are not regarded as a curse. it is a common belief among af ricans to respect ancestors. though, due to clashes in ideology and social structures between af rican and modern cultures, bhekani regards his late mother’s wishes as a curse. evidently, the significant modification of ideology and social structure has intensified some conflicts among af rican cultures. lame (2013: 12) is of the view that there is a lifestyle that has infatuated af ricans, which is degrading their own way of life. sibani (2018: 68–69) also brings another lifestyle that has brought conflict in af rican societies, which is a liberated sexual activity for young people. another major concern that influences bhekani’s decision not to want to go back home is the quarrels in his parents’ house. the quarrels are caused by overcrowding in his home. this is because all his sisters have many (out of wedlock) children staying under the same roof. the high number of children is a result of liberated sexual activities. the conflict between tradition and modern ways of life has become an af rican central life theme. after the passing away of bhekani’s mother, gogo ximba (an old woman in the village) insists on cutting every child’s hair as a symbol of respect to bhekani’s mother. little does she know that nkintsho (bhekani’s sister) does not believe in this ritual. on realising that her children’s hair has been shaved, nkintsho screams in disbelief: awu gogo ximba! kodwa wenzani gogomathetha? wenzani nje? ngiyazisa ngezinwele zomntanami! hi---hi—hi--! (oh gogo ximba! what are you doing gogomathetha? what are you doing? i am concerned about my child’s hair! hi—hi—hi--!) (buthelezi, 1993: 6) among af ricans, there is evidence of western efforts to transform af rican culture. in general, among traditional af ricans, the shaving of hair is used as a symbol of respect to the deceased. however, due to the influence of western culture, nkintsho does not approve of this ritual. from the foregoing discussion, it is arguable that cultural assimilation does not necessarily and always result in a new culture. instead, it may also lead to cultural conflicts between two worlds: traditional and modern worlds. as is evident, there is a battle between bhekani’s western lifestyle and the life that his parents wished him to fulfil. both these lives – western and traditional af rican – vary dramatically in ideology and social structure, thus causing cultural conflict. cultural commitment cultural devotion is crucial, mainly because of its significance in instilling cultural and identity awareness among af ricans. cultural commitment entails enculturation, which is a process of maintaining norms, heritage and culture by societies. in this regard, commitment refers to the t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 45 retrieving of human norms, heritage and culture passed through ancestry. based on dei’s (2012: 43) views, the retrieving of af rican culture is imperative to decolonising and recognising the genuineness of the af rican voice and human experience. j.c. buthelezi profoundly attempts to enculturate people in his novel kushaywa edonsayo (1993). his emphasis is the sense of identity and unity amongst his characters. at the beginning of the novel, buthelezi recites mamkhize’s (bhekani’s mother) last words to bhekani before she passes away: bhekani mntanami impilo igeleza njengamanzi ebheke olwandle. uma sengemukile mina mntanami, kuko konke okwenzayo, uze ungalifulatheli leli khaya … (bhekani my child, life flows like water to the ocean. when i am gone my child, in everything that you do, do not turn your back on this home…) (buthelezi, 1993: 2–3) according to arunga (2017: 36), longing determination to ensuring cultural commitment among people is essential to recover continuity. the maintenance of cultural continuity will preserve af rican history and treasures. to mamkhize, jonono is a legacy that needs to be treasured. she explicitly instructs her son not to forget home when she is no longer alive. she further states that izithukuthuku zethu noyihlo ningazibukeli ziphelele emoyeni njengezenja (do not allow our sweat with your father to fade away into air like that of a dog) (buthelezi, 1993: 3). based on this citation, the sense of continuity is significant to mamkhize; therefore, it is significant to the af rican society as a whole. in this extract, buthelezi exposes the rank of cultural continuity and the importance of cultural commitment. as maintained by husien and kebede (2017: 61), among af rican societies, communal morals such as loyalty, respect, love, ubuntu, hospitality and many more, are stressed meticulously. among these values, af rican morals emphasise the importance of helping each other, which is practised through ubuntu. giving her last instructions to bhekani, mamkhize avers: uma ukhuphuka, khuphuka nabakwenu. uselule isandla sakho ubadonse (when you succeed, succeed with your siblings. stretch your hand out and pull them) (buthelezi, 1993: 3). through her words, mamkhize does not only remind her son of his cultural responsibilities, she also advocates for the spirit of helping each other. this is one of the communal morals that are shared and valued among af ricans. hence, brown (1993) highlights that, among af rican communities, the sense of individualism is not encouraged. in some af rican societies, the clash of ideologies is mostly influenced by religion. nevertheless, creff (2004: 3) argues that christian churches should adopt a new mind-set and participate in the af rican renaissance. this new mind-set would entail the advocacy of af rican cultures, languages and histories. as bhekani is no longer staying in jonono, he has converted to christianity. as misfortunes befall him, he decides to reconnect with his indigenous culture. following the accidents that bhekani has survived, he decides to invite his church members to join him as he gives thanks, for he has survived. on the day of the ceremony, to keep up with culture, he insists that they make traditional beer for the ancestors. this does not only reveal cultural commitment, it also affirms creff ’s (op cit.) view that christian churches should also advocate for the af rican renaissance. in af rican culture, traditional beer is one of the mechanisms used to connect with ancestors; hence bhekani sees it crucial to make it. moreover, mtumane (2014: 24) highlights that ancestors are considered as a v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 in some african societies, the clash of ideologies is mostly influenced by religion. never theless, cref f (2004: 3) argues that christian churches should adopt a new mind-set and par ticipate in the african renaissance. this new mind-set would entail the advocacy of african cultures, languages and histories. p e e r r e v i e w 46 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 linkage between human beings and god. therefore, bhekani sees it fit to make traditional beer for the ceremony. husien and kebede (2017: 61) maintain that, in most af rican communities, people do not perceive themselves as distinct and individuals. on the contrary, bhekani f inds it diff icult to move back to jonono. he continuously stresses that he is an individual and he has established his own life in durban. however, samvu (his wife) disagrees with his decision. buthelezi narrates samvu’s response to bhekani: masiphindele ekhaya bhekani. ngiyacela sthandwa sami. injabulo yami ayigcwali, ayipheleli njengoba singumndeni onhlakanhlaka. (let us go back home bhekani. i am pleading with you my dear. my happiness is not fulfilled as we are a scattered family.) (buthelezi, 1993: 67) in af rica, family is the cement of society. even though bhekani has adapted to the western system of individualism, samvu finds it her responsibility to remind him of the importance of the family. in this circumstance, samvu emphasises that, without other family members, she feels empty. the idea of being distinct f rom their community does not compliment her principles. she further highlights that the family is scattered. this attests to husien and kebede’s (2017: 62) view that communal morals are crucial to af ricans. the spirit of ubuntu and solidarity is vital to ensure the well-being of society. therefore, samvu finds it significant to remind bhekani of culture devotions. moreover, sibani (2018: 62) proclaims that a decent family structure in af rican societies is reached through the sense of good human relations. bhekani finally decides to move back to jonono to fulfil his late mother’s wishes, even though his concern is that, without his parents, jonono is no longer a peaceful place. there are quarrels between his siblings and his uncles but he commits himself into fulfilling his responsibilities. as it has been maintained, the spirit of ubuntu and solidarity is of vital value to af ricans. therefore, bhekani gathers his family to resolve family matters. he says: imizamo yethu yokwenyusa izindonga zomuzi kababa ingeke iphumelele uma ingaxhumene nemimoya yethu sonke esikulo muzi kababa. (our efforts to re-build our father’s household will not succeed if our spirits are not in harmony in this household.) (buthelezi 1993: 99) bhekani finds it important to firstly unite the family before engaging in other family responsibilities. he maintains that if their spirits, as a family, are not in harmony, nothing will succeed. according to van der walt (2003: 52), in af rican culture, truthfulness, charity, honesty, loyalty, generosity, respect and solidarity are important elements of good morals. bhekani attempts to lay the foundation of re-building his home with honesty, truthfulness, loyalty and solidarity. hence, he finds it necessary for the family to gather and iron out issues that are triggering conflicts in their home. this reveals bhekani’s will to commit to his culture and his family. at jonono, bhekani puts his family farm into good use. he also uses the knowledge and skills he has acquired while still residing in durban to open a huge shop and other facilities that would help his community. everything goes accordingly until their unfortunate day, when they get attacked by bees at the shop. oddly, the bees sting bhekani only. looking at this unfortunate matter, kubheka (bhekani’s worker) requests a traditional healer, khanyile, to come and give bhekani traditional medicine. this reveals or highlights the confusion among af ricans of whether to seek answers of deaths, misfortune, disasters and accidents f rom the christian church or traditional healers. even though bhekani is a christian, kubheka represents the af ricans who still seek clarity f rom traditional healers and who foster to maintain their culture. in addition, gumede (another traditional healer) pays visit to bhekani’s home after the incident. he maintains: ungakhohlwa phela ukuthi thina singabantu, sinezethu izinkolo okungafanele sizilahle … namakholwa amakhulu ayazi ukuthi idlozi liyabhekelwa nokuthi imibhulelo ingatholakala phakathi esontweni … (do not forget that we are af ricans, we have our own beliefs that we must not forsake…even highly p e e r r e v i e w 47 religious people know that ancestors need to be pleased and that sorcery acts can also be found in church…) (buthelezi, 1993: 122–123) in the above extract, buthelezi exposes the importance of af rican beliefs. gumede encourages bhekani not to forsake his culture. moreover, he warns him that, even though he is a christian, he must be watchful because sorcery acts can also be found in church. as bhekani is in the process of selfdiscovery, maintaining af rican ways of life seems to be important to his journey. hence gumede, as an elder, finds it his responsibility to remind bhekani of how they perceive life in rural jonono. based on ushe’s (2011: 5) views, traditional af rican morals are identified to encourage human wellbeing. moreover, metz (2007: 338) highlights that af rican morals grasp some acts to be wrong. in this regard, bhekani looks at his sisters’ children and states: uma intombazane itholele ingane ekhaya, le ngane kuba ngeyabazali bentombazane noma kube ngeyomalume. (if a daughter gives birth to a child before marriage, that child belongs to her parents or the child’s uncles.) (buthelezi, 1993: 133) bhekani points out an act that is practised by most af ricans. it is a common belief among these af ricans that a child born before marriage belongs to the mother’s family. it can be assumed that this cultural practice was established to maintain human wellbeing, especially if the mother wishes to marry into another family. the foregoing quote reveals the cultural commitment that bhekani is keen to uphold. as stated earlier, metz (2007: 329) proclaims that af rican morals value human life, community, honesty, hospitality, discipline, protection, respect, etc. bhekani also emphasises these morals among his family members. in a conversation with his nephew about the influence of white people in south af rica, bhekani articulates: bafunza izingane zethu ukungahloniphi lutho olwazo, zingahloniphi imilando yethu … loku kubiza amakhosi ethu, abantu abadala, ngamagama akuyona inhlonipho yase-af rika … (they teach our children not to respect what is theirs, not to respect our history …the culture of calling our kings and elderly people by names is not our af rican respect…) (buthelezi, 1993: 138) through this conversation, bhekani infuses the prominence of identity and respect. according to sefa dei (2012: 49), there is no af rican identity without the affirmation of cultures, spirituals, indigenous histories and language. bhekani finds it necessary to inspire af rican culture to his nephew. this shows the importance of enculturation among af rican societies. later on, bhekani’s efforts to transform jonono into a vibrant area of development succeed. in this novel, buthelezi strives to reveal the importance of embracing af rican identity and indigenous culture. moreover, bhekani’s journey highlights the significance of cultural commitment and maintaining the af rican way of life. conclusion this paper offered a discussion on cultural devotion in relation to buthelezi’s novel kushaywa edonsayo (1993). the aim was to explore cultural commitments presented in the novel. the discourse revealed cultural conflicts and cultural devotions as portrayed in the novel. the main sub-titles were culture, culture conflict and culture commitment. from the above discussion, it is observable that there is a great culture conflict within af rican societies. the principles and ideologies that westernised traditional af ricans, and which they maintain, vary dramatically. the major result of these differences is the conflict they cause in different societies. while it is understandable that societies at large are developing and improving, it is also noticeable that some of the developments looming in communities clash with the indigenous af rican cultures. it is still arguable that western culture has a great influence on contaminating af rican cultures. members of different societies now prefer maintaining western culture rather than maintaining af rican culture. that includes abandoning ancestral beliefs and other af rican customs. the situation portrayed by buthelezi suggests that there are still a number of af ricans who do not regard af rican culture as important to their lives. v o l u m e 9 2 / 2 0 2 2 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 48 although buthelezi discloses culture neglect, he also strives to reveal culture commitment. through his main character, bhekani, he reveals the importance of maintaining af rican culture to ensure societal harmony. before western influence, many af ricans valued af rican morals such as honesty, love, humanity, respect, ubuntu, hospitality, etc. due to popular culture and globalisation, many af ricans seem to have abandoned such morals. in his novel, buthelezi encourages the enculturation of the af rican valued morals. the emphasis is on preserving communal morals that will unite af ricans. it is, however, worth mentioning that not all af ricans are victims of the acculturation of western values. there are those who are still in line with their culture and traditions. at the time of moral renaissance, it is a necessity to argue that there is a fair enculturation process taking place in af rica, especially among the youth. there seem to be some af rican individuals who are keen to maintain af rican culture and identity. on the other hand, there are still a great number of af rican individuals who are consumed by western culture. therefore, it is still a challenge for af rican societies to strive to maintain indigenous af rican values. recommendations as the subject of culture is broad and not many scholars have analysed it as it is illustrated in af rican literary works, it is necessary that more students of literature conduct research on it. as this paper has considered the aspect only in one isizulu novel, scholars may consider works by authors in the same or other languages. these works could include other genres of literature as well. references arunga, m.t. (2017). ‘back to af rica in the 21st century: the cultural reconnection experiences of af rican american women.’ unpublished phd thesis. california: antioch university. brown, k.d. (1999). ‘globalisation and cultural conflict in developing countries: the south af rican example.’ indiana journal of global legal studies, 7(1): 225–256. buthelezi, j.c. (1993). kushaywa edonsayo. cape town: maskew miller longman. creff, k. (2004). exploring ubuntu and the af rican renaissance: a concept study of servant leadership f rom an af rican perspective. virginia: regent university. diop, s. (2012). ‘af rican elites and their post-colonial legacy: cultural, political and economic discontent – by way of literature.’ af rica development, xxxv ‖ (2): 221–235. grayman-shimpson, n. (2017). the sage encyclopedia of abnormal and clinical psychology. thousand oaks: sage publications. husien, a and kebede, o. (2017). ‘the conception of morality in indigenous af rican culture.’ international journal of english literature and culture, 5(3): 57–64. jaja, j.m. (2012). ‘globalization, culture and the great disruption: an assessment.’ international journal of academic research in business and social sciences, 2(2): 78–86. lame, m.k. (2013). things fall apart: an analysis of pre and post-colonial igbo society. sweden: karlstads university. metz, t. (2007). ‘towards an af rican moral theory.’ the journal of political philosophy, 15(3): 321–341. motloung, n.l. (2020). ‘some cultural aspects in zulu novels.’ unpublished master’s dissertation. johannesburg: university of johannesburg. mtumane, z. (2014). ‘the significance of ancestors as a cultural component in m. mbambo’s amakroza (1992).’ southern af rican journal for folklore studies, 24(1): 22–39. parkash, k.j. (1993). ‘cultural transition in colonial and postcolonial societies in three francophone west af rican novels by ahmadou kourouma, francis bebey and mariama ba.’ unpublished master’s dissertation. montana: university of montana. sefa-dei, g.j (2012). ‘reclaiming our af ricanness in the diasporized context: the challenge of asserting a critical af rican personality.’ the journal of pan af rican studies, 4(10): 42–57. sibani, c.m. (2018). ‘impact of western culture on traditional af rican societies: problems and prospects.’ international journal of religion and human relations, 10(1): 56–72. spencer-oaley, h. (2012). ‘what is culture? a compilation of questions.’ global pad core concepts, university of warwick [online]. available at: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/globalpadintercultural ushe, m.u. (2011) ‘role of traditional af rican moral values in the development of nigeria.’ journal of sociology, psychology and anthropology in practice, 3(2): 1–13. van der walt, b.j. (2003). morality in af rica: yesterday and today, the reasons for the contemporary crisis. potchefstroom: potchefstroom university for che. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 50 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion in 2021, prof. corné davis, f rom the department of strategic communication at the university of johannesburg (uj), approached kpmg south af rica regarding the publication of an updated research report on the cost of gender-based violence (gbv) to the south af rican economy, following a f requently quoted report titled ‘too costly to ignore – the economic impact of genderbased violence in south af rica’. a memorandum of agreement (moa) was signed between uj, shared value af rica initiative, and kpmg south af rica to conduct research and to publish a new gbv report for south af rica. in the 2014 kpmg report, prof. koustuv dalal of mid sweden university was cited with reference to the cost estimations he had done during a study in kwazulu-natal in 2011. prof. davis contacted prof. dalal by email to invite him to participate in the study. by corné davis exploring the impact of gender-based violence in south africa: a partnership between the university of johannesburg and mid sweden university 51v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 on 11 march 2020, president ramaphosa published the national strategic plan to address gbv in south africa in which he called on the private sector multiple times to address gbv. at that time, no study had been conducted to determine the views of the private sector on gbv. hence, this new research was conceptualised. the study used three methodologies, which were interviews with leaders in private sector organisations in south africa (mostly chief executive officers), an employee perception survey, and a secondary data analysis for the estimation of the cost of gbv to the south african economy. at that time, there was little evidence to suggest that gbv was being addressed as an issue that affects employees in the private sector in south africa (davis, 2020). first, interviews were held with leaders in private sector organisations in south africa to determine: a) their awareness of the prevalence and impact of gbv in south africa; b) where they would position the issue of gbv within their organisational framework; c) what they thought their employees expected them to do regarding gbv support and intervention; and d) whether they intended to address gbv in some way. second, a survey instrument was developed in collaboration with dr kuhudzai, an expert statistician at uj. the survey was distributed among all networks, including the stakeholders of the south african research partners, and was also shared on linkedin. the aim of the survey was to determine what employees’ knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, and recommendations were pertaining to gbv and how it should be addressed by private sector organisations in south africa. the survey ran for 10 months and a total of 2,270 responses were used for analysis. although this was not a representative study, responses were received from all provinces in south africa and included all language groups. the number was significant enough to provide some insight into employees’ perceptions. prof. dalal had previously done research in 52 countries, with many of the studies focused on gbv. he had also been ranked as the top health economist in the world and is familiar with south africa from his previous research. he used local and global figures to estimate the current cost of gbv to the south african economy with the secondary data obtained from the world bank and the world health organisation. he made a strong recommendation for a study to be conducted among gbv victims to arrive at a more accurate figure, given that most cases of gbv in south africa are never reported to the police. release of the research prof. dalal visited south africa from 8 to 18 august 2022 to attend the release of the research report at the johannesburg stock exchange (jse). prof. dalal was welcomed at uj auckland park campus on 10 august 2022 by the dean of the faculty of humanities, prof. kammila naidoo. prof. dalal presented a public lecture that was well attended by enthusiastic students who were keen to learn about some of the successful gbv interventions he had been involved in previously. image 1: prof. koustuv dalal, prof. corné davis and dr anesu kuhudzai (the research team) opinion 52 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the event at the jse was attended by various stakeholders, including some of the participating private sector organisations, non-governmental organisations, and other stakeholders. several interviews were held on television and radio channels and most of the major newspapers in south af rica covered the event. the research report was endorsed by prof. mervyn king, who is well known for the king reports on corporate governance and who authored the foreword, as well as uj chancellor dr phumzile mlambo-ngcuka, who has also been the executive director of un women, with a rank of under-secretarygeneral of the un. the report showed that leaders in the private sector were aware that gbv was a problem in south af rica, but their awareness of how it affected their employees was less apparent. it was also apparent f rom leaders’ responses that they were aware that gender inequality persisted in south af rica, and they acknowledged that inequality was a key driver of gbv. many agreed that addressing gbv should be included in their organisation’s strategy as well as organisational policies. many leaders acknowledged that gbv was an issue that affected employee wellbeing and that it required a more holistic approach as it also affected employees’ inner circles. leaders who did not know much detail about gbv were provided with some statistics, including the fact that intimate partner violence statistics in south af rica are six times higher than the global average, and that most cases of gbv are never reported to the police. they were also informed that a very high number of gbv distress calls received by the tears foundation’s help-atyour-fingertips line were made f rom affluent areas in south af rica (davis and meerkotter, 2017). findings of the research the findings f rom the employee perception study were most insightful. the sample population was skewed towards higher education levels, ranging f rom diplomas to doctorate qualifications. there were several key findings. first, most of the sample was aware of the prevalence of the different kinds of gbv being perpetrated in south af rica. most respondents strongly agreed that gbv had to be addressed in the workplace, because of its high prevalence in south af rica. surprisingly, a significant number of employees felt that perpetrators of gbv also needed support, given that children who were exposed to or experienced gbv in their lives were far more likely to become either victims or perpetrators or both. employees also felt that patriarchy was a key driver of gbv and that it was closely linked to inequality and the subordination of women across cultures, with 77% holding the view that gbv was a main contributor to the lack of career progress for women in south af rica. several employees expressed their dismay at the south af rican government’s systemic failures, ranging f rom inadequate police services to the lack of support structures and appalling conviction rates for gbv crimes. they also thought that private sector organisations should include how they were addressing gbv in their annual economic social and governance (esg) reports to demonstrate their commitment to addressing gbv in south af rica. the health economy stream of the research revealed concerning findings, showing that among the 789,000 employees in the organisations included in the study, the crude estimate was that approximately 208,000 female employees would have experienced some kind of gbv in their lifetime. it was pointed out that gbv necessarily impacts victims’ performance at work and hence the profitability of the company. a figure in the study also shows how the disabilityadjusted life years (dalys) have increased over the past 10 years, based on the secondary data obtained f rom the world health organisation (who) and the world bank. dalys refer to years of life lost because of exposure to and experience of gbv. the human capital approach was used for the cost estimation of the health economy stream of the research revealed concerning findings, showing that among the 789,000 employees in the organisations included in the study, the crude estimate was that approximately 208,000 female employees would have experienced some kind of gbv in their lifetime. it was pointed out that gbv necessarily impacts victims’ performance at work and hence the profitability of the company. opinion 53v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 opinion gbv in south af rica, referring to health, knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic wellbeing (davis, kuhudzai and dalal, 2022). the cost estimation included the out-ofpocket (oop) expenditure of individuals, as well as loss of productivity, and the dalys for south af rica in 2019 was estimated at 289,800, while the oop expenditure for gbv victims was estimated at approximately r10 billion per annum. also considering other costs, such as medical practitioners and judicial expenditure, a loss of more than r36 billion to gdp in 2019 alone was estimated for south af rica. the report acknowledged that these estimations may not be accurate, and that primary research had to be conducted to arrive at more accurate cost estimations. the report made a number of recommendations, starting with an appeal to business leaders to speak out against gender inequality in the workplace and to address issues such as gender discrimination, while providing more support to enable women’s empowerment. the report reiterated the importance of subscribing to the sustainable development goals (sdgs), with specific reference to sdg 5, which aims to achieve gender equality. it was also recommended that organisations should enable complaint and response mechanisms that could also help to address the silence that perpetuated gbv. private sector organisations should act to prevent gbv within the company through strategy, hr-led policies, systems, awareness training, communication and dialogue. further research further research was done during prof. dalal’s visit. the first engagement was in east london in the eastern cape province of south af rica. a focus group discussion was held with a group of public services representatives and other gbv support service providers to gather their views on why the gbv statistics for south af rica are so high. interviews were also conducted and conversations held with gbv support service providers in the city of cape town in the western cape province. most interviews were held in umhlanga in kwazulu-natal, where participants included gbv activists, a team of medical practitioners, public health officials, and the national prosecuting authority. the last set of data was collected f rom public service providers in welkom in the free state province. these findings will be submitted for publication shortly. since prof. dalal’s visit to south af rica, he has been appointed distinguished visiting professor at uj, and an mou between uj and mid sweden university has been signed. prof. dalal will visit uj again in 2023 to continue with our gbv research and, hopefully, to attend the release of our next national gbv research report on victim profiling in collaboration with the tears foundation. the current research will show the number of gbv distress calls that were made to the tears helpline, and where these calls were made f rom. it will also provide very specific information about call patterns, including population parameters for the various cities and suburbs in south af rica. another data stream in this study will profile gbv victims in terms of their conversations with tears support staff. these data sets will also be linked to police records and statistics published by the south af rican government. the collaboration so far has been successful, and hopefully the publication of the forthcoming reports will gather support for the funding of gbv intervention programmes that are so critical for south af rica. the impact of the gbv research has been recognised as prof. davis won the faculty of humanities dean’s award for 2022 and won the woman of stature award for women in education, as well as the overall woman of stature award for south af rica. considering the global impact of gbv, further collaboration between south af rican and swedish universities to address gbv is recommended. references dalal, k. and dawad, s. (2011). ‘economic costs of domestic violence: a community study in south africa.’ healthmed, 5(6): suppl.1: 1931–1940. davis, c. and meerkotter, d.n. (2017). ‘exploring the heuristic value of non-personal data for sexualand gender-based violence research and prevention in south africa.’ african safety promotion, 15(1): 16–37. davis, c. (2020). ‘how the private sector can address the issue of gender-based violence in south africa.’ african safety promotion, 18(1): 106–115. davis, c., kuhudzai, a.g. and dalal, k. (2022). “the costly impact of gbv: private sector perceptions and realities in south africa.” shared value africa initiative [online]. available at: svai.africa/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/gbv-report22_050822.pdf kpmg. (2014). ‘too costly to ignore – the economic impact of gender-based violence in south africa.’ kpmg [online]. available at: assets.kpmg/content/dam/ kpmg/za/pdf/2017/01/za-too-costly-to-ignore.pdf https://svai.africa/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/gbv-report22_050822.pdf https://svai.africa/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/gbv-report22_050822.pdf https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/za/pdf/2017/01/za-too-costly-to-ignore.pdf https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/za/pdf/2017/01/za-too-costly-to-ignore.pdf t h e t h i n k e r32 pan-african a nxiety about technology is nothing new among traditional intellectuals. the greek philosopher plato worried that writing would produce forgetfulness – if you can write things down there is no need to remember them – while the english poet alexander pope described the invention of printing as a ‘scourge for the sins of the learned.’ narratives about literature being shunted aside by other media go back to the advent of visual media such as movies or television, long before the rise of the internet. then as now, the view of a present where deep thinking and reading are relegated to the margins of cultural life by new technologies is overstated. firstly because reading, and especially the reading of high literary forms, has always been an activity for a minority with a particular set of literacy skills, surplus money and the leisure time to pursue it. as us media scholar kathleen fitzpatrick notes, narratives of cultural decay have more or less overt ideological motivations. the subtext of recent statements about the decline of a reading culture in the age of digital and social media is usually something like: ‘no one reads [anything (i think is) good] anymore’ (fitzpatrick, 2012, p. 42). it is not that people, including africans, who are active online do not read, and write, anymore. the digitally connected tend to read and write a lot. it is just that they often read and write short, small size chunks of text: whatsapp messages, tweets, and facebook and instagram posts. the key shift here is that digital media users bypass the divisions between the written, the visual, the oral and the aural. we read and write texts, look at images, play videos and listen to music or speech on the same device, often at the same time. we have created new ways of communicating in literacies and african literature digital media, in this article, we explore the impact of digital media on af rican literacy practices and literature. as our starting point, we want to problematise the notion that digital media spell doom for reading generally and for af rican literature in particular. versions of this argument include perturbations that ‘af rican readerships are under siege’ by ‘the cost of books, varying degrees of general literacy, inadequate library services and the seductions of the web and social media’ (o jwang and titlestad, 2014). the latter are held responsible for the decline in modes of attention attuned to ‘older forms of “deep” and refined literature,’ in favour of ‘visual salience, speed, brevity and the predominance of surface over depth.’ in this view, the information flow of new media has rendered the pastime of reading fiction, with its affects and ‘stylistic or literary pretensions to beauteous form, […] seem evermore superfluous’ (de kock, 2015). pier paolo frassinelli and lisa treffry-goatley © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m 33v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african which the written, the visual, the oral and the aural are constantly mixed and remixed. the results are hybrid and complex messages that produce their own discourses, modes of engagement, codes and forms of attention (frassinelli, 2019, p.16-17; 67-71). ngũgĩ wa thiong’o has theorised the implications of this mixing of modes, codes and forms for african literature. in particular, he has highlighted the challenge cyberspace poses to ‘aesthetic feudalism:’ where, in modern western culture and its colonial outposts, a hierarchy is established between the written and the oral whereby the latter, ‘even when viewed as being “more” authentic or closer to the natural, is treated as bondsman to the writing master’ (ngũgĩ, 2012). the multimodal and transmedia forms of expression and communication that we encounter online interrupt the hegemony of writing and open up new possibilities for its hybridisation with the oral: the lines between the written and the orally transmitted are being blurred in the age of internet and cyberspace. this has been going on for some years with the writing down of the orally transmitted; the electronic transmissions of the written as spoken through the radio and television; or simply the radio as a medium of speech. but it has surely accelerated with all corners of the globe becoming neighborhoods in cyberspace. through technology, people can speak in real time face to face. the language of texting and emailing and access to everything including pictures and music in real time is producing a phenomenon that is neither pure speech nor pure writing. the language of cyberspace may borrow the language of orality, twitter, chat rooms, we-have-been-talking when they mean we-have-been-texting, or chatting through writing emails, but it is orality mediated by writing. it is neither one nor the other. it’s both. it’s cyborality. (ngũgĩ, 2012) media convergence and cyborality are especially apt points of entry into the work of some of the best-known contemporary african writers, not in the least because of their engagement with different media, and especially their digital media presence. the first example that comes to mind is the internet celebrity status of nigerian novelist chimamanda ngozi adichie. at the time of writing, in october 2019, adichie’s talk ‘the danger of a single story’ has hit over twenty million views on ted.com and over five and a half millions on youtube, with well over one thousand comments for each video, while her tedxeuston talk ‘we should all be feminists,’ sampled in beyoncé’s 2013 single ‘***flawless,’ has scored over five and a half million views on youtube. digital media also finds its way into and out of african and diasporic authors’ books. again, the best known example comes from chimamanda ngozi adichie’s americanah (2013, p.418-423), whose main character, ifemelu, sets up a blog called ‘raceteenth or various observations about american blacks (those formerly known as negroes) by a nonamerican black.’ her anonymous blog postings, typed in a different font from the rest of the text, provide a counterpoint to the unfolding story, in which ifemelu first migrates to the united states and then comes back to nigeria, where she starts a new blog, ‘the small redemptions of lagos’ (adichie, 2013). the second blog has had a life of its own outside the covers of the book. between 27 august and 2 november 2014 a series of posts on topics ranging from everyday life in nigeria, to responses about the representation of africa in western media were uploaded, as if ifemelu had written them, at https://americanahblog.com/, where they are still accessible. the impact of digital media on this body of literature, in fact, goes beyond this description into other uses and references. contemporary narratives of migration by african authors have articulated the complex relations between the rupture produced by migration, and the role and limits of new communication technologies in bringing separate worlds together. the phrase media convergence and cyborality are especially apt points of entry into the work of some of the best-known contemporary african writers, not in the least because of their engagement with different media, and especially their digital media presence. t h e t h i n k e r34 ‘new-media-driven narratives’ has been used to describe how novels such as americanah and noviolet bulawayo’s we need new names (2013) address ‘issues of affect and access, which the influence of expanding virtual networks on social relations is making increasingly visible’ (isaacs, 2016, p. 174). us critic caren irr theorises a new subgenre that she labels the ‘digital migrant novel’ – in which she includes the ‘african migration fiction’ of teju cole’s open city (2011), chris abani’s virgin of flames (2007) and dinaw mengestu’s the beautiful things that heaven bears (2007) – where digital media provide a representational template and spatial sensibility that enable the move ‘from the discrete geography of nations to the overlapping and virtual spaces of communication technologies’ (irr, 2014, p. 26). but digital media are not only the playground of african literary stars who use them as narrative devices or to enhance their visibility. what shola adenekan calls ‘the internetting’ of african literature dates back ‘to the mid to late 1990s, when many young african writers, wanting to escape the politics of book publishing, began to publish poetry, short stories, and essays on african listservs, personal blogs and creating writing websites’ (adenekan, 2016, p. 3). today, ‘there are dozens of poetry and creative writing communities online.’ they testify both to the possibilities opened up by digital media for hybridising written and oral forms of expression and to their complex imbrication with the offline world: …poetry posted on facebook may be performed for members of the public in the real space of lagos and nairobi, and the recording of those performances may be posted on youtube and facebook for consumption by the online public. young poets such as david ishaya osu (nigeria), dami ajayi (nigeria), and redscar mcodindo k’oyuga (kenya) publish poems almost every week on facebook, many of which later form part of print collections. these works may also appear as part of a collection of a creative book project. these processes arguably involve reshaping the text for different formats, and through this process the creative piece is unfixed and susceptible to changes. (adenekan, 2016, p.3) digital media have offered a platform for the production, circulation and reception of diverse texts and performances through modes of delivery that make them travel outside of the literary establishment and move away from canonical literary forms. in june 2019, the number of african online users was ‘already larger than in latin america (448 million) and at current growth rates could eclipse europe (719 million) as internet penetration on the continent grows.’ still, a note of caution about the scale and reach of these developments is in order. in june 2019, less than 40% of africa’s population used the internet, contrasting with more than 60% of the population in the rest of the world (business insider, 2019). although internet penetration and mobile telephony are growing exponentially in africa, giving many access to digital and social media platforms, the digital divide remains a reality linked to class, age, gender, geographical location and language. the majority of internet sites are only available in english or in other former colonial languages. smartphones and data are still too expensive for the continent’s poor and working class people. in south africa, for instance, only 32 of over 58 million citizens have internet access, while the cost of data is more expensive than in higher income countries such as australia (see mutsvairo and ragnedda, 2019). african digital literary networks are largely middle-class and elite spaces. as adenekan underscores, the ‘poets, novelists, critics, and consumers of [african literary] works [that circulate online] are people with the language capability to enjoy them. they can afford fast and reliable internet, are often based in metropolitan centres of africa, europe, and america, and some even spend much of their time in these the impact of digital media on this body of literature, in fact, goes beyond this description into other uses and references. contemporary narratives of migration by african authors have articulated the complex relations between the rupture produced by migration, and the role and limits of new communication technologies in bringing separate worlds together. pan-african 35v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 places.’ the listservs adenekan surveys, such as concernedkenyanwriters, krazitivity, usa-africa dialogue and ederi, do not exceed a few thousand active users (adenekan, 2016, p. 3). there is no disputing the digital divide on the african continent, where a minority of people have access to digital technologies – to devices, software, data, effective connection and digital literacy skills (i.e., computer and other proficiencies). where people only have access to the cheapest type of devices – ‘dumb’ or ‘feature’ cell phones – they are more likely to be using them for oral communication than for enjoying the other affordances of digital media. it is not just a matter of access, but of meaningful and effective access, unimpeded by the cost of data and lack of digital literacy. even so, despite unequal access to digital technologies, and despite the current constraints on digital connectedness in africa, digital media can and do play a significant role in promoting reading practices and cultures across the african continent, in a multiplicity of african languages. examples of this can be found in work promoting children’s literacies – critical to developing lifelong readerships – by african storybook. now in its fifth year, african storybook uses traditional and digital publishing processes to create and distribute print and digital materials that support multimodal reading engagement. the african storybook initiative ‘aims to address the shortage of contextually appropriate books for early reading in the languages of africa.’ its goal is ‘for all young african children to have enough enjoyable books to read in a familiar language to practise their reading skills and learn to love reading’.1 central to african storybook is a website that is a repository of openly licensed digital storybooks written by african educators, and available in a multiplicity of languages ranging from acholi (uganda), afaan oromo and amharic (ethiopia), akwapem twi and asante twi (ghana), to isixhosa (south africa), yoruba (nigeria) and zarma (niger). storybooks are freely available for reading online, and for downloading as pdfs (print-ready or for projection) and epub files. at the time of writing, a total of 5851 digital storybooks had been published on the website, in 183 languages 1 see www.africanstorybook.org. african storybook is an initiative of saide, https://www. saide.org.za. – mostly indigenous african languages, but also in english, french and portuguese. some of the languages represented previously had little or no reading material published specifically for children. the total number of storybooks available on the website consists of those classified as original, plus the number of translated or adapted versions of the original storybooks. there are two main categories of original storybooks on the african storybook website: those that are created and published by independent users of the website, and those that are created and published with african storybook resources (which have gone through a basic editorial process and are illustrated by artists commissioned by african storybook). publishing tools for making storybooks are available both on the website and offline, and in a storybook maker app. while the quality of independently-produced materials may vary, this represents an important shift from publishing being the preserve of expert professional publishers to publishing being accessible to anyone with a computer and access to online publishing tools (and the ability to use them). the story manuscripts illustrated and published by african storybook have been developed and written mostly in workshops with teachers, librarians and education students in uganda, kenya, south africa, lesotho, ethiopia, ghana, nigeria and rwanda. in other words, the majority of storybooks are authored by african educators who create the storybooks for their particular contexts of use. contributors of stories are asked to write in their preferred language, and to submit two final texts – the story in an indigenous african language and another version usually in english (either the writer or someone else translates as necessary). the english storybooks are seen as the ‘seed texts,’ which can be accessed and translated or adapted by translators with proficiency in that language. this means that one illustrated storybook in one language can potentially be used by many different readers because it is possible to replace the written text on the digital pages and publish new translations and adaptations of any storybook. this can be achieved with the website publishing tools by any registered user. the economy of scale in (re)publishing storybooks on the african storybook website is enabled by the open license publishing model. all storybooks are pan-african t h e t h i n k e r36 published under a creative commons cc by license, which means that anyone is ‘free to download, copy translate or adapt this story and use the illustrations,’ as long as they include the attribution on the back of the storybooks they produce. thus, the core collection of approximately 400 original illustrated picture storybooks published by the african storybook initiative is available to anyone to translate or adapt online or offline and then upload in any language that has a written form (and, ideally, that has a keyboard). for example, a storybook written by cornelius wambi gulere in lusoga and english, ‘omusaadha omuleeyi einho’ – ‘a very tall man,’ has been translated into over 45 african languages, as well as into multiple non-african languages (via global storybooks). this storybook – and others with similar high numbers of translations and adaptions – is a good example of the affordances of open license digital publishing for multilingual cultural production.2 we are reminded here of another digital publishing project by jalada africa, an online journal out of nairobi that published a short story originally written in an african language and subsequently translated into 30 other african languages. titled ‘ituĩka rĩa mũrũngarũ: kana kĩrĩa gĩtũmaga andũ mathiĩ marũngiĩ,’ and authored by ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, the story was published in march 2016 in gĩkũyũ and translated into english as ‘the upright revolution: or why humans walk upright.’ according to mũkoma wa ngũgĩ, this is 2 for a link to ‘omusaadha omuleeyi einho’ – ‘a very tall man,’ see www. africanstorybook.org/reader.php?id=918&d=0&a=1. global storybooks (https:// globalstorybooks.net/) and storyweaver (https://storyweaver.org.in) also offer open license storybooks in multiple languages ‘the most translated african language story’ and the translation initiative is an important contribution to ‘decolonization’ (mutsvairo and ragnedda, 2019, p. 13-26). the examples of ‘internetting’ of african literature, as well as of african storybook and the jalada africa’s translation initiative illustrate some of the possibilities at the interface of digital media, literacy, literature, storytelling and african cultural production. they also underscore the complexity of theorising reading practices and creative expression in contexts where linguistic diversity and plurality are the norm, thereby inviting us to question what, in african contexts, constitutes the value of constructs such as ‘literacy,’ ‘literature’ and even ‘language.’ ■ a longer version of this article will appear in af rican philosophical and literary possibilities: re-reading the canon. ed. aretha phiri. lanham, md: lexington books. references adenekan, s. 2016. ‘new voices, new media: class, sex and politics in online nigerian and kenyan poetry.’ postcolonial text, 11.1. adichie, cn. 2013. americanah. london: fourth estate. business insider sa. 2019. ‘this startling graph shows how many africans are now using the internet – far more than in north america, and on track to beat europe.’ 24 july. de kock, l. 2015. ‘an era in which fact is more desired than fiction.’ mail & guardian, 24 july. fitzpatrick, k. 2012. ‘reading (and writing) online, rather than on the decline.’ profession, n.s. frassinelli, pp. 2019. borders, media crossings and the politics of translation: the gaze f rom southern af rica. new york: routledge. irr, c. 2014. the geopolitical novel: u.s. fiction in the twenty-first century. new york: columbia university press. isaacs, c. 2016, ‘mediating women’s globalized existence through social media in the work of adichie and bulawayo.’ safundi, 17.2. mukoma, wn. 2016. ‘a revolution in many tongues.’ af rica is a country, 26 april (2012:63). http://africasacountry.com/2016/04/a-revolution-in-manytongues/. mutsvairo, b. and ragnedda, m. 2019. ‘comprehending the digital disparities in africa.’ in mutsvairo. b. and ragnedda. m. (eds). mapping the digital divide in af rica: a mediated analysis. amsterdam: amsterdam university press. ngũgĩ, wt. 2012. globalectics: theory and the politics of knowing. columbia university press, new york. ojwang, d. and titlestad, m. 2014, ‘african writing blurs into “world” literature.’ mail & guardian, 14 april. a very tall man pan-african https://globalstorybooks.net/ https://globalstorybooks.net/ https://storyweaver.org.in _goback 98 p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction sweden’s support for the anti-apartheid movement is well documented and has prompted some observers to comment that both states share a “special relationship.” and while some aspects of south africa-sweden post-apartheid relations have been interrogated by scholars and covered in the media, a more generic and comprehensive account of south africa-sweden post-apartheid relations, as provided in this article and this special issue as a whole, is missing. using an analytical framework, of the author’s own design, that incorporates social, economic, and political indicators, this paper provides an appraisal of south africa-sweden relations while simultaneously offering a conclusion to the special issue on south africa-sweden relations. this paper argues that the aforementioned framework is necessary to glean a more comprehensive understanding of bilateral relations that the two states share. furthermore, the rudimentary understanding of south africa-sweden relation provides the foundation for increased research on south africa-sweden relations and africa-nordic relations more broadly. by sven botha south africa-sweden relations: an appraisal south africa-sweden relations: an appraisal 99v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction south af rica and sweden share a special relationship. this sentiment has been echoed by both government and the academic community alike. the roots of this “special relationship” are often grounded in the support sweden afforded the af rican national congress (anc) in its fight against the apartheid regime. in the post-apartheid era, sweden and the now anc national government have elevated their diplomatic exchanges to the ambassadorial level. and while post-apartheid south af rica-sweden relations have been monitored by both scholars and the media, there remains, as the forthcoming literature review will show, a lamentable lack of scholarly attention being given to formulating a more generic and comprehensive understanding of the nature of the bilateral relationship that both states share. in response to the gap in the literature this paper, and the accompanying special issue as whole, intend to provide a more far-reaching overview of the various aspects of south af rica-sweden relations encompassing historical, contemporary, and possible future accounts. for its part, this paper will attempt to apprise the state of south af rica-sweden relations using the author’s own analytical f ramework for the assessment of bilateral relations consisting of political, economic, and social cooperation. this f ramework has emerged given the gap that exists within the realm of bilateral relations assessment f rameworks which is mostly historical, emotive and exploratory in nature. the application of the author’s analytical f ramework finds that while south af rica and sweden have made impressive progress in their relationship, particularly in the post-apartheid setting (see table 1), more can be done in the realms of social and political cooperation. finally, this paper suggests how the discourse on south af rica-sweden relations can be advanced. bilateral relations: what does the literature say? south africa-sweden relations as the introductory contribution for this double special issue has already noted, the literature on post-1994 bilateral relations between south af rica and sweden is “scant.” the current literature on south af ricasweden relations can be divided into two pools. the first pool of literature is rooted in history with a focus on sweden’s support for the anti-apartheid movement (sellström, 1999; sellström, 2002a; sellström, 2002b), while also making a minor reference to swedish investment in south af rica during the apartheid era (magnusson, 1974). the second pool of literature is more contemporary in its composition focusing on the gilpin deal (coetzee, 2020; coetzee, 2021) and the early post-apartheid efforts to strengthen south af rica-sweden relations through the sweden-south af rica partnership week held in 1999 (glover, 2021). while both pools of liturature are notworthy and help to advance one’s unserstanding of the bilatural relationship that both states share, there is an everpressing need to go further. the litrature that exisits at presrnt leans towards the economic ties. as a result, there is little understnading of the political and social relations that south af rica and sweden share given the eff rots that both sides have undertaken in this areas. furthremore, the mutual advanages to be gained in social and political cooperation are plentiful. it is worth noting that the litrature tends to focus more on inter-regional relations between af rica and the nordic states (wohlgemuth, 2002; kiljunen, 2016; hammerstad, 2018; akamo et al., 2022). this further illustrates the gap in the literature thus further necessitating the need for greater scholarly focus on south af rica and sweden’s bilateral relations. assessing bilateral relations bilateral relations are often viewed as the foundation of international relations (pannier, 2020: 19). bilateral relations are best conceptualised as a means of pairing two states with one another. rana (2018: 1) notes “[e] ach pairing works on relations in different fields for their mutual benefit, facilitating cooperation between their institutions and citizens. countries may also work jointly to solve mutual differences or overcome disputes.” traditionally, bilateral relations involved representing, information and negotiation; however, these functions and activities have transformed in promotion and protection with the rise of the mass media as well as diversification of actors being able to represent a state (rozental and buenrostro, 2013: 230). the easement of the movement of persons across the globe necessitates those diplomatic missions remain on hand to facilitate the administration, delivery, and exchange of passports, visas, and other 100 travel documents (rozental and buenrostro, 2013: 230). promotion meanwhile concerns itself with a state’s national interests. these include: trade and investment, maintaining a state’s image, connect and communicate with the diaspora, commence negotiations or support the work of summit diplomacy (rozental and buenrostro, 2013: 230). the centrality of bilateral relations within international relations is perhaps best understood through three lenses, namely: the historical, the strategic and the numerical lens (pannier, 2020: 19). historically, key events saw the evolution of bilateral diplomatic practice. beginning with the peace of westphalia in 1648, all states were seen as equal within the international system, which resulted in euro-centric bilateral diplomacy. two world wars latter coupled with the rise and fall of colonial empires widened the scope of bilateral diplomatic practice so that it was no longer a northern concept, thus connecting the former colonial empires of the global north with the former colonies of the global south (pannier, 2020: 19). strategically, bilateral relations are often considered to be the bedrock of international negotiations as mutual internets and common positions are initial determined at the bilateral level thereby allowing states to form diplomatic blocs and/or clubs more effectually within multilateral settings (pannier, 2020: 19). on the numeric f ront, it should be noted that bilateral relations are a prefeed form of diplomatic practice. between 1990 and 1999 the united nations (un) recorded the signing of 5,000 bilateral agreements; this coupled with the growing f ragility of certain multilateral forums helps to ensure that bilateral diplomacy remains anchored firmly at the epicentre of the international system (pannier, 2020: 20). with the nature and purpose of bilateral relations firmly understood, the question becomes: ‘how does one measure or assess bilateral relations between two states?’ the answer to this question is not straightforward. this is largely due to the fact that scholars have derived different ways access bilateral diplomatic relations. kielinger (1996), and anderson (1997), in their papers on anglo-german relations and sino-russian relations respectively, adopt for a descriptive approach to assessing bilateral relations whereby attention is given to the unpacking of historical detail; little to no theory is used in this approach. adebajo (2008) opts for a similar approach when examining south af rica’s bilateral strategy on the af rican continent. other schoolers such as hornsby and van heerden (2013) offer a more conceptual approach wherein they argue that middle power states will only be seen to have strong bilateral diplomatic relations if both parties adhere to five common condtions, namely: obligation of the global north to the global south, moral identity, diaspora links, mutual economic interests and the risk of noncooperation, and partnerships for development. tam and kim (2017) propose the relationship assessment of diplomatic interaction outcomes (radio) f ramework to measure the success of public diplomacy in bilateral diplomacy. radio categorises the quality of bilateral relationships into two, namely: experimental and reputational. the former type of relationships are based on direct exposure to an entry while the latter is symbolic and is usually developed by means of hearsay f rom others and/or the consumption of narratives produced and distributed by the media (tam and kim, 2017: 216 and 217). in determining which category, a bilateral relationship falls into, a number of common and bespoke variables are used. the common variables include: international bilateralism, power mutuality, trust, and empathy. experimental bilateral relations will include relational satisfaction and relational continuance while reputational bilateral relationships will include relational attentiveness as their respective bespoke variables (tam and kim, 2017: 223). pehlivanturk (2019) argues, in his assessment of japan-turkey relations, that role theory can be used to assess the quality of bilateral relations. role theory posits that a state’s policymakers should be the primary objective of the assessment as it is their understanding and vision which informs a sate’s role and actions within the international system; these understandings are informed by both domestic and international factors which act upon a state (pehlivanturk, 2019: 106 and 107). in determining the nature of bilateral relations between asian states and china, takahara (2021) proposes that a number of domestic and international factors influence the decision-making processes which can impact how a bilateral relationship evolves. these factors are arranged into the four factor model and include: peoples, perceptions, emotions, and identity, domestic politics, economic interests, and the international environment takahara (2021: 158 and 159). finally, hassan, al rabaani, and nejjari (2022) argue that state identity (such as state size and statep e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 101v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w type) can impact the nature of bilateral relations that states seek to form as is the case with oman and brunei. the above literature review clearly shows how the study of bilateral relations has evolved over time. assessment of bilateral relations has grown f rom a largely descriptive field to one that that now has a conceptual and theoretical character. this is not to suggest that the field of bilateral assessments has reached its peak, nor that one means of assessment holds more value than the other. each approach is chosen depending on the scope or desired outcome of the assessment. the ability to adjust the scope of an assessment provides for a shortfall in that they cannot provide a comprehensive overview of the state of relations as the social connections between the sending and receiving states. a comprehensive understanding spanning political, economic, and social bilateral connections allows for the identification of new and sustainable areas of cooperation even if tensions are afoot in another area of cooperation. this f ramework has been employed by author in previous research that sought to assess nigeria-cameroon relations within the context of counter-terrorism cooperation. assessing bilateral relations: political, economic, and social factors unpacking the framework the f ramework employed by the author posits that states do not only have political or economic interests, but social ones too. consequently, bilateral relations should be assessed by political, economic, and social variables. the political variable refers to bilateral cooperation or common positions on areas of mutual interest and concern in the international space (botha, 2020: 427). within the context of this article, political cooperation further speaks to the installation of essential instruments to ensure the facilitation of diplomatic exchanges. economic cooperation will refer trade relations between both countries (botha, 2020: 428). finally, social cooperation refers to peopleto-people exchanges (botha, 2020: 428). within the context of this article, the social variable will refer to both formal and informal diplomatic relations that may occur between two states. formal social relations occur when the two states in question agree to initiate exchanges that have a people-to-people relations. such exchanges may include undertakings in culture, education and research, and public diplomacy more broadly. informal social relations occur when two states have a rich people-to-people relations that are not facilitated via diplomatic means. the author’s f ramework maintains that while a trifecta of harmony between the political, economic, and social variables is ideal for the neutering of strong bilateral relations, it is not required for two states to have strengthening bilateral relations. from this perspective, each veritable is assessed both in isolation as well as part of a coherent whole. this twopronged approach not only provides a comprehensive overview of bilateral relations between two states, but it also allows for an in-depth foresight on how to sustain and energise bilateral relations in another area of cooperation if tensions arise in another (botha, 2020: 427). it should be noted areas of cooperation may overlap between the three variables. applying the framework south africa-sweden relations given the wealth of knowledge that exists on the historical aspects of south af rica and sweden’s relationship, this analysis will primarily focus on south af rica-sweden relations in the bilateral exchanges following the former’s democratic transition. south af rica and sweden have undertaken firm political commitments that began in 1993 when both states the framework employed by the author posits that states do not only have political or economic interests, but social ones too. consequently, bilateral relations should be assessed by political, economic, and social variables. the political variable refers to bilateral cooperation or common positions on areas of mutual interest and concern in the international space 102 agreed to elevate the status of their diplomatic relations f rom a legation to an embassy thereby resulting in ambassadorial representation on both sides (swedish ministry of foreign affairs, 1993: 2 and 4). to date south af rica and sweden have entered into 22 agreements with south af rica, which span both bilateral agreements and multilateral agreements including the rest of the nordic and scandinavian states (south af rican department of international relations and cooperation, 2023). the majority of these agreements (73% or 16/22 agreements) were signed in the post-apartheid era. refer to table 1 for a comprehensive overview. table 1: a summary of bilateral and multilateral agreements between south africa and sweden from 1994-present title of agreement date of signature date agreement entered into force memorandum of understanding on south african swedish development cooperation 28-11-1994 28-11-1994 convention for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income 24-05-1995 25-12-1995 agreement on general terms and conditions for development co-operation 17-10-1996 17-10-1996 agreement on the promotion and reciprocal protection of investments 25-05-1998 01-01-1990 agreement on co-operation in the fields of science and technology (south africanswedish research partnership programme, 1999-2005) 23-11-1999 23-11-1999 agreement concerning defence cooperation 02-06-2000 02-06-2000 memorandum of understanding on air services between republic of south africa, denmark, norway and sweden 09-11-2001 09-11-2001 bilateral air services agreement 09-11-2001 26-09-2002 exchange of notes relating to the designation of airlines in terms of article three of the air services agreement 11-09-2001 26-09-2002 memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the area of public service and administration 29-04-2005 29-04-2005 declaration of intent between the government of the republic of south africa and the governments of denmark, finland, iceland, norway and sweden concerning partnerships in africa 09-06-2008 09-06-2008 p e e r r e v 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https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?ac=get_record&xc=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll&bu=https%3a%2f%2ftreaties.dirco.gov.za%2fdbtw-wpd%2ftextbase%2ftreatywebsearch.htm&gi=&tn=treatyweb&sn=auto3242&se=1372&rn=16&mr=20&tr=0&tx=1000&es=0&xp=&rf=printingformat2018&ef=basic+record+form&df=web+full+record&rl=1&el=1&dl=1&np=1&id=&mf=&dt=&st=0&ir=2666&nr=0&nb=8&sv=0&ss=0&bg=&fg=&qs=treaties+new+master 103v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w protocol amending the convention for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income 07-07-2010 03-18-2012 agreement between the government of the republic of south africa and the government of the kingdom of sweden on cooperation in the fields of science, technology and innovation 10-11-2013 not in force letter of intent between the department of environmental affairs of the republic of south africa and the ministry of the environment and energy of the kingdom of sweden in the field of environmental protection and climate change 20-10-2015 20-10-2015 memorandum of understanding between the government of the republic of south africa and the government of the kingdom of sweden on cooperation in the field of arts and culture 25-09-2020 25-09-2020 memorandum of understanding between the government of the kingdom of sweden and the government of the republic of south africa on cooperation in the field of environmental protection and climate change 11-11-2021 11-11-2021 (source: dirco’s treaty section) table 1 clearly shows that the standard of political cooperation is encouraging. to this end, a number of essential instruments are in place with common positions on matters of defence, climate change, and cultural exchanges in place. the foundation for this, and other forms of cooperation, was laid down in november 1999 when then swedish prime minister göran persson led a delegation of an estimated 800 swedes to south africa to participate in the swedish-south african partnership week (ssapw). the ssapw saw the hosting of 70 events across six cities in south africa (glover, 2021: 42). notworthy outcomes of the ssapw included the estbalishmement of the south africa-sweden bi-national commission, both national soccer teams playing agianst each other, a number of workshops and seminars on possible areas of cooperation were held in cape town, and finally, a tradeshow was hosted in johannesburg (glover, 2021: 42). sweden had invrsted sek 25, 000, 000 into the ssapw; this was more than double then what sweden had invested into the world expo held in lisbon over a four month period in 1998 (glover, 2021: 42). both south africa and swedn have also become keen trading partners. swedish exports to south africa increased sharly following south africa’s transation to deomnracy. figure 1 illustates this phenomenon. however, it should be noted that there is an embalance of experts between both states. swedish expoprts to south africa total an estimated sek 10, 000, 000, 00 (or $962,361,000) while south african exports to sweden total an estimainted sek 3, 000, 000, 000 (or $288,708,300) (embassey of sweden, 2023). several outlets such as business sweden, the swedish trade council, and the nordic-south af rican business association are in place to help drive trade and investment between the two states. in february 2021 the swedish embassy collaborated with business sweden, the city of cape town, invest cape town, wesgro, and the loudhailer to launch the cape townstockholm connect (csc) initiative. the csc has been designed and introduced to concert an array of actors including companies, developers, customers, https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?ac=get_record&xc=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll&bu=https%3a%2f%2ftreaties.dirco.gov.za%2fdbtw-wpd%2ftextbase%2ftreatywebsearch.htm&gi=&tn=treatyweb&sn=auto3242&se=1372&rn=17&mr=20&tr=0&tx=1000&es=0&xp=&rf=printingformat2018&ef=basic+record+form&df=web+full+record&rl=1&el=1&dl=1&np=1&id=&mf=&dt=&st=0&ir=2459&nr=0&nb=8&sv=0&ss=0&bg=&fg=&qs=treaties+new+master https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?ac=get_record&xc=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll&bu=https%3a%2f%2ftreaties.dirco.gov.za%2fdbtw-wpd%2ftextbase%2ftreatywebsearch.htm&gi=&tn=treatyweb&sn=auto3242&se=1372&rn=17&mr=20&tr=0&tx=1000&es=0&xp=&rf=printingformat2018&ef=basic+record+form&df=web+full+record&rl=1&el=1&dl=1&np=1&id=&mf=&dt=&st=0&ir=2459&nr=0&nb=8&sv=0&ss=0&bg=&fg=&qs=treaties+new+master https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?ac=get_record&xc=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll&bu=https%3a%2f%2ftreaties.dirco.gov.za%2fdbtw-wpd%2ftextbase%2ftreatywebsearch.htm&gi=&tn=treatyweb&sn=auto3242&se=1372&rn=17&mr=20&tr=0&tx=1000&es=0&xp=&rf=printingformat2018&ef=basic+record+form&df=web+full+record&rl=1&el=1&dl=1&np=1&id=&mf=&dt=&st=0&ir=2459&nr=0&nb=8&sv=0&ss=0&bg=&fg=&qs=treaties+new+master https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?ac=get_record&xc=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll&bu=https%3a%2f%2ftreaties.dirco.gov.za%2fdbtw-wpd%2ftextbase%2ftreatywebsearch.htm&gi=&tn=treatyweb&sn=auto3242&se=1372&rn=17&mr=20&tr=0&tx=1000&es=0&xp=&rf=printingformat2018&ef=basic+record+form&df=web+full+record&rl=1&el=1&dl=1&np=1&id=&mf=&dt=&st=0&ir=2459&nr=0&nb=8&sv=0&ss=0&bg=&fg=&qs=treaties+new+master 104 investors, entrepreneurs, and institutions f rom both cities to promote economic exchanges (wesgro, 2021). as ambassador håkan juholt noted at the time: “it’s time to accelerate and intensify business exchange between stockholm and cape town. geographical boundaries don’t exist in the digital world, but we have identified gaps when it comes to knowledge and understanding about the respective markets. by connecting these two nodes of digital excellence, we want to close those gaps and create new business opportunities.” a csc business summit was held in april 2021 which brought together companies, developers, customers, investors, entrepreneurs, and institutions to brainstorm possible means by which both cities could collaborate to connect both regions to new markets (silicone cape initiative, 2021). in the september of the same year, the csc hosted a webinar to layout solutions to gender inequalities that are present in the technology sector within both countries (iaf rica, 2021). more recent activates of the csc have been less widely publicised and are therefore harder to showcase. on a social level, both states enjoy warm bilateral relations. while there have always been cordial relations between swedes and south af ricans, there are a number of commitments within the various bilateral agreements that have been entered into over the years. following the sspw in 1999, south af rica and sweden signed a bilateral agreement resulting in the establishment of the south af rican-swedish research partnership programme (the programme), which ran f rom november 1999 until march 2005. article three subsection two of the agreement notes: “[the] overall objective of the programme is to facilitate, promote, develop and support research co-operation between the two countries in spheres of mutual interest in all domains of science on the basis of equality and mutual benefit” (dirco, 1999: 3). subsection four of the same article goes on to note that: the specific objective of the programme is to facilitate co-operation between south af rican researchers at universities and technikons and swedish researchers at universities and university colleges by financing their joint research proposals” (dirco, 1999: 4). in june 2000 south af rica and sweden entered into a bilateral agreement pertaining to defence cooperation. the scope of the defence agreement places a further emphasis on knowledge-sharing as can be seen in article one of the agreement: “the parties shall promote cooperation in defence related matters, especially in the fields of research, p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 figure 1: swedish exports to south africa from 1991-2022 (source: trading economics, 2023) 105v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w development, projection, acquisition, logistic support and peacekeeping matters in accordance with the terms of this agreement and any associated annexures, subject to each party’s domestic law and contractual or international obligations.” in october 2013 both counties would attempt to expand their cooperation in the area of research by signing a bilateral agreement fostering cooperation in the areas of science, technology, and innovation. this agreement mandated the ministry of education and research in sweden and the then department of science and technology in south af rica to coordinate exchanges of research and ideas between experts and institutions in both states (dirco, 2013: 1 and 2). this agreement is not in force at the time of this writing (see table 1). despite the above development, collaboration in the area of research saw an enhancement with the launch of the south af rica-sweden university forum (sasuf) in 2017 by a cohort of university vice chancellors f rom both south af rica and sweden who submitted a funding application to the swedish foundation for cooperation in research and higher education, otherwise known as stint. to date, sasuf has connected over 3, 000 students and researchers f rom both states and has become an essential instrument for the practice of knowledge diplomacy (see sven botha and helin bäckman kartal for more information on south af rica and sweden’s practice of knowledge diplomacy). the social linkages between south af rica and sweden moved on f rom research to include closer cooperation in arts and culture. in march 2017, hedda krausz sjögren became sweden’s first counsellor for cultural affairs on the af rican continent. krausz sjögren’s experiences and achievements are documented in her own article of this special issue and will therefore not be discussed in-depth here. however, it should be noted the creation of this diplomatic posting helped to fulfil a long-term commitment to cooperate in arts and culture via a memorandum of understanding (mou) on the subject in september 2020, which was fuelled by a later of intent pertaining to the same subject which was signed in 2015. the mou notes that its purpose “is to maintain and develop an intercultural dialogue and to enrich knowledge of the other country's culture and arts and promote cooperation between cultural institutions, independent groups and individual artists. the participants will encourage exchanges between artists, representatives and experts in various fields of culture and the arts” (dirco, 2020: 1). the mou is rooted in the desire to “consolidate and strengthen the f riendly ties and reciprocal understanding between [sweden and south af rica’s] peoples” with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life for people f rom both states (dirco, 2020: 7). moreover, the mou will span cooperation in the areas of: schools of art, associations of artists and writers, museums, archives, film, and other heritage orientated institutions (dirco, 2020: 8). some of the areas of cooperation in the area of culture include the future of fashion indaba, the collaboration between h & m and mantsho, and the digitally yours campaign hosted by the embassy of sweden at the hight of the covid-19 pandemic (embassy of sweden, 2021; mbude, 2019; botha, 2023). it is also important to note that the sweden and south af rica have enjoyed some successful informal social relations as is the case in the higher education space. for example, cooperation between practitioners of higher education has also resulted increased awareness pertaining to genderbased violence (see cornè davis’s article for more on this collaboration). discussion: unpacking the special issue the application of the author’s f ramework to south af rica-sweden relations has yielded a pensive of insights spanning the individual and the collective. politically, both states have made encouraging progress by maintaining bilateral relations at the ambassadorial level and have bi-national commission at the level of vice heads of government. additionally, a vast number of bilateral agreements spanning travel, defence, research, higher education, arts and culture, and environmentalism and climate change have all been initiated. the progression of bilateral cooperation suggests that the firm political foundations have allowed economic and social cooperation. on the economic f ront, south af rica and sweden have enjoyed a keen partnership. however, it should be noted that there is an imbalance in trade with swedish exports to the republic outweighing south af rican exports to the kingdom. despite this imbalance, both states still work together on connecting the markets within both states; the cape town-stockholm connect initiative is indicative of this. finally, there has been much social cooperation 106 between south af rica and sweden. the joint commitment to research and the exchange of ideas and knowledge, both within traditional research, science, and technology agreements, formal research forums such as sasuf, and within a broader sense as is indicated in the agreement on defence cooperation and the mou on arts and culture suggests social cooperation is the strongest type of cooperation both states share. combined, the three variables suggest south af rica and sweden have established a strong bilateral relationship which is rooted in historical solidary and sustained through a collective desire to cooperate on issues of mutual concern. however, it should be noted that the possible expansion of the brisc bloc and south af rica’s neutrality over russia’s invasion of ukraine in 2021 may cause tensions in the relationship going forward, as discussed by beakkvold and hattar’s article in this special issue. this special issue has provided a number of unique contributions which result in a greater understanding of the relationship south af rica and sweden have come to form and, perhaps more importantly, what could be done to sustain and strengthen it going forward. anna-mart van wyk and tove sternehäll ground the special issue by offering enriching insights into sweden’s opposition to apartheid and how this would come to shape initial trade relations between both states respectively. suzanne graham investigates how both states grapple with the concept of good international citizenship and finds that both south af rica and sweden bear the credentials of good international citizens to some extent and further notes that common positions on human rights and un working methods provide avenues for future cooperation. comparative studies by pragna rugunanan on migration and suzanne graham and muvumba-sellström on e10 membership to the un security council provide insights on a host of domestic and internal issues of concern, which paves way for an opportunity for political leaders, diplomats, and scholars to reflect on how south af rica and sweden could share examples of best practice and lessons learnt in their dual capacity as middle powers. other contributions such as those by elise dermineur reuterswärd and unathi kolanisi, hedi richards, and lipnizki, corné davis all illustrate the strong social bonds south af rica have formed via research collaboration. finally, the contribution by stiehler-mulder and tselepis introduces an enhance of the principles of sustainability and how they are applied within the fashion industry yielding a means of fostering closer economic and social ties between sweden and south af rica. may these forms of cooperation evolve and thrive. conclusion: proposing a new research agenda for south africa-sweden relations the purpose of this article was to provide a means of concluding this double special issue on south af ricasweden relations by offering a brief appraisal of the bilateral relationship shared by both countries. this appraisal was undertaken by employing the author’s own analytical f ramework which considered the political, economic, and social aspects of south af rica and sweden’s relationship. in doing so, their bilateral relationship could be understood both individual silos and as a coherent whole. the application of these three variables finds that the republic of south af rica and the kingdom of sweden have established a stable bilateral relationship steeped in rich historical context. this has resulted in the emergence of a keenness to cooperate in areas such as trade, defence, climate change, research, higher education, and science and technology. of the three areas of cooperation assessed in this paper, social cooperation is the strongest while economic cooperation is the weakest means of cooperation. the strong social cooperation that both states share is thanks to an evergreen commitment to higher education, research, and past work in arts and culture. political cooperation remains lukewarm and under threat given ongoing geopolitical tensions on the international stage. with possible tensions afoot it is important to look beyond the ordinary discourse on bilateral relations and consider how the stronger variables within the south af rica-sweden relationship could be leveraged to help sustain the relationship. this special issue has provided a number of possible leads as how this could possibly happen with four possible areas of further research emerging. firstly, both states share common positions on key international issues which should explored in greater detail to see if and how these political platforms can be leveraged to ensure future cooperation. furthermore, cooperation between south af rica and sweden f rom april to december 2005 aimed at strengthening the institutions of the state in the democratic republic of congo provides p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 107v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w a unique opportunity for reflection and evaluation as such cooperation could be extended to other states in need. secondly, both states are middle powers and regional hegemons which places them in a unique position as ideal case studies for scholars to compare and contrast within both classifications. thirdly, both south af rica and sweden have demonstrated an ardent appetite for knowledge generation and exchange. nowhere is more potent than sasuf. as a result, future research should focus on the impact sasuf exchanges are having. this research should focus both on the impact individual sasuf-funded projects are having on the communities in which they implemented, and how cooperation and collaboration via sasuf is impacting people-to-people perceptions of both countries. lastly, south af rica has at times been found to collaborate multilaterally with the wider nordic region. this provides researchers with an opportunity to reinvigorate the broader research agenda on af rica-nordic relations focusing on regional and international issues of mutual concern. it is hoped that this special issue has provided a platform for much food for thought as governments, diplomats, students, and scholars continue their work to foster ties between both states and ultimately both regions. notes 1. the author acknowledges that anderson’s work discusses the concept of strategic partnerships within international relations. however, it should be noted that anderson’s work offers little conceptual and theoretical insights into what constitutes a strategic partnership and instead focuses on a chronological order of events. hence, the citations categorisation. it should also be noted that strategic partnerships are not considered in this paper’s literature review on bilateral relations as strategic partnerships require a firm bilateral relationship to be in place before it can be elevated to the level of a strategic partnership. for an assessment of weather south af rica could formulate a strategic partnership with sweden and wider nordic region, refer to beakkvold and hattar’s article in this special issue. 2. the terms ‘nordic’ and ‘scandinavian’ are not to be used interchangeably. nordic states include: iceland, norway, sweden, finland, and denmark while only norway, sweden, and denmark are classed as scandinavian. this difference is noted as one of the agreements mentioned in table 1 are limited to the scandinavian states. 3. while this paper is primarily concerned with bilateral relations, multilateral agreements are included in table 1 as they help to enhance the analysis offered in this paper. 4. this is a multilateral agreement between south af rica, sweden, and the democratic republic of the congo. 5. values for figure 1 are in us dollars. bibliography adebajo, a. 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(the interested reader may like to consult either frankfurt’s or my work and decide for his or her self whether the term is applicable in the present context). regardless, irresponsible speech is something that medicine itself has been accused of, in the form of quackery, charlatanism, and so forth. david wootton argues that, in effect, quackery was universal in the past (wootton, 2006). he suggests that the entirety of medicine prior to 1865 was “bad”, and suggests that doctors often knew it, or else simply didn’t care, and thus knowingly or at least carelessly gave false hope for personal profit. i’ve defended medicine against this charge, notwithstanding its patchy track record and the existence of real quacks (broadbent, 2018b, 2018a, 2019). nonetheless, the high hopes we have for medicine and the difficulty of assessing its effectiveness render it an easy victim of negligent by alex broadbent talking responsibly about medicine in the fourth industrial revolution © s to c k .a d o b e .c o m global 17v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 talk, and i’m depressed to see this happening in some of the contemporary discourse about the 4ir. it is sometimes acceptable to speak without regard for truth or falsity: to embellish for purposes of entertainment, as in after dinner speech, or to pass the time, as in the idle banter in the uber, or when everyone knows what is going on and nothing hangs on it, as in the dean’s word of welcome at a university event. but it’s problematic when people might take it seriously, and especially so when it concerns medicine, about which people rarely doctor the truth for a joke. i want to discuss two categories of pronouncement on the future of medicine. one is almost always irresponsible, and i’ll not hesitate to say so. this category comprises bold general pronouncements about the future of medicine. the other category is considered and careful; all the same, claims in this category are not true, and there are systematic mistakes that need to be highlighted. this category comprises serious research which nonetheless ignores limits on what one can learn from patterns in data alone, independent of what the data is about. general pronouncements on the future of medicine general pronouncements on the future of anything are always to be treated with skepticism. that’s not to say they can’t be true. it’s to say that we should be doubtful of their truth. that’s because such claims have a terrible track record, and are subject to all kinds of well-documented biases, including financial bias (or bias for other personal gain—ego fulfilment, or whatever), confirmation bias, the base-rate fallacy (kahneman, 2011; kahneman, slovic, & tversky, 1982; kahneman & tversky, 1973, 1982), and plain old over-excitement. we are not driving flying cars or living on mars or speaking to personal robot assistants—prospects that already seemed within reach in the 1960s. how different is our epistemic position now from what it was in the 1960s? our technology has advanced, but i’ve yet to see good evidence that our powers of prediction have kept pace. in fact, the last fifteen years have seen spectacularly unpredicted events: 9/11 in 2001, the crash of 2008, and in 2016 the doubly pundit-slamming brexit vote and trump victory. our predictive inadequacies as humans were being studied as far back as 1973 by amos tversky and to-be nobel winner daniel kahnneman (kahneman & tversky, 1973). yet we continue to love our pundits even though we should know they are mostly bad. what’s more, expertise seems not to make much difference; academic pundits with doctorates who write books nearly 400 pages long are as likely to be wrong as the most gung-ho fox news opinionistas, at least according to the body of empirical evidence amassed by psychologist philip tetlock (tetlock, 2005). that’s because taking a strong stance and sticking to it is a common factor in being both a pundit and a bad predictor—in fact a terrible predictor, worse than random. pundits keep their jobs because of our hardwired psychological traits rather than their competence. i’ve explored these general failings of general predictive competence elsewhere, and will do so in more detail in future. the present topic is medicine, and here, too, general predictive claims are usually incredible—and i’ll explain why, after giving an example. the general nature of this example is the “magical internal doctor hypothesis”. it occurs to different authors in different forms. klaus schwab imagines “smart dust” consisting of tiny robots that could circulate in our blood stream, detecting and destroying pathogens before we even know it (schwab, 2016). noah yuval harari imagines something remarkably similar: within a few decades, big data algorithms informed by a constant stream of biometric data could monitor our health 24/7. …by 2050, thanks to biometric sensors and big data algorithms, diseases may be diagnosed and treated long before they lead to pain or disability. (yuval harari, 2018, p. 49) the magical internal doctor hypothesis might be true. who am i to say it’s not? both the authors just mentioned pepper their work with qualifiers nonetheless, the high hopes we have for medicine and the difficulty of assessing its effectiveness render it an easy victim of negligent talk, and i’m depressed to see this happening in some of the contemporary discourse about the 4ir. global t h e t h i n k e r18 to the effect that they are not saying that these scenarios will be actualized. they are not making specific predictions. these are just imaginary scenarios, used for illustrative purposes only (the actual contents of 4ir may differ). this is meant to excuse the complete lack of systematic marshalling of evidence, and of the systematic consideration of, and testing against, contrary hypotheses that are fundamental to science. yet the pronoucements are often as close as can be to categorical predictions. they are written to sound plausible, as if the person writing believes them. saying “by 2050”, for example, suggests that there is some sort of basis for picking that date. if one says, “by next tuesday, we might see a new president in charge”, that implies that one has some reason to think that a change of power is imminent. so it won’t do simply to say that the predictions are “mights” and “maybes”. they are expressed as if they are based on sound reasoning from serious consideration of the evidence. however, they are not. they are mere speculations. that is why the authors, and many others like them, periodically remind the reader that they are not making specific predictions. they know that they don’t know what is going to happen. but it suits them to sound as if they do, without quite committing to anything. in the context of medicine, i regard this as irresponsible speech. these predictions are not innocuous, despite the qualifiers. in the first place, even if the specific predictions are not supposed to be essential to any particular arguments made about how we must prepare ourselves for the future, it is obvious that these claims (or claims of this kind) are at least rhetorically essential to their respective books, and thus essential to the popularity and ensuing fame and wealth of the authors of these works in which they are found. in my view, it is intrinsically unethical to knowingly or carelessly allow people to believe falsehoods for personal profit. i believe that it matters what people believe. in the second place, there is a danger of raising expectations about medicine, which is already a serious problem for clinical practice. people are already prone to expect modern medicine to painlessly cure everything, maybe with the exception of hereditary cancers (and even then, it’s common to encounter the impression that a cure is round the corner.) but modern medicine can’t cure everything, and isn’t painless. to promote excessive expectations of modern medicine places great pressure on medical practitioners, who have to find a way to puncture these inflated expectations. false hope creates acrimony in the consultation room and devastating disappointment outside it. you might be wondering whether my stance towards medicine is unduly cynical. but i have the greatest respect for medicine and its achievements. but this shouldn’t prevent a sober assessment of its achievements. of the top ten causes of death in america in 1900, six are recognizable on the 1998 list (rockett, 1999, p. 8). in the intervening century, antibiotics made a huge difference, and the four departures from the list are all infectious diseases. but their success was not the start of an upward trend, let alone an exponential curve (stegenga, 2018). viruses failed to fall to medical innovation, and remain basically intractable. lifestyle-related diseases claim more lives than they used and suicide has made an appearance in the top ten—perhaps a symptom of the wider perplexity and disillusionment that has characterized the postmodern era (tarnas, 1991). mental illness generally is not proving especially tractable for modern medicine. surgery is not the miracle it is sometimes thought to be; different surgical procedures have different success rates, and of course are hard to test empirically because of the lack of a plausible placebo, and so forth. i’m not saying that modern medicine has enjoyed no successes. it definitely has. however, most of these successes were concentrated in a dramatic medical revolution running from around the end of the 19th century through the middle of the twentieth (stegenga, 2018). then the revolution stopped. mere progress settled in: slow, painful progress. and the big picture remains but modern medicine can’t cure everything, and isn’t painless. to promote excessive expectations of modern medicine places great pressure on medical practitioners, who have to find a way to puncture these inflated expectations. false hope creates acrimony in the consultation room and devastating disappointment outside it. global 19v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 one of isolated successes amid a general sea of well-intentioned efforts to varying degrees of uselessness (broadbent, 2019; stegenga, 2018). this story is familiar from the pre-twentieth century history of medicine, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. it is what it is, which is considerably preferable to what it was. i’m no anti-medicine warrior. but the fact is that we’re nowhere near what one might call a “completed medicine”. to hold out any hope that we are near a “completed medicine” in this situation is irresponsible, unless it is based on a proper assessment of the evidence. and artificial intelligence, machine learning, “big data algorithms”, “biometric sensors”, and so forth do not change the situation of medicine. maybe some algorithmic panacea is just around the corner; but we have no more reason to think so in 2019 than we did in 1719, strange though that sounds to the inflated collective ego of the contemporary era. even if that general claim is wrong, the magical internal doctor hypothesis that i’ve described is most emphatically not based on the discovery of any such reason. rehearsing the familiar technobabble about algorithms and sensors and the latest advances in epigenetics available to us in 2019 simply does not cut the mustard, any more than the creation of the principality of liechtenstein three hundred years earlier gave reason to think that world peace was round the corner. there are large-scale consequences of holding out false hope of imminent medical breakthroughs. public sector funding is politically guided, and political guidance can be quite sensitive to irresponsible speech of the kind i’m describing. (in particular, klaus schwab appears to seek to influence policy.) as a consequence, money may be ploughed into one or another channel of research, sub-optimally. maybe the development of deep learning tools for clinical application becomes all the rage, and swallows money that could be spent assessing the effectiveness of sugar taxes on reducing diabetes incidence. maybe money is directed (even more) into geneticallyoriented biomedical research, when it could be put into implementing known-effective healthrelated measures, like improving education (strongly correlated with longevity, among other obvious benefits), improving living conditions for the poorest, or even biomedical research directed at developing better cures for neglected tropical diseases. even if it had none of these consequences, however, it would be ethically problematic to be negligent in making bold factual claims for personal profit. i’ve focused on one particular idea, the magical internal doctor hypothesis, but there are many other examples of similarly unfounded pronouncements. for example, a recent press article announced that robotics was the future of medicine. this is weird, because robotics is hardly a 4ir technology. the robotics revolution in the automotive industry brought detroit to its knees in the 1990s (and in doing so incidentally spurred the rise of techno music). even setting this historical point aside, however, it’s obvious that there is more to medicine than surgery, and moreover that the abilities of surgeons to operate with greater precision and less invasion have in any case considerably increased over past decades. it’s plausible that continued efforts to develop robotic aids for surgeons will continue this trend (although it would be nice to see a bit more thought given to whether there may also be reasons to doubt this). but it’s a long leap from there to the future of medicine. will robotics be increasingly developed for medical applications? probably. does that make robotics the future of medicine? no. does it matter? yes, because it might lead to research funding being sub-optimally deployed. the limits of pure data there are more serious attempts to predict or project the future of medicine, which do not amount to irresponsible speech. however, some of them are wrong, and for a specific reason, which i want to illustrate with an example. the august 2019 issue of nature reported on a tool built by google health for predicting acute will robotics be increasingly developed for medical applications? probably. does that make robotics the future of medicine? no. does it matter? yes, because it might lead to research funding being sub-optimally deployed. global t h e t h i n k e r20 onset kidney disease with impressive accuracy (tomašev et al., 2019). it claimed that the tool was “clinically applicable”. aside from the specific significance for acute onset kidney disease, the claim to clinical applicability suggests that there might be a completely new way to understand, predict, and ultimately make health decisions of all kinds. the usual process is a slow, painful accumulation of knowledge across multiple long and costly studies. their results may be hard to synthesise, their transportability unknown, and after all that, we may not have a clear idea of how a system will respond to an intervention (hernán & robins, 2020; pearl & mackenzie, 2018). instead of all that, we simply give a suitable dataset to google (all data arising from hospital admissions), along with the questions we want answered (“who is going to get acute onset kidney disease?”). google then comes back with a plug-and-play programme that answers our questions. “clinically applicable” means we can use this programme in a live clinical setting, and the fact that it learns as it goes means that its accuracy may be expected to improve over time. it won’t answer the questions that epidemiologists have traditionally asked. it won’t tell us, for example, why certain patients are highly likely to develop acute onset kidney disease. but it will tell us that certain patients will develop acute onset kidney disease, with remarkable accuracy, 48 hours before it happens. and that, ultimately, is what the clinician wants—isn’t it? this is a familiar story: artificial intelligence radically outperforming old ways of doing things. it’s also one that presents challenges very familiar to philosophers. inductive inference in general is not susceptible to formalisation: that is, the form of the inference does not guarantee that it works. it matters what the inference is about. but machine learning, however sophisticated, deals only in data that could, so far as the machine is concerned, be about anything at all. we therefore know that machine learning has in-principle limits. these limits correspond to the familiar problem of external validity or transportability, where we face the inferential challenge of understanding whether, when and how knowledge gained in relation to a studied population can be applied to a target population. substitute “data set” for “population” and you have an expression of the exact same problem as it faces machine learning. the glitz of the new is apt to dazzle us to this old problem, however; hence the inappropriate use of “clinically applicable” in the above-mentioned article. machine learning can be an extremely important source of hypothesis generation, but there must be a distinction drawn between the context of discovery and the context of justification (popper, 1959). this distinction isn’t as influential as it was; it doesn’t dominate the philosophy of science any more, and it isn’t immune to criticism. nevertheless, it has its uses, and this is one of them. data-driven methods powered by machine learning are surely great for generating hypotheses. these may be highly creative, from our perspective—things we never would have thought of (as illustrated by chess computers, which conceive of plays that are, from the point of view of chess knowledge, novel and highly original). there is a separate question to be explored as to how this is so; the point is that it may be so. however, it is far less clear that machine learning can satisfactorily justify the hypotheses they create. this is because merely working with data can only get us so far. we need to relate the data back to what it is about. we need to interpret these hypotheses. if we don’t, then we cannot justify what we have hypothesised. this is because no inductive inference is ever justified by its form alone. that’s in the nature of an inductive inference. instead, it is facts about the things that the inference is about that provides the warrant. in this instance, it would be facts about acute kidney injury. what features of the incoming patients is the machine detecting, through the lens of the data? how do these give rise to, or arise from causes of, the onset of kidney failure? answering these questions is essential to however, it is far less clear that machine learning can satisfactorily justify the hypotheses they create. this is because merely working with data can only get us so far. we need to relate the data back to what it is about. we need to interpret these hypotheses. global 21v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 determining whether the machine has found a chance pattern in the data—any dataset large enough will contain all sorts of interestinglooking patterns that arise by chance alone—or if it corresponds to something real. this is important to our decision as to whether indeed to apply this approach in a clinical setting. but it’s also important to the advance of medical knowledge. exciting though machine learning is, nearly all our existing medical success stories have a basis in biomedical theory—even if their discovery was somewhat fluky in some cases, and even if some, such as anaesthesia, remain inadequately explained. none was discovered, let alone justified, by appeal to mere patterns in data. a deep learning approach to de novo small molecule design was also published in a nature group journal the following month (zhavoronkov et al., 2019). this approach included empirical testing, with the “lead candidate” demonstrating “favourable pharmacokinetics in mice”. this is hardly a randomised controlled trial, and i reserve my right to scepticism about the results. nonetheless, the approach shows a laudable effort to understand the physical reality beneath the patterns in the data. this is how machine learning can really advance medicine. towards better predictions i’ve heavily criticized some predictions for being irresponsible, and argued that others are wellresearched but misguided. how can we do better? properly considering the evidence for a prediction means testing it against contrary hypotheses, and i’ve given a detailed account of how to do this in the context of public health predictions previously (broadbent, 2011, 2013), which is readily extended to cover the categories of prediction about medicine covered here. there is a simple test you can apply: what could possibly go wrong? consider scenarios in which the prediction you are making comes out false. (for any machine-led discovery process, this will include the scenario in which the pattern discovered by the machine has no basis in reality, and is a data-fluke. that’s why trying to understand the reality beneath the hypothesis is so important.) search for the most plausible of such scenarios, the ones that are the likeliest, the ones that are compatible with your current evidence as far as possible, the ones that are best supported by the data. these are competitors to your favored hypothesis. then set about looking for evidence that will discriminate between, on the one hand, your hypothesis, and on the other hand, the competitors. the more you iterate this process, the stronger your prediction becomes. it won’t necessarily guarantee truth. but it certainly secures you from negligence, since you can take proper care over what you say, yet still come a cropper. and it has a place in protecting serious research, such as the research underlying the nature paper discussed above, from overreach, as when an entirely data-driven approach is pronounced clinically applicable without any consideration of the possible physical and biological explanations for the model’s success, as if it were an oracle rather than a tool for scientific discovery. ■ references broadbent, a. 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(2019). deep learning enables rapid identification of potent ddr1 kinase inhibitors. nature biotechnology, 37(9), 1038–1040. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0224-x global _goback 22 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract science diplomacy has been an endeavoured area of cooperation between sweden and south af rica despite sweden’s reluctance to practice science diplomacy. however, the introduction of the south af rica-sweden university forum (sasuf) in 2017 remains an underexplored phenomenon of knowledge diplomacy. using knight’s five characteristics of knowledge diplomacy (focus on higher education, research, and innovation; diversity of actors and partners; recognition of different needs and the collective use of resources; reciprocity; and the building and strengthening of relations between states), this paper argues that sasuf is an essential f rontier for knowledge diplomacy in the context of south af rica-sweden relations. the employment of knight’s f ramework finds that sasuf can indeed be classified as an example of knowledge diplomacy. in conclusion, a new research agenda on knowledge diplomacy within the context of south af ricasweden relations is proposed. by sven botha and helin bäckman kartal the south africa-sweden university forum (sasuf): an exploration of knowledge diplomacy within south africa-sweden relations 23v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction the kingdom of sweden and the republic of south africa have shown signs of leaning towards the practice of science diplomacy, with the former being slightly more reluctant than the latter to embrace science diplomacy. regardless, both states have displayed an appetite for knowledge diplomacy. over the last decade, the phenomenon of knowledge diplomacy has become an ever-present diplomatic practice within the context of south africa-sweden relations via the south africa-sweden university forum (sasuf). a joint statement released by sasuf partner universities in may 2019 following the conclusion of the second sasuf research and innovation week noted: ‘as two countries at the opposite end of the globe, we reali[s] e that cooperation is key to our future prosperity as countries’ (sasuf, 2019: 1). such an acknowledgement suggests that sasuf should be considered as a means of knowledge diplomacy. using sasuf as its case study, this paper argues that sweden and south africa engage in knowledge diplomacy via sasuf. this argument is made by employing knight’s five characteristics of knowledge diplomacy as an analytical framework to a random sample of sasuf projects. in making this argument, it is important to note that the authors simply wish to illustrate the practice of knowledge diplomacy within the context of south africa-sweden relations; it is beyond the scope of this paper to comment on or assess any power dynamics that may exist between south africa and sweden when both states practice knowledge diplomacy. this delineation is desired as sasuf is an ongoing project. hence, a more accurate and in-depth assessment of power relations will be at hand once sasuf concludes its work. following this introduction, the authors provide a brief historical overview of sasuf, after which the conceptual considerations are discussed, namely the intersection between education diplomacy, science diplomacy, academic diplomacy, and knowledge diplomacy. knight’s five characteristics of knowledge diplomacy are unpacked and clearly defined to firm up the analytical framework to be used in this paper. thereafter, the framework is applied to the case study with some practical examples. these examples are drawn primarily from project reports submitted to sasuf, thus offering the authors some frontline insights into the work of sasuf. finally, the conclusion will summarise the main arguments and findings of this paper while also highlighting some areas of further academic interest. the south africa-sweden university forum: a brief overview the south africa-sweden university forum, or sasuf, was founded in 2017 by means of a joint application being made to the swedish foundation for cooperation in research and higher education (stint) by an array of vice-chancellors from a number of south african and swedish universities. stint viewed the application favourably and sasuf was born with an initial three-year lifespan spanning from 2018–2020 (south africa-sweden university forum [sasuf], 2023a). at the conclusion of the second sasuf research and innovation week in may 2019, the then-36 partner universities issued a joint declaration, calling on their respective governments to support their collaboration (uppsala university, 2019): the universities participating in sasuf call on their respective governments to promote collaborations and networking linked to the united nations agenda 2023 through research and educational cooperation between south africa and sweden by facilitating the following: • to support flexible mobility of academic staff, students encompassing undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctorial students as well as post[-doctorial] fellows and provide exchange opportunities for administrative officials by strengthening existing funding structures and creating new ones where gaps exist. • to facilitate the development of early career academics through the initiation of grant programmes to enhance collaboration and networking between south africa and sweden. • to ensure appropriate flexible funding schemes to facilitate partnerships in research and education between south africa and sweden. this call has resulted in the emergence of a number of programmes, including virtual exchange grants, the sasuf papers grants, and the completion of three research and innovation weeks (see table 1), with both countries taking turns to host this event. at the conclusion of its first collaboration cycle in 2020, sasuf has connected 3,000 students and educators f rom both south af rica and sweden via 70 24 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w projects to date (sasuf, 2023a). following its initial successes, sasuf was given a three-year extension in 2021 and will continue to function until 2024. sasuf concentrates on six themes (sasuf, 2023a), including: 1. climate change, natural resources, and sustainability 2. education for a sustainable society table 1: all of the research and innovation weeks hosted to date year host institution location 2018 university of pretoria pretoria, south africa 2019 stellenbosch university stellenbosch, south africa 2020 uppsala university uppsala, sweden (unforeseen circumstances related to the covid-19 pandemic resulted in the exchange taking place remotely under the theme of ‘sasuf goes digital.’) 2022 uppsala university1 the exchange was again facilitated remotely under the theme of ‘sasuf goes digital.’ 2023 university of the western cape cape town, south africa (source: the authors with the data provided by the co-author) at the time of writing, sasuf consists of 40 partner universities and one associate partner. table 2 organises sasuf’s partners by category and country. 3. social transformation through change (knowledge and social development strategies) 4. health (understanding the burden of disease in sweden and south africa) 5. sustainable urbanisation, travel, and tourism in the 21st century 6. digital technologies, big data, and cybersecurity table 2: partner universities and associated partners of sasuf as of january 2023 partner universities south african universities swedish universities cape peninsula university of technology uppsala university (coordinator) central university of technology jönköping university durban university of technology linköping university mangosuthu university of technology luleå university of technology nelson mandela university lund university north-west university karlstad university rhodes university karolinska institutet sefako makghato health sciences university malmö university sol plaatje university stockholm university 25 special edition v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w stellenbosch university swedish university of agricultural sciences tshwane university of technology umeå university university of cape town university of gothenburg university of fort hare university west university of the free state örebro university university of johannesburg university of kwazulu-natal university of limpopo university of mpumalanga university of pretoria university of south africa university of the western cape university of venda university of witwatersrand university of zululand vaal university of technology walter sisulu university associated partners2 entrust foundation (source: the authors with data f rom sasuf, 2023b) conceptual considerations since the end of the cold war, the practice of diplomacy has expanded beyond the state-to-state nexus. against this backdrop, both the number of actors as well as the number of categories encompassing diplomacy have become plentiful (abdurahmanli, 2021). academia, research, and institutions of tertiary education have become pivotal instruments of diplomatic practice; the use of this tool is twofold, as diplomats can deliver lectures or participate in panel discussions while higher education institutions can also be used to establish collaboration in research (rozental and buenrostro, 2013: 235 and 236; ogunnubi and shawa, 2017: 87 and 88; knight, 2022: 103). the realms of knowledge generation, knowledge sharing, and cooperation to deliver education have spurned various diplomatic typologies, namely: education diplomacy, science diplomacy, academic diplomacy, since the end of the cold war, the practice of diplomacy has expanded beyond the state-to-state nexus. against this backdrop, both the number of actors as well as the number of categories encompassing diplomacy have become plentiful (abdurahmanli, 2021). academia, research, and institutions of tertiary education have become pivotal instruments of diplomatic practice 26 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w and knowledge diplomacy. while it is clear that this paper opts to employ its analytical f ramework within the confines of knowledge diplomacy, the authors deem it necessary to clarify these concepts as a firm understanding of them will help readers to understand the interconnectivity between these various typologies and the reason why knowledge diplomacy was chosen over other typologies. education diplomacy is defined as a means of using the diplomatic skillset to advance effective cooperation among various actors and sectors to achieve transformational agendas in education (childhood education international, n.d.). over time, education diplomacy has been studied by scholars as a means of advancing international peace, security, development, and human rights (scorza, 2019: 65). within this setting, education diplomacy has predominantly been used in the global south to propel the attainment of the fourth sustainable development goal (quality education for all) (murphy, 2018). occurrences of this within the literature include cardarelli’s application of education diplomacy to the refugee education for children displaced by the syrian conflict (cardarelli, 2018) and nasser’s proposal for a new f ramework to use education diplomacy as means to improve childhood education in pakistan (nasser, 2018). academic diplomacy is perhaps the most loosely defined diplomatic typology discussed in this paper. academic diplomacy is the exchange of knowledge and ideas in higher education across borders (chandramohan and rycroft, 2018). one such example is the academic network established by the mikta3 bloc to aid exchanges between academics and students in mexico, indonesia, the republic of korea, turkey, and australia (farrelly, 2015). abdurahmanli (2021: 587) argues that the exchanges between academics across borders are a form of civil diplomacy, a means of diplomacy whereby civilians informally represent their states. the academic diplomacy project (n.d.) instead argues that academic diplomacy should instead be a means of ensuring that academic knowledge benefits those outside of the academic space, particularly in the case of communities and societies in need. aukes (2020: 1) defines science diplomacy as ‘collaborations between stakeholders f rom science, policy and diplomacy, which involve various governmental or diplomatic organisations as well as non-governmental scientific organisations.’ within this backdrop, science diplomacy has three characteristics (the royal society, 2012: 15), namely: centring foreign policy objectives around science and scientific work. coordinating international cooperation in the area of science employing cooperation in the area of science to enhance bilateral relations between two states. figure 1: the interconnection between various diplomatic typologies (source: the authors) south af rica has been an ardent practitioner of science diplomacy. the republic’s appetite for scientific advancement is rooted in its isolation brought on by sanctions f rom the international community in response to apartheid. international isolation solidified the need to safeguard south af rica’s security by means of employing technologies pertaining to steel production and iron processing, nuclear technology, bio-warfare, and energy security (masters, 2015: 174). the republic’s scientific path resulted in advances in nuclear technology, cola-toliquid processing in aid of oil production, and surgical 27v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w intervention in the form of the world’s first humanto-human transplant (masters, 2015: 174). in the postapartheid era, the republic adopted its white paper science and technology (the white paper). the white paper emphasises that south af rica needs to foster a culture and setting of innovation in order to make meaningful progress. the white paper notes that (south af rican department of arts, culture, science and technology, 1996: 8 and 9): the stimulation of a national system of innovation will be central to the empowerment of all south af ricans as they seek to achieve social, political, economic, and environmental goals. the development of innovative ideas, products, institutional arrangements and processes will enable the country to address more effectively the needs and aspirations of its citizens. this is particularly important within the context of the demands of global economic competitiveness, sustainable development and equity considerations related to the legacies of our past. a well-managed and properly functioning national system of innovation will make it possible for all south af ricans to enjoy the economic, socio-political, and intellectual benefits of science and technology. south af rica’s quest for scientific innovation persists into its white paper on foreign policy which identifies europe, asia, and south america as regions that could help the republic advance its admission in science, technology, and innovation (south af rican department of international relations and cooperation, 2011: 29, 31, and 34). by 2012, south af rica’s department of science and technology4 had three overseas offices attached to the republic’s diplomatic missions to russia, tokyo, and the european union to promote cooperation in the areas of science and technology; officials have also been seconded to the secretariat of the southern af rican development community as well as the af rican union commission (pandor, 2012: 3). additionally, south af rica has played a leading role in the establishment of the group of earth observations (geo).5 the geo was founded in 2005 following a call to action for the establishment of an internationally integrated earth observation system following the republic’s hosting of the world summit on sustainable development in 2002 (south af rican department of science and innovation, 2018). the republic would go on to become the lead cochair of the geo in 2018 and is to host the 2023 geo ministerial summit in its capacity as present-day co-chair (south af rican department of science and innovation, 2018; south af rican department of science and innovation, 2022). south af rica has also used its membership of the brics (brazil, russia, india, china, and south af rica) club to practice science diplomacy. one such example of this occurred in 2019 when the brics youth energy agency and the national youth development agency of south af rica signed an agreement to facilitate formal collaboration between young scientists f rom the brics states (botha, 2022: 117 and 118). while sweden, like south af rica, is a member of the geo, and both states had initially opted to enter a bilateral agreement aimed at nurturing cooperation in the areas of science, technology, and innovation in 2013, sweden appears less ardent in pursuing science diplomacy. the bilateral agreement remains unenforced (south af rica’s department of international relations and cooperation, 2022). sweden’s lack of enthusiasm is also highlighted by aukes and kuhlmann in their report detailing the extent to which the kingdom has used and could use science diplomacy going forward. in particular, aukes and kuhlmann (2022: 26) note: science diplomacy is a trending term in foreign policy as well as international science policy. this trend has not yet caught hold in the swedish sti ecosystem. partly, this is because of the careful consideration of new, fashionable notions that is common among swedish policy stakeholders. at the same time, the swedish diplomatic tradition, among others in international environmental policy, represents a logical starting point for a stronger role of science diplomacy in the country. stalled cooperation in the areas of science, technology, and innovation coupled with a stagnant attitude towards science diplomacy within swedish policymaking and diplomatic circles necessitates a shift towards a more inclusive diplomatic typology. finally, knight (2020: 38) defines knowledge diplomacy as ‘a two-way process. it refers to the role that international higher education, research, and innovation (iheri) play in building and strengthening 28 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w international relations and, vice versa, the role that international relations play in facilitating and improving iheri.’ these processes are underpinned by five characteristics, all of which are listed and unpacked in the next section of this paper. overall, the above discussion illustrates how the blossoming of diplomatic typologies has complicated the diplomatic discourse. regardless, it is important to note that there is overlap between the various typologies discussed above. this overlap is necessitated by two realities. firstly, there is a form of ‘actor-overlap’ between education, science, academia, and knowledge diplomacy. within the realms of science, academic, and knowledge diplomacy, higher education actors play a role in these kinds of exchanges. furthermore, education and science diplomacy are very specific in their applications. the former predominantly refers to undertakings to improve access to education in the basic education sector, while the latter mostly speaks to cooperation in finding solutions to global challenges via means offered by the natural sciences. this also raises questions about the difference between science diplomacy and knowledge diplomacy and if they should be considered to be symmetrical. knight (2022: 122) weighs in on this ponderance by noting: this is a question worthy of serious consideration. it depends on how broadly the concept of science is being defined and used. if science is broadly interpreted to mean knowledge, as in the latin word “sciencia”, then there is a close relationship. but traditionally, science diplomacy has been seen and used in the western sense of natural sciences as illustrated in all the examples provided in the conceptual f ramework developed by the american association for the advancement of science. knight (2022: 122) also highlights the one-sided nature of science diplomacy: however, the focus on science and technology excludes, to a large extent, other sectors, issues and disciplines related to the social sciences and humanities. for instance, it is unlikely that science diplomacy initiatives or negotiations would include humanitarian or societal issues such as migration, ageing, refugees, gender, poverty, or human rights. thus, while full acknowledgement is given to the importance and role of science diplomacy, it does not exclude the necessity of knowledge diplomacy, which is a more inclusive concept in terms of the range of issue sectors and disciplines involved, the diversity in the production of research and application of knowledge. the discussion above shows that each typology discussed in this paper, while akin in some way, is different in their scope and objective. each typology discussed herein has its own scope, with knowledge having the broadest scope, thus providing an opportunity for education, academic, and science diplomacy to be embarrassed in the practice of knowledge diplomacy (as shown by figure 1) depending on the context in which each typology is applied. this is present within the realm of south af ricasweden relations. while south af rica’s priorities are channelled towards the pursuit of science diplomacy, sweden’s motivations are anchored in the swedish government’s desire to expand the internationalisation of swedish higher education. a government report published in 2018 summarising the outcomes of a state-sponsored inquiry tasked with proposing a new strategy for the internationalisation of swedish higher education found that internationalisation, by means of cross-border collaborations in research, with knowledge having the broadest scope, thus providing an opportunity for education, academic, and science diplomacy to be embarrassed in the practice of knowledge diplomacy (as shown by figure 1) depending on the context in which each typology is applied. this is apresent within the realm of south africa-sweden relations. 29 p e e r r e v i e w from a social perspective, the report concludes that the internationalisation of higher education can result in the personal growth of the individual participant as exposure to external cultures has the potential to increase their self-understanding as well as the understanding of others (government of sweden, 2018: 9). enhances the quality of research and education (government of sweden, 2018: 8). the report further notes that internationalisation in higher education yields significant political, economic, and social benefits for the participating states. politically, the internationalisation in higher education allows for the strengthening of bilateral relations as many states desire to create ‘knowledge-intensive societies’ (government of sweden, 2018: 9). economically, the internationalisation of higher education can stimulate economic growth. as the report notes (government of sweden, 2018: 9): by attracting researchers, experts and foreign students who stay on after completing their studies, a country can gain access to international expertise, compensate for inadequate domestic education capacity, support innovation and the economy by renewing the knowledge and innovation system through an inflow of new methods, perspectives and technologies and mitigate the effects of an ageing population. from a social perspective, the report concludes that the internationalisation of higher education can result in the personal growth of the individual participant as exposure to external cultures has the potential to increase their self-understanding as well as the understanding of others (government of sweden, 2018: 9). when considered side-by-side, it is clear that south af rica favoured science diplomacy while sweden was more inclined towards academic diplomacy6 with the increasing f requency of science diplomacy being mentioned in the report (government of sweden, 2018: 9). sasuf therefore paves the way for knowledge diplomacy to occur as the potential occurs whereby both states are able to have their objective fulfilled. secondly, the context of the mechanism or platform, in this case sasuf, cannot be overlooked as it provides a circumstantial setting which brings higher education and education-focused non-governmental organisations f rom both south af rica and sweden together as collaboration to advance a joint agenda for the delivery of higher education in a wide array of fields spanning the natural and social sciences, which align with knight’s observations above. combined, these realities require a more generic typology that accommodates both a diversity of actors and different interests among participating actors. knight’s five characteristics of knowledge diplomacy jane knight remains one of the few scholars, if not the only scholar, who has been able to enrich and solidify the collective conceptual discourse pertaining to knowledge diplomacy. in this regard, five characteristics have been developed (knight, 2020: 38–39): i. focus on higher education, research, and innovation: the practice of knowledge diplomacy involves various forms of internationalisation efforts in higher education. these include student exchanges, scholar exchanges, joint conferences, and research projects. it is imperative to note that all of these activities must be linked or interconnected to one another, as well as a myriad of actors which help to drive strategies for international engagement in order to be considered knowledge diplomacy. ii. diversity of actors and partners: within the context of higher education, higher education institutions play a potent role in international exchanges; they are, however, not the only actors involved in this process. as knight (2020: 38) v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 30 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w notes ‘national, regional, or international centres of excellence, research institutions, foundations, think tanks, professional associations, nongovernmental education organizations and governmental departments/agencies [all have a role to pay in adding the facilitation of international exchanges in the higher education sector].’ of equal importance are the engagements with actors f rom different sectors who will be involved in the facilitation of the exchanges. iii. recognition of different needs and collective use of resources: it is understood that while different actors come together to address common issues, their ability to engage and seek international partners may differ on each partner’s needs and the resources they have access to. regardless, it is important to acknowledge that each state will bring their own resources to the table by engaging the partnership. within this context, the cooperating states recognise the collective needs their partners have and work together to ensure that these needs are realised through the constructive employment of each partner’s resources. iv. reciprocity (mutual, but with different benefits): when states engage in knowledge diplomacy, they often exist in different social, economic, and/ or political contexts resulting in each partner having access to different and sometimes unequal resources, thereby yielding asymmetrical benefits for all parties involved regardless, both states are likely to remain engaged in the practice since their participation is mutually beneficial and will likely meet contextual needs or outcomes. v. build and strengthen relations between countries: overall, knowledge diplomacy, if employed correctly, can help to strengthen the bilateral relations between the two participating states. interactions undertaken in the name of knowledge diplomacy are seen to go beyond any pre-existing bilateral or multilateral agreements that the participating states may be party to. sasuf as a means of knowledge diplomacy within the context of south africa-sweden relations focus on higher education, research, and innovation a focus on higher education is central to sasuf. the project’s website notes that sasuf was founded with ‘the overall aim of strengthening ties between sweden and south af rica in research, education and innovation’ (sasuf, 2023a). as noted earlier on in this article, sasuf has to-date connected an estimated 3,000 students and researchers. this number will most likely increase, given that sasuf’s second cycle of operation is still ongoing. diversity of actors and partners as illustrated by table 2, sasuf currently has 40 university partners and one associate partner. additionally, there are many partners that may emerge when sasuf collaborations take place via the seed grants for collaborative research programme. the wilder rangelands workshop series project, co-hosted by the university of fort hare, nelson mandela university, swedish university of agricultural sciences, the university of cape town, umeå university, and rhodes university is one such example. the final report submitted for this project noted that conservation south af rica played a key role in cross-learning and knowledge exchange between academic and non-academic experts in the rangeland conservation (sasuf, 2023d: 7). outside of the seed grants for collaborative research programme, other ad-hoc pilot collaborations have also highlighted how different sasuf actors can converge to achieve a common goal. an example of this is the student essay contest on south af rica-sweden relations (the essay contest). the essay contest was open to all final-year undergraduate students at sasuf partner universities, with the hosting and coordination being jointly attended to by the university of johannesburg (uj), sasuf, and the swedish embassy in pretoria. the essay contest welcomed submissions f rom five categories, namely: gender issues, environmental issues, academic exchanges, science and technology issues, and cultural issues. participating students were asked to write an essay in which they explained how both states can strengthen their bilateral relationship within the student’s chosen category. the essay submissions were assessed by a panel of 14 judges (seven f rom south af rica and sweden respectively) emanating f rom various sasuf partner universities. 31v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w recognition of different needs and collective use of resources while both south af rica and sweden acknowledge that their collaboration is rooted in addressing border-blind issues of mutual concern, each state has their own set of needs that they wish to meet via their collaboration within sasuf. the needs of both states, within the context of sasuf-orientated collaboration, are not publicly stated. clarity can, however be sought when assessing the foreign policy documents of both states. as has been demonstrated above, south af rica maintains an ardent admission to participate in and lead processes pertaining to research, technology, and innovation. for its part, sweden has singled out the need to deepen its development cooperation with the af rican continent, as noted by the swedish foreign ministry (2022): af rica’s countries and regions face widely differing conditions and opportunities when it comes to sustainable development. at the same time, several of the continent’s challenges are cross-border in nature. one important starting point for the strategy is, therefore, to strengthen regional cooperation and integration. development cooperation includes support in areas such as environment and climate, democracy and human rights, migration and development, economic integration, and peaceful and inclusive societies. while the above does not specifically mention cooperation in education, science diplomacy, nor knowledge diplomacy, it is plausible to argue that cooperation in education and knowledge exchange is part of this process given that the kingdom is known for fostering a cooperation culture which allows locally based partners to take an active part in owning the projects they collaborate on (söderbaum, 2017). moreover, the swedish government’s desire to further the internationalisation of swedish higher education also suggests that the kingdom places an emphasis on the important role that collaboration in higher education can occupy in the pursuit of its own interests. collaboration within sasuf places an emphasis on each party employing their own resources. this emphasis is reflected in the seed grants for collaborative research programme, where sweden provides funding via stint, and south af rica provides funding via its national research foundation (nrf). stint contributes 100,000 sek while the nrf contributes r130,000 (73,891 sek)7 (sasuf, 2023e). additionally, during the essay contest, each of the three partners put their respective resources into action to make the contest a success. uj used its academic knowledge to map out the initial f ramework for the contest while also providing the artwork advertising the essay contest to prospective students. sasuf was able to help market the essay contest to partner universities and help identify suitable candidates for the panel of judges. sasuf also awarded the essay contest a mobility grant which allowed the winners of each category to attend a winners’ luncheon at the swedish ambassador’s residence in pretoria. the embassy’s willingness to host the luncheon provided prospective submitters with an incentive to participate in the essay contest. reciprocity (mutual, but with different benefits) despite having different needs, the various partners are incentivised to cooperate because their collective efforts will make progress towards fulfilling their needs. in the context of sasuf, there are benefits for both states, as well as for individual researchers participating in sasuf’s activities. for south af rica, sasuf offers the republic the opportunity to meet its domestic and foreign policy objectives by affording south af rican researchers and students the opportunity to be part of the creation of innovative solutions to common problems, such as by scientific and exploratory means. the articles co-authored by richards and lipnizki, as well as dermineur and kolanisi, respectively, for this special issue are evidence of this. as for sweden, the kingdom can fulfil its desire for increased internationalisation of higher education via sasuf. south af rican-based researchers are able to gain access to a wider pool of research funding while also enhancing their international professional networks. sweden-based researchers are able to gain access to the af rican loci for research purposes with greater ease. combined or mutual benefits have also emerged as researchers f rom sweden are able to obtain fellowships in swedish academic institutions and vice versa. moreover, postgraduate students f rom south af rica and sweden benefited f rom cosupervision expertise f rom both states. 32 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w the positive outcomes outlined above confirm strong social ties between south african and swedish academics, which could help to maintain traditional bilateral relations going forward should the strong bilateral cooperation in research and innovation continue. build and strengthen relations between countries the activities conducted by sasuf have strengthened bilateral relations between south af rica and sweden. sasuf was due to be showcased as a successful bilateral undertaking in 2020 at a high-level meeting between president cyril ramaphosa and thenswedish prime minister stefan löfven. the south af rica-sweden bi-national commission’s working group on science and technology had agreed that sasuf would be the subject of the plenary session.8 unfortunately, this meeting was postponed due to covid-19. sasuf’s work has also helped to foster strong social bonds between researchers f rom both states. some of the final reports submitted by beneficiaries of the seed grants for collaborative research programme brought these conclusions to the surface. facilitators of the remote sensing and multispectral imaging for plants and food stuff to meet the un’s sustainable development goals (sdgs) project made a similar observation and noted the following when asked to highlight the most significant outcomes of their collaboration: ‘[t]he different ties we have been able to make and that there are several projects both within academia and between academia and the private sector that will survive after the project is over’ (sasuf, 2023e: 1). likewise, the final report submitted for the ‘violence on the global map: ‘street science’ for challenging norms and practices’ project made the following observation: ‘we have been able to develop the partnership into a strong and meaningful collaboration that is looking forward to continued shared activities and engagement’ (sasuf, 2023f: 2). they elaborate further to say: ‘through this project we have learnt f rom one another in ways that have enriched us all and our future plans will enable the learning to strengthen teaching and learning activities at [our respective] institutions’ (sasuf, 2023f: 2). finally, collaborators working on the open education and social justice (oesj) project concluded (sasuf, 2020: 5): the sasuf oesj has been highly successful as a mechanism to facilitate ongoing collaboration between participating researchers. the team has benefitted f rom the numerous contact meeting opportunities and has established the trust and rapport necessary to facilitate longer-term collaboration. the project team members have all benefited personally f rom the interaction in terms of being exposed to different perspectives in two countries and remain committed to ongoing interaction. the positive outcomes outlined above confirm strong social ties between south af rican and swedish academics, which could help to maintain traditional bilateral relations going forward should the strong bilateral cooperation in research and innovation continue. conclusion this paper sought to highlight the presence and nature of knowledge diplomacy within the context of south af rica-sweden relations by attempting to illustrate that knight’s five characteristics of knowledge diplomacy were present within sasuf. these characteristics were found to align with sasuf’s work which indicates that sasuf is an example of knowledge diplomacy within the context of south af rica-sweden relations. given the alignment of sasuf with the typology of knowledge diplomacy, the authors posit and propose a new research agenda visá-vis sasuf and knowledge diplomacy. the proposed research agenda is threefold. first, continued usage of sasuf as a case study in scholarly work could help further understanding of contemporary south 33v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w af rica-sweden relations. some of the final reports submitted have indicated that the seed funding has helped to foster strong working relationships between south af rican and swedish researchers. with this submitted observation as a backdrop, future research should focus on how sasuf-orientated collaborations impact how researchers view south af rica-sweden relations and whether their work contributes to the fostering of this relationship. the motivation for electing to participate in sasuf activities could also be incorporated into this research. second, researchers may wish to focus on the soft power potential of sasuf. jane knight has already illustrated the difference between knowledge diplomacy and soft power, so future research should apply this differentiation to sasuf. third, the longterm impact of the sasuf-funded projects is yet to be determined. this is largely due to the fact that sasuf is still in its second cycle of operation. sasuf coordinators, researchers, and students should continue to submit final reports while also keeping additional statistical and numerical information on hand so that a thorough evaluation can be undertaken upon the second funding cycle’s conclusion. the success of knowledge diplomacy between south af rica and sweden by means of sasuf is laudable. however, south af rica’s positions in relation to the russia-ukraine conflict as well as the possible expansion of the brics (brazil, russia, india, china, and south af rica) bloc could possibly undermine this positive collaboration.9 only time will tell how these phenomena will unfold and potentially impact the bilateral relations between south af rica and sweden. acknowledgements the authors would like to express their gratitude to the south af rica-sweden university forum for allowing them access to the final reports of the seed grants for collaborative research programme, which provided some primary insights for this article. both sasuf and the authors of these reports are assured that their information was used solely for research purposes and was not disclosed to a third party. notes 1. sasuf encourages the joint coordination of projects across its partner institutions. to this end, plans are currently being formulated for the research and innovation week for 2024 to be cohosted by three swedish universities. 2. plans with sasuf’s associate partners are still under development. further information regarding sasuf’s associate partners was not available at the time of writing. their work, contributions, and impact will need to be noted and discussed in future research. 3. mikta is a bloc of states consisting of mexico, indonesia, the republic of korea, turkey, and australia. 4. at the time of writing, this department is known as the department of higher education, science, and innovation. 5. the geo was founded in 2005 with the intention of establishing a global earth observations system that will enable political leaders and policymakers to make better decisions that will impact humankind. at the time of writing, the geo has 113 member states, which include both south af rica and sweden. 6. this conclusion is confirmed when one considers the definition of internationalisation of higher education used in the report. 7. this is an estimated value based on present-day exchange rates. 8. this information was provided to the authors by sasuf. 9. for more information on these global developments, please refer to beakkvold and hattar’s paper in this special issue. references abdurahmanli, e. 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(2022). ‘government adopts regional strategy for swedish development cooperation with africa.’ swedish foreign ministry [online]. available at: www.government.se/press-releases/2022/02/government-adopts-regional-strategy-for-swedish-development-cooperation-with-africa/#:~:text=the%20government%20has%20adopted%20 a,by%20climate%20change%20and%20conflicts. the royal society. (2010). ‘new frontiers in science diplomacy navigating the changing balance of power.’ the royal society [online]. available at: royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/new-frontiers-science-diplomacy/ uppsala university. (2019). ‘joint declaration by the participating universities in the south africa-sweden university forum (sasuf).’ uppsala university [online]. available at: mp.uu.se/documents/432512/399567108/joint+declaration+sasuf+%28signed%29.pdf/64489aaf-12b4-a60e-da735f1719d8c334 international relations and, vice versa, the role that international relations play in facilitating and improving iheri.’ these processes are underpinned by five characteristics, all of which are listed and unpacked in the next section of this paper. https://www.stint.se/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/stint_science_diplomacy.pdf https://www.stint.se/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/stint_science_diplomacy.pdf https://diplomacybeyond.com/academic-diplomacy-an-evolving-discipline/ https://diplomacybeyond.com/academic-diplomacy-an-evolving-discipline/ https://ceinternational1892.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/what-is-education-diplomacy.pdf https://ceinternational1892.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/what-is-education-diplomacy.pdf https://www.newmandala.org/academic-diplomacy-in-the-21st-century/ https://www.newmandala.org/academic-diplomacy-in-the-21st-century/ https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/2522e5c3f8424df4aec78d2e48507e4f/internationalisation-of-swedish-higher-education-and-research.pdf https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/2522e5c3f8424df4aec78d2e48507e4f/internationalisation-of-swedish-higher-education-and-research.pdf https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/2522e5c3f8424df4aec78d2e48507e4f/internationalisation-of-swedish-higher-education-and-research.pdf https://www.sasuf.org/general-info-about-sasuf https://www.sasuf.org/partner-universities https://www.sasuf.org/funding-opportunities https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/sciencetechnologywhitepaper.pdf https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/sciencetechnologywhitepaper.pdf https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/final-draft-white-paper-sa-foreign-policy.pdf https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/final-draft-white-paper-sa-foreign-policy.pdf https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/final-draft-white-paper-sa-foreign-policy.pdf https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/textbase/treatywebsearch.htm https://treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtw-wpd/textbase/treatywebsearch.htm https://www.dst.gov.za/index.php/media-room/latest-news/2664-south-africa-to-chair-group-on-earth-observations-geo https://www.dst.gov.za/index.php/media-room/latest-news/2664-south-africa-to-chair-group-on-earth-observations-geo https://www.dst.gov.za/index.php/media-room/latest-news/3822-south-africa-to-host-group-on-earth-observations-ministerial-summit https://www.dst.gov.za/index.php/media-room/latest-news/3822-south-africa-to-host-group-on-earth-observations-ministerial-summit https://www.dst.gov.za/index.php/media-room/latest-news/3822-south-africa-to-host-group-on-earth-observations-ministerial-summit https://www.government.se/press-releases/2022/02/government-adopts-regional-strategy-for-swedish-development-cooperation-with-africa/#:~:text=the government has adopted a,by climate change and conflicts https://www.government.se/press-releases/2022/02/government-adopts-regional-strategy-for-swedish-development-cooperation-with-africa/#:~:text=the government has adopted a,by climate change and conflicts https://www.government.se/press-releases/2022/02/government-adopts-regional-strategy-for-swedish-development-cooperation-with-africa/#:~:text=the government has adopted a,by climate change and conflicts https://www.government.se/press-releases/2022/02/government-adopts-regional-strategy-for-swedish-development-cooperation-with-africa/#:~:text=the government has adopted a,by climate change and conflicts https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/new-frontiers-science-diplomacy/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/new-frontiers-science-diplomacy/ https://mp.uu.se/documents/432512/399567108/joint+declaration+sasuf+%28signed%29.pdf/64489aaf-12b4-a60e-da73-5f1719d8c334 https://mp.uu.se/documents/432512/399567108/joint+declaration+sasuf+%28signed%29.pdf/64489aaf-12b4-a60e-da73-5f1719d8c334 https://mp.uu.se/documents/432512/399567108/joint+declaration+sasuf+%28signed%29.pdf/64489aaf-12b4-a60e-da73-5f1719d8c334 61v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african by francis onditi and shadrack mulei kithiia african futures: the agenda 2063 t he year 2063 is important to the au and the african people. aside from the fact that, by then, many african states will be celebrating 100 years’ independence, this is also the year that the goals listed in the agenda 2063 should have been achieved. the agenda 2063, which was created in 2015, groups its objectives into four broad categories: inclusive growth; integration; governance; security; cultural identity; women and youth; and partnership. however, the agenda does not consider the influence of war and conflict. the failure to anticipate and put in place measures for mitigating the impacts of such events means that the goals of the agenda 2063 are less likely to be achieved. in this paper, we argue that investigating war and conflict, and its triggers and effects, is necessary, especially in africa, where armed conflict costs the continent us $18 billion per annum (iansa, oxfam and saferworld, 2007). in 2017, africa experienced 50 non-state conflicts compared to 24 in 2011 (peace research institute oslo, 2018). during the same year, the continent experienced 18 conflicts in 13 countries – an increase from the 12 conflicts in 10 countries seen 10 years ago. in total, since the why most african states may be at war with each other in 2063 © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m t h e t h i n k e r62 pan-african 1970s, the continent has seen more than 30 wars (mengisteab, 2003), which have resulted in more than half of all war-related deaths world-wide and more than 9.5 million refugees (mengisteab, 2003). these figures show the importance of identifying the factors that might cause or trigger war or other types of conflict. as such, the planners of the agenda 2063 should have considered the conditions that foment war and conflict; the likelihood that, in 2063, the majority (98%) of african states might be at war with each other; and what should be done to avert this possibility. in addition, the au planners ought to have critically examined whether or not the trend of increasing conflict on the continent demonstrates a definite build-up of tensions that will erupt into full-blown war in a few decades from now. in order to try to fill these gaps in the agenda, we examine three processes: 1) demographic trends, 2) environmental forces and 3) polemogical factors. it will be shown that an analysis of these factors demonstrates why it is necessary that the au reconsiders its agenda 2063 and takes into account the likelihood of wide-spread and numerous wars by 2063. changes that influence the way we perceive war the first factor that will shape 2063 is the demographics of africa. according to statistica (2018), africa’s average life expectancy is 61 years for males and 64 years for females. in some areas, such as middle africa, the rate is much lower: 57 years for males and 60 years for females (united nations statistics division, 2019). using these figures, we have utilized two types of probability models to forecast the life expectancy in african by 2063. statistics indicate that the global life expectancy is higher than that in africa (71 years and 74 years for males and females, respectively) (the border project, 2018). this means that 52% and 57% of africans born in the 1960s and 1970s respectively will be alive in 2063. those born in 1990s have a 40% chance of living to see 2063. those born in 2000 will be 63 years old, with females having a higher chances of surviving (58%) than males (56%). those born after 1990 have a 60% chance of being alive in 2063. this scenario is, however, dependent on a number of internal and external forces, such as the impact of civil wars, higher emotional and physical stress levels, diminishing water and food, and increasing levels of carcinogenic agents in the atmosphere. furthermore, human ecological studies have unveiled evidence linking climate change to conflicts. this relationship is particularly evident in regions dependent on agriculture for livelihood, countries with politically excluded populations and states with ineffective institutions (koubi, 2018). the second factor is environmental change. like the rest of the world, africa is experiencing the effects of human, physical, economic, and environmental processes. with the population growth rate in excess of 2% per annum, it is possible that the number of people in africa will reach the 2.4 billion mark in 2050, up from the current 1.2 billion (world population review, 2019). presently, 60% of africans are under the age of 25. a youthful population experiencing high unemployment rates is associated with increased war and conflict, which is the case in ethiopia, mali, the central african republic, the democratic republic of congo, kenya, burundi, nigeria, tunisia, and egypt. in our estimation, high rates of unemployment are likely to remain for several decades, and perhaps will result in large-scale conflict before 2063. moreover, research predicts that, by 2020, 30%–40% of the world will experience water scarcity (al jazeera, 2016). by 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in water-scarce areas (holloway, 1 unconditional probability: if we select a child at random (by simple random sampling), then each child has the same probability (equal chance) of being selected, and the probability is 1/n, where n = population size. thus, the probability that any child is selected is 1/5,290 = 0.0002. the following formula can be used to compute the probability of selecting an individual with specific attributes or characteristics: p(characteristic) = # persons with characteristic / n. conditional probability: each of the probabilities computed in the previous section (e.g., p(boy), p(7 years of age)) is an unconditional probability, because the denominator for each is the total population size (n = 5,290), reflecting the fact that everyone in the entire population is eligible to be selected. 2 a probability is a number that reflects the chance or likelihood that a particular event will occur. 3 those born in 1960: current age as of 2019 = 59; age by 2063 = 103; chance of survival = 59/103 = 0.57 or 57%. 4 those born in the 1970s: current age as of 2019 = 49; age by 2063 = 93; chance of survival = 49/93 = 0.52 or 52%. 5 those born in 1990: current age as of 2019 = 29; age by 2063 = 73; chance of survival = 29/73 = 0.397 ~ 0.40 or 40%. chances of survival is therefore 60%. 6 chances of a woman reaching 2063, using 60 years as the life expectancy as of 2019 and 104 at 2063: chance of survival = 60/104 = 0.577 ~ 0.58 or 58%. 7 chances of a man reaching 2063, using 57 years as the life expectancy as of 2019 and 101 at 2063: chance of survival = 57/101 = 0.564 ~ 0.56 or 56%. 63v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 we examine three processes: 1) demographic trends, 2) environmental forces and 3) polemogical factors. it will be shown that an analysis of these factors demonstrates why it is necessary that the au reconsiders its agenda 2063 and takes into account the likelihood of wide-spread and numerous wars by 2063. pan-african 2019). and five times as much land is likely to be under extreme drought conditions by 2050. the un predicts that 30 nations will be water-scarce in 2025, up from 20 in 1990s, and that the number will rise to 41 by 2063. this problem is exacerbated by population growth. it is estimated that there will be 1 billion more people to feed in 2025, which means that global agriculture will require an extra 1 trillion cubic meters of water per year (equal to the annual flow of 20 nile or 100 colorado rivers). by 2050, the estimated 9 billion people residing on earth will require a 60% increase in agricultural production and a 15% increase in water supply. total water demand is projected to grow 55% by 2050 (the christian science monitor, 2019). moreover, by 2035, the world’s energy consumption will increase by 35% (the christian science monitor, 2019). climate change will thus likely cause major famines and death. on the account of these demographic and environmental changes, tensions among nations will have escalated in the 2050s and 2060s. war and conflict seem inevitable, especially considering the apparent inability of nations to put strategies in place to decrease risks and effects of war. what is war? society is mostly geared towards peace and progressive development, not for large-scale war. from this perspective, it makes sense that the au agenda 2063 failed to take into account the possibly of war in 2063. to remedy this lack, we propose four approaches to assessing the likelihood and presence of war. the first is the psychological school of thought, based on the competitive nature of human beings and, by extension, entire countries. the second is rational strategy. political leaders making decisions on war must be aware of three issues: 1) there are hidden costs associated with war; 2) war weakens the fabric of society; and 3) conflict can lead to self-destruction. these issues encourage a rational-strategic approach to war. the third approach is the geopolitics of things. in 1904, british geopolitician sir halford mackinder put forward the idea of the ‘heartland’ as the key geographical factor that determines power structures amongst nations (mackinder, 1994). he defined geopolitics as ‘the geographical pivot of history’. although mackinder’s visualisation of power through the prism of geopolitics was designed to explain the global power structure, his methodological classification can be applied to the study of power dynamics within and between nations. for instance, one could leverage psychological weakness (island) of the opponent by maneuvering the enemy into precarious positions through inducing feelings of frustration and confusion. why african states may fight each other in 2063 in africa, each state has either ‘sleeping’ or © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m t h e t h i n k e r64 pan-african ‘active’ unresolved border disputes. these inimical relationships form what we term a web-like map of hostilities among states. as such, a country can have a border dispute with more than one neighbour. for instance, sudan has disputes with egypt, ethiopia, chad, the car and, more recently, the republic of south sudan. these disputes are over territories that are rich in resources or are strategic locations. there are similar disputes in the bakassi peninsula between nigeria and cameroon (okoi, 2016) and in the corisco bay between equatorial guinea and gabon. there is also tension between kenya and somalia over the indian ocean’s exclusive economic zone, which is around 42,000 square kilometres (okoi, 2016). kenya’s objection to the court’s jurisdiction over, and the admissibility of, the case has drawn out the dispute. finally, the rich deposits of phosphates in the western sahara are at the centre of tensions between the territory and morocco. to complicate the situation, morocco has benefited from strong political, economic, and military support from its western (united states) and arab (gulf monarchies) allies (zoubir, 2010). it is therefore imperative for african leaders to foresee these tensions as potentially escalating into future wars. other likely sources of conflict are found further north in tunisia and egypt, where the effects of the ‘arab spring’ remain. even though the revolution was intended to champion democratic governance in the middle east and north africa, analysts also fear that the civil war in libya and the ongoing crises in yemen and syria are prolonging the conflicts in north african states (joffé, 2011). the neo-patrimonial political system in tunisia and the worsening socio-economic conditions in egypt may intensify before 2063. egypt also maintains diplomatic ties with the west (mainly the us and britain), which is a factor that may see the west continue to destabilise libya and other north african states through ‘proxy warfare’. further issues can result from unstable neighbours. for instance, the car is surrounded by some of the most unstable states on the continent: chad, cameroon, congo republic, drc, south sudan and sudan. other external forces with significant influence include france, as well as libya, uganda and benin (kam kah, 2014). the involvement of south african troops in defending south african mining interests in the country led to standoff between these forces and the séléka insurgents during their march to the capital city of bangui. this regional web-like effect was occurred when benin hosted rebel leaders who caused havoc in the car. in the meantime, france and, for instance, russia continue to pursue their interests to the detriment of political stability in the country. in neighbouring drc, the history of protracted conflict is related to a culture of insurgency. in the wake of the anti-kabila revolt in 1998, president paul kagame of rwanda captured the capital city, kinshasa, and launched a spectacular transcontinental attack from the eastern town of goma to the western military base of kitona, located 1600 kilometres away (kisangani, 2003). kabila was aided by angola and zimbabwe as part of a military alliance within the sadc. increasingly, the drc conflicts have drawn both official military personnel and insurgents from angola, zimbabwe, burundi, rwanda, and uganda. there has been no change in the political regimes in these countries, thus the leaders or their heirs are likely to continue to deploy the same tactics. by 2063, these tactics may have resulted in fullblown wars. on the horn of africa, the relationship between ethiopia, eritrea, djibouti and somalia is not amicable. the badme border between ethiopia and eritrea is contested owing to the fact that tigrayans from both sides use this area as grazing land and to search for alluvial gold. this border point remains controversial even after the de facto independence of eritrea in may 1991. eritrea has contended that the unilateral italian map of 1934 should serve as the basis of the demarcation, but this seems to be contrary to the various treaties and to international law, which ethiopia is using to contest this position. to the south of the horn of africa, the border between tanzania and malawi over lake nyasa has been subject to dispute research predicts that, by 2020, 30%–40% of the world will experience water scarcity (al jazeera, 2016). by 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in water-scarce areas (holloway, 2019). and five times as much land is likely to be under extreme drought conditions by 2050. 65v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african active since may 1967 (mayall, 1973). although the government in dar es salaam initially accepted that no part of the lake fell within its juris, a recent change of position suggests the possibly of future conflict. there are also tensions between uganda and rwanda. the relationship between these countries depends on a number of factors, including population growth in rwanda. in the north, the oil-rich abyei has been claimed by both sudan and south sudan (johnson, 2012). the pending decision by the juba government on whether its oil should be exported through the kenyan coast of lamu or through khartoum also brings further risks and may create another ‘war triangle’ as soon as south sudan begins exporting oil on a large scale. in 2019, kenya also joined the oil exporting countries, which may result in tensions with other eac partner states. in southern africa, while mozambique does not have active border disputes with its neighbours, the country’s position is complicated by internal strife between frelimo and renamo. tanzania and malawi have sent in armed units to assist frelimo (morgan, 1990). a quadrigal relationship between south africa, botswana, swaziland and lesotho is then described by valentine belfiglio (belfiglio, 1980), who asserts that ties between these countries are loose. the main point of tension here is the fact that south africa is perceived to dominate the 1969 customs agreement. meanwhile, in south africa, the problem of xenophobia continues, while the inefficiency of the post-apartheid regime to implement the september 1991 national peace accord is a further cause of dissatisfaction among south africans. unfortunately, this violent behaviour against people of african descent is a further reason for war between south africa and other african states. war will surely be prevalent in 2063 if nothing is done today in conclusion, it is necessary to develop a methodological approach to anticipating and planning for war. doing so might call for a rejection of some of the assumptions made within the agenda 2063. however, this should not lead to a complete renouncement of the goals embedded within the agenda. pragmatic solutions are thus needed that take into account the reality of possible changes in africa. there needs to be strong advocacy towards more inclusive governing structures in many of the african states to avoid the feeling of exclusion, which ultimately triggers conflicts and wars. resource exploitation, sharing of revenue, and protection of environmental resources should be taken seriously by african states to avert wars associated with environmental stress. there is also a need for investment in genetic engineering technologies focusing on food production to increase agricultural production to feed the ever-increasing population in the continent. ■ references al jazeera. 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http://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/africa-population/ https://www.csmonitor.com/world/global-issues/2012/1202/global-water-crisis-too-little-too-much-or-lack-of-a-plan https://www.csmonitor.com/world/global-issues/2012/1202/global-water-crisis-too-little-too-much-or-lack-of-a-plan https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/vitstats/index.cshtml https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/vitstats/index.cshtml _goback t h e t h i n k e r49 the importance of south af rica adapting to the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) has been high on the national agenda in recent years. however, the adoption of artificial intelligence (ai) and other forms of technology has been hampered to some extent by fears of job losses and privacy issues. the urgent need to address the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic has forced a renewed interest and focus on the possible solutions that technology can provide in a time of enormous crisis. this article provides some preliminary observations on how new technology can assist in the fight against the pandemic, and some of the legal challenges that may arise. before discussing these issues further, it is worth acknowledging that the relationship between law and medicine has always been somewhat strained. law is often seen as being in opposition to medicine, and hostility f rom doctors towards lawyers is not uncommon. lawyers, for their part, are known to be sceptical about medical evidence when cross-examining medical experts in court. however, it is essential to point out that due to the distinct characteristics of medical practice, legal rules and regulations are created to protect both doctor and patient f rom potential harm. this is pertinent to the 4ir: when the need to regulate new technology arises, it is up to the law to determine if current legal instruments are sufficient or if there is a need to revisit them. new technology in the fight against covid-19 the covid-19 crisis has highlighted the centrality of internet access. however, the fact that more than half of the global population does not have internet access diminishes the potential of new and exciting technologies. if the solutions that new technologies present do not in themselves worsen this inequality gap, steps will need to be taken to expand stable and accessible internet services to remote areas, so that the most vulnerable in society another industrial revolution leaving black women behind? the fourth industrial revolution by dawie de villiers covid-19 the roles of new technology and the law in the fight against covid-19 © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 50v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 can also benefit f rom better healthcare supported by new technology (guterres, 2020). the lack of hospital capacity and resources has been a real concern since the beginning of the covid-19 outbreak. many hoped that new technology like ai would speed up patient screening, reducing the strain on medical personnel. a valid question that arose, however, was whether the results of tests conducted by it experts in laboratories would be comparable to real situations. a study f rom google health revealed that this was not the case (heaven, 2020). other problems were noted, such as poor internet connections which caused delays. it was also pointed out that accuracy in labs is only the first step. in response to these concerns, the speeding up of the rollout of 5g technology across af rica has inevitably been marked as a priority. while this priority may be justified, it should not overshadow the need to be mindful of the balance between the right to safety and security (including the right to health facilities) and the right to privacy. assistant robots medical chatbots and other robots that can update algorithms in the initial screening of patients may be extremely valuable, particularly in assisting health personnel who are under tremendous pressure. an example of this is quintin, a robot at tygerberg hospital in the western cape, who assists with virtual ward rounds – some of which are conducted in the absence of medical staff. doctors can control quintin remotely with a desktop, tablet or smartphone, and communication between the doctor and patient occurs through a microphone and zoom. the obvious benefit of using robots in these circumstances is that medical personnel are not exposed to the virus unnecessarily. germ-destroying robots it is crucial to control the spread of covid-19 in hospitals and amongst health care workers. the latest technologies can play an essential role in this, as seen in the use of super germ-destroying robots. netcare began acquiring these robots in late 2017, and currently uses two types. dr richard friedland, netcare group’s chief executive officer, explains: ‘both the xenex pulsed ultraviolet (uv) robots and yanex pulsed-xenon uv robots deployed in netcare hospitals use high doses of uv light to destroy viruses, bacteria and fungal spores and disinfect hospital wards, theatres and other spaces within minutes’ (netcare, 2020). there are currently 28 of these robots in operation at 22 hospitals and, according to friedland, another 13 will soon be deployed. the russian-designed yanex robot has proven to be effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria and viruses such as covid-19. it releases uv-c spectrum light, which destroys viruses and prevents replication. the robot can destroy a remarkable ‘99.90% of germs on high-touch surfaces and 99.99% of airborne germs’, and is able to disinfect a room in just over a minute (netcare, 2020). the robots are connected to a cloud, where all records are stored and are easily obtainable. screening robots and applications the screening of large numbers of people, both for possible quarantine and for necessary treatment, is key to controlling the spread of covid-19. however, our present pathogenic laboratory testing approach is time-consuming and carries the risk of a large number of falsenegative results. ai may offer a solution to these issues, according to a recent study by eleven researchers f rom china (wang et al, 2020). by using a deep learning technique, the researchers developed an ai screening application that reached a global 89.5% accuracy – far higher than the results obtained by two skilled radiologists. the researchers made use of a supercomputer system that obtained results in about 10 seconds per individual case. testing can also be conducted remotely through a shared public platform. this is a work in progress, however, and the researchers admit that there are limitations to their study. the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) recently released a covid-19 assessment robot that can swiftly assess signs of infection and risk factors. after assessment, the robot the adoption of artificial intelligence (ai) and other forms of technology has been hampered to some extent by fears of job losses and privacy issues. the urgent need to address the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic has forced a renewed interest and focus on the possible solutions that technology can provide in a time of enormous crisis. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r51 offers a report and proposes that either a doctor be contacted or that the illness be managed at home. powered by microsoft azure, this healthcare robot will be an important tool in helping currently overwhelmed hospitals, as it will allow doctors and other healthcare workers to pay attention to more urgent matters. apart f rom its assessment function, the bot can be linked to a chatbot, grace, who can answer patients’ questions online (bitran and gabarra, 2020). although this tool was only launched in march 2020, an average of more than 1 million messages per day are submitted by people who are concerned about covid-19. closer to home, nigeria has developed a f ree online covid-19 triage application that allows users to pre-screen themselves and assess their risk category, based on symptoms and travel and recent exposure history. their answers determine if remote medical advice should be sufficient, or whether they should contact a doctor (harrisberg, 2020). since march 2020, more than 400,000 af ricans have made use of this service. here it is important to note that any new technology developed for use in af rican countries should be mobile f riendly, given the growing use of smartphones in af rica. acutely aware of how covid-19 could affect the continent’s most vulnerable, af ricans across the spectrum are increasingly using and implementing available mobile technology options to prevent the spread of the virus. to quote wale adeosun, ceo of nigerian-based wellvis: ‘a majority of af rica’s problems require mostly af rican solutions or solutions designed with af ricans in mind’. in south af rica, whatsapp users have reacted favourably to an interactive chatbot launched by the department of health – a solution that is less data intensive and more affordable than other web-based health sites. this chatbot answers general questions about symptoms, possible treatment, and myths in five different languages. since its launch just over a month ago, it is now available globally and has already reached more than 3.5 million users (harrisberg, 2020). another pre-screening symptom checker that is being used locally is an application recently released by epione.net, available as a f ree download (daniel, 2020). at present the app is linked to two hospitals in soweto, with several doctors and other staff partaking in its pilot programme. it has also just been extended to zimbabwe. the app allows users to monitor the progress or deterioration of their symptoms, thereby limiting the numbers of visitors to hospitals and clinics. a leading radiologist at a hospital run by the uk’s national health service saw the potential of an existing ai chest x-ray application called qxr, which was developed by a mumbai-based company, qure.ai. in order to distinguish covid-19 f rom other pneumonia viruses, the company re-adjusted qxr to execute initial readings, as opposed to the older version that was used to double-check human diagnosis. one of the challenges encountered in doing this was the collection of enough data for training algorithm purposes, due to privacy concerns. qure.ai has now expanded this rollout f rom the uk to the us, italy, france, mexico and portugal (hao, 2020). the qxr application is extremely valuable as it can deal with enormous workloads, reducing the burden on radiologists. the importance of aggressive and proactive screening in containing the spread of the virus has been demonstrated in countries like south korea, taiwan and singapore (tarun et al, 2020). the new online version of radify, developed by envisionit deep ai, is another example of assessment technology being used in the response to covid-19. radify can label 20 different x-ray pathologies at a speed of 2,000 x-rays per minute, which greatly reduces the workload of radiologists (bizcommunity, 2020). it also assists hospitals by grading possible cases in order of high, intermediate and low probability. track and trace technology apple and google have joined forces to launch application programming interfaces (apis) and operation system-level technology that will enable contact tracing. these apis work interchangeably many hoped that new technology like ai would speed up patient screening, reducing the strain on medical personnel. a valid question that arose, however, was whether the results of tests conducted by it experts in laboratories would be comparable to real situations. covid-19 52v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 between ios and android devices when customers use apps made available by health authorities. apple and google will also enable a common bluetooth-based contact-tracing platform (apple newsroom, 2020). the use of this platform will, however, depend on how aspects like transparency, consent and protection of privacy are addressed. tracking and tracing covid-19 patients and their contacts has become a key strategy in many countries, including south af rica. in his address to the nation on 30 march 2020, ramaphosa announced the launch of an ‘extensive tracing system’ that would be used to ‘trace those who have been in contact with confirmed coronavirus cases and to monitor the geographical location of new cases in real-time’. within days, new regulations – in terms of section 27(2) of the disaster management act, 2002 – were passed that permitted the government to implement this tracing system, without needing a court order (mahlangu, 2020). this method, however, will not be practical without the assistance of big it companies and mobile service providers. revised regulations with more detailed location tracking procedures were published on 2 april 2020 in government gazette no 43199. in terms of these regulations, the department of health will keep a database of all those who are infected or reasonably suspected of being infected. this database can be shared with mobile service providers, who can then specify information about the location of those who have been infected, as well as people being traced who were in their immediate vicinity. only identification is permitted under these regulations – the interception of any communication is not allowed. it is worth noting that just months before these track-and-trace provisions were passed, surveillance laws (under the regulation of interception of communications and provision of communication related information act, 2002 (rica)) were declared unconstitutional by the gauteng (pretoria) high court. sutherland j found no balance in the act between ‘lawful surveillance’ and respecting the individual’s right to privacy. with this case as background, it is understandable that much effort went into ensuring that many essential safeguards were put in place to protect the critical right to privacy, as guaranteed by our constitution. these safeguards strike a fair balance between the need to limit covid-19 infections and the right to privacy. some of the safeguards are as follows: • no content of any communication may be intercepted • location information or movements obtained f rom mobile service providers may only be f rom 5 march 2020 until the end of the national state of disaster • the information may only be used to prevent or combat the covid-19 virus • the information may only be retained by the director-general of health for six weeks, after which it must be destroyed • a designated judge must be appointed to oversee the protection of the right to privacy of citizens (justice kate o’regan has since been appointed) • an individual whose location information has been obtained must be notified of this, within six weeks of the state of disaster lapsing • no person, unless authorised to do so, may disclose any information obtained in terms of the regulations (milo and pillay, 2020). the threat that exists of ‘de-anonymising’ individuals, as a concern mentioned by those who advocate for our privacy rights, is now possibly resolved. in this regard, a technique called differential privacy is used, where inaccuracies or ‘noise’ are inserted into the data. this can change characteristics such as age, race and gender. the more ‘noise’ that is inserted, the more difficult it is to de-anonymise the data. this is the same method that facebook and apple use to collect data without identifying a specific user. telemedicine telemedicine and mobile healthcare can play a significant role in combatting covid-19. the potential uses of these technologies range f rom virtual consultations, to awareness raising, to clearing up misinformation. useful telemedicine will only be possible if we can overcome legal and other challenges, such as exposure to delictual liability, privacy concerns, increased malpractice, insurance rates and scepticism concerning reliability. it is worth noting that the delictual liability risk of medical practitioners participating in telemedicine may be even higher than in covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r53 traditional health care scenarios. telemedicine has significant advantages, including the prevention of the overcrowding of hospitals and clinics, and the facilitation of remote interaction – a patient can interact with their doctor via smartphone, for instance, and hospitals without certain specialists are able to contact specialists f rom other places. there are also the already popular ‘telemedicine robots’, used by more than a thousand hospitals in the united states in areas of cardiology, paediatrics, neurology, and mental health (achenbach, 2020). notwithstanding these benefits, there exist several regulatory drawbacks and conflicting guidelines related to telemedicine, some of which have already been solved. the first barrier for telemedicine was the requirement that a face-to-face consultation had to occur before telemedicine could be practiced, according to the health professions council of south af rica (hpcsa). the second was the requirement that telemedicine could only be practiced where there was an existing doctor-patient relationship. understanding that these two obstacles stood in the way of the increased use of telemedicine, the hpcsa first did away with the face-to-face requirement, and then watered down the doctor-patient relationship requirement. a solution was also found to a previous written consent requirement by applying the electronic communications and transactions act 25 of 2002 (ecta). the required consent can now be given electronically via a legally binding electronic signature on platforms such as whatsapp and zoom (bizcommunity, 2020). the inf ringement of a patient’s privacy and how personal and sometimes sensitive information is regulated are considerable concerns with this technology. the security of electronic medical records is difficult to guarantee: statistics show that in 2015 alone, more than 113 million healthcare records were stolen (andriola, 2019). it is also alarming that no other industry has suffered more breaches of data than the health industry. other technological successes ai has been recognised by the media as a formidable new weapon against infectious diseases. as some commentators have rightly pointed out, however, ‘too much confidence in ai’s capabilities could lead to ill-informed decisions that funnel public money to unproven ai companies at the expense of proven interventions such as drug programs’ (bitran and gabarra, 2020). monitoring companies like metabiota and bluedot are making use of several natural-language-processing (nlp) algorithms to scan news and official healthcare reports. these are available in many different languages, making it easier to get a global picture for prediction purposes. ai has an established record of picking up on early signs of diseases that human doctors may have missed, including cancer, heart conditions and eye diseases. (bitran and gabarra, 2020). in order to make successful diagnoses, however, ai requires significant amounts of training data that may not be available during the early stages of a new disease. there are also the challenges of ai relying on powerful algorithms, computing power and centralised cloud services – all of which place constraints on the speed and privacy of new applications. there is, however, some good news. it is now possible to run compelling algorithms on smartphones. developers and researchers have found a way to shrink deep-learning prototypes without sacrificing their capabilities. new specialised ai chips are also able to store added computational power into less space, which also uses far less energy. labelled ‘tiny ai’, this technology is already being implemented by the likes of google, apple and amazon (hao, 2020). to be able to operate powerful applications on cell phones, without the need to send requests to remote servers, is enormous progress. localised or ‘tiny ai’ is also much better for privacy protection, as data does not need to leave the person’s computer or phone to get better performance. law and technology it is important that technology be regulated in telemedicine and mobile healthcare can play a significant role in combatting covid-19. the potential uses of these technologies range from virtual consultations, to awareness raising, to clearing up misinformation. covid-19 54v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 terms of the f ramework of existing legal structures, rules and regulations – particularly those that are designed to give effect to the rights-based approach required by the constitution. these should not be regarded as being redundant in any context and in a country like south af rica, where these rights are the result of struggle and sacrifice, they should not be waived easily. if compliance is not possible, it may call for a re-visiting of legal requirements. new technology can enormously advance access to healthcare, but it is vital that several regulatory issues are handled correctly. these include the licensing of medical practitioners, the determination of delictual liability, and the role of human rights in monitoring relationships. the law should take notice of the role that robots play in the health services arena. as mentioned above, robots are not totally in charge of medical care, but rather work alongside humans. the specific relationship between machines and humans is therefore meaningful f rom a legal perspective when determining liabilities and responsibilities. there is already the case to be made that specific diagnostics by machine learning may have better results than diagnostics made by human doctors. this may affect medical malpractice law, and leads us to question if there should be an obligation on a doctor to make use of machine learning systems as part of the standard of care principle. if that is the case, doctors who fail to use machine diagnosis without a proper excuse may be liable for malpractice if an incorrect diagnosis follows. covid-19 and the limitations of fundamental human rights the second part of this article focuses on the effect that the limitations of certain human rights may have on combatting covid-19. within this limited space, only a few essential rights can be highlighted. a recently-published comprehensive un report on international human rights is referred to as background to this discussion, and used as a benchmark for the present situation in south af rica (guterres, 2020). one of the many negatives of addressing pandemics is that approaches can easily divide societies, especially when unpopular laws impact individuals, relationships, businesses, and other institutions. respect for public health requirements should go hand in hand with a reliance on fundamental human rights law and the protection against any unnecessary abuses. south af rica’s democratic constitutional dispensation requires that a high value be placed on the importance of all human rights. this is particularly true if the constitution is to be successfully used as an instrument for the transformation of our society. however, it seems covid-19 © m ic h a s e rr a f / s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m t h e t h i n k e r55 that these relatively newly acquired human rights have never come under so much pressure as during the past few months, with the government’s reaction to the outbreak of covid-19. most rights are not absolute. in other words, international law as well as our constitution allows restrictions and limitations to our human rights in certain circumstances, especially if these are for the public good. this applies to even the most fundamental guarantees, as found in the international covenant on civil and political rights (iccpr), which in times of national crises permits states to suspend certain rights (guterres, 2020). in order to limit rights in circumstances such as the covid-19 pandemic, there must first be a formal proclamation of the public emergency, and the law must prescribe all conditions for the limitations. curbing rights must be essential and necessary to achieve one or more of the following: public order, public health, public safety and national security, amongst others. we are, according to international law and our own constitution, not allowed to impose restrictions to a greater extent than what is allowed in our constitution. in the context of the limitation of human rights where there exists a threat to our public health, it is the balance between individual rights and communal rights that is difficult to strike, as this does not fall within clearly defined areas. the issue is further complicated in circumstances of disaster and uncertainty. in order to comply with the necessary requirement of protecting public health, situations may necessitate powers to be extended to force individuals to do what they may not prefer to do. there is precedent for this in cases involving tuberculosis, such as minister of health, western cape v goliath 2009 2 sa 248 (c), where the court found that involuntary detention was a justifiable limitation on an individual’s f reedom of movement in open and democratic countries in situations where it was in the interests of public health. the key point, however, is that instances such as involuntary detention can only be justified in specific circumstances if the individual or group poses a real threat to society. to explain by way of another example: public health authorities should not, even within the context of covid-19, impose mandatory physical examination, treatment or isolation of a person who is not contagious or where there is no reasonable suspicion of contagion. according to one commentator: ‘the methods used, moreover, must be designed to prevent or ameliorate that threat. in other words, there must be a reasonable relationship between the public health intervention and the achievement of a legitimate public health objective’ (gostin and berkman, 2007). a crucial measure of how the balance should be struck is therefore the principle of proportionality, including a direct relationship between the limitation and the purpose for which the right is limited. south af rica’s constitution includes a limitation clause in section 36, which spells out that the ‘rights in the bill of rights may be limited only in terms of law of general application to the extent that the limitation is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and f reedom, taking into account all relevant factors, including — (a) the nature of the right; (b) the importance of the purpose of the limitation; (c) the nature and extent of the limitation; (d) the relation between the limitation and its purpose; and (e) less restrictive means to achieve the purpose’. the constitution also specifies that: ‘except as provided in subsection (1) or in any other provision of the constitution, no law may limit any right entrenched in the bill of rights’ (constitution of the republic of south af rica, 1996). the authorities are responsible for keeping the requirements of section 36 in mind and striking a reasonable balance between public health and fundamental rights. section 36 does not provide carte blanche to authorities to disregard rights and requires a high degree of responsibility when exercising powers relying on the limitation provision. if the interference is unfair or biased, it may well be deemed unconstitutional and can be set aside by the courts. in our current situation, some are fearful that the government might be overreaching and unnecessarily and unreasonably restricting rights, and that these restrictions may even continue after the covid-19 crisis has ended. given our history, it is crucial that we only allow our rights to be sacrificed when it is necessary to defend public health. sufficient attention should be given to due process so that unnecessary inf ringements on individual rights can be kept to a minimum. as gostin and berkman (2007) wrote: ‘the threat of an influenza pandemic is real and could affect millions of lives. if such a disaster covid-19 56v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 occurs, we must not allow the widespread erosion of individual rights to compound the tragedy’. the role of human rights in a time of disaster because of the extraordinary situation that the world finds itself in, countries have had to adopt unprecedented regulations. in order to slow down the transmission of the virus, governments around the world have implemented lockdowns. these restrict not only f reedom of movement, but also many other rights, including access to medical treatment (not only covid-19 related), as well as the right to food, water, education and relaxation. these drastic measures have severely impacted the most vulnerable and least protected in our society, underlining our enormous social and economic inequalities, and the inadequacy of our existing health systems, especially for the poor. regulations and directives f rom various bodies and institutions are issued almost daily, and are often vague and contradictory. it is in this context that the bill of rights, with its proportionality requirement, can provide us with answers. the government should pay more attention to this as guidance, and should not ignore any of these binding sections. to quote the united nations on international human rights: ‘this is not a time to neglect human rights; it is a time when, more than ever, human rights are needed to navigate this crisis in a way that will allow us, as soon as possible, to focus again on achieving equitable, sustainable development and sustaining peace’ (guterres, (2020). the current crisis we face also reminds us of the adage that with great power comes great responsibility. in securing compliance with the limitation of rights, there is an additional concern. law enforcement agencies, including the armed forces, do have an essential role to play in combatting the pandemic and safeguarding people. however, in south af rica we have witnessed a situation where broad powers were speedily granted to individuals who might not have been sufficiently trained for the job at hand. this carries risks that cannot be ignored. oppressive and brutal enforcement is not productive and may cause more damage than anyone could have imagined. the actions of law enforcement officials, who admittedly work under challenging and stressful circumstances, should be judged by how they respond to immediate threats, while protecting human rights and the rule of law. south af rica was heralded for its quick response to covid-19. it should strive to also be heralded as a leader for its ability to adopt a rights-based approach under challenging circumstances. ■ references achenbach, s. j. (2020). telemedicine: benefits, challenges, and its great potential. health law & policy brief, vol. 24(1), pp. 1–26. andriola, m. (2019). telemedicine and legal disruption. health law & policy brief, vol. 13(2). apple newsroom, (2020). apple and google partner on covid-19 contact tracing technology. [online] available at: https://www.apple.com/za/ newsroom/2020/04/apple-and-google-partner-on-covid-19-contacttracing-technology/ ateriya, n., saraf, a., meshram, v., and setia, p. (2018). telemedicine and virtual consultation: the indian perspective. natl med j india, vol. 31 (4), pp. 215–218. bitran, h. and gabarra, j. (2020). delivering information and eliminating bottlenecks with cdc’s covid-19 assessment bot. [online] official microsoft blog. available at: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/03/20/deliveringinformation-and-eliminating-bottlenecks-with-cdcs-covid-19-assessmentbot/ bizcommunity, (2020). ai can help doctors with coronavirus. 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[online] available at: https://www.netcare.co.za/newshub/articles/germ-destroying-robots-come-into-their-own-amid-covid19-outbreak tarun, bhargava, manoj, preetham, pooja. (2020). re-purposing qxr for covid-19. [online] qure.ai blog. available at: http://blog.qure.ai/notes/chestxray-ai-qxr-for-covid-19 wang, s., kang, b., ma, j., zeng, x., xiao, m., guo, j., cai, m., yang, j., li, y., meng, x. and xu, b. (2020). a deep learning algorithm using ct images to screen for corona virus disease (covid-19). medrxiv [online]. available at: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.14.20023028 covid-19 86 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 b o o k r e v i e w review by julia forsberg book review: 87v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 reading graeme d. eddie’s book – swedish foreign policy, 1809–2019: a comprehensive modern history – is a remarkable history lesson. and don’t get me wrong, it is in no way like the boring, never-ending, tedious history lectures held by a dull teacher who talks way too slowly; it’s something else. while being a historical review, the book is a real page turner! it’s detailed, it’s informative, yet gripping. in the current reality, where sweden is joining the north atlantic treaty organization (nato) and where the sweden democrats, a populist right-wing party, are now the second largest party, it is relevant to look back in order to understand the present. reading this book is an excellent start. the book provides a comprehensive overview of sweden’s foreign policy during the period 1809 to 2019, offering nuanced perspectives and analyses of the ever-changing relationship between the country and its surroundings. naturally, it covers foreign policy, but it also encompasses defence policy and the quaint neutrality policy. in fact, the account of the swedish defence and its industry during the eventful years f rom 1990 onwards is unexpectedly elaborate. the same is true about the neutrality policy, which is explored over a span of 50 pages. even an overview of the years before the ones formally covered in the book is included. the part about sweden’s stormaktstiden (the period of greatest power) was especially detailed. the choice to officially start the book in 1809, ‘year zero’, makes sense as the author explains that it was a year of great national trauma that created something similar to a restart for sweden, establishing a new political order – which was followed by a new foreign policy. the author has gone through an impressive amount of material in the writing of the book: articles, reports, government bills, statements, and election results, to name a few examples. this qualitative case study also offers many descriptions on an individual level, depicting a range of different politicians and their views throughout the years: anders björck’s opinion as defence minister on the possibility of an all-nordic security union, margaretha af ugglas’ excitement as foreign minister for the upcoming chairing of the organization for security and cooperation in europe, and göran persson as prime minister and his arguments in favour of sweden adopting the euro. throughout the book, the descriptions of sweden’s policy choices are done in an impeccable way. these descriptions range f rom explaining how the unsuccessful scandinavian defence union and post-war failure of the un led to the policy of non-participation, to the decisions that steered the country into closer european collaboration and later into membership of the european union. throughout, the author is able to boil down complex decision-making processes to something palpable. while impressively mastering the art of being informative and engaging at the same time, the book is missing a certain perspective on the present day. not using the immense knowledge of foreign policy history to make sense of, and possibly explain, current events such as sweden joining nato, is a lost opportunity. i would have really loved to read the author’s take on today’s reality. i guess no historian is keen to predict the future, but what about using what we know about history to understand today? isn’t that the whole usp (unique selling point) of studying history? maybe i’m missing the point. each chapter could have ended with a ‘current perspective’ paragraph. this would be compatible with the layout, as the focus of the book is mostly on b o o k r e v i e w the book provides a comprehensive overview of sweden’s foreign policy during the period 1809 to 2019, offering nuanced perspectives and analyses of the ever-changing relationship between the country and its surroundings. naturally, it covers foreign policy, but it also encompasses defence policy and the quaint neutrality policy. 88 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 the twentieth century, especially on the years f rom 1970 onwards. the author does share his own take on some parts, and has a strong voice throughout the book. his analyses are equally accurate – and i don’t know how he does this because the areas covered are at times quite dry – as they are funny. some examples are when he writes about sweden’s new security policy maxim and calls it ‘newish’; when he describes how sweden was once part of eu28 but then eu27 with a ‘goodbye uk’; when he calls the intense first period in office for the foreign minister ann linde in 2020 a ‘baptism of fire’; when he explains how economists jumped at the chance to criticise the swedish welfare system and the ‘demolition process’ of it started in the early 1990s; or when he describes how the swedish population was nowhere near as positive towards a eu membership as the current prime minister bildt with the words ‘they had quietly and reluctantly taken the ferry crossing to europe.’ the book is incredibly detailed, covering a large time period and range of events. i would strongly recommend it, especially to anyone interested in sweden, history, foreign policy, or the thing we call society in general. and even if the author does not make an analysis of today, he makes sure that readers are capable of doing that by themselves. in a time where many things are uncertain, the focus is commonly placed on possible next steps and future developments. what will happen when sweden joins nato? will russia invade other countries? when will the war in ukraine end? thoughts like these make sense: we want to make sure, or at least create the feeling of making sure, that we will be safe. but simply looking forward, without taking the lessons f rom the past with us, is foolish. in order to prepare and strategically plan to guarantee a safe future – for all – it is absolutely necessary to understand and analyse the past. p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r84 outside africa much of the world has been under lockdown orders in the past few months, due to fears about the possible impact of covid-19. as this is a highly contagious virus, there were initial fears that the death rate f rom covid-19 would be quite high. death rate statistics for previous notable epidemics/pandemics are as follows: 100% for hiv (prior to treatment becoming available), 50% for ebola, 34.3% for middle east respiratory syndrome (mers), 50% for the plague in the middle ages, 9.6% for severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars), and 2.5% for the spanish flu. fortunately, the death rate f rom covid-19 has proved to be much lower. dr. anthony s. fauci – a leading infectious diseases expert and advisor to the us president – estimates that the death a view from america covid-19 anti-lockdown rallies by william d. slicker © le v ra d in / s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 85v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 outside africa country city date attendees source(s) austria vienna april 17 200 reuters france paris, toulouse, leon, strasbourg april 18, 2020 ? washington post germany berlin berlin berlin stuttgart april 18 april 25 may 2 may 2 500 1000 300 5000 vice the telegraph sbs news sbs news poland zgorzelec april 24 400 reuters russia vladikavkaz april 20 500-1500 moscow times ukraine kiev april 29 several hundred europost united kingdom london may 2 20 evening standard country city date attendees source(s) brazil brasilia april 20 several hundred bbc news canada toronto april 25 ? blogto canada toronto may 2 300 blogto canada ottawa may 2 20 cbc news, cpv news canada vancouver april 13 ? the independent canada edmonton april 29 100 ctv news chile santiago april 20 ? bbc news india mumbai april 13 thousands reuters, the financial times india surat april 11 over 1000 financial times lebanon tripoli april 17 several hundred dw news, washington post lebanon zouk april 27 dozens global news turkey istanbul may 1 ? the guardian rate f rom covid-19 will be about 1%. other sources suggest that the death rate will be lower than this, given that many people are asymptomatic and are not counted in official covid-19 statistics. due to this low death rate, many people are of the opinion that lockdowns are causing more harm than the threat of covid-19. there have been anti-lockdown rallies around the world. the chart below shows the number of rallies held in european countries: anti-lockdown rallies have also occurred in other countries around the world, as shown below: due to this low death rate, many people are of the opinion that lockdowns are causing more harm than the threat of covid-19. there have been anti-lockdown rallies around the world. the chart below shows the number of rallies held in european countries. t h e t h i n k e r86 outside africa however, nowhere have anti-lockdown rallies been more prevalent than in the us. according to cnn, it has been estimated that 97% of americans have been placed under stay-at-home orders. these orders were put in place by a government with good intentions, but – as is often the case when the government steps in to deal with a problem – other problems have been inadvertently created. after six weeks of stay-at-home orders, there have been anti-lockdown rallies in at least 42 states in the us, as shown below: state city date attendees source(s) alabama montgomery ? dozens alabama news arizona phoenix april 20 500 arizona family, bbc california sacramento april 20 100’s sacramento bee, san francisco chronicle, newsweek california san diego april 18 250 times of san diego, la times california huntington beach april 17 100 la times, sacramento bee california huntington beach may 1 2,500 to 3,000 the guardian, the daily mail colorado denver april 19 550 denverite connecticut hartford april 20 ? nbc delaware dover may 1 hundreds delaware news journal florida orlando april 17 ? times union florida orlando april 25 a few dozen fox news florida delray beach april 19 100 south florida sun sentinel, fox news florida miami ? ? new york times florida miami april 25 a few dozen fox news georgia canton april 19 small group ajc (atlanta journal constitution) hawaii honolulu april 19 two dozen hawaii news now idaho boise april 17 ? the idaho statesman and bbc illinois chicago april 18 ? daily mail illinois chicago may 1 hundreds forbes indiana indianapolis april 18 250 indianapolis star, usa today kansas kansas city april 20 handful the kansas city star, kctv kansas kansas city ? 80 the kansas city star kentucky frankfort april 15 100 the new york post kentucky louisville april 17 30-40 cars fox news these orders were put in place by a government with good intentions, but – as is often the case when the government steps in to deal with a problem – other problems have been inadvertently created. 87v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 outside africa state city date attendees source(s) maine augusta april 20 ? the huffington press maryland annapolis april 18 200 cars capital gazette, wusa9 massachusetts cape cod april 19 dozens boston.com michigan lansing april 15 3000-4000 usa today, nbc news michigan lansing may 1 hundreds the guardian, mercury news minnesota saint paul april 17 800 voa news missouri jefferson city april 21 several hundred associated press montana helena april 19 hundreds independent record nevada carson city april 18 hundred reno gazette journal new hampshire concord april 18 a few hundred associated press new jersey trenton april 17 two dozen cars the blaze new york albany april 16 about a dozen times union north carolina raleigh april 14 100 nbc news north dakota bismarck april 20 ? the daily mail, internewscast ohio columbus april 9 75 the daily mail ohio columbus april 13 200-300 the cleveland scene, nbc news, ohio columbus april 17 dozens ohio columbus april 18 hundreds columbus dispatch, the alliance review ohio columbus april 20 ? huffington press ohio hudson april 18 ? oklahoma oklahoma city april 15 hundreds of cars politico, the oklahoman oregon salem april 17 dozens the register-guard oregon redmond april 17 200 associated press pennsylvania harrisburg april 20 2000 usa today, the daily item, the source, internewscast rhode island providence april 25 100 providence journal tennessee memphis april 19 ? the tennessean, usa today tennessee jackson april 19 ? the tennessean, usa today tennessee chattanooga april 19 ? the tennessean, usa today tennessee knoxville april 19 ? the tennessean, usa today tennessee nashville april 19 hundreds the tennessean, usa today texas austin april 18 hundreds business insider utah salt lake city april 18 1000 the daily mail, bbc, npr vermont montpelier april 22 20 burlington free press virginia richmond april 19 couple dozen the daily mail t h e t h i n k e r88 outside africa state city date attendees source(s) washington olympia april 19 2,500 the seattle times, washington post, the stranger washington spokane may 1 ? reuters west virginia richmond ? ? whsv wisconsin madison april 19 70 usa today wisconsin brooksfield april 19 1,000 the tennessean, youtube wyoming cheyenne ? ? the us sun most media coverage of these anti-lockdown rallies has focused on the f ringe elements of the crowds. for example, the media have picked out the few people who compare the strictness of stay-at-home orders with the nazi government, or the few members of the crowd who are carrying guns because they are mixing up their second amendment right to bear arms under the united states constitution with their first amendment right to assemble. in focusing on these f ringe elements, the media is not paying sufficient attention to the core reason for these rallies. the core reason for these rallies is economic: people are not earning money and are therefore not able to buy food, pay their mortgage, or pay for their utilities. there are now over 22 million people in the us who are unemployed, and this number is far greater around the world. globally, lockdowns are worsening life for the poor, who fear hunger more than the threat of covid-19. a woman protestor in lebanon said: “hunger does not have mercy on anyone.” another female protestor in kansas city said: “i haven’t been able to provide for my children and to me that is scarier than that virus.” or as a sign in north carolina read: “the government does not consider my business essential, but it is essential to feeding my family.” these people would rather face the threat of contracting covid-19 and becoming sick than having their family starve for lack of food. after all, the covid-19 mortality rate is somewhere around 1% or less (the true statistics are still unclear, as discussed above), but we know that prolonged starvation leads to death. up until now in the us, most people were able to stand in a line at a food bank to get basic food. however, even food banks are now running out of food. in addition, prominent news sources – such as the new york times and cnn – have begun to beat the warning drums, telling us that the disruption of the world economy will lead to famine in many parts of the world. who has the authority to decide that saving people in the industrialised world f rom sickness and a low possibility of death is worth more than the sure deaths of people in the third world f rom starvation? there are those who might say that making such a decision is elitist. perhaps it is time to start letting people earn a living again so that they can feed their families – both in the us and in other parts of the world that have been under lockdown. this would help to resurrect economies and save lives in the process. this can be done if people do not confuse a total lockdown with allowing movement outside of homes, while maintaining social distancing and wearing masks when in public. this is apparently the decision of the governors of over half of the states in the us who have begun phasing out lockdown orders this week by allowing businesses and public places to reopen, so long as people stay at least six feet apart. it is unknown how much the anti-lockdown rallies have affected these phasing out decisions, but they almost undoubtedly had an influence on policymakers. ■ i haven’t been able to provide for my children and to me that is scarier than that virus.” or as a sign in north carolina read: “the government does not consider my business essential, but it is essential to feeding my family. 13v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology and cancer medicine in the fourth industrial revolution by steven mufamadi and zamanzima mazibuko © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m t h e t h i n k e r14 pan-african m edical technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (industry 4.0), such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (ai), 3d printing and advanced materials are already transforming medical technology and the pharmaceutical industry by offering accurate diagnoses, targeting therapies with fewer side effects, and providing better medical imaging and personalised medicine. industry 4.0 will be driven by the convergence and synergy of innovative technologies, including nanotechnology and biotechnology, and not by these technologies working in isolation. nanotechnology is defined by others as the prime mover of industry 4.0. it provides new tools that boost the performance and functionality of other emerging technologies, while offering unique properties to these technologies. while biotechnology deals with the manipulation of molecular and biological systems and processes to make or modify products and services, the advantage of using nanotechnology is that it deals with the creation and manipulation of the chemical and physical properties of a substance at the nanoscale and molecular level (i.e. 1-100 nm). these characteristics of nanotechnology and biotechnology allow for the treatment of complex health conditions, such as cancer, whose early diagnosis and targeted treatment provides for better patient prognosis. the convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology the intersection of nanotechnology and biotechnology created a new subject i.e. nanobiotechnology or bionanotechnology or nanobiology. the role of nanotechnology in this convergence is to equip biotechnology with tools and materials that can interact directly with biomolecules. in medicine, the convergence of these two technologies offers innovative solutions to unmet needs such as early detection of disease, rapid diagnostics, imaging, target delivery and personalised medicine. in addition, nanotechnology will allow biological scientists to recognise, measure and interact with single biological events, changing the dynamics of diagnosis and treatment. the convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology is maturing and currently progressing at a rapid rate, particularly in cancer medicine. the convergence of nanobiotechnology and cancer nanomedicine the number of cancer cases are on the rise in africa, with the most common being cancers of the cervix, breast, liver and prostate, as well as kaposi’s sarcoma and non-hodgkin’s lymphoma. approximately 14 million people were diagnosed with cancer and more than 8 million people died from various cancers in 2012. more than half these cases, and almost two-thirds of deaths, occurred in africa and other low to middle-income regions. it is estimated that these numbers will increase to approximately 22 million cases and 13 million deaths by 2030. the growth of cancer cases on the continent can be attributed, amongst various factors, to population growth and lifestyle changes smoking, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, obesity, etc. infection is also important in the pathogenesis of cancers especially in africa. the who estimates that 22-24% of cancers are due to infectious aetiologies. most cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage in africa, which contributes to poor prognoses. furthermore, there is a scarcity of cancer treatment (over 20% of african countries have no access to medications and access is sporadic in others) and limited access to conclusive diagnoses at various healthcare facilities on the continent. with a general move towards technology-based solutions globally, tackling the rising cancer crisis in africa by using technologies that will drive the fourth industrial revolution should be explored. the challenge of treating various cancers is that most types of cancer can only be detected once the tumour has already developed, making very early detection difficult with prognosis then being worse as treatment is then less effective. the convergence of nanobiotechnology and cancer nanomedicine has immense potential towards the advancement of early diagnosis and hence the role of nanotechnology in this convergence is to equip biotechnology with tools and materials that can interact directly with biomolecules. in medicine, the convergence of these two technologies offers innovative solutions to unmet needs such as early detection of disease, rapid diagnostics, imaging, target delivery and personalised medicine. 15v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african more effective treatment for cancer patients. nanobiosensors and quantum dot imaging are examples that promise better approaches towards identifying cancer at an early-stage, before the tumour develops. nanobiosensors and quantum dot technologies are highly sensitive and biospecific, with the capability to detect a specific cancer through cell-surface biomarkers. furthermore, bionconjugated quantum dots can detect small numbers of malignant cells in the early stages of cancer or metastasis, which is very difficult with current imaging techniques such as x-ray imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (mri), and computed tomography (ct). another advantage of using nanobiotechnology in combating cancer includes targeted drug delivery i.e. the capability of delivering anticancer drugs to where they will be most effective. nanoparticles incorporated with active pharmaceutical ingredients (apis) can be surface functionalised with different biological ligands such as proteins, monoclonal antibodies, folic acid, carbohydrates, fructose, and receptors so that they can be localised at the cancer sites, without affecting the normal cells and/or healthy tissues. targeted drug delivery reduces side-effects while improving drug safety and effectiveness. this means better cancer treatments, less medications and lower costs. the use of nanoparticles to deliver the crispr-cas9 gene editing tool holds promise for cancer treatment by deleting and/or editing the defective genes that cause cancer. the arrival of fully autonomous dna nanorobots, that are capable of transporting anticancer drugs, to target and destroy tumours, will revolutionise the way cancer is treated in the 21st century. although nanotechnology promises endless opportunities in medicine, one cannot discount that this emerging technology might have unintended effects on human health and the environment. nanoparticles are relatively new; their risks are largely unknown due to insufficient data on possible risks, therefore there is a need for further studies to explore the long-term harmful effects on both human health and the environment. in recent studies, researchers have found that inhaling airborne nanoparticles, or oral or dermal exposure to some nanomaterials, may lead to pulmonary diseases and/or induce skin aging through oxidative stress. the gap between the development of nanotechnologies and nanoethics is wide: there remains a substantial lack of suitable and thorough risk and life cycle analyses of nanotechnologies. thus, due to unknown long-term impacts on both health and the environment, many countries are starting to look at the establishment of a nano code of conduct for nanotechnology research and development (r&d) to protect students, research participants, patients and the environment. to support sustainability for nanomedicine or nanotechnology, r&d will require implementation of a nano ethical code of conduct that includes educating the public about the benefits, limitations and perils associated with this emerging technology. essentially, the regulation of nanotechnologies needs to be firm enough for effective nanoethics, but also flexible enough to allow for innovation. ■ although nanotechnology promises endless opportunities in medicine, one cannot discount that this emerging technology might have unintended effects on human health and the environment. nanoparticles are relatively new; their risks are largely unknown due to insufficient data on possible risks, therefore there is a need for further studies to explore the long-term harmful effects. a lab-on-a-chip (loc) is integration device with several laboratory functions image _goback financing infrastructure for new economies in the context of dislocated markets introduction one could be forgiven for thinking that given the close to 20 deadly pandemics (lepan, 2020) and over 70 economic crises humanity has seen since the first century, we should by now know how mutation works and what economic outcomes to expect. this view is influenced by the established understanding that irrespective of the type of crisis – natural, financial, economic or otherwise – all crises have some similarities (reinhart and rogoff, 2011). for example, we can anticipate varying impacts f rom crises on risk appetite in markets, liquidity, productivity, trade, economic activity, standard of living – sometimes even lives and fiscal debt. the uncertainty in crises mutation begs the question whether certain tools can be set up during normal times to help smooth impacts. specifically, this question should seek to deal with smoothing impacts on inf rastructure finance by development finance institutions (dfis). some have criticised dfis in south af rica for lacking the foresight to deal with and respond to crises in general. this note seeks to add to the dfi arsenal in thinking through possible options. the proposals in this note are inspired by the new cities new economies project in which ratshitanga (2019) triumphs in relating why the south af rican financing infrastructure for new economies in the context of dislocated markets by zeph nhleko | peer review 45v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies some of the missing links (ratshitanga, 2019) to achieving quick progress with the new cities new economies project have been the weak collaboration among stakeholders, the lack of widespread programmatic approach to infrastructure development, the dearth of visionary leadership, clinging to the notion of democratic centralisation at the expense of new innovative ways, the inability to identify and successfully nurture local economy initiatives economy finds itself where it is. the project analysis confirms that the economic problems conf ronting south af rica have not changed since 1994. the assessment further makes a recommendation for a controlled and deliberate economic discrimination to development by introducing the ex nihilo strategy. this strategy discriminates because irrespective of the size and number of developments, specific spatial localities must be chosen to create new economies out of nothing. this is a good thing. the special economic zones concept uses this approach. the critique that this strategy might locate people in the middle of nowhere misses the point that this is precisely how new economies should be forged. some of the missing links (ratshitanga, 2019) to achieving quick progress with the new cities new economies project have been the weak collaboration among stakeholders, the lack of widespread programmatic approach to inf rastructure development, the dearth of visionary leadership, clinging to the notion of democratic centralisation at the expense of new innovative ways, the inability to identify and successfully nurture local economy initiatives, as well as a lack of innovative funding solutions. the rest of the report assesses the concepts of new economies and dislocated markets to f rame the discussion before highlighting the lingering challenges of municipal inf rastructure. the last section covers the proposed tools that should be considered by dfis for inf rastructure funding, especially during times of dysfunctional markets. the concept of new economies the term ‘new economy’ can assume different definitions, depending on the context of usage. it could be used to refer to a high-tech driven economy and society (delong and summers, 2001) that emphasises information, ideas and relationships. it can also mean the introduction of new measures of economic progress that encourage new f rameworks of economic analysis and policies (oecd, 2019). in this context, the term is used in the spirit of the new cities new economies project to mean the development of new spatial settlements that are accompanied by economic activity. naturally, these are sustainable environments that lean towards being urban in nature. the emphasis is on financing the creation of new inf rastructure for these spatial localities, which should be situated within municipality boundaries in south af rica. for new economies to make sense, settlements and economic activity must be supported by sound economic and social inf rastructure. for example, many of china’s cities that started off being labelled as ghost towns eventually found their vibrancy (shepard, 2015), thus driving the point that if planned properly and supported with the relevant inf rastructure, new economies can be developed. in the case of south af rica, the creation of new economies ex nihilo does not detract f rom the reality that existing township and rural economies must be improved. the neo-apartheid state of south af rica has ensured that black people who live in these areas, especially in townships, remain crowded with inadequate inf rastructure (evans, 2009). dislocated capital markets capital market dislocation refers to widespread asset mispricing in the market (pasquariello, 2012) brought about by a shock internal or external to the market. as a result of the difficulty in measuring market dislocations, it has often been proposed that a market-specific index can be created to assess them. the impact of market dislocations on the ability of dfis to access funding can be devastating. first, investors pull out of the market, thus rendering dfis unable to issue new debt instruments. secondly, the cost of borrowing rises sharply as a risk-off sentiment sets in. thirdly, those lenders who remain in the market reprice their facilities upwards to compensate for the perceived extra risk. the outcome is that a dfi struggles to service its commitments, let alone extend new credit or create new business. if the market dislocation persists, this means the dfi is unable to invest more to counter the economic downturn. 46 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies municip al infrastructure challenges ten years ago, the municipal inf rastructure growth rates were robust across all inf rastructure types. by 2018, the only growth rate posting a positive return was for transport equipment. this demonstrates both the reversal in inf rastructure development and perhaps the inability to maintain inf rastructure at the municipal level. furthermore, it has been reported recently that it would take an increase in inf rastructure investment of 28% per year for the next three years for south af rica to get back to the original growth trends observed half a decade ago (watermeyer and phillips, 2020). new economies must be created at the municipal level of the economy and therefore investing in municipalities is critical. one of the investment vehicles is in municipal bonds. (source: statistics south af rica) in order to support the development of sound primary and secondary municipal bond markets, dfis might have to increase their role of facilitating the municipal bond market. balance sheet acquisitions may be utilised where available, or the prudent increase of debt-to-equity ratios might be explored. these municipal bonds can then later be used for repurchase agreements or collateralised instruments. to sustain this approach, a steady flow of municipal bond purchase must be maintained. one key benefit that will flow from facilitating the municipal primary bond market is enhancing the governance standards at municipal level. this will be achieved as municipalities comply with market listing requirements such as financial information, information management systems and sound accounting management, among others. funding options that can be elevated during market dislocations episodes repurchase agreements (repos) one of the key tools to deal with the dfi liquidity challenges through municipal bonds is to utilise them as repurchase agreements (repos). repurchase agreements are a form of short-term market borrowing for traders. in the case of municipal bonds, term repurchase agreements with long tenor would be preferred. although creditworthiness and interest rates are more likely to fluctuate in a long tenor repo, most dfis’ funding formula are more suited for these types of repos – with maturities of 6 months or longer. setting longer tenor will probably be difficult initially, but once market players adjust, the process should stabilise. there is enough evidence in the case of south africa that supports market appetite for this type of instrument. a standard tri-party repo would be preferred for this exercise. key risk mitigating processes, such as attending to overcollateralisation, margin calls or under-collateralisation can be utilised to deal with risks from various sources including the terms of the transaction, liquidity, high leveraging and counterparty risk, among others. a steady flow of these instruments must be maintained. 47v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies therefore, if it is agreed that historically the key elements of central banking are its independence, inflation targeting and direct/indirect support to economic sectors (epstein, 2005), then the conversation should be about the central bank’s role in assisting dfis with infrastructure finance. simple structure of a repo earlier date: money flows to seller and bond to buyer later date: bond returns to seller and money flows back to buyer collateralised bond obligations (cbo) municipal bonds of varying credit quality levels could be packaged into tradable collateralised bond obligations (cbo) tranches to deal with liquidity issues. cbos are structured debt instruments that have different bond grades with varying risk levels as underlying assets. this process facilitates the packaging of highgrade and low-grade municipal paper to be traded in the secondary market. this type of packaging allows high risk investors to participate in the low-grade, high yield segment of the cbo. since south african municipalities have varying financial strengths and capabilities, the cbo approach would accommodate a wider range of municipalities – beyond just the metros. simple structure of a cbo south african reserve bank infrastructure facility there is a need for the central bank to be an active economic development agent, especially in dysfunctional markets. for some strange reason, the conversation about the involvement of the central bank in supporting economic development directly or indirectly is always taken to extremes. if it does not end up being a discussion about nationalisation, then it ends up being a conversation about printing money or about the threat to the central bank’s independence. these are, quite f rankly, inconsequential discussions and take a lot of our energy unnecessarily. anyone getting involved in the conversation about the central bank supporting economic development indirectly through dfis should be aware that: (i) only privately-owned assets can be nationalised (polity, 2011); (ii) as per the guidance of the monetary theory of inflation (friedman, 1956), increasing the money supply faster than economic output is inflationary; and (iii) the independence of the central bank is guaranteed by the constitution (department of justice and constitutional development, 2020). therefore, if it is agreed that historically the key elements of central banking are its independence, inflation targeting and direct/indirect support to economic sectors (epstein, 2005), then the conversation should be about the central bank’s role in assisting dfis with inf rastructure finance. surely in the same manner that the central bank targets sovereign paper in the primary or secondary market, it can target dfi paper or create an inf rastructure-specific borrowing facility for dfis. it has been argued that it should be normal for dfis to have central bank reserve accounts and even participate in the discount window (rezende, 2015), especially during times of dysfunctional financial markets. this argument is further justified by the fact that monetary policy liquidity interventions do not go all the way to support dfis’ borrowing requirements during tough times. 48 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the irrational presupposition that dfis as nonclearing banks (i.e. as banks that do not participate in the exchange of payment instructions) cannot be supported by central banks deprives us of innovative thinking and imagination. it is logical that the f raming and deployment of monetary policy should be informed in the main by prevailing domestic economic conditions. while the central bank independence and chosen monetary policy tool must remain mostly rigid, the investment/lending aspect of the policy must adapt and evolve with domestic economic progress. central banks, by their very nature, are capable of adaptation – note, for example, how montagu norman, benjamin strong, hjalmar schacht and émile moreau manoeuvred the early part of the 1900s to reposition the bank of england, the new york federal reserve, the reichsbank and the banque de france (ahamed, 2009). it is therefore sensible for the south af rican reserve bank to explore and consider getting indirectly involved with inf rastructure development through dfis. this is a long-term solution for a funding problem that repeats itself during every crisis. this liquidity challenge is undesirable if dfis are expected to be countercyclical and to increase investments during bad economic patches. a standing r15–r20 billion inf rastructure facility can ensure a good support platform for dfis. concessional funding there are a number of global concessional funds that have been established to support sustainable inf rastructure development. funding sustainable new economies using these funds, as part of a broader funding mix, offers an avenue to counter f inancial market dislocation challenges. concessional funding, such as the climate investment funds provided by the sustainable low carbon transport partnership, gives the opportunity to accelerate the adoption of clean energy technologies, provides investment agility, and enables competitiveness on otherwise very expensive technologies (climate investment funds, 2019; binsted et al, 2013). creating new economies will require sustainable approaches that are good for people and the planet. many concessional funds share and promote the principles of the green economy. 49v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the key sustainable funds available to be explored include: • global environment facility • clean technology fund • global climate change alliance • idb’s sustainable energy and climate change initiative • adb climate change fund • fast start financing • german international climate initiative • adb clean energy fund • carbon market (clean development mechanism and voluntary carbon market) • green climate fund • sectoral mechanism it has been found that when financing the transition into new economies, governments require six additional actions (godf rey and zhao, 2016) as outlined below: • boost local resources and the ability to access capital for investment • coordinating public and private finance • leveraging international financing • strengthening institutional capacity for investment planning at national and local levels • reforming wider price distortions • strengthening investment in clean technology development and deployment urbanisation strategies, such as the integrated urban development framework and the city support programme, are critical to coordinate these actions. however, the focus should not only be on existing urban areas – which tend to entrench the apartheid spatial legacy – but on the creation of new economies as well. in a study of medium-sized emerging cities in latin america and the caribbean (bonilla-roth, m. e. and zapparoli, i., 2017), it was concluded that the process of structuring financing and crowding in private sector participation in financing new economies inf rastructure is made easier if accompanied by technical support to strengthen the technical and administrative capacities of municipalities. in rethinking inf rastructure finance and delivery, dfis must therefore focus on smarter ways that favour sustainable deployment solutions. in this regard, two key aspects become important: • creation of platforms to implement inf rastructure programmatically in a deliberate process of rowding in the private sector; and • focusing on the full inf rastructure value chain and designing fit-for-purpose models/solutions through planning, preparation, finance, implementation, as well as operations and maintenance. in addition, there must be an intentional inclusivity effort across the value chain to ensure that broadbased black economic empowerment (bbbee), gender and youth participation are at the centre of inf rastructure creation. i am grateful for the invaluable comments received f rom my colleague, mohale rakgate. references ahamed, l. (2009). lords of finance: the bankers who broke the world. london: penguin books. binsted, a., bongardt, d., dalkmann, h. and sakamoto, k. (2013). accessing climate finance for sustainable transport: a practical overview. changing transport [online]. available at: https://www. changing-transport.org/wp-content/uploads/2013_binsted_etal_ accessingclimatefinanceforsustainabletransport.pdf bonilla-roth, m. e. and zapparoli, i. (2017). the challenge of financing urban inf rastructure for sustainable cities. inter-american development bank [online]. available at: https://publications.iadb. org/en/challenge-financing-urban-inf rastructure-sustainable-cities climate investment funds. (2019). the clean technology fund and concessional finance [online]. available at: https://www. climateinvestmentfunds.org/sites/cif_enc/files/meeting-documents/ brief_ctf.pdf delong, j. b. and summers, l. h. (2001). the ‘new economy’: background, questions, and speculations. economic review, federal reserve bank of kansas city, vol. 86, pp. 29–59. department of justice and constitutional development. (2020). constitution of the republic of south af rica. no. 108 of 1996 [online]. available at: https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/pdf. html epstein, g. (2005). central banks as agents of economic development. political economy research institute, university of massachusetts amherst [online]. available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&context=peri_workingpapers evans, m. (2009). apartheid (1948–1994). [online] blackpast. available at: https://www.blackpast.org/global-af rican-history/ apartheid-1948-1994/ friedman, m. 1956. studies in the quantity theory of money. chicago: university of chicago press. godf rey, n. and zhao, x. 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[online] polity. available at: https://www.polity.org.za/ ar ticle/nationalisationcase -studies-lessons-for-south-af ricanovember-2011-2011-11-08 (polity, 2011) ratshitanga, t. (2019). new cities new economies: south af rica and af rica’s grand plan. johannesburg: staging post. reinhart, c. m. and rogoff, k. s. (2011). this time is different: eight centuries of financial folly. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. rezende, f. (2015). why does brazil’s banking sector need public banks? what should bndes do? psl quarterly review, 68 (274). shepard, w. (2015). the great debate: the myth of china’s ghost cities. [online] reuters. available at: http://blogs.reuters.com/greatdebate/2015/04/21/the-myth-of-chinas-ghost-cities/ statistics south af rica. (2019). capital expenditure by the public sector, 2018. [online] statistics south af rica. available at: http://www. statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&ppn=p9101&sch=7630 watermeyer, r. and phillips, s. (2020). public inf rastructure delivery and construction sector dynamism in the south af rican economy. national planning commission [online]. available at: https://www. nationalplanningcommission.org.za/publications_reports 50 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies t h e t h i n k e r2 note from the editor the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the panaf rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. prof ronit frenkel contributors to this edition – all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity abejide ade-ibijola holds a phd in computer science (artificial intelligence) from the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa. he is currently an associate professor of artificial intelligence and applications in the department of applied information systems at the university of johannesburg, and the founder/lead of the research cluster on formal structures, algorithms, and industrial applications. abejide is nrf-rated and mainly interested in problems and algorithms in ai, innovations for driving the 4th industrial revolution, the applications of formal grammars (string or picture grammars) in the synthesis of things, programs (analysis, comprehension, and/or synthesis), special-purpose compilers, and theoretical computing. in his 11 years of experience in academia and the software industry, he has left a trail of 90+ awards, 50+ publications, and an incredible record of top-notch delivery of algorithmic solutions. abejide is the recipient of the uj cbe dean's top senior lecturer award 2018, sa department of public service (dpsa) ignite hack innovation award 2018, the uj vice-chancellor's distinguished award for the innovation of the year 2019, sa department of communications living 4ir hackathon overall best innovation of 2019, and two sa state it agency (sita) public service innovation awards of 2019. tapiwa chagonda, dlitt et phil (sociology), is an associate professor of sociology at the university of johannesburg in south africa. his research interests mainly centre on zimbabwe’s socio-economic and socio-political challenges since 2000. he has published numerous articles on zimbabwe’s crises in journals such as the review of african political economy and the journal of contemporary african studies and popular media such as the conversation. tapiwa is a member of the south african sociological association (sasa), the international sociological association (isa) and the council for the development of social science research in africa (codesria). thulani andrew chauke is a national youth service provincial coordinator at the national youth development agency in cape town, south africa. he holds a master of arts degree in youth development degree with cum laude from the university of venda. he is currently enrolled in a doctorate degree in education at the tshwane university of technology. he is a peer reviewer for four accredited journals and hold a membership for various academic associations. his research interests include youth deviant behaviour, school violence, youth work, positive youth development and youth entrepreneurship. thulani has published 6 articles in dohet accredited journals and is finalising the publication of his first book. he is working on a youth school violence behaviour project aimed at promoting teacher-youth worker based models to curb school violence in south africa. rachel chinyakata is a postdoctoral fellow in the child and family studies unit at the university of the western cape. she holds a phd in gender studies, a master of arts in youth development and a bachelor of arts in youth in development from the university of venda. her research interests include research with families, migration, gender, youth and health. rachel has published 9 articles in dohet accredited journals from her honours, masters and phd work. currently, she is working on a project aimed at the development of strategies to promote gender equality in the family through the human capabilities through the family. dawie de villiers is head of the department of procedural law, in the faculty of law at the university of johannesburg. his most recent publication was a book chapter in “decolonisation and africanisation of legal education in south africa”. he is intensely involved in the training of economic crime forensic investigators and his current research focus is on the use of technology in the area of virtual courts. katharina gihring is an environmental manager and works as a research coordinator at the university of johannesburg’s process, energy and environment technology station (uj-peets). her main focus is the circular economy. applying circular and systems thinking is crucial to solve pressing problem of increasing waste generation and pollution, while at the same time creating new job opportunities to create a sustainable south africa. leila hall is a lesotho-born writer, editor and teacher currently studying towards a phd in the department of english at uj. she has had journalism and fiction published on a range of websites, including cnn international, the huffington post, true africa and the kalahari review. her current writing and research interests focus on expressions of lgbtqi+ identity and experience in contemporary african fiction. she is the assistant editor of the thinker. charis harley is an academic based in the faculty of engineering and the built environment at the university of johannesburg, south africa. she holds a doctorate in computational and applied mathematics from the university of the witwatersrand, and is a j. william fulbright research scholar, having completed a postdoc at texas a&m university. professor harley’s research has, to date, been focused on the numerical solution of problems in fluid flow and heat transfer, an area in which she has published 37 research articles in isi journals. until recently she worked as a lead data scientist in industry and has now re-joined academia and, having broadened her scope of research interests, will continue with research in data science and machine learning. nickey janse van rensburg is a mechanical engineer and manager of the university of johannesburg’s process, energy and environment technology station at uj (uj-peets), with the mandate to support small and medium enterprises through technology innovation and knowledge transfer through technological development in the green economy. the technology station program is an initiative of the department of science and innovation implemented by the technology innovation agency which enables triple-helix partnerships that can sustainably support technology innovation as a catalyst for socio-economic development. nasreen jessani is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence (university of johannesburg) and at the centre for evidence-based health care (stellenbosch university). her writing focuses on the nexus between health policy and systems research; innovations in evidence-informed policy and practice; and the relationship between academia and public policy. she has a drph in international health systems strengthening from johns hopkins university. declan kearney has been active in irish republican politics since 1980. he has represented the south antrim constituency as a member of the legislative assembly (mla) in the north of ireland from 2016. declan has been a key member of sinn féin’s national leadership since 2003, and has previously served as the party’s northern chairperson and national deputy general secretary. currently he is sinn féin national chairperson, and has been central to the party’s all-ireland development, and its negotiations and reconciliation strategies. following restoration of the regional assembly and power sharing government in january 2020, declan was appointed as a junior minister within the office of the joint first ministers in the north of ireland’s five party coalition administration. pule kholopane holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering and operations management and several diplomas from different institutions i.e. economics (turin; italy), production management (pmi), communications (wits), industrial relations (wits) and management (wits). he obtained his phd degree in engineering management from the university of johannesburg. prof. kholopane was a part-time lecturer at the production management institute (pmi) and later joined the vaal university of technology as head of department and senior lecturer in the department of industrial engineering and operations management before joining the university of johannesburg as a senior lecturer. he is a supervisor and coordinator of the m. tech quality and operations management program at the institute and is currently the head of the department (hod) and associate professor in quality and operations management. laurenz langer is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. he has a phd in evidence-informed development from the university college london. he writes about how to support evidence-informed decision-making in international development and evidence synthesis methodology. thakaramahlaha lehohla holds a master’s degree , post-graduate diploma, advanced diploma and advanced certificate in project & programme management all obtained from cranefield college of project & programme management. furthermore, holds a bachelor of commerce from the university of pretoria. the researcher has been employed by the department for the past six years, serving as a deputy director. currently he is in pursuit for a phd, enrolled with the school of engineering and built environment, under the faculty of quality and operations management. the researcher’s topic for thesis is “ developing project, programme and operations management methodologies for sustainable industrialisation in south africa”. his interests include industrial and economic development research, with focus of integrating the project and operations management body of knowledge. mokaloba mokaloba (kalo) is a lecturer at the university of botswana in the department of political and administrative studies. his research interests include public finance, public policy and corporate governance. dr steven mufamadi is the founder and managing director of nabio consulting (pty) ltd, a start-up company specialised in bionanotechnology, nanomedicine and pharmaceutics. he is a winner of the gauteng biotech fundi awards in 2017, in the category “bio-communicator” and a finalist of the 2019/2020 nstf south 32 awards in the category “communication”. dr mufamadi holds a phd in pharmaceutics from wits university. mpho phehello ngoepe is a postdoctoral research fellow at the university of the witwatersrand. he has qualifications in chemistry (phd), pharmaceutics (msc(med)) and genetics (bsc). his research interests include medicinal chemistry and nanotechnology. eric picard is a research associate at the african futures institute (pretoria) and a doctoral student at the university of pretoria. he has been doing research in the area of the political economy of africa and futures studies. he is interested in the impact of policy on youth and development. anton m. pillay is a student of prof chris landsberg, south african research chair : african diplomacy and foreign policy (uj). anton works at the centre for academic development based at the vaal university of technology. shahana rasool is a rhodes scholar with a masters and doctorate from the university of oxford, department of social policy. she is currently professor in the department of social work at the university of johannesburg (uj). her research considers help-seeking after domestic violence, adolescent gender attitudes and exposure to gender based violence. shahana is vice president of association for schools of social work in africa (asswa), and africa representative for the international association of schools of social work (iassw). she is chair of the international conference on gender and sexuality. she is on the editorial board for the journal of international women’s studies and gender issues. shahana is also chair of the international conference on gender and sexuality, which was held in 2018 and 2019 in thailand. shahana has been an activist, researcher, trainer and academic in the field of gender for many years. alioune sall is the founder and executive director of the african futures institute, a pan-african think-tank established in 2004. prior to establishing the african futures institute, alioune sall had a distinguished career in the united nations development programme. before joining the undp, alioune sall worked with the dakar-based un institute for economic development and planning (idep) and enda as researcher and lecturer from 1975 to 1979. sall is director of several international ngos and member of editorial board of scholarly journals and policy-oriented publications, including the paris-based foresight journal “futuribles”. he is the author of several publications, including books and contributions to books, journal articles, book reviews, and consultancy reports. prominent among them are: “africa 2015: what possible futures for sub-saharan africa?” and “the future competitiveness of african economies” dr sall is currently serving as the special advisor of president ibrahim keita of mali in his capacity as the au champion for the arts, culture and heritage. alinah kelo segobye is the dean of the faculty of human sciences at the namibia university of science and technology (nust). she holds an honorary professorship at the thabo mbeki african leadership institute (tmali), university of south africa (unisa) and is a research scholar at the african futures institute (afi) and the institute of economic research on innovation (ieri) tshwane university of technology in pretoria, south africa. segobye has taught at the university of botswana for over twenty years where she held the professorship of archaeology. she has extensive teaching, research and consultancy experience in african studies, hiv/aids, gender and development. she has authored and co-authored essays and book chapters on african archaeology, heritage, culture and development. she is the co-editor and contributor to the book re-awakening and shaping africa’s future in a globalised world. ruth stewart is a professor who directs the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in professional education and writes about evidence-informed decision-making, the importance of evidence communities, and how to build evidence capacities across the spectrum from evidence production to evidence use. william d. slicker is an attorney who lives in st. petersburg, florida, usa. and has authored 25 articles. he is recognized as av preeminent by martindale-hubbell. he has been recognized as best of tampa bay by the tampa bay times. he has received the florida bar president’s pro bono award for the sixth circuit, the ms. jd incredible men award, the st. petersburg bar foundation’s heroes among us award, the community law program volunteer of the year award, and the florida coalition against domestic violence lighting the way award. carina van rooyen is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in development studies and writes about technology and learning, and evidence synthesis and use in international development and environmental management/practice. abejide ade-ibijola holds a phd in computer science (artificial intelligence) from the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa. he is currently an associate professor of artificial intelligence and applications in the department of applied information systems at the university of johannesburg, and the founder/lead of the research cluster on formal structures, algorithms, and industrial applications. abejide is nrf-rated and mainly interested in problems and algorithms in ai, innovations for driving the 4th industrial revolution, the applications of formal grammars (string or picture grammars) in the synthesis of things, programs (analysis, comprehension, and/or synthesis), special-purpose compilers, and theoretical computing. in his 11 years of experience in academia and the software industry, he has left a trail of 90+ awards, 50+ publications, and an incredible record of top-notch delivery of algorithmic solutions. abejide is the recipient of the uj cbe dean's top senior lecturer award 2018, sa department of public service (dpsa) ignite hack innovation award 2018, the uj vice-chancellor's distinguished award for the innovation of the year 2019, sa department of communications living 4ir hackathon overall best innovation of 2019, and two sa state it agency (sita) public service innovation awards of 2019. tapiwa chagonda, dlitt et phil (sociology), is an associate professor of sociology at the university of johannesburg in south africa. his research interests mainly centre on zimbabwe’s socio-economic and socio-political challenges since 2000. he has published numerous articles on zimbabwe’s crises in journals such as the review of african political economy and the journal of contemporary african studies and popular media such as the conversation. tapiwa is a member of the south african sociological association (sasa), the international sociological association (isa) and the council for the development of social science research in africa (codesria). thulani andrew chauke is a national youth service provincial coordinator at the national youth development agency in cape town, south africa. he holds a master of arts degree in youth development degree with cum laude from the university of venda. he is currently enrolled in a doctorate degree in education at the tshwane university of technology. he is a peer reviewer for four accredited journals and hold a membership for various academic associations. his research interests include youth deviant behaviour, school violence, youth work, positive youth development and youth entrepreneurship. thulani has published 6 articles in dohet accredited journals and is finalising the publication of his first book. he is working on a youth school violence behaviour project aimed at promoting teacher-youth worker based models to curb school violence in south africa. rachel chinyakata is a postdoctoral fellow in the child and family studies unit at the university of the western cape. she holds a phd in gender studies, a master of arts in youth development and a bachelor of arts in youth in development from the university of venda. her research interests include research with families, migration, gender, youth and health. rachel has published 9 articles in dohet accredited journals from her honours, masters and phd work. currently, she is working on a project aimed at the development of strategies to promote gender equality in the family through the human capabilities through the family. dawie de villiers is head of the department of procedural law, in the faculty of law at the university of johannesburg. his most recent publication was a book chapter in “decolonisation and africanisation of legal education in south africa”. he is intensely involved in the training of economic crime forensic investigators and his current research focus is on the use of technology in the area of virtual courts. katharina gihring is an environmental manager and works as a research coordinator at the university of johannesburg’s process, energy and environment technology station (uj-peets). her main focus is the circular economy. applying circular and systems thinking is crucial to solve pressing problem of increasing waste generation and pollution, while at the same time creating new job opportunities to create a sustainable south africa. leila hall is a lesotho-born writer, editor and teacher currently studying towards a phd in the department of english at uj. she has had journalism and fiction published on a range of websites, including cnn international, the huffington post, true africa and the kalahari review. her current writing and research interests focus on expressions of lgbtqi+ identity and experience in contemporary african fiction. she is the assistant editor of the thinker. charis harley is an academic based in the faculty of engineering and the built environment at the university of johannesburg, south africa. she holds a doctorate in computational and applied mathematics from the university of the witwatersrand, and is a j. william fulbright research scholar, having completed a postdoc at texas a&m university. professor harley’s research has, to date, been focused on the numerical solution of problems in fluid flow and heat transfer, an area in which she has published 37 research articles in isi journals. until recently she worked as a lead data scientist in industry and has now re-joined academia and, having broadened her scope of research interests, will continue with research in data science and machine learning. nickey janse van rensburg is a mechanical engineer and manager of the university of johannesburg’s process, energy and environment technology station at uj (uj-peets), with the mandate to support small and medium enterprises through technology innovation and knowledge transfer through technological development in the green economy. the technology station program is an initiative of the department of science and innovation implemented by the technology innovation agency which enables triple-helix partnerships that can sustainably support technology innovation as a catalyst for socio-economic development. nasreen jessani is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence (university of johannesburg) and at the centre for evidence-based health care (stellenbosch university). her writing focuses on the nexus between health policy and systems research; innovations in evidence-informed policy and practice; and the relationship between academia and public policy. she has a drph in international health systems strengthening from johns hopkins university. declan kearney has been active in irish republican politics since 1980. he has represented the south antrim constituency as a member of the legislative assembly (mla) in the north of ireland from 2016. declan has been a key member of sinn féin’s national leadership since 2003, and has previously served as the party’s northern chairperson and national deputy general secretary. currently he is sinn féin national chairperson, and has been central to the party’s all-ireland development, and its negotiations and reconciliation strategies. following restoration of the regional assembly and power sharing government in january 2020, declan was appointed as a junior minister within the office of the joint first ministers in the north of ireland’s five party coalition administration. pule kholopane holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering and operations management and several diplomas from different institutions i.e. economics (turin; italy), production management (pmi), communications (wits), industrial relations (wits) and management (wits). he obtained his phd degree in engineering management from the university of johannesburg. prof. kholopane was a part-time lecturer at the production management institute (pmi) and later joined the vaal university of technology as head of department and senior lecturer in the department of industrial engineering and operations management before joining the university of johannesburg as a senior lecturer. he is a supervisor and coordinator of the m. tech quality and operations management program at the institute and is currently the head of the department (hod) and associate professor in quality and operations management. laurenz langer is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. he has a phd in evidence-informed development from the university college london. he writes about how to support evidence-informed decision-making in international development and evidence synthesis methodology. thakaramahlaha lehohla holds a master’s degree , post-graduate diploma, advanced diploma and advanced certificate in project & programme management all obtained from cranefield college of project & programme management. furthermore, holds a bachelor of commerce from the university of pretoria. the researcher has been employed by the department for the past six years, serving as a deputy director. currently he is in pursuit for a phd, enrolled with the school of engineering and built environment, under the faculty of quality and operations management. the researcher’s topic for thesis is “ developing project, programme and operations management methodologies for sustainable industrialisation in south africa”. his interests include industrial and economic development research, with focus of integrating the project and operations management body of knowledge. mokaloba mokaloba (kalo) is a lecturer at the university of botswana in the department of political and administrative studies. his research interests include public finance, public policy and corporate governance. dr steven mufamadi is the founder and managing director of nabio consulting (pty) ltd, a start-up company specialised in bionanotechnology, nanomedicine and pharmaceutics. he is a winner of the gauteng biotech fundi awards in 2017, in the category “bio-communicator” and a finalist of the 2019/2020 nstf south 32 awards in the category “communication”. dr mufamadi holds a phd in pharmaceutics from wits university. mpho phehello ngoepe is a postdoctoral research fellow at the university of the witwatersrand. he has qualifications in chemistry (phd), pharmaceutics (msc(med)) and genetics (bsc). his research interests include medicinal chemistry and nanotechnology. eric picard is a research associate at the african futures institute (pretoria) and a doctoral student at the university of pretoria. he has been doing research in the area of the political economy of africa and futures studies. he is interested in the impact of policy on youth and development. anton m. pillay is a student of prof chris landsberg, south african research chair : african diplomacy and foreign policy (uj). anton works at the centre for academic development based at the vaal university of technology. shahana rasool is a rhodes scholar with a masters and doctorate from the university of oxford, department of social policy. she is currently professor in the department of social work at the university of johannesburg (uj). her research considers help-seeking after domestic violence, adolescent gender attitudes and exposure to gender based violence. shahana is vice president of association for schools of social work in africa (asswa), and africa representative for the international association of schools of social work (iassw). she is chair of the international conference on gender and sexuality. she is on the editorial board for the journal of international women’s studies and gender issues. shahana is also chair of the international conference on gender and sexuality, which was held in 2018 and 2019 in thailand. shahana has been an activist, researcher, trainer and academic in the field of gender for many years. alioune sall is the founder and executive director of the african futures institute, a pan-african think-tank established in 2004. prior to establishing the african futures institute, alioune sall had a distinguished career in the united nations development programme. before joining the undp, alioune sall worked with the dakar-based un institute for economic development and planning (idep) and enda as researcher and lecturer from 1975 to 1979. sall is director of several international ngos and member of editorial board of scholarly journals and policy-oriented publications, including the paris-based foresight journal “futuribles”. he is the author of several publications, including books and contributions to books, journal articles, book reviews, and consultancy reports. prominent among them are: “africa 2015: what possible futures for sub-saharan africa?” and “the future competitiveness of african economies” dr sall is currently serving as the special advisor of president ibrahim keita of mali in his capacity as the au champion for the arts, culture and heritage. alinah kelo segobye is the dean of the faculty of human sciences at the namibia university of science and technology (nust). she holds an honorary professorship at the thabo mbeki african leadership institute (tmali), university of south africa (unisa) and is a research scholar at the african futures institute (afi) and the institute of economic research on innovation (ieri) tshwane university of technology in pretoria, south africa. segobye has taught at the university of botswana for over twenty years where she held the professorship of archaeology. she has extensive teaching, research and consultancy experience in african studies, hiv/aids, gender and development. she has authored and co-authored essays and book chapters on african archaeology, heritage, culture and development. she is the co-editor and contributor to the book re-awakening and shaping africa’s future in a globalised world. ruth stewart is a professor who directs the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in professional education and writes about evidence-informed decision-making, the importance of evidence communities, and how to build evidence capacities across the spectrum from evidence production to evidence use. william d. slicker is an attorney who lives in st. petersburg, florida, usa. and has authored 25 articles. he is recognized as av preeminent by martindale-hubbell. he has been recognized as best of tampa bay by the tampa bay times. he has received the florida bar president’s pro bono award for the sixth circuit, the ms. jd incredible men award, the st. petersburg bar foundation’s heroes among us award, the community law program volunteer of the year award, and the florida coalition against domestic violence lighting the way award. carina van rooyen is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in development studies and writes about technology and learning, and evidence synthesis and use in international development and environmental management/practice. 3v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 contributors to this edition t h e t h i n k e r4 abejide ade-ibijola holds a phd in computer science (artificial intelligence) from the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa. he is currently an associate professor of artificial intelligence and applications in the department of applied information systems at the university of johannesburg, and the founder/lead of the research cluster on formal structures, algorithms, and industrial applications. abejide is nrf-rated and mainly interested in problems and algorithms in ai, innovations for driving the 4th industrial revolution, the applications of formal grammars (string or picture grammars) in the synthesis of things, programs (analysis, comprehension, and/or synthesis), special-purpose compilers, and theoretical computing. in his 11 years of experience in academia and the software industry, he has left a trail of 90+ awards, 50+ publications, and an incredible record of top-notch delivery of algorithmic solutions. abejide is the recipient of the uj cbe dean's top senior lecturer award 2018, sa department of public service (dpsa) ignite hack innovation award 2018, the uj vice-chancellor's distinguished award for the innovation of the year 2019, sa department of communications living 4ir hackathon overall best innovation of 2019, and two sa state it agency (sita) public service innovation awards of 2019. tapiwa chagonda, dlitt et phil (sociology), is an associate professor of sociology at the university of johannesburg in south africa. his research interests mainly centre on zimbabwe’s socio-economic and socio-political challenges since 2000. he has published numerous articles on zimbabwe’s crises in journals such as the review of african political economy and the journal of contemporary african studies and popular media such as the conversation. tapiwa is a member of the south african sociological association (sasa), the international sociological association (isa) and the council for the development of social science research in africa (codesria). thulani andrew chauke is a national youth service provincial coordinator at the national youth development agency in cape town, south africa. he holds a master of arts degree in youth development degree with cum laude from the university of venda. he is currently enrolled in a doctorate degree in education at the tshwane university of technology. he is a peer reviewer for four accredited journals and hold a membership for various academic associations. his research interests include youth deviant behaviour, school violence, youth work, positive youth development and youth entrepreneurship. thulani has published 6 articles in dohet accredited journals and is finalising the publication of his first book. he is working on a youth school violence behaviour project aimed at promoting teacher-youth worker based models to curb school violence in south africa. rachel chinyakata is a postdoctoral fellow in the child and family studies unit at the university of the western cape. she holds a phd in gender studies, a master of arts in youth development and a bachelor of arts in youth in development from the university of venda. her research interests include research with families, migration, gender, youth and health. rachel has published 9 articles in dohet accredited journals from her honours, masters and phd work. currently, she is working on a project aimed at the development of strategies to promote gender equality in the family through the human capabilities through the family. dawie de villiers is head of the department of procedural law, in the faculty of law at the university of johannesburg. his most recent publication was a book chapter in “decolonisation and africanisation of legal education in south africa”. he is intensely involved in the training of economic crime forensic investigators and his current research focus is on the use of technology in the area of virtual courts. katharina gihring is an environmental manager and works as a research coordinator at the university of johannesburg’s process, energy and environment technology station (uj-peets). her main focus is the circular economy. applying circular and systems thinking is crucial to solve pressing problem of increasing waste generation and pollution, while at the same time creating new job opportunities to create a sustainable south africa. leila hall is a lesotho-born writer, editor and teacher currently studying towards a phd in the department of english at uj. she has had journalism and fiction published on a range of websites, including cnn international, the huffington post, true africa and the kalahari review. her current writing and research interests focus on expressions of lgbtqi+ identity and experience in contemporary african fiction. she is the assistant editor of the thinker. charis harley is an academic based in the faculty of engineering and the built environment at the university of johannesburg, south africa. she holds a doctorate in computational and applied mathematics from the university of the witwatersrand, and is a j. william fulbright research scholar, having completed a postdoc at texas a&m university. professor harley’s research has, to date, been focused on the numerical solution of problems in fluid flow and heat transfer, an area in which she has published 37 research articles in isi journals. until recently she worked as a lead data scientist in industry and has now re-joined academia and, having broadened her scope of research interests, will continue with research in data science and machine learning. nickey janse van rensburg is a mechanical engineer and manager of the university of johannesburg’s process, energy and environment technology station at uj (uj-peets), with the mandate to support small and medium enterprises through technology innovation and knowledge transfer through technological development in the green economy. the technology station program is an initiative of the department of science and innovation implemented by the technology innovation agency which enables triple-helix partnerships that can sustainably support technology innovation as a catalyst for socio-economic development. nasreen jessani is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence (university of johannesburg) and at the centre for evidence-based health care (stellenbosch university). her writing focuses on the nexus between health policy and systems research; innovations in evidence-informed policy and practice; and the relationship between academia and public policy. she has a drph in international health systems strengthening from johns hopkins university. declan kearney has been active in irish republican politics since 1980. he has represented the south antrim constituency as a member of the legislative assembly (mla) in the north of ireland from 2016. declan has been a key member of sinn féin’s national leadership since 2003, and has previously served as the party’s northern chairperson and national deputy general secretary. currently he is sinn féin national chairperson, and has been central to the party’s all-ireland development, and its negotiations and reconciliation strategies. following restoration of the regional assembly and power sharing government in january 2020, declan was appointed as a junior minister within the office of the joint first ministers in the north of ireland’s five party coalition administration. pule kholopane holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering and operations management and several diplomas from different institutions i.e. economics (turin; italy), production management (pmi), communications (wits), industrial relations (wits) and management (wits). he obtained his phd degree in engineering management from the university of johannesburg. prof. kholopane was a part-time lecturer at the production management institute (pmi) and later joined the vaal university of technology as head of department and senior lecturer in the department of industrial engineering and operations management before joining the university of johannesburg as a senior lecturer. he is a supervisor and coordinator of the m. tech quality and operations management program at the institute and is currently the head of the department (hod) and associate professor in quality and operations management. laurenz langer is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. he has a phd in evidence-informed development from the university college london. he writes about how to support evidence-informed decision-making in international development and evidence synthesis methodology. thakaramahlaha lehohla holds a master’s degree , post-graduate diploma, advanced diploma and advanced certificate in project & programme management all obtained from cranefield college of project & programme management. furthermore, holds a bachelor of commerce from the university of pretoria. the researcher has been employed by the department for the past six years, serving as a deputy director. currently he is in pursuit for a phd, enrolled with the school of engineering and built environment, under the faculty of quality and operations management. the researcher’s topic for thesis is “ developing project, programme and operations management methodologies for sustainable industrialisation in south africa”. his interests include industrial and economic development research, with focus of integrating the project and operations management body of knowledge. mokaloba mokaloba (kalo) is a lecturer at the university of botswana in the department of political and administrative studies. his research interests include public finance, public policy and corporate governance. dr steven mufamadi is the founder and managing director of nabio consulting (pty) ltd, a start-up company specialised in bionanotechnology, nanomedicine and pharmaceutics. he is a winner of the gauteng biotech fundi awards in 2017, in the category “bio-communicator” and a finalist of the 2019/2020 nstf south 32 awards in the category “communication”. dr mufamadi holds a phd in pharmaceutics from wits university. mpho phehello ngoepe is a postdoctoral research fellow at the university of the witwatersrand. he has qualifications in chemistry (phd), pharmaceutics (msc(med)) and genetics (bsc). his research interests include medicinal chemistry and nanotechnology. eric picard is a research associate at the african futures institute (pretoria) and a doctoral student at the university of pretoria. he has been doing research in the area of the political economy of africa and futures studies. he is interested in the impact of policy on youth and development. anton m. pillay is a student of prof chris landsberg, south african research chair : african diplomacy and foreign policy (uj). anton works at the centre for academic development based at the vaal university of technology. shahana rasool is a rhodes scholar with a masters and doctorate from the university of oxford, department of social policy. she is currently professor in the department of social work at the university of johannesburg (uj). her research considers help-seeking after domestic violence, adolescent gender attitudes and exposure to gender based violence. shahana is vice president of association for schools of social work in africa (asswa), and africa representative for the international association of schools of social work (iassw). she is chair of the international conference on gender and sexuality. she is on the editorial board for the journal of international women’s studies and gender issues. shahana is also chair of the international conference on gender and sexuality, which was held in 2018 and 2019 in thailand. shahana has been an activist, researcher, trainer and academic in the field of gender for many years. alioune sall is the founder and executive director of the african futures institute, a pan-african think-tank established in 2004. prior to establishing the african futures institute, alioune sall had a distinguished career in the united nations development programme. before joining the undp, alioune sall worked with the dakar-based un institute for economic development and planning (idep) and enda as researcher and lecturer from 1975 to 1979. sall is director of several international ngos and member of editorial board of scholarly journals and policy-oriented publications, including the paris-based foresight journal “futuribles”. he is the author of several publications, including books and contributions to books, journal articles, book reviews, and consultancy reports. prominent among them are: “africa 2015: what possible futures for sub-saharan africa?” and “the future competitiveness of african economies” dr sall is currently serving as the special advisor of president ibrahim keita of mali in his capacity as the au champion for the arts, culture and heritage. alinah kelo segobye is the dean of the faculty of human sciences at the namibia university of science and technology (nust). she holds an honorary professorship at the thabo mbeki african leadership institute (tmali), university of south africa (unisa) and is a research scholar at the african futures institute (afi) and the institute of economic research on innovation (ieri) tshwane university of technology in pretoria, south africa. segobye has taught at the university of botswana for over twenty years where she held the professorship of archaeology. she has extensive teaching, research and consultancy experience in african studies, hiv/aids, gender and development. she has authored and co-authored essays and book chapters on african archaeology, heritage, culture and development. she is the co-editor and contributor to the book re-awakening and shaping africa’s future in a globalised world. ruth stewart is a professor who directs the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in professional education and writes about evidence-informed decision-making, the importance of evidence communities, and how to build evidence capacities across the spectrum from evidence production to evidence use. william d. slicker is an attorney who lives in st. petersburg, florida, usa. and has authored 25 articles. he is recognized as av preeminent by martindale-hubbell. he has been recognized as best of tampa bay by the tampa bay times. he has received the florida bar president’s pro bono award for the sixth circuit, the ms. jd incredible men award, the st. petersburg bar foundation’s heroes among us award, the community law program volunteer of the year award, and the florida coalition against domestic violence lighting the way award. carina van rooyen is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in development studies and writes about technology and learning, and evidence synthesis and use in international development and environmental management/practice. contributors to this edition the journal for progressive thought www.thethinker.co.za publisher english department university of johannesburg kingsway campus, auckland park, johannesburg tel:+27 11 559 2553 editor prof ronit frenkel editor@thethinker.co.za thethinker@uj.ac.za design & art direction on the loose matt@ontheloose.co.za tel:+27 83 302 8969 www.ontheloose.co.za advisory council dr ademola araoye (nigeria), professor puleng lenka bula (south af rica), dr faisal devji (tanzania), professor chris landsberg (south af rica), professor tshilidzi marwala (south africa), professor sabelo j ndlovu-gatsheni (zimbabwe), dr morley nkosi (south af rica), dr francis onditi (kenya) professor eghosa e osaghae (nigeria), dr mzulcisi qobo (south af rica), dr garth le pere (south af rica), professor alioune sall (senegal), addai sebo (ghana), dr mongane serote (south af rica), professor mammo muchie (ethiopia). material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without proper citation. views and opinions expressed in the thinker are not necessarily those of university of johannesburg. they can accept no liability of whatsoever nature arising out of or in connection with the contents of the publication. © 2020 university of johannesburg www.thethinker.co.za the thinkerthe thinkerthe thinker p a n a f r i c a n q u a r t e r l y f o r t h o u g h t l e a d e r s (idep) and enda as researcher and lecturer from 1975 to 1979. sall is director of several international ngos and member of editorial board of scholarly journals and policy-oriented publications, including the paris-based foresight journal “futuribles”. he is the author of several publications, including books and contributions to books, journal articles, book reviews, and consultancy reports. prominent among them are: “africa 2015: what possible futures for sub-saharan africa?” and “the future competitiveness of african economies” dr sall is currently serving as the special advisor of president ibrahim keita of mali in his capacity as the au champion for the arts, culture and heritage. alinah kelo segobye is the dean of the faculty of human sciences at the namibia university of science and technology (nust). she holds an honorary professorship at the thabo mbeki african leadership institute (tmali), university of south africa (unisa) and is a research scholar at the african futures institute (afi) and the institute of economic research on innovation (ieri) tshwane university of technology in pretoria, south africa. segobye has taught at the university of botswana for over twenty years where she held the professorship of archaeology. she has extensive teaching, research and consultancy experience in african studies, hiv/aids, gender and development. she has authored and co-authored essays and book chapters on african archaeology, heritage, culture and development. she is the co-editor and contributor to the book re-awakening and shaping africa’s future in a globalised world. ruth stewart is a professor who directs the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in professional education and writes about evidence-informed decision-making, the importance of evidence communities, and how to build evidence capacities across the spectrum from evidence production to evidence use. william d. slicker is an attorney who lives in st. petersburg, florida, usa. and has authored 25 articles. he is recognized as av preeminent by martindale-hubbell. he has been recognized as best of tampa bay by the tampa bay times. he has received the florida bar president’s pro bono award for the sixth circuit, the ms. jd incredible men award, the st. petersburg bar foundation’s heroes among us award, the community law program volunteer of the year award, and the florida coalition against domestic violence lighting the way award. carina van rooyen is a senior researcher at the africa centre for evidence at the university of johannesburg. she has a phd in development studies and writes about technology and learning, and evidence synthesis and use in international development and environmental management/practice. 5v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 contributors to this edition t h e t h i n k e r65 covid-19 gender based violence (gbv) has been referred to as the shadow pandemic, since it has tripled internationally f rom the start of the outbreak of covid-19. the increased rates of reported gbv around the globe have ranged f rom 30% to 200%. we have seen high numbers of gbv reports in sa as well, with the gbv toll-f ree emergency hotline reporting 120 000 calls in the hotlines have also reported increased calls. usually survivors are reluctant to seek help or only seek help many years after violence begins. the reasons that survivors do not seek help are complex, and include the extensive normalization of abuse among other reasons, that will be discussed further. however, the conditions of lockdown have exacerbated the intensity of gbv to such an extent that some women may be reaching out for help, while others have less access to help and support because of lockdown conditions. in general, women are more likely to seek help when their lives, or the lives of their children or other loved ones are in danger. hence, the high levels of reporting are not necessarily indicative of huge amounts of additional women experiencing gbv – it is more likely that more women are violence against women and children in south africa. the ongoing challenge of why are we deeper in crisis? by shahana rasool © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 66v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 reporting because of the intensification of such violence. research has shown that much of gbv is hidden, just like much of the iceberg is hidden. lockdown is revealing the depth of the iceberg. it is likely that the usual coping mechanisms and outlets for survivors of intimate partner violence are no longer available –walks, perpetrator and/or survivor going to work, children being at school, access to social networks etc. hence, the sudden influx of calls reporting gbv may be because the lockdown conditions have made the usual outlets for dealing with violence unavailable. lockdown nevertheless, for many women accessing help because of the lockdown, is made more difficult because of confinement with the perpetrator. under such conditions, a safety plan is critical. the survivors could have code words for when they are in danger, which is shared with a trusted f riend or family member so that when the survivor uses the code word, the support person is able to respond in the agreed upon manner. however, this is assuming that the survivor had access to support or information prior to lockdown in order to plan code words and make a safety plan. in fact, perpetrators often isolate their victims and this isolation is exacerbated in lockdown conditions. victims end up stuck with abusers, and so may have fewer opportunities for escaping. nevertheless, when situations get desperate, survivors find innovative ways to try to reach out for help. seeking help is then not a simple issue and is limited by various factors, such as isolation, access to data, knowing where to get help, trust in service providers, ability to find an opportunity to escape safely (sometimes with children, other times they have to leave them to escape for survival, which is not ideal); overcoming fear, and so forth. it is important to note though, that most gbv is not necessarily new, but probably more intensified under lockdown. this can be attributed to the social cultural norms that perpetuate gbv and gender inequality, which remain entrenched in society. the lockdown conditions have aggravated an already persistent problem that we have not tackled effectively. what lockdown has done is to reveal the deeply embedded inequalities that permeate our societies and families. it has also given rise to, or intensified newer forms of, harassment such as cyber or online sexual harassment that has increased since lockdown. many of us have experienced this on zoom, among other platforms. horrific forms of online sexual harassment have been highlighted, since more people are increasingly engaged on online platforms, and perpetrators are taking advantage of these spaces to victimize women. moreover, the increased militarization of society in response to covid-19 has increased women’s vulnerability to violence. socio-cultural norms the reasons that we are still stuck with gbv are two-fold. first, we have not been able to shift our responses and make our services appropriate and relevant for survivors of gbv. this relates to the second and more persistent problem, which is the deeper issue of structures, institutions and attitudes that are deeply patriarchal. working with the drivers of gbv – such as patriarchy and gender inequalityare an ongoing challenge. whilst we have engaged in training the police, developing gender sensitive policies, creating women’s policy bureaus, increasing quotas etc., the underlying socio-cultural institutional arrangements remain deeply entrenched in patriarchy. people often ask why women stay in violent intimate relationships. a critical reason is linked to the socio-cultural norms that perpetuate gender inequality and violence against women. various constructions of gender, family, and marriage keep women tied to violent relationships. women are expected to be the guardians of families and thereby have the responsibility of keeping the family together, even in the face of violence. in the same vein, women are expected to keep the marriage intact and do whatever necessary including sacrificing themselvesto ensure that the marriage does not end. hence, the sudden influx of calls reporting gbv may be because the lockdown conditions have made the usual outlets for dealing with violence unavailable. t h e t h i n k e r67 if, as families and f riends, we prioritized the safety of women and children over these ideas of family and marriage, we could reduce both gbv and femicide. we know that there are high rates of femicide in south af ricaa woman is murdered every 4 hours in south af rica we have recently seen the reports of three such cases in mpumulanga alone. hence, it is only when we realize the extent of the risk and danger that living in an abusive relationship presents to both women and the children, could we reduce femicide levels. co-occurrence of woman and child abuse women and children are most insecure in their homes where they should be safest. yet, we expect women to stay in violent relationships for these children in order to keep the family together. of course nobody wants to break-up functional families. however, is this the appropriate option in situations where the lives of women and children are at risk? why is the pressure not on the abuser to change his behavior instead of on the woman to stay and to make the relationship work? staying for the children ignores the risk that gender based violence presents for both women and children. we often forget the impact of witnessing abusive behaviour on the emotional state of children, as well as the long-term consequences of exposure to abuse for society. moreover, research has shown the co-occurrence of woman abuse and child abuse. research also points to the relationship between witnessing abuse and the likelihood of either the perpetration of abuse or its victimization, as children who are exposed to abuse are more likely to become perpetrators or victims themselves and the cycle continues unabated. hence, staying in an abusive relationship for the children is not a solution. normalisation of abuse despite the impact on children, the extensive normalization of abuse in intimate relationships continues. with such adages as: ‘he didn’t mean it’, ‘abuse is a sign of love’, ‘marriage is not a bed of roses’, ‘he wouldn’t beat you if he didn’t love you’. many abused women seek solace in the counsel of older women, who often share similar stories of their own experiences of victimization that contributes to normalizing such abuse. abuse has become so normalized, for some women and communities, that seeking help is not always even a consideration. moreover, women’s economic dependence makes escaping abusive relationships complex when options are limited. financial insecurity the continued economic dependence of women, their lower salaries then men in similar positions, working in insecure and casual labour, managing the triple burden of care, all impact on women’s financial security. in some cases where they do earn an income, especially in domestic violence situations, they may not have control or access to that income. hence, economic abuse is one of the forms of gbv that is least spoken about. additionally, increased financial stress on families in the current economic crises, generated by lockdown and limited options for financial activity, could have contributed to increased gbv. often financial dependence on abusive partners or limited access to or control of resources in the household, make it difficult for survivors to leave abusive relationships. psychosocial impact gbv also affects the psychosocial well-being of the survivor. fear, depression, anxiety, and other repercussions on the mental health of the survivor, impact on the ability of the survivor to seek help or/ and leave an abusive relationship. service provision inadequacies seeking help is also complicated in an environment where service provision is unreliable, mistrusted, inefficient, complicated, inaccessible and often unhelpful. for many communities and survivors, there is mistrust of the police, limited clarity of how social services can help, inadequate knowledge of where psychosocial services can be accessed, limited faith in the criminal justice covid-19 people often ask why women stay in violent intimate relationships. a critical reason is linked to the socio-cultural norms that perpetuate gender inequality and violence against women. various constructions of gender, family, and marriage keep women tied to violent relationships. 68v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 system, difficult and alienating bureaucracies, etc. that make reaching out to formal services improbable. moreover, women are reluctant to use the criminal justice system, as they do not want their children seeing their father arrested. often times, family members support the abuser and victimize survivors for reaching out to the criminal justice system. reporting abusers to the police can be stigmatized and women may be isolated and chastised for doing so, instead of receiving support f rom family and f riends. hence, work needs to be done in communities so that informal networks, which form the first line of reporting for women, are enabled to become more supportive and knowledgeable on how to assist survivors better. this is critical, as survivors are most vulnerable when they are trying to leave abusive relationships. protection and support f rom both the community and the police is critical when women are seeking help and trying to leave. vulnerable groups under lockdown conditions, access to services for rural women are even more limited because of their geographical distance from hospitals, police, courts, social workers etc. they are often also economically marginalized where access to data, electricity, unstable networks for calls and other ways of reaching out online for help, are inadequate. hence, rural women are extremely vulnerable as their options for reporting are minimal with covid-19, especially with travel limitations. migrants, refugees, people living in other people’s homes, temporary workers, lgbtqi+ communities are also usually at greater risk with less pathways for help suggesstions and options for creating change criminal justive system much still needs to be done to overhaul the patriarchal underpinnings of the criminal justice system that makes services unf riendly and inaccessible to women. the procedures for accessing a protection order remain complex and alienating, particularly for survivors who are already stressed and traumatized. extensive work still needs to be done to improve the conditions (like privacy and comfort) of reporting spaces at police stations for survivors. it is necessary to improve the facilities available for police officers to assist survivors, as much as facilitating the transmission of appropriate knowledge, attitudes and practices for police officers. there also needs to be systems in place that hold police accountable when they do not record reports of survivors, do not respond to warrants of arrest or do not remove the firearms of perpetrators after incidents of gbv. a strong court support program that deals with the physical, emotional and logistical needs of survivors needs to be enabled. pre, during and postcourt support needs to be available to survivors. other women who can guide, support, and assist a survivor through the reporting and court process are critical in this difficult process. ensuring that protection orders are served on perpetrators (within 24 hours) at no cost to survivors, should be prioritized. this could be facilitated by making protections orders available via the internet which is then widely publicized so women are aware of it. community interventions, monitoring and funding outreach work needs to be done in communities such that there is zero tolerance for violence against women and children. ideally any person who a survivor reaches out to should become a ‘safe space’ for them. we need to think through ways to help survivors remain safely in communities if they do not want to go through the criminal justice system but still need protection. we can do this by enabling family and f riends to assist in providing care and protection to women in their own homes or in the community. there needs to be a few people or safe houses as ‘go to’ places in every community. awareness need to be created about these spaces so that survivors can use them if they need to escape – community networks are crucial to this process. better monitoring and evaluation of responses to gbv in the health, social services and criminal justice sectors are needed. consequences for noncompliance with protocols for best practice need to be both clear and implemented. awareness of the role of social workers and community workers in dealing with gbv needs to be made clear to communities so that they can reach out for help. these services also need covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r69 to increase their accessibility and availability. all these responders need to be enabled to do their jobs through the provision of appropriate resources and improving the conditions for multidisciplinary interventions. improving the inf rastructure, knowledge, attitudes and service provision of victim empowerment centres, thutuzela care centres and other social service professionals to better serve the needs of survivors is critical. comprehensive multi-disciplinary services, through the extension of one-stop centres that work effectively together, is critical. training, education and public awareness campaigns on how to prevent, intervene and get help for gbv may all coalesce in these one stop centres. covid screenings can be used as opportunities for gbv screenings to identify vulnerable women and children, as well as to help women to develop safety plans. these measure all rely on adequate funding for gbv interventions, which would indicate a clear commitment to this issue f rom both government and the private sector. prevention a prevention messaging programme about how to prevent, intervene, and get help for gbv needs to be available in public places such as supermarkets, food distribution points, pharmacies, community health workers involved in testing, etc. hot spots and other places where women will be more at risk of sexual violence need to be publicly identified such as empty roads and buildings. improving safety and protection in isolated routes and hot spots for sexual harassment and rape is critical. educational programmes in schools about appropriate behaviour in intimate relationships to prevent gbv needs to be iimplemented. support programmes for children and young people who have witnessed gbv or been victims of child abuse are essential if we are to prevent the ongoing intergenerational cycle of violence. changing the landscape we need to shift to a victim/survivor centered approach in reality, not just in theory. perpetrators must be asked to leave if they are abusive. the development of semi-correctional facilities needs to be established for cases in which a protection order has been violated and there is a warrant of arrest attached. women and children should not be displaced f rom their homes, having to deal with the effects of dislocation after experiencing abuse and its psychosocial impacts on their wellbeing. they should receive protection and economic support to stay in their homes while the perpetrator should rather be moved. it is important that men hold each other accountable for sexual harassment and gbv, rather than ignoring it when they are witnesses, as that this is tantamount to complicity. conclusion whether there is or is not an increase in gbv is unclear. what is clear is that the numbers of gbv are high, the responses are not as effective as they need to be while the availability of user-f riendly accessible and appropriate services and responses, need to be increased. covid-19 and lockdown has exacerbated psychosocial and economic conditions that already make seeking help for gbv difficult; this is worse for groups who are more marginalized such as lgbtqi+ community, rural women, migrants and refugee communities. it is clear that despite the development of progressive legislation to deal with domestic violence, as well as the establishment of gender policy bureaus and many women representatives, there is still much that needs to be done to address gbv effectively under covid-19 restrictions, and in general. we have not done enough around working with young people for the prevention of the intergenerational cycle of abuse, for example. hence, despite efforts over many years by gbv organizations, shelters, and women’s movements, the shifts have been slow because the underlying structures and systems of patriarchy that perpetuate gender inequality and violence against women and children remain. ■ covid-19 comprehensive multi-disciplinary services, through the extension of one-stop centres that work effectively together, is critical. training, education and public awareness campaigns on how to prevent, intervene and get help for gbv may all coalesce in these one stop centres. abstract on 9 june 2020, viewers around the globe were glued to international tv networks to watch the live coverage of the funeral of george floyd, an af rican-american man who was killed by the police during an arrest in minneapolis on may 25 2020. police brutality against af rican-americans is not something new and this is what led to the slogan ‘black lives matter’ that has been the lodestar of the recent waves of protest. the american police force is embedded with systemic racism which seems to have been reinforced by donald trump’s presidency. however, the brutal killing of floyd should be understood in a broader context. the black race has gone through many dehumanising experiences, including the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, and all manner of discrimination. this, in turn, has led to an inferiority complex because, for the most part, we have been defined by others – and not in the most positive of terms to say the least. there is a need for a conscious paradigm shift to transcend from a negative self-image to a positive one on the part of black people all over the world. it is high time we stood up to define ourselves. casting the george floyd story in a broader context by gerson uaripi tjihenuna | opinion 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion opinion the question is: what does george floyd’s murder have to do with most of us here on the af rikan continent and in other parts of the world? to answer that question, we need a brief reflection on pan af rikanism. introduction on 9 june 2020, viewers around the globe were glued to international tv networks to watch the live coverage of the funeral of george floyd, an af ricanamerican man who was killed by the police during an arrest in minneapolis on may 25 2020. on that fateful day, four police officers pinned floyd to the ground and literally choked him to death while he helplessly pleaded for his life. one speaker at the memorial service could not have stated it better when he said: ‘…the only crime that george floyd has committed was that he was born black.’ protests in response to his death, and more broadly to police violence against black people, quickly spread across the us and internationally. the question is: what does george floyd’s murder have to do with most of us here on the afrikan continent and in other parts of the world? to answer that question, we need a brief reflection on pan afrikanism. pan afrikanism and self-definition a few years back, before i started to pay serious attention to the pan af rikan cause, i used to think that pan af rikanism was just a pastime, a form of intellectual romanticism. however, when i started to seriously reflect on it, i came to the sobering realisation that pan af rikanism is about who we are as a people, based on our lived experiences. pan af rikanism is about defining ourselves based on our common struggles and experiences, so that we can stand tall and relate to others on an equal footing! the black race has gone through many dehumanising experiences: the trans-atlantic slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and all manner of discrimination and degradation. this, in turn, has led to an inferiority complex and a negative self-image because, for the most part, we have been defined by others – and not in the most positive of terms, to say the least. that definition has mainly been in the shadows of others, where we are defined as ‘other’ or as ‘outsiders’ who are ‘not good enough’ according to eurocentric standards. given the current historical and socio-economic international order, western knowledge and cultural structures dominate the world. in other words, the ‘international imagery representation’ is mainly eurocentric and extra-af rican. as a result, eurocentric values and opinions have come to be accepted as ‘universal’ standards. as edward said would say, we are out-numbered and out-organised by the prevailing western consensus that regards the black race as a culturally inferior people. for too long, our story has been told by others. pan af rikanism deals with the reconstruction of distorted images about af rika and the black race in general. pan af rikanism is a call for the democratisation of the asymmetric global knowledge system with the view of creating epistemological equity. it is a discourse about self-definition and self-affirmation. as the saying goes, ‘as long as the antelope does not tell its own story, hunting will continue to be told f rom the hunter’s perspective.’ when i visited johannesburg for the first time after apartheid was dismantled, i made it a point to visit soweto and when i went to new york city in 2005, i also made it a point to visit harlem. someone who does not share in the common collective experience of black people may ask, what is the big deal about that? my answer is that both soweto and harlem represent a collective cultural f rame of reference for black history, black resistance, and black identity in more ways than one. as black people, our imagery representation has, for the most part, been negative. we have not only been subjected to all manner of oppression and dehumanisation, but who we are has been defined by others. sadly, most of our people have come to accept this ‘definition’. the problem with mental slavery or 2 t h e t h i n k e r a race-based inferiority complex is that, for the most part, the victim does not seem to be aware that he/ she is a victim. it is like being in a prison, without being aware that you are a prisoner. in his seminal book, pedagogy of the oppressed, paulo freire states that: ‘…under these circumstances the oppressed cannot consider the oppressor outside themselves sufficiently clearly to objectivize him – to discover him outside themselves because their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression’ (1993: 27). in other words, there is a need for a conscious paradigm shift to transcend f rom a negative selfimage to a positive one. again, to paraphrase freire, the oppressed person needs to transcend f rom being an object to becoming a subject. according to freire, the term subjects denotes ‘those who know and act, in contrast to objects, which are known and acted upon’ (1993: 18). to put it differently, as georg hegel said (cited in freire), the oppressed needs to ‘…attain the status of an independent self-consciousness…’ (1993: 18). that is why we have chosen to speak up on the brutal killing of george floyd. black lives matter and the trump presidency police brutality against af rican-americans is not something new and this is what led to the slogan ‘black lives matter’ that has been the lodestar of the recent waves of protest. the american police force is embedded with systemic racism which seems to have been reinforced by donald trump’s presidency. as one tv commentator put it, trump failed to ‘speak to the moment’ regarding the brutal killing of george floyd and the subsequent street protests. the few moments when trump spoke publicly on the issue, he was very combative and belligerent. instead of telling the protestors that ‘i hear you and i will address your grievances,’ trump instead chose to come across as the law and order president who was out to ‘put the protestors in their place’. he even threatened to send in the army to quell the protests. in any democratic country, the military is deployed to deal with external aggression and i do not think the american military is an exception to this rule. however, we were faced with a situation where the president of the most powerful country in the world, the epitome of democratic governance, was threatening to use the army against peaceful demonstrators. since his election in 2016, trump basically reversed america’s political life ninety degrees back to the white anglo-saxon protestant (wasp) days, both domestically and at the international level, where he pursued a hawkish foreign policy. the phrase wasp refers to an informal, but closed social group of highstatus and influential white americans of english protestant ancestry (wikipedia, 2021). this is the group that has dominated the political and social life of the us for many years. it is interesting to note that out of the 46 presidents who have ruled america over the years, only john f. kennedy and barack obama were not f rom this group. kennedy was a roman catholic and obama is an af rican-american. it is also worth noting that the wasp’s unwritten ideology is exclusive to the point that even the irish and italian americans (two groups that happen to be predominantly catholic) were for many years not considered as ‘members’ of mainstream ‘white america’. that theme is, for example, captured in patrick mckenna’s book when the irish became white. the wasp ideology – although it was never formally written – was, to a certain extent, informed by the 20th century german sociologist max weber’s book protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. the central thread of the book is that although economic production for gain had existed in other civilizations like india or china, it was only in the west where capitalism, for the first time, gained momentum and took off. this, according to weber, is due to the notion of the ‘calling.’ this notion of the ‘calling’ did not exist either in antiquity or in catholic theology; it was introduced by the reformation, weber argues. in other words, the highest form of moral obligation of the individual is to fulfil his/her duty in worldly affairs. this is particularly so for those who are called out or chosen, who then need to demonstrate a solid work ethic and iron discipline. the surety of being chosen is to be demonstrated through the performance of ‘good works’ in worldly activities (wikipedia, 2021). weber further argues that it was this protestant ethic that paved the way for the introduction of the formal factory system and thus the creation of a ‘f ree’ mass of wage-labourers whose livelihood depends upon the sale of labour power in the market. according to this theory, for the first time in history, there were ‘f ree’ labourers who were neither slaves nor mere household unit producers. 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion max weber’s theory is based on the doctrine of predestination, as advocated by john calvin. according to this doctrine, only some human beings are chosen to be saved f rom damnation and that choice is predetermined by god. this was the doctrine that was used to undergird and justify apartheid. trump represents a new social phenomenon: rightwing white nationalism, a movement that has a strong international dimension. in the era of perceived or real danger of international terrorism, refugee crises, and international migration, this right-wing movement has been on the rise in a number of western countries. britain’s decision to exit the european union should, for example, be understood within that context. the leader of the far-right national front in france, marine le pen, also came out singing praise songs to donald trump after the latter was elected to office in 2016. in an article published in the new york times on 1 november 2016, amanda taub argued that: ‘... whiteness is more than just skin colour. you could define it as a membership in the ethno-national majority. what it really means is the privilege of not being defined as other.’ trump’s political tone and vocabulary find resonance with supra-racist groups like the ku-klux-klan and other right-wing white elements. to paraphrase taub in the article referred to above, the supra-racist elements in the us feel that they were in a long line leading uphill where they were hoping to get hold of the american dream, but alas the line had slowed down or even stopped because immigrants, af ricanamericans, and other ‘outsiders’ seemed to be cutting the line. that is the heart of trump’s tone and it does not matter how much his spin-doctors may want to sugar-coat it: it is heavily loaded with racism! taub further argues that: ‘…for decades the language of white identity has only existed in the context of white supremacy. when that became taboo, it left white identity politics without a vocabulary’ (2016). it is that white identity vocabulary vacuum that trump is trying to fill. for trump and his supporters, the grand american narrative is white. in other words, for them, what constitutes ‘political community’ in the us is the ‘silent’ assumption that it is ‘the white ethnic majority’. the others are ‘outsiders’ and thus just a footnote, if not a nuisance to that grand narrative. it is this narrative that racist elements in the us (including some police officers) feed into. references freire, p. (1993). pedagogy of the oppressed. london: penguin books. taub, a. (2016). behind 2016’s turmoil, a crisis of white identity. [online] the new york times. available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/ world/americas/brexit-donald-trump-whites.html wikipedia, (2021). the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. [online] available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_protestant_ ethic_and_the_spirit_of_capitalism wikipedia, (2021). white anglo-saxon protestants. [online] available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/white_anglo-saxon_protestants 4 t h e t h i n k e r opinion contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel tlhabane mokhine ‘dan’ motaung is a former student and youth activist. he has published articles in the mainstream media and chapters in edited volumes. he is currently a civil servant. his interests include classical antiquity, history (south african, african, and world), international political economy, classical and african philosophy, and rejected knowledge. george hull is a senior lecturer and nrf y1-rated researcher in the philosophy department, university of cape town. he lectures on political philosophy, philosophy of race, business ethics, and history of philosophy. together with jimmy winfield and greg fried, he co-authored business ethics and other paradoxes: how philosophy answers questions about the ethics of business (fairest cape press, 2014). he is editor of the equal society: essays on equality in theory and practice (lexington books, 2015) and debating african philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial ethics and comparative philosophy (routledge, 2019). he has published essays in academic journals and collections on topics including transitional justice, democracy, reification, social equality, affirmative action, higher education funding, and south african literature. gerson uaripi tjihenuna holds a master’s degree in public policy and a ba degree in political science. he served as a senior civil servant in the cabinet office of the republic of namibia and the namibian parliament respectively. he was the board chairperson of air namibia (2016–2018) and is currently a commissioner of elections in the republic of namibia. furthermore, he was also a senior lecturer in labour studies at the international university of management. tamunodein princewill is an international relations student at the university of cape town. she comments on the socio-political relations occurring within the af rican continent, and between the af rican continent and western states. isha dilraj is a doctoral candidate in the school of education at the university of cape town, and a national institute for the humanities and social sciences scholar. she is currently a research assistant for the political economy of education research (peer) network in the af rican hub, which is funded by the global challenge research fund (gcrf) to support ground-breaking impactful research in conflict-affected regions, and is engaging in research using political economy analysis within conflict-affected regions in af rica. isha has worked in the higher education sector in south af rica where she engaged in administration and planning, project management, staff-andstudent development, system development, and observing policy formulation and implementation. this experience drives isha’s resolve to contribute to research in the complex higher education arena in post-apartheid south af rica and was the catalyst to her pursuing full-time doctoral studies. she has represented uct at the north-south-south higher education conference in namibia, which focused on democracy and quality education for all, and at the un millennium development goals symposium. her research interests include education policy, higher education, political economy of education, theories of power, access, and transformation. note from the editor 1 t h e t h i n k e r letlhokwa george mpedi completed his b juris degree (1996) and llb degree (1998) at vista university. in 2001, the llm degree in labour law was conferred upon him by the then rand af rikaans university (now university of johannesburg). he was twice the recipient of the deutscher akademischer austauschdienst (daad) award (in 2000 and 2001, for purposes of researching in germany for his llm dissertation and lld thesis respectively). upon completing his llb, he was employed as a junior lecturer in the department of mercantile law at vista university (mamelodi campus). he joined the centre for international and comparative labour and social security law (ciclass) at the then rand af rikaans university as a researcher in 2000. in august 2003, professor mpedi accepted a position as a research fellow at the max planck institute for foreign and international social law in munich (germany). upon his return f rom germany in 2006, he was employed as a deputy director at ciclass. in the same year, the lld degree in mercantile law was conferred upon him by the university of johannesburg. before his current position as deputy vice-chancellor: academic (designate), professor mpedi served as head of department of practical business law (january 2011–december 2012), vice-dean (january 2013–december 2015), director at ciclass (january 2009–december 2015), and executive dean (january 2016–december 2020) at the faculty of law of the university of johannesburg. he lectured labour law and social security to llb, post-graduate, and certificate students. he has delivered papers at numerous national and international conferences. professor mpedi publishes on labour law and social security. kyla hazell is a popular educator with the ngo ndifuna ukwazi, where she supports social movement partners struggling for spatial justice in cape town. she serves on the boards of the restitution foundation and the popular education programme (pep). in these positions, kyla is interested in exploring how ordinary people can activate constitutional rights to address structural inequality. she holds a ba (hons) in law, politics and philosophy f rom rhodes university and an mphil in justice and transformation f rom the university of cape town (uct), all with distinction. her studies were made possible through the consecutive awards of an allan gray orbis foundation fellowship and a nelson mandela rhodes scholarship. throughout her studies and in the early stages of her career, kyla has sustained an interest in journalism, working variously for student publications and as a f reelance writer. a.w. misbach is a journalist who worked for the nowdefunct anti-apartheid newspaper south in the 1990s and as a parliamentary and political correspondent for the sowetan. he has also worked for several news outlets in saudi arabia as a copy editor. he is currently studying towards a phd at stellenbosch university, with a focus on racism, islamophobia, and socioeconomic and political debates in south af rica and the arab world. tata emmanuel sunjo lectures in the department of geography at the university of buea, where he has been a faculty member since 2015. he is a governance and regional integration fellow at the nkafu policy institute with the denis and lenora foretia foundation in cameroon. his research interests include climate change, the management and use of natural resources, environmental politics and policy, and natural resourcesrelated conflicts. he has published extensively in academic journals and has participated in a number of international conferences and seminars. dr. sunjo is also an associate editor with the journal of resource and environmental management (jorem) and the af rican journal of social sciences in cameroon. 2v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 contributors to this edition the journal for progressive thought www.thethinker.co.za publisher english department university of johannesburg kingsway campus, auckland park, johannesburg tel:+27 11 559 2553 editor prof ronit frenkel thethinker@uj.ac.za design & art direction on the loose matt@ontheloose.co.za tel:+27 83 302 8969 www.ontheloose.co.za advisory council dr ademola araoye (nigeria), professor puleng lenka bula (south africa), dr faisal devji (tanzania), professor chris landsberg (south africa), professor tshilidzi marwala (south af rica), professor sabelo j ndlovu-gatsheni (zimbabwe), dr morley nkosi (south africa), dr francis onditi (kenya) professor eghosa e osaghae (nigeria), dr mzulcisi qobo (south af rica), dr garth le pere (south africa), professor alioune sall (senegal), addai sebo (ghana), dr mongane serote (south af rica), professor mammo muchie (ethiopia). material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without proper citation. views and opinions expressed in the thinker are not necessarily those of university of johannesburg. they can accept no liability of whatsoever nature arising out of or in connection with the contents of the publication. © 2020 university of johannesburg www.thethinker.co.za contributors to this edition 3 t h e t h i n k e r thethinker@uj.ac.za t h e t h i n k e r76 by thakaramahlaha lehohla and pule kholopane covid-19 ssector as a key driver of the economy via the re-industrialisation drive, with incentive programmes such as the manufacturing competitive enhancement programme (mcep), cluster development programme (cdp), 12i tax allowance incentive, and special economic zones (sezs). these include the development of black industrialists, with the purpose of growing the economy via manufacturing, growth in exports, revitalisation of industrial parks, and broadbased black economic empowerment (b-bbee). black industrialists must be directly involved in the strategic and operational leadership of the operation, and have the requisite expertise. they should take personal risk in the business, and be locked in for a reasonable time f rame to the entity. the department of trade and industry (dti) policy requires black industrialists to have a high level of ownership (>50%), and/or exercise control over the business. the dti describes black industrialists as ‘black south af ricans who own used and have a considerable impact on decent employment and create broad-based economic opportunities’ (dti, 2020). the dti has various incentive schemes for individuals who are planning to start their own businesses, as well as for those who have existing the impact of covid-19 on the level of productivity and industrial development in south africa © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 77v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 businesses. the department seeks to broaden participation in entrepreneurial activity to all, with an emphasis on youth development, women, and b-bbee, and developed the industrial policy action plan (ipap) as a blueprint to realise this vision. in the midst of this plan, the country faces economic challenges, losing some of the advances made prior to the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. covid-19 has caught the south af rican economy and industries off guard, as emergency approaches have had to be applied towards mitigating its spread. the greater focus has been on containing the virus by closing internal and external economic activities, with the exception of essential services. this comes as a double blow to an economy already bleeding f rom the consequences of state capture (poor management of state-owned entities, and corruption), a distressed steel sector, and the generally poor performance of its key sectors, such as the manufacturing industry. as a result, credit rating agencies have downgraded south af rica, reducing investor confidence and the possibility of positive growth. it is projected that manufacturing in south af rica will regress to 42.60 points by the end of this quarter, according to trading economics global macro models and analysts’ expectations. further projections estimate that the purchasing managers’ index (pmi) (an indicator used to measure the level of productivity in industry) in south af rica will stand at 47.00 in 12 months’ time. in the long term, south af rica’s manufacturing pmi is projected to trend around 49.00 points in 2021 and 51.00 points in 2022, according to our econometric models (south af rican manufacturing pmi – 1994–2019 data). this raises an alarming question regarding what went wrong in terms of industrial development, as manufacturing’s contribution to gdp was at 24% in the early 1980s, and regressed to less than 13% in 2017. as seen in figure 1, south af rica’s gdp staggered between a 0% – 1.6% growth rate between 2017 and early 2019, then grew by 0.9% f rom mid-2019, followed by a 0.1% growth rate, then a drastic drop in january 2020 to a negative growth of 0.5% gdp. this trend of minimal and negative growth in gdp can be attributed to moody and fitch’s global credit rating downgrade of south af rica, due to poor governance and corruption precipitated in south af rica’s state-owned entities (soes), resulting in load shedding (electricity), an increased unemployment rate (at 29%), negative growth in the financial year, expenditure of gdp at 62.5%, and a myriad of other economic deficiencies. the worst-case scenario is a further 5–7% contraction in economic growth, resulting f rom the covid-19 pandemic. manufacturing over the past two decades, south af rica’s manufacturing sector has been experiencing a covid-19 figure 1: south africa gdp annual growth rate – 1994–2019 data | 2020–2022 forecast | (source: adapted from trading economics, 2020a). t h e t h i n k e r78 significant revolution, including thorough shifts in management strategies, goods and process technologies, consumer expectations and supplier outlook, as well as competitive behaviour. manufacturing and tourism are rated as the main job providers, followed by the mining industry. a collapse of these industries will deliver a significant blow to the south af rican economy. according to the manufacturing circle (2020), south af rica requires a strong manufacturing sector in order to sustain the more than 1.6 million people it currently employs. it should also provide a platform for load and scale for key national inf rastructure such as electricity, rail and municipal services. the manufacturing sector is among the top three multiplier sectors in terms of value addition, job creation, export earnings and revenue generation, as well as a driver of tertiary education and the absorption of people into the workforce. despite these great expectations for the manufacturing industry as a driver of productivity in the south af rican economy, the contrary is revealed in recent statistics. since 2008, almost 400,000 south af rican manufacturing jobs have been lost, and manufacturing has declined f rom contributing more than 15% of gdp to just under 13% of gdp in 2016 (manufacturing circle, 2020). key factors contributing to this decline include domestic electricity supply constraints, rapid increases in administered prices, labour instability, and competition f rom unfairly incentivised imported products. projected impact during and post-covid-19 as a result of south af rica’s nationwide lockdown in response to covid-19, most manufacturing companies have closed, delivering a serious blow to the supply chain. most stores and essential services have closed, and major projects intended to boost inf rastructure and industrial development have been impacted. the dti incentive programmes, such as the critical inf rastructure programme, as well as the 12i tax allowance incentive – which focus on brownfield and greenfield projects at sezs, attracting foreign and domestic direct investment, are non-operational as a result of the lockdown. the author is involved in the incentivisation of industrial development projects, and can attest to the adverse impact on industrial development in terms of efficiency in the processing of applications and claims meant to finance industrial development projects. this particular value chain has become significantly inefficient, f rom the processing of claims, quality control, authorisation, and finally paying the claim. while a necessary precautionary measure to avoid the spread of a deadly virus, south af rica’s lockdown will – in the long term – adversely impact industrialists and the economy. a case in point is the cluster development in the figure 2: south africa manufacturing pmi – 1994–2019 data|2020–2022 forecast| (source: adapted from trading economics, 2020b). covid-19 79v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 dti, where claims to the value of r10 million – which could have been processed and paid within three to four working days – may now be delayed until the end of the lockdown. this scourge could lead to the possible closure of the cluster development in the dti, and the loss of many jobs. additionally, on the industrialist side, the supply value chain is impacted adversely since there will be operational disturbances, and this will impact some industries’ local and international markets. covid-19 has led to grim forecasts for the south af rican economy, f rom both a microand macroeconomic perspective, with estimations that 75% of smmes will close down, and an additional 400,000 jobs could be lost. an additional provision of r150 billion is being sourced for economic sustenance, and there are currently conflicting views regarding sourcing a loan f rom the international monetary fund (imf) to service the economy post-covid-19. a 5-7% contraction is projected, and the economy is at negative growth as a result of moody’s downgrade (boonzaier, 2020; de lange, 2020). according to trading economics (2020b), it is projected that the present lockdown will result in a further regression of the pmi – which has been on a downward slope for the past eight months. figure 2 explains the actual pmi manufacturing trend covering 2019 to early 2020, and provides projections for mid-2020, into 2021. it can be seen that the pmi rose by 48.1 in march 2020, whereas previously it was at 44.3. prior to march 2020, there had been a downward slope since october 2019 as a result of contraction in industrial activity, which was due to slower delivery times. these delays are an indication that suppliers are busier under normal circumstances. this illustrates the clear adverse impact of the covid-19 pandemic on global supply chains (trading economics, 2020b). it is further projected that the manufacturing pmi in south af rica will regress to 40.00 points by july 2020, as a result of credit rating downgrades and the slowing down of the production process due to covid-19. further projections estimate that manufacturing pmi in south af rica will take an upswing to 47.00 points in january 2021 – which is a sign of recovery. as for the long term, the south af rican manufacturing pmi is projected to trend around 49.00 points in 2021 and 51.00 points in 2022 (trading economics, 2020b). recommended solutions for productivity postcovid-19 for a productive post-covid-19 economy, viegi (2020) suggests that expansion and diversification will be the key drivers of long-term growth. by engaging in an export strategy, exporting national firms can capitalise on becoming more productive, competitive and innovative. this is in line with the national integrated export strategy, which aims to increase national export f rom the current 0.02% to 2% in 2030 (dti, 2017). on the industrial financing side, the dti and development finance institutions (dfis) provide industrial development incentives in support of the country’s ipap. the industrial development incentive programmes are inclusive in the master plan, with the aim of supporting and developing the manufacturing sector, developing an exportdriven economy which is globally competitive, as well as enhancing skills development in terms of contributing to product and process improvement. the positive effect of this is that productivity, wages and standard of living will increase, and generate resources for public services and redistribution. for long-term growth and resilience, there should be an incentive to boost public investment in health, education and inf rastructure (bloomberg, 2020). additionally, a limitation to monopoly power, promotion of innovation, and increase in accountability and transparency will result in a competitive environment. this scenario further reinforces the sentiments of mwambari (2020), ascertaining that this pandemic could lead to the decolonisation of af rica, in terms of self-reliance, further economic reforms, prioritisation of af rican markets, innovation, and local manufacturing embracing the objective behind the establishment of the af rica free trade agreement. additionally, this initiative will gradually lead to af rican industrial development programmes diverting f rom foreign for a productive post-covid-19 economy, viegi (2020) suggests that expansion and diversification will be the key drivers of long-term growth. by engaging in an export strategy, exporting national firms can capitalise on becoming more productive, competitive and innovative. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r80 funding to national funding drawn f rom taxation, repatriated funds, and new, higher-value exports. this perceived economic overhaul requires greater investment into the development of social sectors, such as the prioritisation of healthcare, thereby stimulating the growth of local pharmaceutical industries and biotechnology. furthermore, a key priority would be greater investment in the education and innovation sectors. conclusion this article has discussed the massive impact of covid-19 on the economy in general, and its effect on the manufacturing sector in particular. what happens next will depend on how the covid-19 crisis evolves. it is hoped that this virus will be contained, and that its transmission will be slowed down enough for production to resume, and for the economy to go back to normal. this would certainly bring relief to south af ricans, and would help companies to bounce back relatively quickly with the help of tailored government measures. if the virus continues to spread, the government will be forced to extend the lockdown, further harming the economy and the supply chain. the global outbreak of the virus could possibly become an eye-opener for the af rican continent, in terms of realising the dream of self-reliance, and of utilising natural and intellectual resources to re-industrialise and develop the continent (mwambari, 2020). the new birth of industrial development in south af rica post-covid-19 should focus on a ‘lessons learned’ path, and on an integrated industrial development strategy that involves the government, industry associations, industrialists (1st tier, 2nd tier, 3rd tier, 4th tier within supply value chains), and other relevant stakeholders. it should also assess the state of industry by means of a swot analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), and develop a path for sustainable industrial development. the key competency will be operational efficiencies within finance development institutions supporting manufacturing and industrial development, and accompanied by set targets per sector in terms of expected level of productivity, global competitiveness, contribution towards exports, and operational efficiencies within supply value chains. this requires enhanced strategic transformation processes within organisational value chains. it would also involve continuous improvement through industrial development systems’ value chains within the state departments responsible for developing the country’s industrial development policy and strategy. operations management approaches, such as business and operations strategy, market analysis, financial planning, master planning, demand management, master scheduling and order fulfilment processes, need to be integrated into the national industrial development strategy. this will result in filtering and feeding into the various sector and industry value chains, accompanied by projections and applied interventions in terms of the desired level of productivity in the south af rican economy, and in terms of manufacturing’s contribution to pmi and south af rica’s gdp. ■ references boonzaier, d. (2020). 75% of smes may not survive lockdown. [online] city press. available at: https://city-press.news24.com/business/75-of-smes-maynot-survive-lockdown-20200412 curran, e. and lyu, d. (2020). world economy watches and waits for china’s great reboot. [online] bloomberg. available at: https://www.bloomberg. com/news/articles/2020-03-07/world-economy-watches-and-waits-forchina-s-great-reboot de lange, r. (2020). sa may need to adjust budget by as much as r150bn to provide for covid-19 aftermath. [online] city press. available at: https:// city-press.news24.com/business/sa-may-need-to-adjust-budget-by-asmuch-as-r150bn-to-provide-for-covid-19-aftermath-20200412 department of health south af rica, (2020). covid-19 resources & guides. [online] available at: https://sacoronavirus.co.za. department of trade and industry south af rica, (2013). industrial policy action plan 2013–2014. [online] available at: http://www.thedti.gov.za department of trade and industry south af rica, (2015). industrial policy action plan 2015. [online] available at: http://www.thedti.gov.za department of trade and industry south af rica, (2016). industrial policy action plan 2016–2017. [online] available at: http://www.thedti.gov.za manufacturing circle, (2020). a strong and growing manufacturing sector is of vital importance to south af rica. [online] available at: https://www. manufacturingcircle.co.za/about-us-1 mwambari, d. (2020). the pandemic can be catalyst for decolonisation in af rica. [online] al jazeera. available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/ opinion/pandemic-catalyst-decolonisation-af rica-200415150535786.html trading economics, (2020a). south af rica gdp annual growth rate. [online] available at: https://tradingeconomics.com/south-af rica/gdp-growthannual. trading economics, (2020b). south af rica manufacturing pmi 1999–2020 data|2021–2022 forecast. [online] available at: https://tradingeconomics. com/south-af rica/gdp-f rom-manufacturing viegi, n. (2020). covid-19: the way we respond to this crisis will define our economic future. [online] university of pretoria. available at: https://www. up.ac.za/economics/news/post_2888028-op-ed-the-way-we-respond-tothis-crisis-will-define-our-economic-future this perceived economic overhaul requires greater investment into the development of social sectors, such as the prioritisation of healthcare, thereby stimulating the growth of local pharmaceutical industries and biotechnology. furthermore, a key priority would be greater investment in the education and innovation sectors. covid-19 109v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 b o o k r e v i e w reviewed by lesego motsage book review: 110 gendered institutions in this book are described as social structures, norms, and practices that maintain gender inequalities and stereotypes, often to the advantage of men. many political systems in af rica are patriarchal, with traditional leadership structures dominated by men. the book highlights the formal and informal political institutions that make it difficult for af rican women to gain access to political power or to have their voices heard within the af rican political establishment. additionally, many of the rules and customs of af rican political institutions are biased against women and sometimes require candidates to have a certain level of education or financial autonomy that may be more difficult for women to attain. these gendered institutions have contributed to the under-representation of af rican women in politics. while there has been progress in recent years, women remain significantly underrepresented in af rican decision-making bodies such as af rican national parliaments. this book has eight chapters, with each chapter representing a unique case study of a country in af rica. the eight af rican countries that the book focuses on are south af rica, tanzania, malawi, zimbabwe, nigeria, kenya, ghana, and botswana.  female political leaders f rom these countries face many political challenges, including sexism, gender bias, negative media coverage, societal stereotypes, and expectations about women’s roles and abilities. sexism and gender bias often manifest in various ways, including through double standards around appearance and behaviour, as well as discrimination and harassment. for example, female candidates have been scrutinised for their clothing, hair, and makeup choices. furthermore, they have been expected to conform to traditional gender roles and stereotypes in order for them to be seen as competent. negative media coverage has also significantly impacted af rican female political leaders, with women often receiving less favourable or more critical coverage than their male counterparts. this has led to public perceptions of female candidates being shaped by biased or inaccurate information, which can be challenging to overcome. furthermore, societal stereotypes and expectations about women’s roles and abilities continue to pose challenges for female political leaders.  af rican women oftentimes face pressure to balance their professional and personal lives in ways that men do not and have sometimes been perceived as being less capable or qualified than male candidates due to their gender. another challenge the book highlights is the lack of support and resources available to women who wish to enter politics. women in these af rican countries face social stigma and barriers discouraging them f rom seeking political office. they have limited access to funding and the resources necessary to run a successful campaign. as noted on page 7 of the book: ‘women have to negotiate with their husbands over funds, use their professional and private networks for fundraising, taking loans and receiving gifts’. additionally, women who do enter politics may face hostility or harassment f rom male colleagues or constituents, leading to further marginalisation and disempowerment. these challenges make it more difficult for female political leaders to succeed in their campaigns and can contribute to ongoing gender disparities in political representation and leadership. however, many women have been able to overcome these obstacles and achieve successful careers in politics, paving the way for future generations of female leaders. the book highlights the need to adopt a feminist institutionalist perspective. furthermore, it advocates for the need to modify and adapt ‘feminist institutionalism’ to af rican realities on the ground and af rican conceptions of power, feminism, and institutions. the three components of af rican feminist b o o k r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 female political leaders from these countries face many political challenges, including sexism, gender bias, negative media coverage, societal stereotypes, and expectations about women’s roles and abilities. sexism and gender bias often manifest in various ways, including through double standards around appearance and behaviour, as well as discrimination and harassment. 111v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 b o o k r e v i e w institutionalism are the re-excavation of the past, the role of af rican feminisms in reshaping patriarchal institutions, and the development of specific af rican concepts on gendered institutions. the book provides a more nuanced perspective on af rican concepts such as femocracy and the first-lady syndrome, as well as a new emphasis on a politics of insults, ridicule, and rumours that works against the participation of more women in politics. a lot has been written about af rica and af rican women, but there is a need for af ricans to write about themselves. page 242 of the book notes that ‘it has been important to ensure that the majority of contributions are written not just about af rica but also by af rican researchers’. an element that makes the book unique is that female af rican scholars contributed to the book; af rican women were part of telling their own story for a change. a critique of the book is that the sampling of the countries was not fairly done, as there is a lack of representation f rom other parts of af rica. no country f rom north af rica was represented; only two east af rican countries and one country f rom west af rica were chosen. the remaining five countries are f rom the southern parts of af rica, more specifically the sadc region; therefore, the title would have been more fitting as gendered institutions and women’s political representation in sadc instead of using the term ‘af rica’. however, the author indicates that these eight countries were chosen strategically as some countries, like ghana, nigeria, botswana, and malawi, have low representation of women in politics, while others, like south af rica, zimbabwe, tanzania, and kenya, are known to have high representation of women in politics. nonetheless, using case studies f rom eight countries out of a continent that consists of 54 countries is not enough to draw a conclusion on women’s overall political representation in af rica. while efforts have been made to address some systemic barriers to women’s political representation in af rica, addressing the root causes of gendered institutions requires significant social and cultural changes, political will, and investments in women’s leadership development. some countries have implemented quota systems and affirmative action policies to ensure women are represented in political institutions. others have focused on increasing access to education and resources for women or on changing public attitudes toward women’s political leadership. there have also been initiatives to train and mentor women interested in pursuing political careers, providing them with the skills and support necessary to succeed in a challenging environment. by working together to address these challenges, we can create more equitable and inclusive political systems that benefit all members of the society. abstract this contribution reflects on racism within the workplace f rom a labour law perspective. it deliberates on the approach adopted by the south af rican courts of law in dealing with the vexed issue of racism at work. in particular, this contribution focuses on the following themes: the relevant legislative f ramework, determining racism in the workplace, the nature and impact of racism at work, dealing with false accusations of racism, the use of racial slurs on social media, racism-related offduty misconduct, and the dismissal of an employee at the behest of third parties. it concludes by arguing that racism in the workplace cannot and should not be tolerated. furthermore, it is a broader societal problem that must be addressed by all stakeholders. such stakeholders include employees, employers, trade unions, workplace fora, labour inspectors, the director-general of the department of employment and labour, and the commission for employment equity. in dealing with racism, sight should not be lost of the fact that courts of law cannot unilaterally eradicate this scourge. south af ricans f rom all walks of life have a role to play. after all, in as much as racism is taught, it can and must be unlearned. racists beware some labour law perspectives on racism in the workplace 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 by letlhokwa george mpedi | opinion opinion this contribution shares some labour perspectives on racism at work. it reflects on how courts have dealt with this thorny issue by addressing a variety of questions which include the relevance of the context in determining racism in the workplace, how to deal with a false accusation of racism, the use of racial slurs on social media, off-duty misconduct introduction racism has demonstrated over time to be one of the perennial challenges experienced in the world of work the world over. in south africa, racism was one of the central features of the apartheid system. as dugard (2018: 89) puts it, ‘[i]nstitutionalised race discrimination was the hallmark of apartheid’. racism featured in all aspects of life, including sport (see lapchick, 1979; martin, 1984), religion (see tiryakian, 1957), and employment (see mariotti, 2009). the demise of the apartheid system did not spell the end of racism in south africa. instances of racism are reported from time to time in many sectors of society, ranging from sport to business. in the work environment, the constitutional court in rustenburg platinum mine v saewa obo bester and others (2018) 39 ilj 1503 (cc) (at paragraph 52) delineated the situation as follows: ‘racism and racial prejudices have not disappeared overnight, and they stem, as demonstrated in our history, from a misconceived view that some are superior to others. these prejudices do not only manifest themselves with regards to race but it can also be seen with reference to gender discrimination. in both instances, such prejudices are evident in the workplace where power relations have the ability ‘to create a work environment where the right to dignity of employees is impaired’’. in an effort to eradicate racism, post-apartheid south africa established a legislative framework to promote equality and to prohibit unfair discrimination. these laws include the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996 (hereinafter the constitution); the promotion of equality and prevention of unfair discrimination act 4 of 2000; labour laws such as the employment equity act 55 of 1998 (hereinafter the eea); and the labour relations act 66 of 1995 (hereinafter the lra). the use of law to proscribe and punish racism makes sense as racial discrimination was legally sanctioned during the apartheid era. the following apartheid laws spring to mind: population registration act 30 of 1950 (created a national race register and the race classification board); group areas act 41 of 1950 (created different residential areas for different races); native building workers act 27 of 1951 (made it a criminal offence for bantu to perform skilled work in urban areas except in sections designed for black occupation); bantu authorities act 68 of 1951 (made provision for the homelands); native labour (settlement of disputes) act 48 of 1953 (prohibited strike action by black people); bantu education act 47 of 1953 (made provision for racially segregated education facilities); native (prohibition of interdicts) act 64 of 1956 (denied black people the opportunity to appeal to the courts against forced removals); and extension of university education act 45 of 1959 (stopped black students f rom attending white universities). needless to say and as shown in this contribution, having relevant laws enacted does not automatically lead to compliance. old habits, as the saying goes, die hard. as appositely stated by chief justice mogoeng in south af rican revenue service v commission for conciliation, mediation and arbitration and others [2017] 1 bllr 8 (cc) (at paragraph 1): ‘there are many bridges yet to be crossed in our journey f rom crude and legalised racism to a new order where social cohesion, equality and the effortless observance of the right to dignity is a practical reality’. this contribution shares some labour perspectives on racism at work. it reflects on how courts have dealt with this thorny issue by addressing a variety of questions which include the relevance of the context in determining racism in the workplace, how to deal with a false accusation of racism, the use of racial slurs on social media, off-duty misconduct (related to racism), and dismissal of an employee at the behest of third parties. it concludes by providing a succinct way forward on eliminating racism at work. 2 t h e t h i n k e r opinion relevant legislative framework the legislative f ramework dealing with racism at work is anchored in the constitution. the constitution, which is the supreme law of the country (preamble, sections 1(c) and 2 of the constitution), lists the achievement of equality and non-racialism as some of the values of south af rica (section 1(a)-(b) of the constitution). it recognises the right to equality as a fundamental right (section 9 of the constitution). furthermore, it prohibits unfair discrimination based on, among other grounds, race, ethnic, or social origin and colour. the right to equality and the right not to be unfairly discriminated against are not absolute and so is every right contained in the bill of rights (see section 36 of the constitution). it is therefore not surprising that laws and affirmative action measures can be introduced to ‘protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination’ (section 9(2) of the constitution). in the area of labour law, the most notable piece of legislation is the eea. the eea has been enacted to ‘promote the constitutional right of equality and the exercise of true democracy; eliminate unfair discrimination in employment; ensure the implementation of employment equity to redress the effects of discrimination; achieve a diverse workforce broadly representative of our people; promote economic development and efficiency in the workforce; and give effect to the obligations of the republic as a member of the international labour organisation’ (preamble of the eea; see also section 2 of the eea). section 6(1) prohibits unfair discrimination, direct or indirect, based on inter alia race, ethnic, or social origin and colour. it should be recalled that according to section 6(2) of the eea: ‘it is not unfair discrimination to – (a) take affirmative action measures consistent with the purpose of this act; or (b) distinguish, exclude or prefer any person on the basis of an inherent requirement of a job.’ the lra also addresses the issue of racism in the workplace. it classifies a dismissal as automatically unfair if the reason for such dismissal is that ‘the employer unfairly discriminated against an employee, directly or indirectly, on any arbitrary ground, including, but not limited to race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, political opinion, culture, language, marital status or family responsibility’ (section 187(1)(f) of the lra). racism in the workplace: a cursory overview of its form and impact racism in the workplace, which is a ground for dismissal (misconduct), can take a variety of forms. this includes racial slurs which are defined as ‘derogatory or disrespectful nickname[s] for a racial group’ (croom, 2011: 343–344). furthermore, racism at work can be overt or covert. racism is legally, morally, and otherwise repugnant because it dehumanises the victim(s). as aptly articulated by the durban declaration and programme of action of the world conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance (adopted on 8 september 2001): ‘racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, where they amount to racism and racial discrimination, constitute serious violations of and obstacles to the full enjoyment of all human rights and deny the selfevident truth that all human beings are born f ree and equal in dignity and rights, are an obstacle to f riendly and peaceful relations among peoples and nations, and are among the root causes of many internal and international conflicts’. viewed f rom a workplace perspective, one can argue that racism has the potential to undermine good working relations in that it impedes racial harmony among employees. furthermore, as argued in edcon limited v cantamessa and others [2019] jol 46015 (lc), it can negatively impact on the business of the employer, particularly when left unpunished. the aforementioned views were echoed by the constitutional court in rustenburg platinum mine v saewa obo bester and others (at paragraph 56) as follows: ‘our courts have made it clear, and rightly so, that racism in the workplace cannot be tolerated. employees may not act in a manner designed to destroy harmonious working relations with their employer or colleagues. they owe a duty of good faith to their employers which duty includes the obligation to further the employer’s business interest. in making racist comments in the public domain, the actions of the employee may foreseeably negatively affect the business of his employer or the working relationship between him and his employer or colleagues.’ some commentators went as far as pointing out that there are no winners in the racism debacle, as it affects both the perpetrator and the victim 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion (see reeves, 2000). for instance, in his address to the united nations general assembly on 3 october 1994, mandela pointed out that: ‘[t]he very fact that racism degrades both the perpetrator and the victim commands that, if we are true to our commitment to protect human dignity, we fight on until victory is achieved.’ the relevance of context in establishing racism many racial epithets, defined as ‘derogatory expressions, understood to convey hatred and contempt toward their targets’ (hom, 2008), are well known in south af rica and they include baboon (bobbejaan), kaffir (kaffer), and monkey (aap). there have been instances where a couple of racial epithets have been used together. for instance, in lebowa platinum mines ltd v hill [1998] 7 bllr 666 (lac), an employee was disciplined for using insulting or abusive language in the sense that it was alleged that he addressed a black colleague as ‘bobbejaankoppie’ (baboon head). while some racist utterances are identifiable at first sight, this does not apply to all racial slurs. for example, calling a colleague a black man may be innocent or malicious. the issue is how one establishes whether words are racist or not. in rustenburg platinum mine v saewa obo bester and others, in a matter involving a situation where a white employee addressed his black colleague as ‘swart man’ (black man), the constitutional court found that ‘the test was whether, objectively, the words were reasonably capable of conveying to the reasonable hearer that the phrase had a racist meaning’ (at paragraph [50]). therefore, the test is an objective one. the constitutional court found that the test regarding whether words are derogatory and racist is objective. in their quest to establish whether there is implicit, covert, and indirect racism, the south af rican courts have invariably found context to be important (see rustenburg platinum mine v saewa obo bester and others and modikwa mining personnel services v commission for conciliation, mediation and arbitration and others [2018] jol 40266 (lc)). are racist tendencies restricted to one race group? racism is not race-specific, in the sense that it can be perpetrated by any race group. black persons (used broadly to include af ricans, coloureds, and indians) are not immune f rom committing racist acts. this is sadly the case even though one would expect such a group to fully appreciate the pain of being on the receiving end of racism. as shown in modikwa mining personnel services v commission for conciliation, mediation and arbitration and others, a black employee was dismissed for uttering a racist remark at a work meeting, i.e. ‘we need to get rid of the whites’. the other contentious issue that needs to be adequately settled is the question of whether persons of the same race group can be racist towards one another. for instance, can a black man be racist to a fellow black man? there is a view that the answer to such a question is no (wadula, 2019). notwithstanding what the views may be on the subject, one fact remains: the uttering of racial epithets cannot and should not be tolerated, especially in the workplace. the use of racist language at work should invariably attract a sanction. dealing with a false accusation of racism it is abundantly clear that racism should not be tolerated, particularly in the workplace (see crown chickens (pty) ltd t/a rocklands poultry v kapp & others [2002]6 bllr 493 (lac) and city of cape town v freddie and others [2016] 6 bllr 568 (lac)). however, a question that begs attention is what about false allegations of racism? can (an) employee(s) deceitfully accuse fellow worker(s) of racism? experiencing racism surely hurts. conversely, it should be painful to be branded, without just cause and excuse, as a racist. as harshly as racism should be dealt with, it is only sensible that the same favour should be extended to false accusations of racism. such blame should, in the workplace context, be treated as misconduct. 4 t h e t h i n k e r racism is not race-specific, in the sense that it can be perpetrated by any race group. black persons (used broadly to include africans, coloureds, and indians) are not immune from committing racist acts. this is sadly the case even though one would expect such a group to fully appreciate the pain of being on the receiving end of racism. opinion branded on facebook by the applicant, as being racist’ (at paragraph 8). use of racial slurs on social media the constitution recognises every person’s right to f reedom of expression (section 16(1) of the constitution). however, such a right is not absolute. it can be limited. for example, section 16(2)(c) of the constitution states clearly that the right to f reedom of expression does not extend to ‘advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.’ this important provision was emphasised in edcon limited v cantamessa and others. in this case, the labour court confirmed the dismissal of an employee who posted a racial slur on facebook while on leave. it ruled that the employer can in principle discipline an employee as long as it can establish the requisite connection between the misconduct and its business (at page 14). while in the case in question the comments made had no connection with the employer’s business, it was sufficient connection that the employee indicated in the post that she worked for the employer. this was found to compromise the good name of the employer in the eyes of the general public. employees must avoid posting racial slurs on social media. failure to do so could lead them straight to the unemployment line. it does not matter whether one uses his or her own device or data. racial slurs posted on social media that connect an employer to the employer’s business will most likely attract a disciplinary action that can result in the dismissal of the offending employee. off-duty misconduct what an employee does after work is none of the employer’s business (see edcon limited v cantamessa our courts have indeed accepted that groundless allegations of racism could amount to serious misconduct. for instance, in sacwu & another v ncp chlorchem (pty) ltd & others [2007] 7 bllr 663 (lc) (at paragraphs 26–28), the labour court found that: ‘clearly, if an employee has conducted himself in a manner which may justify the allegation by another employee or employees that he is a racist or is displaying a racist attitude, then such allegation needs to be properly made to the employer and these allegations need to be investigated, if necessary through the institution of disciplinary action…patently clearly, one needs to be able to accuse a person of being a racist or displaying a racist attitude without fear that making such allegations lead to one’s dismissal. equally clearly, if you make such allegations that a fellow employee is a racist or is displaying racist attitudes and you make them without justification or reasonable cause, therefore, you must accept that this will most likely lead to disciplinary action being instituted against you. equally, it should be clear to any employee who makes unfounded allegations against a fellow employee that he or she is racist or that he or she is displaying a racist attitude, that this will in most instances, in my view, amount to serious misconduct which may lead to that employee’s dismissal. racial harmony in the workplace must be of paramount importance to each and every employer and employee alike. just as racist behaviour needs to be rooted out, allowing employees to willy-nilly accuse fellow employees of being racist or displaying racist attitudes, must be addressed with equal fervour by employers if such allegations are baseless and made without reasonable cause therefore. clearly, to allow such allegations to be made without there being a proper and reasonable basis therefore will be equally destructive to racial harmony in the workplace.’ in chemical, energy, paper, printing, wood and allied workers union obo dietlof v frans loots building material trust t/a penny pinchers [2016] 10 balr 1060 (ccma), the commission for conciliation mediation and arbitration found the dismissal of an employee who made a false accusation of racism on social media to be fair. in this matter, the employee falsely accused a manager of kissing only white women when congratulating them at an award ceremony and ignoring black women. it argued that the actions of the employee ‘could have serious consequences for the business of [the] company as it was being 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 the constitution recognises every person’s right to f reedom of expression (section 16(1) of the constitution). however, such a right is not absolute. it can be limited. opinion and others). that is the general rule. however, does that imply that employees are at liberty to engage in racist behaviour or utter racist slurs after work and/ or outside of the employer’s premises? the answer is not necessarily. the point is that there are exceptions to the general rule. there are indeed instances where an employer’s disciplinary arm can be long enough to reach and discipline an employee who misconducts himself or herself after work. in national union of mineworkers & other v east rand gold & uranium co ltd (1986) 7 ilj 739 (ic), the then industrial court rejected a plea to reinstate an employee who was disciplined and dismissed for assaulting a fellow worker on a bus while being transported f rom work to home. the principle is that an employer has the jurisdiction to discipline and dismiss an employee if the racist conduct is committed by an employee while he or she is still within the course and scope of his or her employment. there must be a connection between the misconduct and the employer. the protection that the employer has to extend to employees against racism is not restricted to the work premises. it extends to employer-provided accommodation. in biggar v city of johannesburg (emergency management services) (2017) 38 ilj 1806 (lc), a black employee and his family who lived at housing apartments provided by the employer were subjected to severe racism perpetrated by his coworkers, who also resided at the housing apartments. the labour court found that the employer failed to take the necessary steps to protect the employee and his family against racism and adequately deal with racial harassment. it ordered the employer to pay the employee 12 months’ compensation. it is important to note that when it comes to off-duty misconduct, the fact that one was on leave may not always come handy as a defence. two cases come to mind. the first one is that of khutshwa v ssab hardox (2006) 27 ilj 1067 (bca), in which an employee on leave f rom work was indicted for shooting his wife and her boyf riend. it was found that the employer was justified in dismissing an employee in light of the serious nature of the charges and that ‘the employer has a duty to ensure that the workplace environment is safe and secure’ (at page 1071). the essence of the matter was that the employee’s involvement in a criminal act placed the relationship of trust between himself and the employer under strain. in the area of racism, the pertinent case which is covered above under the use of racial slur on social media is that of edcon limited v cantamessa and others, where an employee was dismissed for using a racial slur on social media while on annual leave. dismissal at the request of a third party the employment relationship is, generally speaking, a matter between an employer and an employee. parties to an employment contract are invariably an employer and employee. thus, the termination of such a contract is mainly a matter between the two parties. however, there are instances where an employer can terminate the contract of employment at the instance of a third party. a leading case on the subject of racism in the workplace is lebowa platinum mines ltd v hill. in this case, a trade union threatened to embark on a strike action should the employer fail to dismiss an employee for using racist language. such a dismissal is recognised in south af rican labour law as dismissal due to incapacity. the employee concerned is incapable of continuing with his or her employment due to a threat by a third party. such a dismissal will be fair if it complies with, inter alia, the following principles which were expounded in lebowa platinum mines ltd v hill (at paragraph 22) and summarised as follows: ‘(i) the mere fact that such a demand had been made was not enough to justify the dismissal; (ii) the demand had to have sufficient foundation; (iii) the threat of action by the third party if its demand was not met had to be real and serious; (iv) the employer had to have no other option but to dismiss; (v) the employer must have made a reasonable effort to dissuade the third party f rom carrying out its threat; (vi) the employer should investigate and consider alternatives to dismissal and consult with the [employee]; (vii) the extent of injustice to the employee must be considered; (viii) the blameworthiness of the employee’s conduct should be taken into account.’ racism in the workplace – the way forward it will take more than (labour) legislation to eradicate racism in the workplace. the issue is that racism is a broader societal problem. so, all stakeholders will need to play their part. in as much as racism is learned, it can and must be unlearned. as boncheck (2016) puts it: ‘unlearning is not about forgetting. it’s about the ability to choose an alternative mental 6 t h e t h i n k e r opinion extension of university education act 45 of 1959 group areas act 41 of 1950 hom, c. (2008). the semantics of racial epithets. the journal of philosophy, vol. 105(8), pp. 416–440 labour relations act 66 of 1995 lapchick, r.e. (1979). south africa: sport and apartheid politics. the annals of the american academy of political and social science, vol. 445, pp. 155–165 mandela, n. (1994). address to the united nations general assembly, 3 october 1994. [online] united nations. available at: https://www.un.org/ en/events/mandeladay/legacy.shtml mariotti, m. (2009). labour markets during apartheid in south africa. [online] research school of economics. available at: https://www.rse. anu.edu.au/media/43878%5c503.pdf martin, p. (1984). south african sport: apartheid’s achilles heel? the world today, vol. 40(6), pp. 234–243 native building workers act 27 of 1951 native (prohibition of interdicts) act 64 of 1956 population registration act 30 of 1950 reeves, k.m. (2000). racism and projection of the shadow. psychotherapy: theory, research, practice, training, vol 37(1), pp. 80–88 tiryakian, e.t. (1957). apartheid and religion. theology today, vol. 14(3), pp. 385–400 wadula, p. (2019). can blacks be racists towards one another? [online] news24. available at: https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/canblacks-be-racists-towards-one-another-20190329 model or paradigm. when we learn, we add new skills or knowledge to what we already know. when we unlearn, we step outside the mental model in order to choose a different one.’ as society at large grapples with the challenge of unlearning and eventually eliminating racism, some key stakeholders have an important role to play in endeavours to eradicate racism in the workplace. these stakeholders include employees, employers, trade unions, workplace fora, labour inspectors, the director-general of the department of employment and labour, and the commission for employment equity (see chapter 5 of the eea on monitoring, enforcement, and legal proceedings). all said and done, racism in the workplace should not be tolerated. both real and false cases of racism should be handled with the harshness they deserve. south af rican courts, including the constitutional court, have – as shown in this contribution – led the way in this regard. however, this is not a war that can be won through the courts alone. we all have a role, no matter how modest, to play. this call was also sounded by the constitutional court in south af rican revenue service v commission for conciliation, mediation and arbitration and others (at paragraph 8) as follows: ‘south af ricans of all races have the shared responsibility to find ways to end racial hatred and its outstandingly bad outward manifestations. after all, racism was the very foundation and essence of the apartheid system. but this would have to be approached with maturity and great wisdom, obviously without playing down the horrendous nature of the slur. for, the most counter productive approach to its highly sensitive, emotive and hurtful effects would be an equally emotional and retaliatory reaction.’ as the fight against racism rages on, all that can be said, at least for now, is that racists beware! references bantu authorities act 68 of 1951 bantu education act 47 of 1953 boncheck, m. (2016). why the problem with learning is unlearning. [online] harvard business review. available at: https://hbr.org/2016/11/ why-the-problem-with-learning-is-unlearning constitution of the republic of south africa, (1996) croom, a.m. (2011). slurs. language sciences, vol. 33, pp. 343–358 dugard, j. (2018). confronting apartheid: a personal history of south africa, namibia and palestine. auckland park: jacana media employment equity act 55 of 1998 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion t h e t h i n k e r45 as covid-19 sweeps across the globe, one of the biggest questions in many minds is ‘how will this crisis affect af rica?’ (nyenswah, 2020; pillay, 2020; wood, 2020; world bank, 2020a). fears abound that the pandemic will multiply and deepen existing socio-economic issues, such as high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality. some speculations are stoked by geopolitical relations and partnerships that underpin the role of foreign powers, such as china, in af rica (tremann, 2020). other predictions consider the socio-cultural dimensions unique to the continent that would likely hamper extrapolations f rom western or eastern examples to date (broadbent and smart, 2020; kaseje, 2020). often these speculations are characterised by a sense of risk and a pessimistic outlook on af rica’s capacity to respond effectively to the threat posed by covid-19 (holmes et al., 2020). in this article we argue that many af rican governments have so far responded more proactively and effectively to covid-19 than some governments in high income countries (hics), and that much of this capacity to respond effectively can be explained by an existing culture of using evidence to inform policy decision-making. decision-making in the time of covid-19 a key challenge for many decision-makers in these uncertain times is the rapidly expanding and changing knowledge and information base on covid-19. response strategies to contain the pandemic require a sensitive design that evidence which forces decision-makers to adjust and review strategies and policies on an ongoing basis (mbuvha and marwala, 2020). the vast amount of evidence and misinformation can be paralysing for decision-makers and citizens alike. as the world grapples with an overwhelming number of unanswered questions in relation to this pandemic, and a rising tide of often highlyspeculative new research, our leaders’ decisionmaking is in the spotlight. crucially, the different trajectories of covid-19 in countries suggest that adopting evidenceinformed response strategies contributes positively to controlling the pandemic. politicians and leaders stress a need for ‘following the science’ and science advisors and governmental advisory committees are in a new, unfamiliar spotlight. supporting such institutional mechanisms for evidence-informed decision-making is a wider community of global institutions, organisations, by nasreen jessani, laurenz langer, carina van rooyen and ruth stewart covid-19 evidence for decisions in the time of covid-19 eyes africa on © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 46v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 and individuals that produce policy-relevant evidence and work to increase the use of the best available evidence in decision-making. they specialise in rigorous analysis of the full body of available evidence and help to sort fact f rom fiction, supporting decision-makers to navigate the evidence in almost real time. this evidence community is suddenly needed more than ever in national and global decision-making systems. so, with our eyes turned to af rica, how is our af rican evidence community faring in the time of covid-19, and how is its response helping to shape the impact of the pandemic across the continent? increased demand for evidence covid-19 is arriving on the continent and into health systems that are significantly different f rom those in the rest of the world. af rican health systems have both advantages and disadvantages compared to health systems in the wider international community. while the hiv/aids and ebola pandemics have left many af rican countries with the experience and skills needed to manage large-scale health crises, many basic health system functions – such as vaccinations and supply of medicines – are often underfunded and heavily reliant on donor funding. with the world shifting its efforts and resources to covid-19 responses (see the gates foundation’s massive reallocation of funding), af rican health systems face a financial risk for essential basic services at the same time as they have to design an effective covid-19 response. while the world’s – and af rica’s – focus to date has largely been the pandemic’s case growth and mortality rate, af rica is facing a pandemic for which our social and economic capacities arguably require greater attention than our health systems. millions on the continent are already feeling the impact of unemployment, hunger, and social unrest magnified by the pandemic, while few have been affected by the clinical manifestation of the virus. country-wide lockdowns have a far greater negative social and economic impact in economies with large informal sectors, much smaller social safety nets, and dense urban townships and informal settlements (world bank, 2020b). the implications of these unique realities are that af rican decision-makers have a different demand for evidence and need to be able to design a more holistic covid-19 response that, f rom day one, is more sensitive to the socio-economic risks presented by the pandemic, and builds on the existing expertise and experience of managing previous pandemics. to this twin challenge, af rica’s evidence community is responding with cross-sectoral research, monitoring, and evaluation to inform decision-making. for example, the south af rican government has explicitly requested research advice not only in relation to health, but also for education, economic and social policies (af rica centre for evidence, 2020). af rican researchers are also producing evidence on how to protect and prioritise already existing health interventions which can increase health system resilience and preparedness for covid-19. for example, ugandan researchers have produced a rapid evidence review on infection prevention control practices for district health services in uganda (centre for rapid evidence synthesis, 2020a). evidence generation and use by africans for africa we are seeing af rican nations take the lead in the generation and use of evidence for decisionmaking and in the solutions being sought out to tackle the pandemic. almost immediately after the pandemic was declared, some af rican nations responded with explicit evidence-informed mitigation strategies. this is in stark contrast to the speed of the response in some other, much betterresourced health systems. in general, some af rican states implemented strict lockdown policies much earlier than many european and american countries, often adopting such policies even before any deaths had been recorded. these decisions drew heavily on evidence-informed policy advice by the who and the af rica centre for disease control, as well as observations of the emerging data on the effectiveness of lockdowns in other countries at different stages of the pandemic. crucially, these decisions also drew on local reviews that assessed the transferability of the existing international evidence, such as a rapid review conducted in uganda on the effectiveness of lockdowns (centre for rapid evidence synthesis, 2020b). in addition, individual countries such as south af rica led the world in introducing mass screening by community health workers very early in the manifestation of the pandemic. universities and other producers of research across the continent covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r47 mobilised quickly to contribute to the generation of equipment, the development of affordable test kits, and the conducting of multi-arm vaccine trials. these advances have included, for example, the development and trialling of a rapid covid-19 test in senegal which can provide results in ten minutes (haque, 2020), the contactless delivery of samples for testing using drones in ghana, as well as virtual hackathons to find af rican digital solutions to combat covid-19, facilitated by the who (bright, 2020). in response to multiple complex demands for evidence, we have seen a rise in locally relevant rapid production of evidence to inform af rica’s covid-19 response. this local supply f rom af rican academics and researchers of relevant evidence is multifaceted, including responsive evidence syntheses, rapid responses, surveys, advisories, and guideline documents for government decisionmakers. the supply is driven by af rican research organisations and pre-established evidence broker organisations such as the af rican centre for rapid evidence synthesis, the af rica evidence network, effective basic services, and the af rican institute for development policy. for a full list of af rican organisations supporting the use of evidence, see the continent-wide geomap published by the af rica evidence network (2020a). these institutions are tapping into their already established relationships with government and civil society decision-makers to provide responsive evidence services to support national policy and practice. the supply is also informed by continental priority-setting exercises for research, driven by the af rican academy of sciences (2020), and by the participation of af rican researchers in contributing to global efforts to synthesise evidence through the covid-end initiative (mcmaster health forum, 2020). the evidence-informed response across af rican states has been led by high-level and crossgovernmental leadership. for example, president cyril ramaphosa of south af rica has repeatedly stressed that the country’s response is based on the best available evidence, with a range of crossgovernmental teams reviewing and analysing health and socio-economic evidence on an ongoing basis. president nana akufo-addo of ghana and nasir el-rufai, governor of kaduna state in nigeria, both spoke publicly in a recent webinar, alongside some of the world’s leading academics, about their policy responses to the covid-19 pandemic, with f requent references to the evidence bases that guided their decision-making (af rica.com, 2020). this use of evidence to guide decision-making in response to covid-19 is in contrast to the approaches of national leaders in other countries – such as the united states, sweden, and brazil – who have downplayed the risk of the pandemic and promoted distinctively non-evidence-informed health advice. leave no african behind whilst fears are mounting for those living in poverty across the continent, and manifestations of elements such as data-poverty and technologypoverty are being felt, af rican governments have taken stronger measures than their international peers to protect the most vulnerable sectors of their populations. from the onset of the pandemic, governments were keenly aware of the risk covid-19 posed to populations living in overcrowded conditions, with poor nutrition, and with pre-existing conditions such as hiv/aids. to protect these populations, governments have gone to great lengths to design tailored covid-19 response strategies aimed at protecting the most vulnerable. this includes, for example, ghana using historic pre-paid records and geo-location to deliver food parcels to those most in need, and south af rica setting up special isolation sites for individuals who test positive for covid-19 but cannot self-isolate at home. we have witnessed a flurry of activity f rom advocacy organisations in ensuring that the voices of ordinary citizens do not go unheard, and that their needs are met. in cameroon, for example, the evidence community is mobilising to communicate evidence around covid-19 at a community level by using local sign language and whilst fears are mounting for those living in poverty across the continent, and manifestations of elements such as data-poverty and technology-poverty are being felt, african governments have taken stronger measures than their international peers to protect the most vulnerable sectors of their populations. covid-19 48v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 pidgin english for people living with disabilities within their communities (ebase af rica, 2020). again, this contrasts sharply with international examples – such as the united states and the united kingdom – where more vulnerable and marginalised members of the population are experiencing significantly worse clinical outcomes during the pandemic. african evidence solidarity in response to the pandemic there is a general groundswell in calls for solidarity; so too with the evidence community in af rica. partnerships to assist with evidence production, collation, and use of evidence are appearing nationally, regionally, and globally as the lynchpin for quick but measured evidence-informed decisions. such partnerships have demonstrated the value of solidarity in times where collaboration amplifies and multiplies the abilities of the entire evidence community to respond effectively. regional as well as global evidence networks – such as cochrane af rica, the network of impact evaluation researchers in af rica, and the af rica evidence network – are working to find, appraise, and publicly share the best available evidence and in some cases recommendations for a wide range of covid-19 relevant issues and decision implications. these efforts produce a multiplier effect, while reducing duplication and redundancy. it is thanks to the long-term commitment to partnerships f rom evidence leaders in af rica (see af rica evidence network, 2020b) that these networks were already in place prior to covid-19, with established relationships and trust enabling af rican solidarity to translate into evidence solidarity for crisis response. local capacity to provide, share, and use relevant and timely evidence is contributing to evidenceinformed solutions to the pandemic in af rica. while there are 54 countries on the continent, each with its own unique circumstances, there are values, histories, and traditions that connect us. these connections provide the perfect opportunity for leveraging pan-af rican networks, capacities, and knowledge – and strengthening these as we prepare for a new future over the many years in which we will feel the continued impact of covid-19. as we progress through the various phases of the pandemic and its effects on this continent, we should continue to learn f rom each other, support one another, and serve as examples to the rest of the world. let us draw on the bestavailable evidence to inform our decisions and monitor their impacts. let us share our successes, our challenges, our wins, and our losses. af rican countries, and af rica’s evidence community, are rising to the challenge of responding to covid-19 in every way that they can. ■ references af rica centre for evidence, (2020). ace’s response to covid-19. [online] available at: https://www.af ricacentreforevidence.org/ af rica evidence network, (2020a). who is working on eidm in af rica? [online] available at: https://www.af ricaevidencenetwork.org/en/eidm-inaf rica/#who af rica evidence network, (2020b). af rica evidence leadership award. [online] available at: https://www.af ricaevidencenetwork.org/en/learningspace/article/6/ af rica.com, (2020). this isn’t the west – how af rica’s informal sector reacts to covid-19, virtual conference. [online] available at: https:// virtualconferenceaf rica.com af rican academy of sciences, (2020). research and development goals for covid-19 in af rica – the af rican academy of sciences priority setting exercise. [online] available at: https://www.aasciences.af rica/sites/default/ files/2020-04/research%20and%20development%20goals%20for%20 covid-19%20in%20af rica.pdf bright, j. (2020). who af rica hosts hackathons, offers seed funds to fight covid-19. [online] tech crunch. available at: https://techcrunch. com/2020/04/06/who-af rica-hosts-hackathons-offers-seed-funds-to-fightcovid-19/ broadbent, a. & smart, b. (2020). why a one-size-fits-all approach to covid-19 could have lethal consequences. [online] the conversation. available at: https://theconversation.com/why-a-one-size-fits-all-approachto-covid-19-could-have-lethal-consequences-134252 centre for rapid evidence synthesis, (2020a). covid-19 control: what can research evidence tell us about covid-19 infection prevention control (ipc) practices for health facilities at the district level. [online] available at: https:// aenweb.blob.core.windows.net/aenweb/pages/files/uganda_rapid_review_ infection_control_practices_in_lower_health_facilities.pdf centre for rapid evidence synthesis, (2020b). covid-19 control: how can an lmic implement a jurisdictional lockdown to prevent spread of infection in the community. [online] available at: https://acres.or.ug/2020/04/23/newbrief-how-to-implement-a-jurisdictional-lockdown/ ebase af rica, (2020). twitter status 28 april 2020. [online] twitter. available at: https://twitter.com/ebase_af rica/status/1255176695444918274?s=20 kaseje, n. (2020). why sub-saharan af rica needs a unique response to covid-19. [online] world economic forum. available at: https://www. weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/why-sub-saharan-af rica-needs-a-uniqueresponse-to-covid-19/ haque, n. (2020). senegal trials begin for $1 covid-19 test kit. [online] al jazeera. available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/senegaltrials-1-covid-19-test-kit-200428132313740.html holmes, c., lake, a. and schneidman, w. (2020). it’s time to help af rica fight the virus. [online] foreign policy. available at: https://foreignpolicy. com/2020/04/29/af rica-coronavirus-pandemic-united-states-europe/ mbuvha, r. and marwala, t. (2020). on data-driven management of covid-19 outbreak in south af rica. [online] medrxiv preprint. available at: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.20057133v1.full.pdf nyenswah, t. (2020). af rica has a covid-19 time bomb to defuse. [online] world economic forum. available at: https://www.weforum.org/ agenda/2020/04/af rica-covid-19-time-bomb-defuse/ pillay, d. (2020). low covid-19 death toll raises hopes af rica may be spared worst. [online] financial times. available at: https://www.ft.com/content/ e9cf5ed0-a590-4bd6-8c00-b41d0c4ae6e0 tremann, c. (2020). as af rica prepares to fight covid-19, china steps up. [online] the interpreter. available at: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/theinterpreter/af rica-prepares-fight-covid-19-china-steps-up wood, g. (2020). think 168 000 ventilators is too few? try three. [online] the atlantic. available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/ why-covid-might-hit-af rican-nations-hardest/609760/ world bank, (2020a). covid-19 (coronavirus) drives sub-saharan af rica towards first recession in 25 years. press release no. 2020/099/afr. [online] available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/04/09/ covid-19-coronavirus-drives-sub-saharan-af rica-toward-first-recession-in25-years world bank, (2020b). for sub-saharan af rica, coronavirus crisis calls for policies for greater resilience. [online] available at: https://www.worldbank. org/en/region/af r/publication/for-sub-saharan-af rica-coronavirus-crisiscalls-for-policies-for-greater-resilience covid-19 abstract exclusion f rom the category of full humanity constructs certain populations as ‘ungrievable’ or ‘unworthy of grief ’ after death in a way that creates and reinforces radical vulnerability in the conditions they experience. this argument f rom judith butler resonates clearly with what decolonial thinkers have described as a fundamental feature of how racism emerges and operates in the modern world system. building on these understandings, this article considers the potential and limitations of working with grief as a conceptual f ramework for tackling the apathy of whiteness as part of anti-racist work. 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review how do we live and lose together? considering a politics of grief for anti-racist praxis that tackles oppressor identity in post-colonial spaces by kyla hazell | peer review peer review exploring ungrievability as a dimension of coloniality, i considered the potential and limitations of working with grief as a conceptual framework, particularly for moving dominant or oppressor identities toward the work of structural transformation. with race remaining a significant determinant of life possibility and experience in south africa, this meant tackling whiteness. introduction in her book precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence (2004), judith butler argues that certain populations are culturally rendered ‘ungrievable’ or ‘unworthy of grief’ in a way that creates and reinforces radical vulnerability in the conditions they experience. working f rom the belief that grief ordinarily attaches to the trauma of losing human life, ungrievability represents an exclusionary zone outside normative ideas of the human, a boundary beyond which certain lives are not granted full recognition or seen as worthy of grief after death. as part of theoretical research conducted between 2015 and 2017, i placed this understanding of differential vulnerability in conversation with decolonial thought. as a young, white, female, eight-generational settler in post-1994 south af rica, i wrote at a time when the legitimacy of our ‘democratic’ society was being critiqued in specifically decolonial terms that caused a disruption to the ‘rainbow nation’ myth. my theoretical engagement was influenced by reflections formed while being embedded in both student and social movements driving these critiques during the period [1]. observing responses to these shifting politics, i became interested in how a system and those who sustain it loosen their hold on survival of a particular kind so that space might be opened for the emergence of new futures. exploring ungrievability as a dimension of coloniality, i considered the potential and limitations of working with grief as a conceptual framework, particularly for moving dominant or oppressor identities toward the work of structural transformation [2]. with race remaining a significant determinant of life possibility and experience in south africa, this meant tackling whiteness. in the years since undertaking that theoretical research, i have worked variously as a popular educator in the spatial injustice and land inequality sector and as a facilitator and board member for a small npo that engages beneficiaries of colonialism/ apartheid about the need for restitution in south af rica. reflecting on the theory f rom my research in relation to these experiences, i would like to offer a few introductory thoughts about grief as a potentially transformative praxis for whiteness attempting to engage with anti-racist work in post-colonial contexts such as south af rica. as a thinker and practitioner who embodies multiple oppressor identities myself, my reflections are tentative and emergent, connected to both personal and collective experiences of loss, but cognisant that these could never be representative. as a process of profound change that is not chosen and cannot be controlled, grief may offer tools for moving beyond notions of ‘transformation’ that seek to contain change. ungrievability and differential vulnerability from all our different perspectives and positions, experiencing life means encountering loss. the grief we may feel reveals that we are vulnerable: at risk of suffering because we are reliant on each other and on the material conditions that sustain us. this is a common vulnerability, simply part of being human and interdependent. we need others and we also need certain economic and social conditions to sustain ourselves (butler, 2009: 14). however, while all people are inherently vulnerable, social and political organisations have developed historically in order to ‘maximise precariousness for some and minimise precariousness for others’ (butler, 2009: 2). the result is that certain populations find themselves more vulnerable than others because they are generally exposed to greater violence with fewer protections. this is what the theory of ungrievability interrogates. vulnerability to loss – what fundamentally exposes us to grief and what ought to be shared as a reminder of our humanity – is unequally distributed due to 2 t h e t h i n k e r differential power within present structures, leading to a failure of economic and social support for some (butler, 2004: xii; butler, 2009: 25). as noted at the outset, butler argues that the unequal distribution is possible because certain people are excluded f rom the dominant understanding of full humanity. as a parallel, argentinian decolonial theorist walter mignolo (1995: 8) understands racism as a hegemonic discourse that questions the humanity of people who are constructed as different f rom and lesser than those who assume the right to classify. from a decolonial perspective, this questioning – what nelson maldonado-torres (2007: 245) describes as ‘misanthropic scepticism’ – is central to how ‘race’ as we know it today [3] became the most significant determinant of a person’s social and class position in the single-world order emerging under european expansion after 1492. [4] sylvia wynter (1999) argues that a particular understanding of what it meant to be human – one that had emerged within a specific time/place as the result of particular cultural transformations and historical events – was imposed onto different civilizations and weaponised to set the foundations of a racialised global hierarchy. colonisers attempted to justify the exploitation and elimination of those they encountered during expansion by proclaiming the absence of an equal human soul among indigenous people. this allowed for a form of social stratification that was entirely hierarchical and immutable because the oppressed were not seen as equally human, supposedly justifying radical violence against them (morgensen, 2001: 61–63; maldonado-torres, 2007: 244). although butler’s theory was developed as an analysis of war in the aftermath of 9/11, it quite clearly intersects with the way that racism as a structure of differential vulnerability is understood in the lineage of decolonial thought. augustine park (2015) makes this connection when she puts the concept of ungrievability into conversation with settler colonial theory. patrick wolfe (2006) argues that the colonial project operates according to a ‘logic of elimination’ driven by the need to access and retain land. simply put, in order to impose and sustain an external civilisation, one must destroy what already exists in a place. this might be through direct violence, through structural violence, or through multiple forms of assimilation that undermine the elements of identity that those marked for elimination might organise around to challenge the external power. i include here the elimination of cultural assets such as language, social formation, and spiritual practices that protect and reinforce collective identities, supporting life over time. for park, the logic of elimination is what renders indigenous life ungrievable in settler colonial contexts. if a life is not seen as holding full human worth, but rather regarded as an obstacle to be removed f rom space, its loss or the loss of that which renders it irreplaceable will not be met with mourning (park, 2015: 279). it must be noted that this is not to suggest that indigenous peoples are not intimately connected to the grief that flows f rom experiencing colonial violence. nor is it to say that indigenous peoples are left ‘hostage to grief’, debilitated by pain and passively waiting for the day that settler society recognises their loss and the value of their lives (park, 2015: 290). either of these views would deny an entire history of radical decolonial struggle that has worked through pain to continuously challenge oppression. as kēhaulani kauanui (2016) puts it, the operative logic of settler colonialism may be to ‘eliminate the native,’ but indigenous peoples ‘exist, resist, and persist’ all the same. she argues that the logic of elimination must always be balanced by the truth of ‘enduring indigeneity’ (kēhaulani kauanui, 2016). with that said, drawing a connection between ungrievability and the logic of elimination helps us to trace the continuities that bring differential vulnerability into the present. for maldonadotorres (2007: 247), as for butler, casting doubt upon humanity justifies the injustices committed against certain peoples by normalising and radicalising their heightened vulnerability. he argues that existing as a racialised other means existing in a perpetual condition of war, permanently faced with the likelihood of either direct or indirect structural violence. elimination, though always resisted and never complete, becomes a persistent challenge in varying forms. in a dying colonialism, frantz fanon (1959: 128) offers a description of the oppressed experience: there is, first of all, the fact that the colonised person…perceives life not as a flowering or a development of an essential productiveness, but as a permanent struggle against an omnipresent death. this ever-menacing death is experienced 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review as endemic famine, unemployment, a high death rate, an inferiority complex and the absence of any hope for the future. all this gnawing at the existence of the colonised tends to make of life something resembling an incomplete death. at certain points in history, elimination manifested in battles on the f rontiers of settler and colonial states or in forced removal f rom land that supported life; today, it can be recognised in the disproportionate threat of police brutality faced by racialised communities or their lack of access to social goods such as decent education, healthcare, legal aid, and social support. ungrievability as part of racist structures is powerfully articulated by the black lives matter (blm) movement’s contemporary call to ‘end the war on black people’ as ‘an ideological and political intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise’ (black lives matter, 2021). for me, though, it is perhaps most perfectly captured by malawian-born poet upile chisala (2005) when she says: so when black blood bleeds it is minor it is commonplace it is expected. so when black blood bleeds, a system doesn’t cry. putting ungrievability into conversation with decolonial thought is useful for grappling with racism as a specifically embedded form of structural injustice in ostensibly post-colonial settings. in particular, it offers insight into the way that whiteness – a dominant dimension of the ‘system’ that does not cry – situates vulnerability away from itself through a process of elimination and erasure. considering this here, in the world’s most unequal society, we can trace that whiteness means holding privilege that flows from an historic ability to situate vulnerability away from ourselves. dispossession meant looting, killing, and burning (reddy, 2015) – as well as legislating to secure the land that would mean life (saho, 2019). later on, the mechanisms of constructing vulnerability took subtler but no less deadly forms. our grandfathers worked in jobs reserved for white people (hepple, 1963) and bought homes in designated, well-located areas (saho, 2020), while communities were torn apart by forced displacement. our fathers continued to rely on cheap domestic labour and educational opportunities that were closed to others (o’malley/ nmf), while a generation sacrificed their learning to fight for liberation (naidoo, 2019; saho, 2020). as contemporary health and education systems struggle, our own debit orders reflect the turn to private school fees and medical aid. in choosing as we do, we continually distance ourselves from the vulnerability that inheres in the society we are part of, implicitly turning attention away from the fact that this so often concentrates it onto others. we disinvest from the need to fix what’s been broken. we close our eyes to the loss others carry and too often forget the subtle threads that historically bind us to that suffering. anti-racist work and grief as a potentially transformative praxis can this be overcome? as part of her initial theorisation of ‘ungrievability’, butler argues that grief may lead us to consider ethical responsibility in new ways because it makes us acknowledge that relations and social conditions are deeply part of our personhood. this metaphysic isn’t foreign in traditional af rican cultures where ‘i am because you are’ is what makes most sense (mangena/iep). but for those embedded in the more individualist worldviews that dominate western capitalist modernity, butler urges that personal and social grief can help us to identify with the vulnerability others face. park (2015) goes a step further by proposing a ‘politics of grief ’ for settler colonial contexts. she argues that working to overcome ungrievability has the potential to both decolonise the mind of the settler and ground a push towards transformative structural justice (park, 2015: 277). this is very interesting when thinking about anti-racist work that focuses on the oppressor or dominant identity. according to park, a politics of grief reconstitutes the individual and collective, literal and f igurative death of indigenous persons as grievable, allowing settlers and indigenous peoples to honour one another’s existence in a manner that fundamentally alters the relationship because it rejects the foundational logic of elimination (park, 2015: 286). the politics of grief is proposed as a resource through which a grievable person – in park’s formulation, the settler, but this could more broadly be understood as applying to dominant identities or whiteness 4 t h e t h i n k e r peer review a felt concern for its absence. this is especially difficult when the absent world belonged to some other people’s ancestors. [my emphasis] the pathology of ungrievability is essentially a systemic failure by those who enjoy greater protection f rom vulnerability to be moved by the more radical vulnerability and elimination others experience. it is an absence of feeling – what might be described as apathy or indifference – and an associated failure to act. as an example – in her book what does it mean to be white? – anti-racist scholar robin diangelo argues that white people seldom register or lament the lack of meaningful diversity in dominant culture. whiteness is accepted as the norm in their neighbourhoods, schools, media products, mentors, and relationships, so there is little felt need to take action toward change. my core work targets how this operates in space, focusing on the legacy of spatial apartheid and the continued exclusion of poor and working class, black and coloured people f rom well-located areas that were reserved for those classified as white under apartheid. ‘good’ neighbourhoods remain predominantly white and their lack of transformation – or increasing exclusivity – is rarely seen as problematic. as fellow popular educator nicola soekoe (2019: 48) interprets: homogeneity is often felt to be a privilege, not a lack. the absence or erasure of an oppressed group f rom dominant culture results in their potential influence being rendered ‘ungrievable’ because that which was different was seen as lesser f rom the start. the destruction or absence of languages, cultures, knowledge systems, spiritualities, and various forms of social organisation outside of white supremacy is not mourned as loss because it is not in the first generally in a racist world order – is potentially able to join the work of internal and external change to create a more human world. ‘the work’ is not about feeling bad; instead it must mean fighting against the construction of disproportionate vulnerability that results when some monopolise the material resources for liveable life at others’ expense. this requires looking at issues like shelter, work, medical care, food, and legal protection. butler (2009: 28) says: for populations to become grievable does not require that we come to know the singularity of every person who is at risk or who has indeed, already been risked. rather, it means that policy needs to understand precariousness as a shared condition, and precarity as the politically induced condition that would deny equal exposure through the radically unequal distribution of wealth and the differential ways of exposing certain populations, racially and nationally conceptualized, to greater violence. i am drawn to park’s vision of a grief-centred politics that turns dominant identities toward the work of structural transformation, but it is unclear how that politics could emerge practically. given the discussion above of elimination and erasure, it seems any politics of grief would need to involve critical education: challenging and introducing knowledge that disrupts erasure. anti-racist popular educators in this area would need to focus on conscientising those embedded in whiteness about the history of elimination in different spaces so as to surface what has been lost and reveal the mechanisms through which vulnerability is historically differently allocated. particularly when working with dominant or privileged identities that might deny conf rontations with structural injustice, experiences of loss and tangible measures of differential vulnerability can be powerful pedagogical tools. however, knowledge alone might not be enough. when elimination operates continuously over time, a significant problem is that the absence is not felt even if it becomes recognised. cocks (2012: 224) says: the lack of a sense of loss of what has been erased, on the part of persons whose sensibilities have been molded within a new order of things, means that the critic must find a way not merely to conjure up a world that is no longer there but also to elicit 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the pathology of ungrievability is essentially a systemic failure by those who enjoy greater protection f rom vulnerability to be moved by the more radical vulnerability and elimination others experience. it is an absence of feeling – what might be described as apathy or indifference – and an associated failure to act. instance seen as part of the same human collective. this is a serious obstacle for practitioners working for anti-racist structural transformation. al-saji (2014: 147) specifically emphasises the importance of targeting racism at the level of affect. some protest that this plays into the emotionally overdetermined and irrational nature of racism, and argue that anti-racist work should rather be undertaken at a cognitive or rational level targeting people’s beliefs. while cognitive work that challenges racism is essential, we must also be willing to recognise that affect is what moves people to take political action (nussbaum, 2013) or at least believe that action is necessary. one can shift a rational understanding without actually undoing the affective structure that underlies the point of view or developing the desire to act differently. there is an immediacy to the (non)response of indifference. it affects what we do and do not notice and what we turn attention toward or choose to dedicate energy to. al-saji argues that ‘antiracist transformations need to occur at the affective, perceptual, and bodily level, the pre-reflective level of habit, and not merely at the reflective level of cognition or belief’ (2014: 162). a politics of grief that pursues affective transformation must be able to disrupt the indifference of ungrievability for whiteness to experience a meaningful felt response that will actually move people to action. the social and structural security of whiteness reinforces ungrievability, so introducing a ‘politics of grief ’ would take an initial act of rupture to allow for moments of opening in which the dominant way of being can be critically engaged and possibly shifted. as popular educators in the social justice sector, one might be able to achieve this through sharing knowledge or activating protest action that conf ronts and challenges complacency. this raises a further issue, however, in that disrupting indifference risks resulting in highly reactive and resistant responses. in the book the cultural politics of emotion, critical race and postcolonial theorist sara ahmed argues that emotions may invest people so strongly in social structures that they experience a challenge to the system as a sort of existential threat. emotional responses shape our action in ways that either allow for opening, or violently reject it. conf ronted with disruption, privilege likely attempts to restore prior comfort as quickly as possible. butler’s (2004, 2009) thinking on violence, mourning, and vulnerability emerged in the aftermath of the september 11 attacks, f rom seeking to understand the american public’s response to sudden and unforeseen trauma. 9/11 was a moment characterised not only by physical loss of life within the nation’s borders, but also by the symbolic loss of a particular sense of what life in that society meant. entangled and multidimensional, grief flowed openly f rom a wound that tore into the nation’s understanding of self. the ‘break in first world complacency’ ruptured the relative security of life in a northern superpower (butler, 2004: 8), connecting to varying forms of loss for the individual and the society and disrupting a status quo that sought to be seen as secure. considered as an example of privilege conf ronted, it is revealing that its consequence was the so-called war on terror. butler (2004: 29–30) points out that in cases of disruption, privilege likely ‘shores itself up, seeks to reconstitute its imagined wholeness, but only at the price of denying its own vulnerability, its dependency, its exposure, where it exploits those very features in others thereby making those features ‘other’ to itself ’. the uncertainty and vulnerability of disruption can be rejected in repressive or violent ways if we experience it as something to be escaped or overcome, rather than embraced as a resource for opening ourselves and our structures to change. as practitioners, we must be able to not only break through complacency, but sustain the opening created by disrupting indifference in order to build different politics. a politics of grief may need to introduce vulnerability, but then also hold and support people so that they can accept it. vulnerability should, at all times, be introduced and navigated in ways that reconnect us to it as a connector, a shared part of our human experience. exploiting vulnerability is dehumanising; embracing and redistributing it may hold the potential to be humanising. here i align strongly with soekoe’s (2019) move to develop a facilitation style or approach to anti-racist education that creates spaces of uncertainty and vulnerability. when it comes to doing this practically, we might take seriously the emotional tools and perspectives that help people navigate conf rontations with grief and vulnerability generally, drawing on contextually appropriate traditions for these where necessary. 6 t h e t h i n k e r peer review [3] racism is inherently a question of power and of structure which may have varying articulations across space and time, but retains an essential logic of hierarchy with different markers (for example, race as phenotype in certain spaces and as religion in others). [4] to read more on this, see generally wynter, 1995; 1999; 2003; morgensen, 2011; dussel, 2002; grosfoguel, 2007; quijano, 2007; and mignolo, 2011. references ahmed, s. (2014). the cultural politics of emotion. edinburgh: edinburgh university press al-saji, a. (2014). ‘a phenomenology of hesitation: interrupting racializing habits of seeing.’ in: e.s. lee, ed. living alterities: phenomenology, embodiment and race. albany: state university of new york press, 133–172 black lives matter, (2021). herstory. [online] available at: https:// blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/ butler, j. (2004). precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. london: verso butler, j. (2009). frames of war: when is life grievable? london: verso chisala, u. (2015). soft magic. createspace independent publishing platform cocks, j. (2012). ‘the violence of structures and the violence of foundings.’ new political science, 34(2): 221¬–227 diangelo, r. (2016) what does it mean to be white? developing white racial literacy — revised edition. new york: peter lang publishing fanon, f. (1959). a dying colonialism. new york: grove press hazell, k.j. (2017). immovability as the coloniality of f rozen affect: exploring ungrievability and the transformative potential of (e) motion in the modern world system. unpublished thesis, university of cape town hepple, a. (1963). ‘job reservation – cruel, harmful and unjust.’ the black sash, july 1963. south af rican history online (saho). [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/dc/ bsjul63.0036.4843.007.002.jul%201963.7/bsjul63.0036.4843.007.002. jul%201963.7.pdf kēhaulani kauanui, j. (2016) “a structure, not an event”: settler colonialism and enduring indigeneity. emergent critical analytics for alternative humanities, issue 5.1. [online] available at: http:// csalateral.org/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialismenduring-indigeneity-kauanui/ maldonado-torres, n. (2007). on the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept. cultural studies, 21(2–3): 240–270 maldonado-torres, n. (2008). against war: views f rom the underside of modernity. durham and london: duke university press mignolo, w.d. (2011). the darker side of western modernity: global futures, decolonial options. durham and london: duke university press mangena, f. (date unspecified). hunhu/ubuntu in the traditional thought of southern af rica. [online] the internet encyclopedia of philosophy (iep), issn 2161-0002. available at: https://iep.utm.edu/ hunhu/ this for me is perhaps most honestly the place of any politics that considers grief in relation to the pathology of ungrievability: thinking about how to nurture moments of opening in structures that are ordinarily closed and supporting people to accept uncertainty as a space of possibility. a politics of grief could open us to conversations about the material effects of trauma, the actional work of healing, the love and the anger that urge individuals towards justice, and the deeply unequal apportioning of vulnerability in the modern world. it also compels us to recognise how very present both the past and future are in how we inherit and enact structures, allowing us to look to our history and to see the continuities that inhibit meaningful change moving forward. but for any of this to be possible, whiteness must be willing to embrace the necessity, inevitability, and unknowable potential of change. grief is always indeterminable and has a certain transformative potential that cannot be controlled, as captured when butler (2004: 21) says: perhaps, rather, one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly forever. perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance. if ungrievability is a question of power revealing the individuals or institutions that have the ability to situate vulnerability away f rom themselves, then asking for this submission is not about wanting people to be less protected. it’s about reflecting on the question: if we could not other this human vulnerability, how would we want our systems set up? notes [1] these movements were the rhodes must fall and fees must fall student movements, to which i was an active ally participant, as well as the reclaim the city social movement, which i remain closely part of today. [2] any attempt to bifurcate a population into ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ necessarily collapses the complexity of the multiple intersecting identities all people embody. aware of this, i still use the bifurcation in this analysis to recognise race as a primary construct used to divide between the coloniser and the colonised, or oppressor and oppressed (quijano, 2007; gordon, 2005; de sousa santos, 2007). this does not discount the role of complex class formations, divisions between core and periphery areas, and hierarchies based on gender, sexuality, religion, belief, language, and looks. 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review naidoo, k. (2019). as students, we helped defeat apartheid. the climate strikers can win their fight too. [online] the guardian. available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisf ree/2019/ mar/15/students-apartheid-climate-strikers-victory-young-people o’malley, p. (date unspecified). 1953 bantu education act. [online] o’malley archive, hosted by the nelson mandela foundation (nmf). available at: https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/ site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01859.htm# park, a. (2015). ‘settler colonialism and the politics of grief: theorising a decolonising transitional justice for indian residential schools.’ human rights review, 16(3): 27–293 reddy, t. (2015). south af rica, settler colonialism and the failures of liberal democracy. london: zed books ltd. soekoe, n. (2019). ‘a more possible meeting: initial reflections on engaging (as) the oppressor’. yale human rights and development law journal, 20(1). [online] available at: https://digitalcommons.law. yale.edu/yhrdlj/vol20/iss1/7 south af rican history online (saho), (2019). the natives land act of 2013. [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ natives-land-act-1913 south af rican history online (saho), (2020). group areas act of 1950. [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areasact-1950 south af rican history online (saho), (2020). the june 16 soweto youth uprising. [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/ article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising whitney, s. (2015). ‘the affective forces of racialization: affects and body schemas in fanon and lorde.’ knowledge cultures, 3(1): 1–14 wolfe, p. (2006). ‘settler colonialism and the elimination of the indigenous.’ journal of genocide research, 8(4): 387–409 wynter, s., durán-cogan, m. and gómez-moriana, a. (1999). ‘towards the sociogenic principle: fanon, the puzzle of conscious experience, of “identity” and what it’s like to be “black”’. national identity and socio-political change: latin america between marginalization and integration: 30–66. wynter, s. (1995). ‘1492: a new world view.’ in v.l. hyatt and r. nettleford, eds. race, discourse, and the origin of the americas: a new world view. smithsonian: 5–57. wynter, s. (2003). ‘unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/ freedom: towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation-an argument’. cr: the new centennial review, 3(3): 257–337. 8 t h e t h i n k e r peer review t h e t h i n k e r16 covid-19 in 1999, a ground-breaking project was initiated by the national long-term perspective studies (nltps) programme, with the financial support of undp, aimed at exploring the long-term development prospects of sub-saharan af rica. the main outcome of the project was a book, published in 2003, titled af rica 2025 – what possible futures for sub-saharan af rica? (sall, 2003). the book has been translated f rom french into english and arabic, with a foreword by president thabo mbeki, then chair of the af rican union (au). this project was able to mobilise some of the continent’s most eminent thought leaders and has been pivotal to our understanding of the continent’s development to date, in addition to contributing to shaping the au’s long-term vision, adopted in july 2004. several key pan-af rican projects launched post-2000 drew inspiration f rom the analyses and findings of the project. whilst the af rican futures project focused on sub-saharan af rica, recent and contemporary studies of af rica have adopted a more holistic viewpoint, eschewing the idea that what possible futures for africa post-covid-19? by a.k. segobye, a. sall and e. picard © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 17v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 the sahara desert is a divide between north and sub-sahara. scholars have argued that this binary only serves to polarise af rica, defeating efforts of af rican unity and erasing critical lessons of panaf rican solidarity and collaboration. as at the start of may 2020, the global number of covid-19 infections had surpassed three million, with over 26,000 cases on the af rican continent. south af rica’s case load had surpassed the 5,500 mark, with over 100 recorded deaths. infectious disease experts and global leaders have long warned of the dangers of a global pandemic of this nature and scale. as early as 2005, president george bush made a clarion call that the world should not wait for a pandemic to appear before taking action, as by then it would be too late (abc news, 2020). this sentiment was echoed by president barack obama in 2014 (nowthis news, 2020) and later by bill gates in 2015 (ted, 2015). the thread which ran through the three leaders’ presentations was the subject of pandemic preparedness and the need for anticipatory systems to enable effective responses. this article provides a reflection of af rica’s engagement with future and prospective thinking, or lack thereof, in the context of covid-19. over the last two decades, af rican futures research has garnered interest, led by the af rican futures institute, which has facilitated over twenty prospective studies across the continent. academic and corporate business sectors have contributed to futures thinking, including the emergence of af rica’s economies. the global economic meltdown of 2008 and covid-19 paint a gloomy picture for the milestone of 2025. as the af rican futures project straddled the commencement of the millennium development goals (mdgs) through to the sustainable development goals (sdgs), it provides for an interesting lens for a critical review of af rican and global human development. the covid-19 pandemic has exposed several critical fault lines in global governance systems at various levels. firstly, it has exposed the significant deficits and yawning gaps in current scientific knowledge of these novel viruses. knowledge production systems have proven to be faulty, with countries protecting their research know-how and high levels of secrecy surrounding research. the world health organisation (who) has had to evolve its global advisory systems with the evolution of the pandemic, as it has struggled to find answers to a whole host of questions – including the origin of the virus, the speed of its spread, its impact on various age groups, the relative merits of different drugs, and the roles played by climate and demographic structures in the development of the pandemic. the magnitude of the ‘unknowns’ pertaining to the pandemic is such that, in retrospect, only arrogance could have explained some statements made by leaders as to the naming of the virus or the drastic and at times contradictory measures taken by governments to ‘flatten the curve’ of infections. secondly, the pandemic has exposed the myth of a significant difference in capacities between the global north and the global south. because of its colossal scale, the pandemic has unmasked previously-held beliefs of significant capabilities in the developed world, and lack thereof in the developing world. the impact of the pandemic on italy and spain highlighted f ractures within the eu’s response, and delayed action in the uk and the us highlighted discords between political and intellectual leadership. these were all in sharp contrast to china’s response, where the outbreak was first reported. pessimistic prognoses made in relation to af rica have so far been proven wrong, though it would be inappropriate for the continent to rest on its laurels. thirdly, the f ragmentation of decision making indicated by the ghettoization of nations has highlighted the challenges of national governance systems. across the world, governments have adopted authoritarian measures, starting with the declaration of a state of emergency, which then became the trojan horse for strengthening the executive branch of state, if not the presidential powers. the militarisation of the pandemic has been at odds with the key messages of the who, which has highlighted the impending public health and humanitarian crises faced by millions of ordinary people. federal governments’ authority and ability to maintain control have been tested, as some states have defied central authority. the constitutional revolt against lockdown in malawi and anti-lockdown lobbies by powerful islamic clerics in countries like mali have also highlighted the delicate balance of power in the era of covid-19. when china’s lockdown of wuhan province started, several countries clamoured to ‘rescue’ t h e t h i n k e r18 covid-19 their citizens f rom china. this was in sharp contrast to the abandonment of cruise liners, which were left stranded at sea with thousands of passengers as they were refused docking assistance. for many countries, the implementation of lockdowns began with the closure of national borders. even countries with f ragile health systems like the drc announced border closures. clearly, the priorities of managing a public health pandemic vis-à-vis the display of power by leaders were not carefully considered. south af rica’s much-lauded rescue mission of a plane load of her citizens f rom wuhan was a stark contrast to the grinding poverty and hardships experienced by many in the first three weeks of lockdown. the effects of decades of inadequate planning at various levels manifested themselves through the plight of south af ricans who suddenly found themselves without even the most basic necessities, including clean water and food. south af rica’s handling of the pandemic has since received accolades. however, the media and other non-state actors have highlighted the adverse impact of lockdown on communities. the heavy handedness of law enforcement agencies and reports of escalating gender-based violence have unmasked the pervasive and deeply-seated challenges faced by communities, especially the urban poor. the decimation of jobs in various sectors impacted negatively on informal economic activities, including on the millions of workers who rely on casual labour jobs. various governments attempted to mitigate the negative impact of lockdowns with economic stimulus packages and social protection services, including grants. however, historic inequalities have played a significant role in determining access. those who had access to information, connections and proximity to metropoles fared far better than those at the margins. the state’s capacity to deliver basic services under the emergency regimen was further exposed as pitiable. one of the most critical fault lines has been the level of unpreparedness of the world’s health systems to cope with a pandemic on the scale of covid-19. whilst recent outbreaks – such as mers, sars and ebola – have been localised and contained, covid-19 has not only unleashed unprecedented and still unforeseen trauma and chaos on the world, but has also exposed the deficiencies of global and regional health systems. the who has found itself under siege f rom its main financial contributor, the usa. the questioning of the credibility of the who has affected other un agencies, which have remained in the background over the last few months. the inadequate responses of unions such as the eu and the au – and the deafening silence of others, such as brics and regional economic communities (recs) – have highlighted the fallacy of the notion of integration in the face of the insular needs and priorities of individual states. what lessons can be learnt f rom these global and continental experiences? from the viewpoint of development planning, two lessons can be drawn. the first is that the use of state of emergency powers as a response to covid-19 has induced a firefighter mindset in the management of the pandemic. this is similar to the manner in which af rican states functioned during the 1980s at the height of structural adjustment programmes (saps). the main argument of the bretton woods institutions, which sponsored if not imposed the saps, was that macro-economic balance is the prerequisite for development and should therefore be construed as a strategic priority for af rica. all other considerations were to be put on the backburner. that exclusivism, or the mono-focus on one variable of development to the exclusion of others, is coming back in force. sanitary or public health considerations should prevail over all other considerations, be they economic, environmental or political. the current calls by af rican states for debt cancellation or rescheduling are also to be noted. such calls were common currency in the 1980s and the 1990s, which had witnessed increased levels of poverty on the continent following two decades of saps, leading the united nations economic commission for af rica (uneca) to characterise these as ‘lost decades’. james baker and henry kissinger, amongst others, sponsored various initiatives, spawning terminologies such as highly indebted poor countries. such calls may have seemed outdated and unnecessary at a time when a number of af rican countries were boasting high rates of growth and gearing up for joining the group of emerging economies between 2020 and 2035. the covid-19 pandemic, 19v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 however, has brought debt cancellation and rescheduling calls back to the foref ront and such mechanisms are receiving support f rom the g20 countries. the one measure taken by the au, under the chairmanship of president cyril ramaphosa, has been the establishment of a four-member team whose mission is to mobilise resources for af rican countries, including the rescheduling or cancellation of debt. composed of former ministers of finance and ceos of public and private financial institutions, the pitch of the au’s self-labelled ‘dream team’ is desperately conventional. there is no discernible difference – neither in content nor in tone – with the dominant discourses of the 1980s and 1990s that emphasised solidarity and empathy. our current public health emergency has become the conduit for increased dependency, voluntary submission to an unequal world order and a stronger position for the bretton woods institutions. the prime victim of the resurgence of the firefighter mentality is the momentum that had been gained by advocates of alternative development paradigms, including greater attention to long-term development perspectives, and pro-active approaches to development planning and management processes. it should be recalled at this stage that af rica has been quite active in the search for alternative development paradigms. institutions like the dakar-based af rican institute for economic development and planning and codesria, led by the late samir amin and thandika mkandawire respectively, are cases in point. as part of that movement, national long-term perspectives studies were carried out in 53 af rican countries between 1992 and 2020, with technical support provided to 37 of them by af rican futures institute experts. in addition to the national studies, several continental or regional studies were carried out during the same period. notwithstanding the diversity of the conceptual, methodological and analytical f rameworks of these studies – as well as the magnitude and diversity of their sources of funding – a vast amount of information was collected on various economic, social, political, environmental, cultural and technological aspects of af rican systems. the dynamics and scenarios generated f rom these studies provide a wealth of knowledge f rom which af rican covid-19 responses could have been generated. to what extent has this wealth of information been used during the current crisis? this is a difficult question to answer, but it is very likely that only a tiny portion of it, if any, has been drawn upon for planning purposes. in the context of the pandemic, the main line of thinking is that there is no alternative to short-term solutions to bail out countries. in other words, long-term planning is seen as a luxury when the house is burning. some would even add that when you need to put out a fire, you should not be overly concerned about the quality of the water coming f rom the hydrant – whether it is polluted or not is irrelevant. this narrative is predominant in development agencies in af rican countries, as well as in g20 countries, but a closer look reveals that it lacks consistency. as a matter of fact, one can argue that, today more than ever, failing to plan for a post-covid-19 world is tantamount to planning to fail in that world. a case in point is the education sector, in which serious red flags need to be raised. like the public health sector, af rican education systems have been corroded since the late 1980s when the impact of saps began to undermine and erode both inf rastructure and human capital in the sector. whilst many countries continue to commit a significant portion of their gdps towards education, the lack of checks and balances in terms of policy implementation, quality assurance and accountability have resulted in f ragmented and often incoherent, misaligned and multilayered education systems across the continent. countries have warmed to science, technology and innovation (sti) and the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) at the expense of the social and human sciences. the pandemic has changed the face of education as we knew it. in the short time that lockdowns have been implemented across our current public health emergency has become the conduit for increased dependency, voluntary submission to an unequal world order and a stronger position for the bretton woods institutions. t h e t h i n k e r20 the continent, leaders and policy makers have pronounced the opportunities presented by 4ir technologies to provide virtual e-learning solutions to educating during and beyond the pandemic. whilst this could be a noble idea, recourse to the inf rastructure of the continent even as at 2015 tells a different story. save for south af rica and egypt, very few countries have committed the r&d investment necessary to take sti and stem education to the requisite levels to successfully harness virtual and e-learning. in south af rica, almost 1,000 schools had been vandalised a month into lockdown, with ict facilities and food being the targeted resources (mabuza, 2020). it goes without saying that, even with the most efficient of law enforcement systems, the ideal of migrating to a technology-based remote and/or virtual learning system to substitute the time lost during the covid-19 lockdown would be f raught with challenges. a more fundamental challenge foreseen in this regard would be the impact on learners in the future. education has often been seen as the great leveller, providing an avenue for bridging inequalities. however, persistent disparities between public and private sector provisions have ensured that most counties have maintained a dual system which often reinforces colonial and postcolonial divides of elites and others. in whatever form conceived, a migration to e-learning at all levels of education would have the net effect of excluding millions out of the system, with very little prospect of ever catching up. considering that the continent already has a history of exclusion f rom education, whether as a result of brutal policies such as the apartheid systems in south af rica and namibia, or as the effects of conflicts and war, any covid-19 policy response in the education sector which could potentially result in the exclusion of even a f raction of the learner population would be short-sighted. the continent hosts at least 40% of the world’s internally displaced persons, including children who have missed opportunities for formal education in any meaningful way. with the continuation of conflicts and natural disasters, stabilisation or any return to normalcy in the near future is unlikely. in this regard, policy decisions post-covid-19 must take a bold step away f rom the allure of short-term technology-based solutions. instead, critical introspection is needed for long-term and sustainable solutions which will benefit all learners, educators and communities. what scenarios can inform post-covid-19 futures? a lot is being said and written about the postcovid-19 future, even as the crisis continues to unfold. some analysts have speculated about the demise of the un, arguing that the conf rontation between the usa and china will bring the organisation to its knees, while others hold the less pessimistic view that the pandemic has brought to the fore the need for a people-centred approach to development that neo-liberal economists will find difficult not to rally around. either way, the time seems ripe for grounding development on a new paradigm. however, very few of the narratives being developed in regard to our post-covid-19 future can be construed as scenarios stricto sensu, as they lack either a proper strategic assessment of the current situation – including a retrospective analysis of the factors, actors, strategies or lack thereof involved – or a clear description of the trajectory that would lead f rom the present to the future situation envisioned. below, we sketch out several scenarios underpinned by contrasting hypotheses regarding the nature and quality of the interaction between state and society. the authoritarian way: walking in opposite directions lockdowns as a means to ‘flatten the curve’ have been the strategic choice made by a great number of governments. this seems rational as neither a vaccine or cure for covid-19 are available. the aim is to slow the spread of the virus and, concomitantly, to build public health capacities, to acquire equipment for frontline health workers, and to expedite treatment. these measures include a mandatory ‘stay in shelter’ lockdown, with those violating the order facing fines and prison sentences. such strategies have quickly shown their limitations, as economic considerations come into play. calculations conducted in different countries demonstrate that the provision of food, water and essential services to the poor is a costly exercise. in this scenario, the idea of a global solidarity compact is undermined by the narrow firebrigade-mindset responses of countries, including those of seemingly well-organised and resourced covid-19 21v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 blocs such as the eu. as countries dealt with their own national challenges, the business-as-usual approach to global traffic, especially air traffic, led to the rapid transmission of the virus across national borders. af rican countries began by dealing with imported cases, but soon had to contend with local transmissions. in the six weeks since the worstaffected af rican countries started to put in place measures to address covid-19, cases have exploded and drawn attention to the underlying structural challenges of the continent. as countries moved to declare states of emergencies and lockdowns, the plight of citizens whose livelihoods depended on movement, informal procurement and other means of survival was amplified. the lack of policy direction and/or presence of the recs and the af rican union commission has exposed the f ragility of the pan-af rican integration project, which had been touted as the success of the au. efforts by other actors – such as the af rican development bank, the uneca, and international development partners – have highlighted the dearth of adequate and long-term planning systems to cushion countries. very few made reference to their long-term planning systems, even where standing national planning institutions were in place. very little mention was made of national disaster risk systems and/or institutions, whilst most bureaucracies had provided for such since the 1990s. the swift centralisation of power in countries’ responses dispelled the notion that power and authority had been gradually decentralised for more inclusive and citizen-centric systems. ironically, this had the effect of undermining many established community-based and alternative initiatives, some of which had formed and matured f rom the experiences of other public health epidemics, including tb, malaria and hiv/aids. from a public health viewpoint, such a scenario means that af rican countries have learnt very limited lessons, and gained very limited return, if any, f rom the 20-year investment in initiatives aimed at strengthening hiv/aids-related health systems on the continent. covid-19 seems to have come with its own new set of rules and protocols which have either ignored or not optimised the lessons learnt f rom tackling hiv/aids and tb. this may be due to the novelty of the virus, but in this scenario the continent would have missed the opportunity to kickstart its established health systems, including its public health communication systems. mimicry will be the dominant feature of this scenario, characterised by the almost total adoption of the language, etiquette and mannerisms used by china and europe in combatting the pandemic. in that regard, the response to the who’s call for af rica to ‘wake up’ appears, in retrospect, to have been too conventional. whilst it can be appreciated that the who had the challenge of creating a ‘one size fits all’ response in terms of protocols, it is unfortunate that af rica did not seem to bring anything to the global menu. as a result, systems of prevention, care and support – as well as sociocultural behaviours which could have been drawn f rom af rica’s diverse and rich cultural landscapes – were not harnessed. what is often termed as ‘resistance’ and/or the failure of communities to adhere to lockdown regulations could have perhaps been addressed differently. state and society walking and working together in addition to committing part of their gdp to an economic and social relief package, governments will have to put a number of measures in place, including: the provision of financial relief to domestic workers and low-income earners, an emergency aid program for employers, the postponement or reduction of taxes for small businesses, and the payment of monthly minimum wages to employees. governments will also have to require banks to extend hundreds of millions of dollars in loans at reduced interest rates to keep the economy afloat. finally, at least in some countries, administrations will have to suspend evictions and f reeze all rent increases, besides absolving the lowest tax bracket of penalties. there is an opportunity for such a scenario, provided by the joint g20 statement of the world bank and the lack of policy direction and/or presence of the recs and the african union commission has exposed the fragility of the pan-african integration project, which had been touted as the success of the au. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r22 the international monetary fund (imf), proposing immediate debt relief for the poorest countries, while calling for a global humanitarian emergency fund to tackle covid-19. the discourse on af rican emergence has lost some of its splendour in the past few years, due not only to a drastic decreasing trend in international demand and in commodity prices, but also to the fact that economic potential linked to local markets seems to have encountered a limit. insofar as the middle classes have expanded, their number have tended to stagnate. despite this larger middle class, the vast majority of populations in af rican countries remain poor and live on subsistence economic activities. in effect, af rican economies largely remain extractive in nature. however, efforts towards their diversification have gained momentum. this is not only motivated by the recognised need to manage the risks associated with demand and commodity price shocks, but also by concerns pertaining to job creation. these objectives have become, at the very least, part of the mandatory lip service and, at best, fall at the heart of medium and long-term development strategies and plans. however, the effects of covid-19 clearly show that resilience capabilities have not developed enough as depressed economic activity will surely increase poverty figures on a large scale. hence the need for urgency in tackling long-identified issues, such as the improvement of agricultural yields in rural areas or other strategies to develop labour intensive activities. these were central to the resumption of growth dynamics that appeared to have run out of steam before the pandemic and are all the more key to mitigating the adverse consequences that will appear in its aftermath. this rehabilitates, among other things, the essentiality of voluntarist industrial development on one hand and the need to address the persistent shortcomings related to the formulation and implementation of viable industrial policies on the other. in effect, minimal policy interventions centred around ‘the promotion of an attractive environment for foreign direct investment’, to the exclusion of all other measures, seem to have shown their limits. the fact remains that while such policy measures have contributed to rehabilitate the continent as a destination for direct investment, the basket of goods produced locally and likely to be exported remains essentially a basket of goods that are little or not at all processed. if the need to diversify economies seems self-evident, defining the modalities, especially institutional, required for a diversification that is favourable to employment represents a major critical uncertainty. indeed, the institutional logic associated with openness without an industrial policy worthy of the name have been shown to be limited in scope. with the stringent confinement measures required by this pandemic, and the associated depressed local and global consumption, the bloated importance of the informal sector, and the lack of socioeconomic safety nets beyond it, is once more laid bare. the largest emerging countries, which revealed themselves as the continent’s new investors and buyers of raw materials, offer af rican governments an enlarged strategic basket in terms of alliances. this diminishes the influence of western powers and international aid institutions. while the general public policy objectives they promote – poverty alleviation, the development of primary education, or gender equality – form part of the consensus, choices relating to the way in which these objectives should be accomplished still need to be made. in particular, there is a trend – modelled after china – towards legitimising more assertive government interventionism in the economy, sometimes underpinned by resistance to full-blown liberal reforms promoted by western partners. the recent calls for sovereign debt cancellation in order to give breathing space to af rican governments during and after the pandemic have shown an unexpected detractor in their chinese partner. this is a stark reminder that the continent remains a battlefield for hegemons pursing their own interests. one should always bear in mind that the chinese belt and road initiative is a vast long-term project to establish and secure a continuity of raw material supply channels and market access. it critically relies on the establishment of some form of financial interdependence: the inf rastructures which underlie the initiative are subject to chinese funding in the form of debt, which in turn underpins political influence. concurrently, the pandemic has acted as an electroshock to western economies regarding covid-19 v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 23 the hyper-concentration of manufacturing capabilities in south-west asia, and the associated risk of this. global supply chains were drawn to a measures. the extent to which such a realisation will revitalise cooperation ties between certain af rican countries and the west beyond market access and security considerations is of critical changes over a ten-year horizon. promote formal economic integration, as evidenced by the 2018 agreement for the establishment of a negotiations are underway and the effective implementation of this agreement remains distant. a certain degree of sluggishness seems to be at than as a reluctance to renounce state sovereignty beyond a rather low point to supranational entities. very minimal character of inter-af rican cooperation, including on issues where transnational responses are essential. typically, timid transnational cooperation features in security related issues, as illustrated by the lake tchad basin or the great the response to the pandemic. few transnational initiatives of importance have been observed, aside f rom the somewhat relief to mitigate the economic impact of covid-19. cooperation pertaining to health policies remains sparse, the most hyped example being the purchase of the malagasy ‘cure’ by some af rican countries. overall, one would hope that the shock induced by the pandemic will stimulate calls for regional integration at a deeper level, including a wide f ree-trade zone. whether cooperation will develop beyond that point remains a critical uncertainty with far-reaching consequences in the medium to long term. going forward, it is hoped that learning about covid-19 will include af rican perspectives, as already seen in technological, biomedical, ethnopharmacological and psychosocial research. at any rate, such research has presented opportunities to debunk several narratives which had been presenting prospects of re-designing and levelling a novel scenario: a comprehensive and holistic approach to the post-covid-19 era authorities in amsterdam have developed a scenario named the ‘doughnut model’. theoretically, the inner ring of the doughnut sets out the minimum needed to lead a good life f rom the un sdgs paradigm – including food and clean water, housing and sanitation, education and healthcare, gender equity, income and political voice. those who do not attain such a minimum standard of living are in the doughnut’s hole. the outer ring of the doughnut represents our ecological ceiling, the boundaries we should not cross in order to protect the natural world on which we depend. in between these two rings is ‘the good stuff’ – the soft dough – where every human’s needs are met, within safe ecological limits. covid-19 has forced us to rethink our treatment of the natural world, as well as the gaping inequalities in our societies, where the richest 1% is twice as wealthy as the poorest 50%, the result of the contemporary economic system of globalised capitalism. the ‘doughnut model’ proposes a new economic model that would allow us to overcome our intertwined ecological, social and political crises and to rebuild a more inclusive, sustainable and resilient world. the ripple effects of sharp decreases in global demand and concomitant decreases in commodity consequences on af rica, the extent of which remain uncertain. this is related to structural issues that the continent has struggled with for decades, one way or another by covid-19. one of these is the emphasis that has been placed in the past two decades on the processual aspects of political dynamics, which in many cases has led to the covid-19 the ripple effects of sharp decreases in global demand and concomitant decreases in commodity exports and prices are bound to have significant consequences on africa, the extent of which remain uncertain. this is related to structural issues that the continent has struggled with for decades. t h e t h i n k e r24 adoption of strategies by ruling elites to maintain the formal nature of these processes, while emptying them of their substance. thus, rather than increasingly sparse cases of blatant abuse of power, more discrete actions are taking place, such as those aimed at limiting the development of opposition political movements, at reinforcing the executive power’s grip on the legislature and the judiciary, or at influencing the rules governing political processes in favour of the powers in place. there are two essential prerequisites for a semblance of peace to be sustainable: firstly, sufficient leeway to allow for economic activity on the part of social groups de facto excluded f rom the political process, thus allowing people to support themselves. secondly, the continued control of government over police, security and defence forces. these prerequisites form the main ingredients required to contain the expansion of socio-political movements independently f rom the rules in place within political power centres. this was illustrated in the past few weeks by the initial heavy-handedness with which police and defence forces were deployed to impose confinement rules in af rican countries, often in poorer areas which bear the most risk of violent reactions, be it organized or not, and ironically often followed by lax enforcement. insofar as the level of tension remains circumscribed, a de facto balance is struck between politically marginalized groups and the state: the terms of trade are that of a partial surrender of sovereignty over certain areas characterised by uncontrolled economic activity to a sufficient degree, in return for the renouncement of any expansionist desire into the formal political sphere. it goes without saying, however, that such balance is unstable, in particular when it develops on a social ferment, fed by increasing inequality, the political and socioeconomic roots of which run deep. if covid-19 continues to exacerbate food insecurity issues, all hell may break loose. seeds of this are already apparent. another uncertainty has to do with the capacity of the elites to overcome the structural weaknesses of the rent-seeking economy. if one tries to remain optimistic, the pandemic will yield a negative shock on the economy that will soon enough be absorbed. however, covid-19 has highlighted the structural weaknesses that will continue to affect the continent’s dynamic in the long run. if african governments are to emerge from the covid-19 quagmire they must do more to build resilient and integrated economies, to form power blocks strong enough to navigate through the actions of hegemons, and to rekindle their relationship not only with the privileged classes, but with all citizenry. another major uncertainty pertains to the 4ir and af rican futures. in fact, if there is a common thread which has run through the narrations and evolution of the covid-19 pandemic, it has been the tantalising possibilities of technological solutions. these include the expedited development of treatment facilities, the provision of medical technologies, the improvement of logistics and the answers to future employment challenges as workers succumb to covid-19 infections. throughout the f renzy, the treacherous waters of media practice have not been lost to the conversation, as the blame games and sanitizing of ‘fake news’ are thrown boomerang-style across the america-china air spaces. conclusion this essay has highlighted some of the challenges in af rican leadership decision-making, where well-intended development planning (in this case the development of national prospective studies and vision projects) has been completely ignored in the race to contain the covid-19 pandemic. the delicate balance of decisions related to public health and overall well-being seems to have been suspended in favour of shorttermism to ‘flatten the curve’. af rica’s choices in the months of lockdowns and states of emergencies will be felt in varying degrees beyond covid-19. as citizen capacity to shape the future is constrained in lockdown, exploring alternative futures is more urgent as the long-term view becomes the tool of liberation during and beyond covid-19. ■ references abc news, (2020). george w. bush warned of not preparing for pandemic in 2005 [video]. available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=spcj6kur4aa mabuza, e. (2020). nearly 1,000 schools vandalised since start of lockdown, food stolen. [online] times live. available at: https://www.timeslive.co.za/ news/south-af rica/2020-04-30-nearly-1000-schools-vandalised-since-startof-lockdown-food-stolen/ nowthis news, (2020). obama warned the u.s. to prepare for a pandemic back in 2014 [video]. available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=pbvanahxhbm sall, a. (ed.), (2003). af rica 2025 – what possible futures for sub-saharan af rica? pretoria: unisa press. ted, (2015). the next outbreak? we’re not ready [video]. available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=6af6b_wyiwi covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r57 covid-19 the theories of liberalism and realism have for approximately half a millennium provided those wanting to understand human behaviour with a ‘lens’ to view the world. both of these theories translate superbly into theories of international relations, because the same rationality used to interpret or predict human behaviour can be applied to states. at the most elemental understanding, liberalism presumes that humans are inherently goodthe rise of in the time of covid-19 machiavellian realism by anton m. pillay © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 58v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 natured and seek to help each other. realism, on the other hand, contends that individuals are egocentric and always search for their own benefit. this juxtaposition is f ramed in the ‘hobbes vs kant’ paradigm, which places the work of two prominent political philosophers against each other. the german immanuel kant (1724–1804) argued that idealism and morality ultimately shape human interaction, with the question of ‘what ought i to do?’ taking precedence. kantian theory, also known as ‘deontological ethics’, translates into ‘goodwill is humanity’s duty’. in his most popular work, critique of pure reason, kant proposed a moral law called the ‘categorical imperative’ — an unconditional obligation often known as the principle of universalizability or the ‘universal principle’. according to it, human interaction should be based on the world which one would hope to live in. that is, a person should treat other people as having intrinsic value, and not merely as a means to achieve one’s end. the values and virtues of liberalism translated at the state level equivocate to the quest to establish patterns of rules, norms and procedures amongst states. the rationale is that bringing states together under an umbrella of laws and customs makes states more confident in complying with international rules. kant thought that the civilized state depended upon the application of the rule of law to achieve a state of perpetual peace, not only within nation states but also between them (kant, 1795). thus, the liberal worldview emphasises that states should band together to induce the mutual benefits of cooperation via the techniques of f ree trade and capitalism as the path towards peace and prosperity (lamy, 2001). on the other side of the debate, realism appears to be the opposite of liberalism. the englishman thomas hobbes (1588–1679), in his books leviathan and behemoth, contended that man’s selfishness forces him to create laws. without laws, man would experience a ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short life’. to hobbes, each person must eventually rely on themselves, on their own strength and intelligence. hobbes claimed that ‘the original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual goodwill men had towards each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other’ (robin, 2006). hobbes argued that whatever people deem to be good, their self-preservation is the precondition for their pursuit of it. state-level realism is summarised in the ‘three s’s’: statism, self-help and survival. these three s’s all speak to the focus on the individual, selfishness, and self-preservation. to hans morgenthau, the contemporary architect of realism, the analogy of state behaviour to human nature is that states seek power and dominance at all costs. if one sentence could summarise the hobbes vs kant debate it would be ‘the ends justifies the means’, with the realist focus on the ends and the liberalist focus on the means. in the centuries since both hobbes and kant have passed on, their two theories continue to compete, as states adopt one or the other in order to navigate the difficult waters of international affairs. south af rica is a good example of a state which was formerly a key proponent of the liberal world order. between 1994–2008, south af rica’s bold and assertive liberal vision commanded greater international respect and stature amongst states. south af rica backed up its vision not only with words but also with ‘duty’, becoming a respected peacemaker and conflict mediator, as many states recovering f rom war sought its guidance in the field of truth and reconciliation. in 2007, for example, it was listed as the un’s 8th largest troop contributor (landsberg and kondlo, 2017). in liberia, burundi, the drc and sudan, south af rica led the way for credible peace and post-war reconstruction. outside of af rica, south af rica played a pivotal role in the lockerbie case, mediating in northern ireland and timor leste. south af rica’s commitment to ‘duty’ and ‘goodwill’ is a stark contrast to the behaviour of states like israel, taiwan, morocco, or venezuela, who have always viewed their state as the ultimate actor in international relations. these states’ commitment to self-help and survival reveals an insular approach which is referred to as the if one sentence could summarise the hobbes vs kant debate it would be ‘the ends justifies the means’, with the realist focus on the ends and the liberalist focus on the means. t h e t h i n k e r59 ‘primacy of realpolitik’. within the chaos of the covid-19 pandemic, the virtues of liberalism are taking a metaphorical backseat in the greater scheme of the ‘hobbes vs kant’ debate. in fact, states which had previously strongly advocated for the liberal agenda are reverting to classical realism to navigate through our current crises. at both individual and state levels, the selfishness and greed which are tenets of realism have become shockingly clear. the spread of covid-19 around the world brought fear, irrationality and the global phenomenon of ‘panicbuying’, with the ethos of ‘every man for himself’ demonstrated in the hoarding of hundreds of rolls of toilet paper. in england, the football clubs liverpool and tottenham –  which last year made a combined profit of $160 million – furloughed many nonplaying staff, while opting for a government job retention scheme which uses tax money to pay the furloughed workers 80% of their wages. the beckham empire – with a combined fortune of $420 million – looked to the government to pay 30 staff. south af rica, the world’s third-largest exporter of citrus f ruits, saw many stores double the price of these f ruits, though they were in season. the american company amazon had facemasks going for $0.04 in january 2020, but as of april 2020 had hiked this price up to $11.25. these are examples of the shameless profiteering that we have witnessed worldwide during this pandemic. the ethics and morality of capitalism have also been exposed. in germany, the neumünster zoo announced that with disrupted supply chains and steep revenue declines, it was considering turning some of its residents into food. virgin atlantic, whose headquarters were purposely set up in a tax-haven, began to beg the uk government for bailouts. in china, af rican immigrants became the target of xenophobia, with china seemingly looking for a scapegoat. at the state level, countries immediately sealed off their borders as antagonisms and finger pointing increased in intensity. the situation became so evident that the german president frank-walter steinmeier, king abdullah ii of jordan, president halimah yacob of singapore, president sahle-work zewde of ethiopia and president lenin moreno of ecuador co-wrote an article asking states to work together instead of leaving every country to fend for itself. despite the wisdom behind this sentiment, this has not materialised. for example, on 2nd april, a chinese cargo plane loaded with masks destined for paris was rerouted to the us after the americans paid triple the price that the french had paid. france was notably silent on the issue, given that they had also confiscated masks destined for the uk. in another case, a shipment of 200,000 thai masks intended for germany was diverted on the tarmac of bangkok to the us at the last moment. this ‘modern piracy’ led canadian prime minister justin trudeau to express concern that masks were being diverted f rom canada. likewise, brazil’s health minister remarked that attempts by his government to buy masks f rom china were f ruitless, given that the us had sent 23 cargo jets to that country. similarly, turkey banned the export of protective gear and reneged on foreign sales of masks already paid for. in the case of kenya, 6 million masks bound for germany vanished into thin air at jomo kenyatta international airport. even more deceptively, italy received an invoice f rom china on 11th april for masks and supplies that the latter had previously ‘donated’. beyond the hoarding of protective gear, states are exhibiting anti-social and suspicious behaviour towards each other. russian aid to italy was declared by a top italian newspaper as ‘useless’. in various italian circles, the russian army presence was denounced as a military intelligence operation. kazakhstan, a major flour and wheat producer, halved the quantity of its normal exports and vietnam, the world’s third largest rice exporter, suspended exports altogether. serbia also moved to block the export of medicines and sunflower seed products. these export bans are more likely a way of reassessing contracts, with the aim of future massive price hikes. on 26th march, mexico – which has long benefited f rom illegal immigration within the chaos of the covid-19 pandemic, the virtues of liberalism are taking a metaphorical backseat in the greater scheme of the ‘hobbes vs kant’ debate. in fact, states which had previously strongly advocated for the liberal agenda are reverting to classical realism to navigate through our current crises. covid-19 60v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 – demanded that their side of the border should be closed to americans. on april 10th, mexico shut down an american factory for refusing to sell its hospitals ventilators which were being made on site. here in south af rica, the question of ventilators is also a cause for concern. according to sources in the health department, south af rica has approximately 6,000 ventilators. the south af rican emergency ventilator project made an urgent appeal on humanitarian grounds to penlon, a uk-based company, to share their blueprints for ventilator production. penlon’s response was direct: they had no time to be busy digging around for old schematics while they were trying to meet the demand of the british healthcare system. the story of india, the us and hydroxychloroquine showcases the adage that ‘in politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, but only permanent interests’. at around the time that many – including president trump – were touting the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a remedy to fight covid-19, india banned its export. on april 11th, the ban was overturned as trump warned of ‘retaliation’ if india did not resume the export of the drug. this undiplomatically strong language was in stark contrast to the great friendship the two countries had displayed a little less than two months earlier, during trump’s visit to india. all of the cited examples are textbook instances of the tactics theorised by the italian diplomat niccolo machiavelli. born in 1469 in florence, italy, machiavelli is considered one of realism’s founding fathers. his discourse on leadership and a reputation for evil and cruelty has garnered his work to be labelled as the ‘handbook of realism’. his fame spread across europe, with the phrase ‘old nick’ becoming an english term for the devil. today, the adjective ‘machiavellianism’ is given to the doctrine that the end justifies the means. in such a theory, neither intentions nor ideals are important, except insofar as they allow persons or nations to reach their goals. the term represents a form of politics that is marked by cunning, duplicity, and bad faith. in his famed work the prince (banned by the catholic church and rumoured to have been brought into battle by napoleon bonaparte and read in bed by adolf hitler), machiavelli recommends that state leaders must be cunning and at times cruel if they are to maintain power. more specifically, he contended that the safest option was to annihilate one’s enemies and that abuses should be sudden and severe to make victims incapable of revenge. as an advisor to princes in the early 1500s, machiavelli urged leaders to deploy deceit when necessary, and to not depend solely on moral values and ethics to influence their decisions. to machiavelli, ‘he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation’. according to kaplan, machiavelli emancipated politics f rom theology and moral philosophy. he simply described what rulers actually did, and thus anticipated what was later called ‘the scientific spirit’, in which questions of good and bad are ignored, and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens (kaplan, 2005). in conclusion and going forward, covid-19 speaks to the lack of disaster planning by many states. a growing trend globally is to look to china for help. china, however, is too busy exporting ventilators and protective gear to the dollar, euro and pound economies. similarly, it is only natural that companies seek profit in times of crises. they cannot be expected to take the altruistic road. overall, states should take this moment in time as a lesson in naivety if they thought that the virtues of western liberalism were coming to save them. ■ references kant, i. (1795). ‘perpetual peace.’ in perpetual peace and other essays, translated by t. humphrey. indianapolis: hackett, 1983, pp.107–143. kaplan, j. (2005). political theory: the classic texts and their continuing relevance. prince frederick, md: recorded books. lamy, steven l. (2001). ‘contemporary mainstream approaches: neorealism and neo-liberalism.’ in baylis, john and smith, steve, (2001), the globalization of world politics, 2nd edition, oxford university press, p.189. landsberg, c. and kondlo, k. (2007). south af rica and the ‘af rican agenda’. policy: issues & actors. volume 20 (13). johannesburg: centre for policy studies. [online] available at: https://media.af ricaportal.org/documents/ pia20_13.pdf robin, c. (2006). fear: the history of a political idea. oxford: oxford university press. today, the adjective ‘machiavellianism’ is given to the doctrine that the end justifies the means. in such a theory, neither intentions nor ideals are important, except insofar as they allow persons or nations to reach their goals. the term represents a form of politics that is marked by cunning, duplicity, and bad faith. covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r44 global the problem with technology and the law: opaque ai “i would rather discover one true cause than be the king of persia” – democritus. by asher austen fainman © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m 45v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 global opacity t he ability to uncover, evaluate and predict causality is fundamental in disciplines of inquiry, such as law. effective adoption of artificial intelligence (ai) applications in domains in which legally significant consequences result will depend heavily on the user’s ability to provide explanations and contest decisions. while doing so is needed to effectively meet the requirements of legal tests for causation and intent (which assess reasonable foreseeability and decision making) in order to establish legal liability, this is complicated by that fact that ai applications can be opaque in their decision-making processes. this problem cannot simply be ignored, as an increasing number of ai applications can currently match or outperform (stumpe and peng, 2017) humans in a variety of tasks – both low-wage, lowskilled jobs and those that require higher levels of education (muro et al, 2019). jobs that typically involve some collection of rule-based routines and automatable tasks (frontier economics, 2018) are even more likely to become automated in the future. for instance, the performance of convolutional neural networks in detecting abnormalities in radiographs has led some, such as prominent ai researcher geoffrey hinton, to declare that medical schools “should stop training radiologists now” (snow, 2018). although this statement is likely somewhat hyperbolic (european society of radiology, 2018), the encroachment of ai in professional disciplines remains likely. in the past, knowledge-based ai such as “expert systems” failed to gain substantial traction in professions due to their rigidity in decisionmaking (yanase and triantaphyllou, 2019). these applications often relied on hard-coded “static” rules for inferential reasoning and evaluation. for example, in computer chess games, machine learning (ml) algorithms could allow modern ai programs to be given rules to learn from so that it could find optimal patterns that could be generalised to play against real players (goodfellow et al, 2016). today, however, ai has been developed to the point that it might be trained on something more complex, such as historical stock market price data (flach, 2012). for this article, i will be principally discussing ai applications that use algorithms from the subfield of ml in some configuration. in supervised learning, a “training” dataset of images created by experts is processed by ml algorithms, and the model that is created can then be tested to see if it is generalisable (flach, 2012) and thus used on live data (burrell, 2016). however, the issue is that, in such processes, opacity can develop in different ways and to different degrees, with some ml approaches such as bayesian networks and decision tree learning having greater transparency than deep neural networks1 and support vector machines (svm).2 in this article, opaque ai (oai) refers to applications that exhibit any degree of opacity. interpretability some legal scholars (selbst and powles, 2017) have pointed to a “right to explanation” in the general data protection regulation (gdpr) as a principle safeguard to protect rights in automated decision-making. however, the right to explanation is not currently legally binding (wachter et al, 2017). the safeguards that do exist may together constitute a non-binding right that could apply in certain, very limited, circumstances (bensoussan, 2017), where a decision that was fully automated had legally significant effects (edwards and veale, 2017). however, where it does apply, this right only seems to extend to an explanation of the general system as it functioned before the decision was 1 in deep neural networks, multiple layered networks of interconnected neurons (nodes) alongside a backpropagation algorithm progressively find relational connections between data points. these layers learn ‘patterns of patterns’ (schmidhauber, 2014) from each other hierarchically, learning to model a complex function. no single neuron encodes for one part of the decision-making process; instead, many layers converge on a decision. thus, the network learns from experience in a process akin to intuition, so it cannot be reduced to a set of instructions (goodfellow, 2016). the large number (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of interconnected neurons performing individually simple computations can together produce sophisticated outcomes through what is known as “connectionism”. 2 svms find geometric patterns between variables. the svm will find an optimal solution by maximising the margin (distance) between each category that is classified and a dividing line. this line (in a two-dimensional example) is generally the most generalisable and predictive. with three variables, the dividing line becomes a plane, and with more variables, the human mind cannot visualise the line because it cannot process high dimensionality. this is especially true with nonlinear (curved) divisions (flach, 2012). therefore, with large numbers, it becomes impossible to visualise how the model distinguishes between variables, which results in opacity (deng and yu, 2013). the ability to uncover, evaluate and predict causality is fundamental in disciplines of inquiry, such as law. effective adoption of artificial intelligence (ai) applications in domains in which legally significant consequences result will depend heavily on the user’s ability to provide explanations and contest decisions. t h e t h i n k e r46 made, rather than an explanation of the localised internal logic, or even a loose ranking of variables of an individual decision after that decision (wachter et al, 2018). the benefit that can accrue from explaining the internal logic of oai has thus led to the emergence of subfield explainable ai (xai). interpretability methods have been created that attempt to approximate algorithms to determine how a model came to a specific output.3 there are problems regarding generalisability, however, as most interpretability methods are designed on an ad hoc basis for detecting embedded bias or debugging a specific algorithm in a domain by an expert (guidotti, 2018). furthermore, researchers typically delineate their own definitions of what constitutes an explanation (guidotti, 2018), and there are no standardised criteria for evaluating these explanations (lipton, 2017). there is also often some trade-off between interpretability (describing the system’s internal logic using understandable and meaningful language) and completeness (describing the system’s operation accurately to allow its behaviour to be fully anticipated) (gilpin, 2019). there are various methods that exist, located somewhere between these two poles. these models are local – a simplified model approximating a decision about a few data points in an individual instance – or global – a proximate model for all possible data points (mittelstadt et al, 2018). however, these methods are problematic.4 3 it is important to note, however, that this attempt to towards transparency is constrained by the desire not to allow manipulation of the decision-making process, violation of other’s rights to privacy or the disclosure of proprietary information (ananny and crawford, 2016). 4 an example of a method that trades off completeness for interpretability is saliency mapping. however, saliency maps ignore nonsalient background features, which are unstable aspects of an image, in favour of more stable salient aspects of the given input. often these background “artefacts” will not be uniformly relevant across inputs, but the salient aspects are. these artefacts are thus not captured in an explanation, even though they contribute to individual output decisions (alvarez-melis, 2018). another popular method is lime (ribeiro et al, 2016), a linear proxy model that develops a local linear model as a simplified proxy for a local decision. these models assume linearity across the model, to approximate local, non-linear behaviour in the original model. often, however, this does not scale to accurately reflect the non-linearity at a global level of the model (hulstaert, 2018). others have shown that in lime (and other proxy models), the perturbations with little to no effect on the global model’s predictions can have outsized effects on local explanations (alvarez-melis, 2018). a third method is counterfactual models, which were specifically designed to exceed the gdpr requirements. these models aim to show how input changes may impact the decision outcome (wachter, 2018). this approach has been adopted by google as a tool in their tensorflow ml framework (wexler, 2018). however, counterfactual approaches assume that “variables are independent of one another” (wachter 2018: 860). by ignoring interdependencies, the method sometimes relies on artefacts generated by a classifier rather than a labelled “ground truth” data point, creating explanations that do not reflect actual features. also, counterfactuals neglect non-linearity and unstable aspects (laugel et al, 2019). all three of these methods thus lack explanatory robustness, which is indicative of a wider problem where methods frequently rank the moreover, it is precisely their complexity and dimensionality that make oia so accurate – and which interpretability methods assume away. when explanations do not reflect these complex interrelationships, small input changes to the model have wide effects on the explanation output. for instance, in deep learning, “each input… [is] represented by many features” and each feature in combination represents “many possible inputs” creating a “distributed representation” structure (goodfellow, 2016: 16). this diffusion across the network means no single node encodes for a specific part of the output; input features may be represented by interconnected layers or clusters. information is “encoded in the strength of multiple connections” rather than at “specific locations, as in a conventional database” (castelvecchi, 2016: 4), making it difficult to identify the contribution of a specific input feature to an output. instead, the importance of a feature depends on the existence, absence or relative influence of other features. the precise combination of all of these interconnected features and their relative weights in concert produce a particular output in a particular instance. adding to these complex interrelationships is the manipulation of dimensionality, such as through the “kernel trick” in svms, which improves performance but also means that the relationship between a feature and a dimension is not simply one-to-one (burrell, 2016), making it very difficult to establish direct relationships between inputs and outputs. other drawbacks also prevent interpretability methods from meeting the standards required for legal tests. firstly, because of the iterative nature of oai, it is difficult to reproduce results in research from a particular instance. there are not standardised best practices (source control) for recording changes, and changes to gpu drivers and updates to frameworks that models depend on all vastly effect accuracy. moreover, their respective frameworks need to balance between numeric determinism and performance, which can vary outputs when reproduced. furthermore, the expansion or changes to the dataset the model learns from, whether continuously or in periodic update stages, will affect the model’s predictions, meaning it is not static. as such, we would need a snapshot of the “whole system” (warden, 2018) to accurately reproduce the exact state of the relative importance of features with wide variability, even in simple scenarios (lakkaraju et al, 2017). global 47v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 model for a given instance, which would require immense storage and management. even article 5(e) of gdpr requires keeping data that has been processed for “no longer than is necessary for the purposes”. as such, such, storing such “snapshots” is not standard practice for many applications, and often individual input data about a particular decision will be deleted to optimise data storage and protect privacy rights (doshi-velez et al, 2018). in sum, owing to the assumptions these methods make and their lack of robustness, at best they provide a general overview of the factors considered in a decision and at worst they provide unreliable and misleading reassurance about the internal logic of an oai. intent humans are also black boxes to some extent. we cannot always predict others’ decisions, or their reasoning. currently, intent and causation tests scrutinise decision-making and attempt to externally validate claims through fact-finding. for instance, cross-examination or following documentation trails may help to proximate reasonable foreseeability, causal relations and expectations, or to infer what someone likely knew. in contrast, oai does not provide qualitative causal explanations for the purposes of external validation. interpretability methods thus often would not satisfy the burden of proof required by these tests. moreover, oai application do not possess intent in any meaningful sense. their developers or users do. with non-oai, we might scrutinise design to approximate intent – for instance, a program designed to break into another system was likely intended for the “purpose of” (copyright and related rights regulations, 2003) unlawful conduct. with oai, we can discern an overarching goal or “objective function”; however, oai makes decisions within these parameters in ways developers may not understand or be able to reasonably foresee. without hard-coded instructions to infer intent, these tests may not be satisfiable. for example, an oai may be designed to develop a profitable trading strategy. it would be given historical and real-time stock price data for a range of securities and access to business newsfeeds and a twitter account (azar, 2016). after validation and then live testing, the oai would begin consistently profiting. the oai would rapidly place and withdraw orders, and occasionally re-tweet news articles before and after trades. the developers would not be able discern a clear strategy from its behaviour, only that it remained profitable. if, however, the oai takes a short position on a security it often trades and profit, some investors may then bring a lawsuit alleging market manipulation through “phantom orders” and making misleading statements (re-tweets) before placing orders. the developers might defend that access to the twitter account was given but not designed to retweet information or place phantom orders; they had no intent to manipulate prices and were surprised by the oai’s actions. the developers could demonstrate that they only provided the lawful objective of profit maximisation (bathaee, 2018) – the oai independently developed a strategy involving a prohibited practice. indeed, the oai may only be able to interpret market impact, not inaccurate information, and so may re-tweet a misleading article with this effect. because intent is usually required for fraud, it cannot in this case be proven. interpretability methods might determine the importance oai placed on these misleading tweets but would not be able to uncover the overall strategy, nor the impact of a single tweet on the decision. intent tests also examine the basis for conduct. without knowing the oai’s strategy, we cannot determine if it was engaging in illegal “spoofing” (rapidly placing then withdrawing trades, causing the desired movement) – we could also assume that it may have found in past data that placing/ withdrawing bets was correlated with price rises. whilst the developers could have prevented this conduct, failing to do so could be negligence, not a design decision, therefore falling short of criminal causes of action. currently, it is extremely difficult humans are also black boxes to some extent. we cannot always predict others’ decisions, or their reasoning. currently, intent and causation tests scrutinise decision-making and attempt to externally validate claims through fact-finding. global t h e t h i n k e r48 to prove intent in algorithmic trading. united states v corsica was the first prosecutions for spoofing using high-speed trading (hft) systems. hft systems exploit market inefficiencies, trading them away before others can, using algorithms faster than humans. proving manipulation here relied on conduct being wilful (bathaee, 2018). the developers foresaw the effects of the system on the market, and as such were likely to have designed the system for an unlawful purpose (yadav, 2016). the proof of wrongful intent in this case relied on the developer’s testimony regarding the unlawful purpose for which he was instructed to design the system. intent tests use this burden to prevent legitimate transactions resulting in liability, but this can also insulate defendants who can point to program unpredictability due to speed or opacity to defend that there was no criminal intended consequence. oai compounds this problem because there may be no explicit instructions for spoofing or an illegal strategy – the oai might have intuitively do so. in other cases, intent serves to limit the scope of possible claims. for instance, a judge could use an oai, which is given access to data about past sentencing, types of crime committed and personal attributes of the previous defendant, to output a sentence reflective of the likelihood of recidivism. a wisconsin supreme court ruled a program that used actuarial data to predict recidivism did not violate due process rights (state v loomis, 2016), suggesting that a warning to judges about methodological dangers was a sufficient safeguard against discrimination. however, of course, this does not inform the judge about how much to discount the assessment (ibid). furthermore, if the sentencing training data contained latent bias against a particular group, the oai may, unbeknownst to its developers or users, propagate discriminatory decisions. for instance, even unprotected features such as postal code may correlate significantly with race and may in some circumstances be outcome-determinative in the oai’s decision. indeed, some studies have demonstrated that several unprotected factors can act as proxies for protected characteristics in existing compas recidivism prediction systems used in the us (angwin, 2016). opacity may exacerbate this effect. to contest judicial decisions, individuals would have to appeal the decision itself (equality and human rights commission, 2015), requiring a demonstration that the judge took an irrelevant factor (such as race) – or relied on an oai that did – into account during sentencing. even if interpretability methods could show that postal code ranked highly, this could be seen as indicative of economic inequality rather than discriminatory intent. furthermore, merely pointing to the oai’s history of sentencing would not be sufficient: because the oai may reason in a non-linear way, a parameter that is highly weighted for one individual may not be for another with a different combination of characteristics. the burden of proof can be reversed once a prima facie case for indirect discrimination is established (equality act, 2010), requiring decision-makers to prove the practice’s legitimacy. however, without knowledge of the internal logic of that particular output, arguing for overall accuracy may sometimes be sufficient (grimmelmann and westreich, 2017). indeed, there is only minimal case law suggesting that the inability to disclose the underlying factors are necessarily construed against decision-makers (meister v speech design, 2012). these sorts of intent tests serve to limit arbitrary appeal cases but, where the internal logic of an oai is inscrutable, it may be impossible to prove discriminatory intent, shielding users of oai and leading to fewer appeals and making it less likely for an expert to uncover bias. because developers cannot reliably foresee outcomes of oais to achieve decisions and we cannot deduce intent from explanations, oai can create both ex-ante and ex-post barriers to proving that an illegal outcome was intended. causation causation tests balance the scope of causes of action with the administrative burden of these sorts of intent tests serve to limit arbitrary appeal cases but, where the internal logic of an oai is inscrutable, it may be impossible to prove discriminatory intent, shielding users of oai and leading to fewer appeals and making it less likely for an expert to uncover bias. global 49v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 enforcement. these tests seek to ensure harm was indeed caused by another’s actions. tests for reasonable foreseeability can thus help identify the form of liability through examining whether outcomes were foreseeable consequences for a reasonable person, with higher burdens for professionals. reliance tests require the injured to prove they relied on another’s unlawful conduct, manifesting as misrepresentation, for example, causing them harm (robinson, 2010). causation is often highly dependent on context. in medicine, for instance, an analysis (caruana et al, 2015) of an ml research project sought to predict the likelihood of death from pneumonia and thus to establish a system for admitting high-risk patients whilst treating low-risk patients as outpatients. in one of the datasets, the model found the counterintuitive rule that individuals with a history of asthma were at lower risk than the general population of developing pneumonia. the dataset reflected the fact that patients with asthma, presenting with pneumonia to hospital, were usually admitted to the icu and this intensive treatment lowered their risk of dying compared to the general public. because their prognosis improved so much, models trained on the data found the rule that asthma lowers risk, when in fact the opposite is true (providing they are not hospitalised). as such, the models incorrectly classified these patients in the validation data set. both a neural network and a rule-based logistic regression approach were used and came to the same conclusion. importantly, the researchers favoured the logistic regression approach, despite it having lower accuracy, because it was transparent and so they were able to identify the problematic rule and adjust individual weights to correct for it (which, as described in section 3, cannot be done with oai) (burrell, 2016). indeed, the risk of using oia are apparent. for instance, an oai model may be applied for the same purpose but with live data input to predict both risk and appropriate treatment. if incorrect information was entered, which could be a predictor for a serious complication for pneumonia, was reported in a patient’s medical record fed to the oai, the system would incorrectly identify them as requiring immediate and specialist treatment. eventually, the mistake would be identified by medical staff but only after further testing or treatment, incurring considerable expenses to the hospital. the opposite may also occur, resulting in accusations of negligence. an evidentiary burden then exists to prove the model relied on this particular input, such that, without the reliance on oai, they would have “acted differently” (customs & excise commissioners v barclays bank, 2006). this may be an impossible burden. unlike with a transparent logistic regression model, an expert cannot simply adjust the weight of the feature in question to establish that, ceteris paribus, the same outcome would occur or not. one might contend that, because the input was given to the model, this is evidence of at least some reliance. however, this fact does not demonstrate that the information was weighted by the model, in that particular decision, to be outcome-determinative. indeed, even if we could obtain a snapshot of the model as it existed at the time, interpretability methods would provide loose rankings of importance, but the outcome depended on the confluence of them all in that particular instance (goodfellow, 2016), making it difficult to establish reliance. the outcomes oai arrive at may not be reasonably foreseeable in individual instances because they also may uncover latent patterns correlating with counter-intuitive recommendations, thus presenting difficulties in establishing causation when relied upon by doctors. in a 2018 study (peng et al, 2018), researchers used convolutional neural networks trained on retinal fundus images to accurately predict sex, with an impressive auc of 0.97 (alongside age, blood pressure, smoking status, and major cardiac events), on an independent validation dataset. whilst admittedly there are better ways to determine sex, this illustrates an important point. ml has been widely used in classification tasks before; however, these generally involved “feature engineering”, or the indeed, the risk of using oia are apparent. for instance, an oai model may be applied for the same purpose but with live data input to predict both risk and appropriate treatment. global t h e t h i n k e r50 computation of explicit features that experts have specified. however, the model used in the 2018 study could “learn the appropriate predictive features based on examples rather than requiring features to be hand-engineered” (peng et al, 2018). this allowed the oai to find latent predictive features that the ophthalmologists were not aware existed. the researchers used saliency maps of anatomical regions important to the model in predicting gender. ophthalmologists reviewed these maps, categorising the highlighted sections. they noted these sometimes focused on vessels and optic disks, but also “non-specific features” in 50% of the sample, but no discernible pattern or mechanism could be identified (ruyu qi, 2018). this finding is significant because, in some instances, specialists can infer causal relationships from existing medical knowledge about, for instance, predictors for cardiac events. similar associations could also develop in live clinical data with an oai, with further risks. for instance, using the example of an application predicting pneumonia survival rates, the model could uncover a counterintuitive indication, highly correlating some set of patient characteristics with a treatment considered last resort, because it is generally considered unnecessarily high-risk at an early stage of disease progression. nevertheless, the oai could recommend the treatment. a doctor could then decide against intervening and the patient improves anyway. this process would repeat until, eventually, one patient is harmed from unusual complications, which then could result in an action alleging that the doctor’s decision not to follows to application’s recommendation was negligent. in cases of medical negligence, individuals must usually establish a duty of care, a breach, and a causal link to the harm (laurie et al, 2016). the “bolam test” is often used, which states that the “standard of care” is that of the “ordinary skilled doctor”. where multiple options exist, a doctor does not act negligently if the intervention accords with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical specialists in that field (bolam hospital management committee v friern, 1957). the common law also provides more flexibility for innovation, allowing reasonable risk-taking, providing a practice is endorsed by at least one subspecialty of a responsible medical body (de freitas v o-brien and connolly, 1997) and is not considered unreasonable under the circumstances (bolitho v city and hackney health authority, 1998). this provides an allowance for innovative techniques but is limited by the particular circumstances (cooper v royal united hospital bath nhs trust, 2004). the standard of care develops dynamically through common practice, professional guidelines, legislation, and case law. however, because the standard of care for oai is effectively non-existent, the transition period to wider adoption presents uncertainty. non-oai decision aides in medicine are generally considered to “augment the physician’s existing knowledge by providing further information” (miller and miller, 2007: 433). as such, the software is seen only to provide clinical information, while the treatment decision is always made independently by the doctor. however, with oai, because neither the doctor nor the developer knows the exact process underlying the recommendations made, the doctor cannot verify the recommendation against their body of expertise (price, 2017); they can only accept or reject the recommendation. as such, if an oai that has been appropriately approved (schonberger, 2019) recommends changing the dosage of a drug, in contrast to medical knowledge, and the doctor proceeds, the problem is how this approach might be clinically validated, particularly when specialists cannot identify a causal mechanism of this decision through interpretability methods. where an oai application’s status regarding the standard of care is unclear, the same decisions are equally risky and may be left for a court to decide whether harm eventuates (cooper v royal united hospital bath nhs trust, 2004). to mitigate risk, some have suggested that doctors may have to validate oai and its recommendations based on their relative risk, looking at analytical validity, clinical validity and clinical utility (price, 2018) of the oai. price suggests that validation could be conducted through clinical trial models, where algorithmic support might be randomised through computational validation involving procedural safeguards for data quality or tracking outcomes in clinical settings to retrospectively confirm algorithm quality and thus both validate and enable updates (price, 2017). however, the effectiveness of these approaches global 51v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 may still depend on a static oai model, which is not updating dynamically based on patient data and still presents a difficult risk calculus for doctors on an individual basis. the exact parameters for balancing intervention risk or evidence in the recommendation are still unclear (ibid) but likely will be, again, highly domain-specific. when a developer or user of the oai cannot predict the extent or nature of the decisions in a particular instance and cannot probe the oai after the output to determine if its recommendation was based on unorthodox but sound medical reasoning or an error, the scope of liability does not seem reflective of the precautionary risk calculus of the reasonable person, making the test arbitrary. causation tests are equally unequipped to recognise the difficulty in establishing unavoidable harm, where a recommendation falls outside established medical knowledge and cannot be scrutinised by doctors, who must decide whether to intervene. this issue is further complicated because, in an increasingly wide variety of prediction and classification tasks, oai have lower error rates than specialists, sometimes substantially (topol, 2019). one may thus suggest we should always favour oai in such cases because, on aggregate – and in the long run – they produce better outcomes. however, this argument misses a great deal of nuance. in a pragmatic sense, a doctor may subjectively evaluate the size of the deviation between outcome and expectation to assess the likelihood of errors. however, doctors often underestimate the likelihood of false positives (gigerenzer et al, 2007). this problem may be addressed by using a confidence score alongside a decision. similarly, doctors may request retaking the decision to reduce the likelihood of false positives/negatives. however, because the model dynamically adjusts, there may be a different outcome – which is not necessarily false – between decisions if periodic “batched” updates or continuous learning is used. furthermore, there may often be multiple valid outcomes if different treatment options exist, which may complicate the foreseeability of errors. relatedly, when creating “ground truth” data to train models on, researchers often find significant subjective variance amongst practitioners, for instance when using diagnostic grading scales for disease progression (krause et al, 2018). further exacerbating this problem are adversarial examples, where ambiguity in an image, for instance, may lead to an incorrect classification by both a model and humans (wexler, 2017).5 to address this issue, researchers may have specialists deliberate over ambiguous outliers and aggregate decisions to ensure that the benchmark for testing is the best approximation of medical knowledge (krause et al, 2018). many technical issues may arise in training, but these are resolved insofar as the model will only be used if it performs with the same or lower error rate than humans. however, when applied to live data, issues with “overfitting” the model so that it does not generalise effectively may emerge. for instance, as in the example of judicial sentencing above, there is a possibility of algorithmic discrimination. if the underlying datasets contain biases against minorities or other groups, algorithms will often reproduce these in their outputs (romei and ruggieri, 2014). there are many techniques to address this to improve fairness, but more subtle encodings may be hard to remove without impacting accuracy. there is naturally (in the west) proportionally less training data about minorities (hardt, 2014), and this sample size disparity will often increase error rates for those groups (zou and schiebinger, 2018), especially when data sources do not reflect true epidemiology (neighbors, 1989) or where broader socio-economic factors may exclude minorities from health services and clinical studies (schonberger, 2019). however, an influential study argued that “relevant attributes”, such as 5 adversarial networks can be used to make models more robust against outliers, but they can also be used to deliberately disrupt the functionality of oai models. inputs can be designed to induce mistakes in other networks through imperceptible changes to images, causing misclassification. these attacks can be conducted with or without access to the policy network of the oai (goodfellow, 2017). researchers have suggested embedded applications in medicine may hold technical vulnerabilities making them susceptible, especially when there are broader economic incentives for attacks in the healthcare system (finlayson et al, 2017). for cases where system security is compromised, established case law exists (kingston, 2018) for establishing liability in non-oai software, but this is not the case in oai software. this issue is further complicated because, in an increasingly wide variety of prediction and classification tasks, oai have lower error rates than specialists, sometimes substantially (topol, 2019). one may thus suggest we should always favour oai in such cases because, on aggregate – and in the long run – they produce better outcomes. however, this argument misses a great deal of nuance. global t h e t h i n k e r52 targeting individuals susceptible to addiction, are meaningfully shaped by “sensitive attributes”, such as growing up in a poorer neighbourhood, correlated with a particular ethnicity (barocas and selbst, 2016). therefore, removing correlations of sensitive attributes, or proxies, significantly impacts accuracy (calder and verwer, 2010), ultimately harming identification and treatment of those at higher risk. as such, some trade-off between fairness and utility may be unavoidable. nevertheless, if the error rates can be shown to be disproportionately distributed (homer v chief constable of west yorkshire police, 2010), this may still present litigation risks through indirect discrimination or data protection legislation (art. 9 and 22(4) gdpr), where special protections when processing sensitive data is required. although this may improve with the digitisation of underrepresented group’s medical records, these uncertainties may impede developers. moreover, whilst algorithmic discrimination can reinforce discrimination, insofar as oai is reflecting existing discrimination in the data, developers may be uniquely placed to detect this on aggregate if not individually (savulescu and maslen, 2015) and subsequently correct for this through automated decision-making. regulations the problems arising from oai may well resolve themselves if interpretability methods reach a level of detail to satisfy legal requirements in all contexts. indeed, approaches in reinforcement learning and models involving causal “do-calculus” yield promising results (lavin, 2019). however, they also rely on sometimes substantial assumptions about causal relationships. moving away from this associational, a-theoretical and opaque model of decision-making is central to the debate about the theoretical basis of ai and there may be inherent limitations to the ability of many current approaches (pearl, 2018) to produce “explainability”. creating such models without reducing accuracy seems a significant hurdle, and in the meanwhile, it may be that the fractious domain-specific landscape of interpretability methods may continue, and we must concede box’s aphorism that “all models are wrong but some are useful”. regulatory approaches have been equally problematic (guihot, 2017). it may be appropriate to hold ai to the same standards as humans in some circumstances, focusing on the kind of explanations required by the law in individual contexts (doshi-velez et al, 2017) and weighting the need for clarity against the relative domain risks whilst refining interpretability methods (reed, 2018). some have suggested using standards-based regulation to mitigate risks arising from opacity and have argued that algorithms should be held to even higher standards than humans, where explainability is also required (tutt, 2017). the european commission (ec) has also been evaluating the product liability framework to deal with ai concerns around their self-learning moving away from this associational, a-theoretical and opaque model of decision-making is central to the debate about the theoretical basis of ai and there may be inherent limitations to the ability of many current approaches (pearl, 2018) to produce “explainability”. global 53v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 capabilities in particular (european commission, 2018), while the house of lords has concluded that it is simply not acceptable to deploy any ai that has a substantial impact unless it can provide a “full and satisfactory explanation” (house of lords, 2018). attempts have been made in this regard, but they remain incomplete. for instance, the ec expert group on ai (european commission, 2018) has broadly addressed the need for interpretability mechanisms for explanations and to detect bias but does not provide a substantive regulatory framework. the fda seems to have the most comprehensive regulatory framework for its approval of a few dozen ai applications in medicine. it provides standards-based regulation for pre-market and post-market approval and review, such as protocols for handling algorithmic changes by developers that may change the output and requiring clear expectations of how the model might change over time (fda, 2018). however, it does not provide any requirements for transparency in particular decisions or provide an explicit framework for the degree of autonomy or oversight in decision making. ostensibly it may seem appropriate to favour standards-based regulation, similar to schemes in finance that are intended to provide transparency through disclosure and strict registration requirements (manne, 2007). however, it is not clear that, as black box ai becomes more complex with the increasing availability of quality data, it would necessarily become more auditable – indeed, increasing complexity may result in the opposite. as such, placing minimum transparency standards may restrict any market entrants or require design trade-offs, where developers are forced to use a shallower architecture with reduced performance. equally, a complex regulatory standards system may impose great costs for market entrants with regard to meeting compliance requirements, thus further increasing the monopolisation of ai (coates, 2015). standards-based regulations that set impossible thresholds for explainability is counterproductive and stifles innovation. strict liability regimes are another favoured approach with, for instance, the european parliament debating the possibility of a “turing registry”, where ai application providers conduct “risk pooling” from which to pay out damages under a strict liability scheme (european parliament, 2017). others have proposed doctrines such as res ipsa loquitur – or “facts speak for themselves” – where negligence is inferred against the defendant who must then rebut the prima facie case against them (cassidy v ministry of health, 1957). this approach is generally applied where complicated machinery is involved of which the claimant has little knowledge and an explanation is not given by the defendant (laurie et al, 2016). however, courts have been reluctant to apply the doctrine because it is very difficult to establish that a failure to prevent damage was caused by a negligent or non-negligent act (ratcliffe v plymouth & torbay health authority, 1998). the automated and electric vehicles act 2018 imposes a strict liability regime for accidents involving autonomous vehicles, allowing injured parties to bring claims against insurers and, whilst acknowledging in section 3(2) the possibility of contributory negligence, it circumvents decisionmaking and oversight questions. relatedly, often the no-fault strict liability for products – in, for instance, the consumer protection act 1987 and similar international legislation (wagner, 2018) – may be used for claims. here, a “defect” in a “product” would deviate from a standard of safety an individual is entitled to expect. however, this may only include embedded software (schonberger, 2019) and the question of what a defect precisely entails concerning oai remains to be determined. often predictive programming necessarily involves some degree of unpredictable error (yadav, 2017) and as such may lead to widespread breaches when regulating algorithms. oai exacerbates this characteristic. strict liability is only useful when developers can predict harmful effects for which they might be liable and adjust for them and obtain sufficient insurance. they also do not have the same level of control as a product designer about however, it does not provide any requirements for transparency in particular decisions or provide an explicit framework for the degree of autonomy or oversight in decision making. global t h e t h i n k e r54 known defects. the unpredictability of high-cost liability stemming from this scheme would create significant barriers to entry and stifle innovation (schwartz, 1992), thus this approach should be reserved for the most inherently dangerous applications, if any. yet this regulatory scheme relies on aggregate performance, as regulators assume that, if developers can predict the error rate of the model on aggregate, they can infer from this how the model will act in an individual instance. this is misguided. indeed, during an ftc hearing, the ceo of the first approved oai for autonomous retinal scanning, when asked how they defined an accurate or transparent result, stated “simply correlating ai output to current standard of care output does not take into account the underlying reasoning and therefore risks” (ftc, 2018). the law does not exclusively examine a doctor’s track record to determine potential negligence in an individual case; it examines the reasonableness of the specific decision in question. the issue with blanket regulatory approaches is that they do not acknowledge the variance of interpretability methods, nor do they account for the degree of supervision and transparency that seem central in balancing domain-specific risks. lt seems reasonable to ensure oai is not applied in areas where there is an excessive risk; however, it may also be undesirable to limit oai to areas we already understand well. when an oai is supervised but has some opacity, an assessment may focus on whether the user or creator was justified in how they used it, coupled with any relevant insight into the oai itself. this approach might rely on the harm being a foreseeable consequence of deployment rather than action. a regulatory taxonomy of oai applications may be required, which, based on expert insight in a particular domain, acknowledges the level of risk stemming from the consequences of decisions, the degree of interpretability possible with current methods and the amount of oversight (price, 2017) required depending on the foreseeability of error. there are several difficult balances to properly align incentives here. providing too much information about internal logic may expose proprietary content, while oversight without clear boundaries may lead to frivolous litigation, and too little of both may disenfranchise individuals. indeed, the lack of direct supervision and independence of workers resulting from previous industrial revolutions brought difficulties for agency law, which led to an expansion of its use (carlson, 2001). a similar expansion to encompass oai may be useful here, specifically the principalsupervision rule for less dangerous scenarios and vicarious liability for more dangerous scenarios (bathaee, 2018). in essence, the broader problem is that duties of care, intent and causation tests are based on our understanding of human decision-making and ability to verify human behaviour. this evidentiary calculus breaks down when we are presented with a decision-maker that reasons in a fundamentally different way to both humans and hard-coded “static” programs. therefore, a re-evaluation of these doctrines seems necessary to account for the degree of interpretability, domain-specific risks and the level of oversight. ■ 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http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3198764 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3198764 https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/07/facets-open-source-visualization-tool.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/07/facets-open-source-visualization-tool.html _goback t h e t h i n k e r25 by abejide ade-ibijola and charis harley covid-19 can ai really help? many researchers and industry experts working in artificial intelligence (ai) have claimed that ai holds the answers to the past, present, and future difficulties faced by humankind. we form part of this group, and with the coming of covid-19 – a pandemic which is raging through the world and has so far claimed over 300,00 lives – we argue that now is the time to combine human ingenuity with the capability of machines to support a world in crisis. it has been predicted that covid-19 will result in a high death toll in af rica, as has been the case on other continents. vaccines and/or a cure will take more than a year to be realised, hence the question: can we turn to technology, specifically ai, for a solution? in this article, we consider the context of af rica in particular, our specific difficulties, and how ai can help af rica in the fight against covid-19. the goal is to curb its spread, help predict patterns of spread, support social distancing measures, help in contact tracing, and assist with reopening economies. a key point in this article is that not all ai technologies are feasible within the af rican context, not only because of affordability concerns, but also because of current policies and social contexts. mobilising ai against covid-19 in an age where medical science has moved into the realm of what was once termed science fiction, on a continent which has long faced the ravages of disease, poverty, economic instability battling covid-19 with artificial intelligence what will work in africa? © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 26v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 covid-19 by abejide ade-ibijola and charis harley and severe climate conditions, it may seem strange that another pandemic would cause such panic. after all, af rican medical experts have been at the foref ront of medical advances for decades, and have contributed to many innovative technologies. in fact, this is south af rica’s third major pandemic in only 100 years, and with a much younger population than europe or china, af rican countries may in some ways be more resilient to covid-19. the reality, however, is that af rica is vulnerable in many respects, with a constantly evolving climate, changing social constructs, and f ragile economies. as such, we need new tools and methods to support our fight against covid-19. in an age where data is gold, the use of data analytics, machine learning and ai have become prominent tools, as we will argue below. 3d printing a simple yet extremely effective contribution to the fight against covid-19 has been the mass production of masks. in such a manner, ai is being used to safeguard both the public and healthcare workers. the university of johannesburg’s library makerspace team has used 3d printing to produce surgical face shields to tackle the shortage of personal protective equipment (ppe) for healthcare workers. hp’s 3d digital team and digital manufacturing partner network have taken 3d printing further, by designing, validating and producing essential parts for medical responders and hospitals. these include ventilator valves, breathing filters, face mask clasps, and plastic door handle adaptors that enable easy elbow opening to prevent further spread of the virus (lores, 2020). budmen industries are also at the foref ront of producing 3d printed devices to support health care workers. they have developed the necessary files to print 3d face shields, easily downloadable f rom their website (budmen industries, 2020). a northern italian hospital in brescia, italy, ran out of replacement valves for a reanimation device due to a supplier shortage. the italian business isinnova stepped in and printed replacement valves at short notice, saving many lives in the process. building on this success, they then created a 3d-printed adapter that converts snorkelling masks into functional c-pap masks for oxygen therapy, supporting the improved health of any who have severe symptoms of the virus (sher, 2020). curative ai ai research has already shown itself to be at the foref ront of the development of antibodies and vaccines for covid-19, either entirely designed f rom scratch or through drug repurposing. for instance, the ai healthcare start-up deargen, based in south korea, published a paper on a deep learningbased model which assists in detecting which existing medications would work best (marwala, 2020). similarly, companies such as benevolentai, based in the united kingdom, are using ai and available data to search through existing drugs that could be used to treat covid-19 patients until a vaccine becomes available. vir biotechnology and atomwise, start-ups in the united states, are using algorithms to identify a molecule that could serve as the basis of treatment, while the british start-up exscienta has already been successful at presenting an ai-designed drug molecule that has gone to human trials (obeidat, 2020). the genetics of covid-19 are also being investigated. intel have teamed with lenovo and bgi genomics to accelerate the analysis of the genomic characteristics of covid-19, with the aim of assisting scientists with investigating transmission patterns of the virus and creating better diagnostic methods (swan, 2020). using its alphafold system, google’s ai company deepmind is creating structure models of proteins that have been linked with the virus in a bid to aid our understanding of it (obeidat, 2020). academic institutions have not been left behind when it comes to using ai to support curative research. akara, a trinity college spinout based in dublin, has developed violet, which is an ultraviolet light robot clinically proven to kill viruses, bacteria and harmful germs (akara robotics, 2020). oxygen, a device developed by the company protofy.xyz, with the scientific support of the hospital clínic, hospital germans trias i pujol a key point in this article is that not all ai technologies are feasible within the african context, not only because of affordability concerns, but also because of current policies and social contexts. t h e t h i n k e r27 and the ub of barcelona, automates the process of manual ventilation for patients in emergency situations where not enough ventilators are available (oxygen project, 2020). diagnostics with ai immediate diagnosis means that response measures such as quarantine can be employed quickly to curb further spread of the infection. an impediment to rapid diagnosis is the relative shortage of clinical expertise required to interpret diagnostic results due to the volume of cases. markforged, in partnership with neurophotometrics, produced fiberflex rayon, a 3d-printed nasopharyngeal (np) swab for use in diagnostic testing for covid-19. aside f rom only taking minutes to make, they successfully detected the virus in all test patients, while the commercial swabs reported false negatives (markforged, 2020). billiontoone has developed a novel, highly accurate and cost-effective covid-19 test protocol which, through the use of different sets of instruments and chemicals f rom existing covid-19 tests, has unlocked the capacity to test more than one million patients per day in the united states alone (newswire, 2020). improved diagnostic time has been the aim of many innovators during the covid-19 crisis. linkingmed, a beijing-based oncology data platform and medical data analysis company, employed ai to do so. pneumonia, a common complication of covid-19, can now be diagnosed f rom analysis of a ct scan in less than sixty seconds with an accuracy rate as high as 92% and a recall rate of 97% on test data sets (obeidat, 2020). intelligent robots and drones the public deployment of drones and robots for a myriad of purposes has been of great assistance, given the strict social distancing measures implemented in many countries. simple tasks, such as room cleaning and the sterilisation of isolation wards, are now being done by robots. pudu technology have extended their reach to the healthcare sector by deploying their robots in over 40 hospitals for these purposes (obeidat, 2020). dji, a chinese-based company, have furthered sanitation by using drones to spray a chlorine or ethyl alcohol-based disinfectant f rom the air (dji hub, 2020). drones are also being used for effective communication in china. loudspeakers have been mounted on drones to help disperse public gatherings in crowded places, ai voice assistants advise people to adhere to quarantines, and drones flying banners give instructions on necessary precautions. the ai voice robot is further capable of obtaining personal information to produce daily reports which have helped to monitor the spread of the virus in china. thermal cameras on drones have assisted in a similar fashion by monitoring body temperature so that medical staff can identify new potential cases (dji hub, 2020). intel has had similar success, providing robots to assist medical professionals by transporting medical supplies and surgical equipment to reduce human-to-human interactions (swan, 2020). autonomous delivery is being extensively used in more than one country by companies such as antwork, jd logistics, micromulticopter and zipline (obeidat, 2020). communication and misinformation the panic and uncertainty which has engulfed the world has naturally led to the dissemination of false information, leading to myths on many social media and news platforms. several organisations have started combatting concerns surrounding misinformation, such as kaleyra who have launched a program aimed at facilitating communication with populations affected by covid-19. they assist organisations to communicate through their application programming interfaces (apis), whether via sms, voice or whatsapp services. in south af rica, a digital platform called govchat acts as a notification service which connects citizens to government services through mobile phones (marwala, 2020). it also serves to alert healthcare authorities of possibly infected individuals and to direct people to suitable medical facilities. in a similar vein, a ghanaian e-health medical diagnostics distributor, redbird, has launched a covid-19 daily check-in app and symptom tracker which allows users to report symptoms and enables pharmacists to track the results of their customers (jackson, 2020). in this manner, they are not only supporting effective communication between the public and healthcare practitioners, but are also ensuring social distancing. a tide of phishing, misinformation and covid-19 28v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 malware has also hit platforms such as google and facebook, who have developed a method where a search for coronavirus/covid-19 yields an alert sign coupled with links to verified sources of information. youtube directly links users to the world health organisation (who) and similar credible organisations, while removing inaccurate or untrustworthy videos. in an attempt to obtain more accurate data, certain companies are trying to leverage different means of surveillance. canadian-based bluedot have employed machine learning and natural language processing to track, recognise, and report the spread of the virus, and have been able to do so faster than the who or the us centre for disease control and prevention (cdc) (obeidat, 2020). challenges in africa while the outbreak of a communicable disease is not foreign to many in af rica, covid-19 is still novel in many respects. with an eye on the rest of the world, af rica has had to assess an ever-evolving situation with a keen awareness of the fact that an outbreak on this continent will look different to other parts of the world. aside f rom our specific economic, geographical and societal contexts, we must also take into account our demographics. to date, the pandemic has consistently targeted the elderly, with people over the age of 60 accounting for 81% of all infection-related deaths, according to the who. with a relatively young population, such individuals make up approximately 5% of our population, in comparison to 16% in china (dupoux et al, 2020). while this should alleviate some concerns regarding the safety of our young adults and children, we still face the difficultly of having many vulnerable individuals in our society. a significant number of adults in af rica have compromised immune systems, mostly owing to the high prevalence of hiv infection and hiv-tuberculosis co-infection. data on the fatality rate of immunocompromised covid-19 patients is limited, but early data indicates that the rate for individuals with certain chronic medical conditions is up to five times higher than the overall case fatality rate (dupoux et al, 2020). healthcare systems it is well-known that the capacity of healthcare systems in most parts of af rica is limited. recent data indicates that ethiopia and niger each have 0.3 beds per 1,000 people, and tunisia has 2.3, compared to an average of 5.6 in europe (dupoux et al, 2020). furthermore, we have constrained tertiary care capabilities, and limited critical care units and medical supplies. if healthcare systems in the region were to become overwhelmed, support for covid-19 patients would falter, the deaths among patients with other illnesses could spike, and other types of public health measures would be under severe strain. another risk of fighting the covid-19 outbreak is the possible distraction for healthcare systems which need to also be concerned with other diseases, including malaria and measles (vaughan, 2020). the 2014–16 ebola outbreak led to many thousands of deaths, not due to the outbreak itself, but rather as a consequence of resources being diverted away f rom other diseases. should healthcare systems across af rica falter in a similar way, citizens are likely to develop distrust in these systems, which could contribute to the spread of the disease (dupoux et al, 2020). economies covid-19 will undoubtedly have a negative impact on af rican economies. this will lead to revenue declines or possible closures for small businesses and even larger companies. citizens will face job losses and reduced wages as companies lay off workers, with the most immediate impact visible for those in the informal economy. companies and governments are likely to face shortages of cash flow and working capital. this would have an immediate effect on governments’ liquidity, their ability to pay workers, to build inf rastructure, to provide supplies needed by emergency response teams, and to initiate economic stimulus packages to mitigate serious covid-19 in fact, this is south africa’s third major pandemic in only 100 years, and with a much younger population than europe or china, african countries may in some ways be more resilient to covid-19. the reality, however, is that africa is vulnerable in many respects, with a constantly evolving climate, changing social constructs, and fragile economies. t h e t h i n k e r29 economic downturns. several af rican countries have already implemented lockdowns, so these liquidity issues could surface quickly (dupoux et al, 2020). society mitigating strategies that may have worked in other countries will not necessarily be effective in af rican cities, particularly in tightly packed informal settlements. furthermore, even where people are relatively dispersed in rural areas, communicating information about social distancing and necessary sanitation measures will be challenging, if not impossible. such obvious social inequity is an immediate concern, effectively highlighting those that are more vulnerable than others. many people in af rica survive on daily wages, which under lockdown conditions or enforced social distancing will lead to a loss of income (dupoux et al, 2020). reduced wages and an increase in unemployment, especially for those in the informal sector, will lead to increased levels of poverty, a lack of basic necessities, and malnutrition, which in turn will make people even more susceptible to covid-19. the closing of schools contributes to this, since school-based nutrition programs for children will be disrupted. while governments are trying to put measures in place to support the well-being of the public, these measures are also placing economic and emotional pressure on individuals. as the stresses and strains faced by the family unit increase, we will see a breakdown of community cohesiveness, especially with the banning of social events in many countries. at the same time, the spread of misinformation will inevitably lead to unrest and crime, as people grow more desperate and fearful. ai ingenuity in africa in this section, we explore how ai solutions can be implemented in the fight against covid-19 in af rica. we begin by discussing ai solutions that are currently being deployed around the world and highlight the ones that can be ‘ported’, or replicated, in af rica. we also discuss a number of current efforts in af rican countries that suggest that ai is already being implemented in the fight against covid-19 in af rica. finally, we explore how new ai initiatives (or models) can be built to address af rica’s specific needs, and the challenges of such a pursuit (mainly related to data quality), despite the recorded successes of ai in af rica during this pandemic. existing solutions that can be ‘ported’ to africa below, we present various solutions developed via ai which have assisted in combating covid-19 around the world, as well as discussions on whether these same solutions can be ‘ported’ to af rica. case identification f rom surveys – researchers at cambridge university have proposed a machine learning technique that analyses surveys obtained f rom mobile and web apps, while cities and towns are under quarantine (srinivasa and vazquez, 2020). this solution can easily be developed and employed across af rican countries with the limitation of reaching only major metropolitan areas, as af rica has many remote and rural areas that will not be able to access such apps. case identification f rom x-ray images – in australia, ai experts have built an ai model for the automatic detection of covid-19 f rom x-ray images, using deep learning (a class of machine learning algorithm). this ai model took previous advancements in computer vision, and – using a smaller set of labelled x-ray images – was able to learn and tell (to a high degree of accuracy) whether a new x-ray image was that of a covid-19 patient (apostolopoulos and mpesiana, 2020). a similar attempt to this, also based on deep learning, can be found in wang et al (2020). in the case of this innovation, there is really no need to reinvent the wheel: a representative of an af rican country (f rom government, public, or private healthcare) interested in using this tool can just write to the inventors for a license to use the solution. such tools are currently being shared for f ree across the world as solidarity gestures against this pandemic. covid-19 while the outbreak of a communicable disease is not foreign to many in africa, covid-19 is still novel in many respects. with an eye on the rest of the world, africa has had to assess an ever-evolving situation with a keen awareness of the fact that an outbreak on this continent will look different to other parts of the world. 30v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 we also discuss a number of current efforts in african countries that suggest that ai is already being implemented in the fight against covid-19 in africa. finally, we explore how new ai initiatives (or models) can be built to address africa’s specific needs, and the challenges of such a pursuit (mainly related to data quality), despite the recorded successes of ai in africa during this pandemic. a) case identification and outbreak risk analysis – a tool called bluedot uses machine learning (cluster analysis) for case identification and to predict the spread of diseases. this tool uses a dashboard to present users with a global tracking of risks and contexts of the disease. bluedot is a commercial tool, hence within the context of af rica it has limited use: an entity may buy a license, or write to the inventors to use this tool for social good. it is unknown whether the analytics provided by this tool are based on data collected on the af rican continent – were this not the case it may significantly skew the tool’s predictions, or at the very least skew them slightly, due to the inaccuracy of af rican datasets. b) management of critical patients – in the united states, ai (deep learning and expert systems) has been employed to support decision making concerning covid-19 patients in icu. this ai has shown good results in offering diagnosis, treatment risk stratification, prognosis and management (alimadadi et al, 2020). implementing a similar solution in af rica will require large, quality datasets f rom the continent. the challenges of getting these types of datasets is discussed below. c) drug synthesis – evidence has shown that machine learning and natural language processing techniques have found applications in drug synthesis by learning the structural comparison of protein binding (simonovsky and meyers, 2020). this technology is currently being used in the quest to find treatment for covid-19. af rican researchers in related domains are most likely looking at similar works and using these as building blocks in the race for finding a cure to this virus. d) tracking of social distancing and face masks – reuters news agency recently reported that a number of companies in the usa are now using cameras (equipped with computer vision algorithms) to track people’s compliance with social distancing in their environment, including compliance with other regulations such as wearing face masks (reuters, 2020). these solutions can be purchased ‘out of the box’ by the administration of interested af rican countries – there is no need to reinvent this. e) enforcing social distancing with drones – this solution uses drones to provide insights to law enforcement agencies on where people may currently be gathered. this helps with the optimal deployment of policing resources to enforce social distancing (rivas, 2020). this may be in violation of privacy laws in some countries, but it is currently being used in peru. drones have shown their usefulness in rural areas of af rica, so this solution may be considered viable (as a complement to other efforts) by some countries in af rica. f) drones for humanitarian aid distribution – china has used drones for the distribution of humanitarian aid and medical supplies, as well as for aerial monitoring and the estimation of the magnitude of spread (ruiz estrada, 2020). using drones to deliver supplies to remote areas in af rica is not new. one such innovation can be found in rwanda’s zipline drone program, in which blood supplies are delivered to remote areas. g) 3d printing of protective equipment – many manufacturers across the globe are using 3d printing to manufacture protective equipment, such as masks, face shields, covid-19 specimen collection kits, ventilator valves and medications (ishack and lipner, 2020). some af rican countries have made similar efforts, as has been discussed earlier in this article. h) community risk assessment – the alpha satellite (α-satellite) is an example of ai that is currently being used to assess the risk of communities in the usa in order to help with developing strategies for combating the pandemic (ye et al, 2020). africa’s successes in fighting covid-19 with ai in this section, we discuss examples of how ai is being used in af rican countries to assist in combatting covid-19. this is by no means an covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r31 exhaustive list, and there may be many more attempts that are not included here. a) ghana – an app for comprehensive real-time tracking of covid-19 cases across af rica was launched in ghana. this app is based on ai4covid-19 by runmila ai institutes and minohealth ai labs (paul, 2020). another work in progress reported in ghana is the work of amo-boateng, which is a testing unit powered with a mobile phone, capable of producing a result in less than a minute. the ai community is keeping an eye on this development (tsado, 2020; paul, 2020). b) kenya – tambua health, a kenyan start-up, has reported a tool called t-sensem. this tool records sounds f rom the lungs and the heart and attempts to determine if there is a respiratory disease in the body. it is currently at an experimental stage (paul, 2020). c) nigeria – beat drone, a nigerian start-up, has shown promising experiments in the spraying of disinfectants to fight covid-19 using drones (jackson, 2020). wellvis health nigeria has also launched an app that allows users to evaluate their covid-19 risk categories based on their symptoms and history of exposure. this is a rule-based type of ai system (paul, 2020). d) south af rica – the university of johannesburg’s library makerspace is employing 3d printing for the creation of ppe, including face shields, which are donated to health workers in johannesburg (zama, 2020). similarly, natalie raphil – founder of robots can think – is using 3d printing to manufacture a hundred masks per day, which are then distributed to major hospitals in johannesburg (tsado, 2020). drones have also proved helpful in spreading awareness messages about covid-19 in rural areas of south af rica (de klerk, 2020). e) uganda – a noteworthy ugandan innovation – even though it does not employ ai tools – is the market garden app. this app allows vendors to carry out commercial activities in a lockdown environment, while observing social distancing. the app is f ree, helping ugandans to deal with the economic issues that arise f rom the lockdown, as some businesses are able to transact via the app, assisting entrepreneurs to keep afloat (harrisberg, 2020). more can be done in af rica to build ai predictive models, as we have both the academic and technological expertise to do so. one major challenge, however, is the difficulty of obtaining the large and reliable datasets required to build such ai models. in the next section, we discuss the challenge of incomplete datasets, due to instances such as unreported cases of covid-19 infections and deaths across af rican countries. building new ai models, and the challenges of skewed and incomplete af rican data given the rate of covid-19 testing in af rican countries, it is evident that most of these countries do not have the ability to conduct extensive testing, which has led to skewed and incomplete data on the continent. according to worldometer’s statistics on covid-19 – as at 2 may 2020 – out of 56 affected af rican countries and territories, only 38 have complete data fields for the number of tests completed and infected cases, while the rest do not (worldometer, 2020). there is also a great discrepancy in the reported data for these countries, as is reflected below in table 1. some countries appear to have done a lot of testing. however, if we compare the number of tests to the number of cases, we can see that not nearly enough testing is being performed. one way to assess this is to compute testing intensity. the question is: how rigorous is testing in a given country? if the number of tests completed is significantly higher than the number of infected cases, then we can say that a country is doing well covid-19 more can be done in africa to build ai predictive models, as we have both the academic and technological expertise to do so. one major challenge, however, is the difficulty of obtaining the large and reliable datasets required to build such ai models. 32v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 country total cases total deaths total tests testing intensity (%) uganda 85.00 0.00 33,818.00 99.75 botswana 23.00 1.00 7,675.00 99.70 zimbabwe 34.00 4.00 7,642.00 99.56 ethiopia 133.00 3.00 20,770.00 99.36 mauritania 8.00 1.00 1,032.00 99.22 togo 123.00 9.00 7,100.00 98.27 kenya 411.00 21.00 21,702.00 98.11 ghana 2,169.00 18.00 113,497.00 98.09 mauritius 332.00 10.00 16,028.00 97.93 zambia 119.00 3.00 5,284.00 97.75 rwanda 249.00 0.00 10,969.00 97.73 namibia 16.00 0.00 704.00 97.73 south af rica 5,951.00 116.00 217,522.00 97.26 gambia 12.00 1.00 401.00 97.01 libya 63.00 3.00 1,949.00 96.77 mozambique 79.00 0.00 2,246.00 96.48 south sudan 45.00 0.00 1,247.00 96.39 burundi 11.00 1.00 284.00 96.13 madagascar 135.00 0.00 3,393.00 96.02 tunisia 998.00 41.00 23,526.00 95.76 malawi 37.00 3.00 831.00 95.55 angola 30.00 2.00 481.00 93.76 egypt 5,895.00 406.00 90,000.00 93.45 d jibouti 1,112.00 2.00 13,856.00 91.97 morocco 4,687.00 172.00 38,102.00 87.70 ivory coast 1,333.00 15.00 10,073.00 86.77 nigeria 2,170.00 68.00 15,759.00 86.23 niger 728.00 33.00 5,230.00 86.08 eswatini 108.00 1.00 714.00 84.87 cabo verde 122.00 1.00 791.00 84.58 guinea-bissau 257.00 1.00 1,500.00 82.87 mayotte 539.00 4.00 3,000.00 82.03 mali 508.00 26.00 2,172.00 76.61 equatorial guinea 315.00 1.00 854.00 63.11 gabon 276.00 3.00 724.00 61.88 algeria 4,154.00 453.00 6,500.00 36.09 sao tome and principe 16.00 1.00 19.00 15.79 table 1: testing intensity in african countries as at 2 may 2020 covid-19 t h e t h i n k e r33 in terms of testing. we compute testing intensity as follows: testing intensity = 1 – (total cases/total tests) x 100. in table 1, we present 38 af rican countries who have complete numbers for tests completed and infected cases, as published by worldometer, as at 2 may 2020. we have sorted this table according to the computed testing intensity in these countries, f rom the most intense to the least. countries such as uganda, botswana, zimbabwe and ethiopia have very high testing intensity rates and have carried out a significant number of tests in comparison to their number of confirmed cases. we can also observe countries that may consider performing more tests, such as egypt, south af rica, morocco, and algeria. as can be seen, creating a model via ai tools which is expected to predict the spread of covid-19 in af rica is extremely challenging, simply because the current data f rom af rican countries is skewed and not a true representation of the situation on the ground. most rural areas do not have access to testing kits, there is a huge backlog at testing facilities (i.e. new numbers are reports of old tests and not of new tests), and deaths are not reported in most communities, especially when the deceased have to be buried unceremoniously (saba, 2020). given the circumstances, lockdowns have proven to help in curbing the spread of covid-19. however, economies have to reopen and many experts have proposed stages so that this can be done gradually. in the next section, we discuss components of reopening plans f rom around the world, and propose how ai can assist in the reopening process in af rica. reopening strategies with ai: what can africa afford? in this section, we recommend a reopening plan and present ways in which ai can assist af rican countries during this gradual process, especially in cases where there has been a lockdown. we also elaborate on various mitigation strategies, and areas where further efforts could be focused to support the effective reopening of af rican economies. the reopening of economies is one of the most talked-about and controversial topics of the present moment, especially in countries with high covid-19 infection rates. in the usa, the governor of new york, andrew cuomo, has presented a fourstage plan that was crafted using a risk versus reward analysis. this analysis placed activities and businesses that have a low risk of spreading the virus, but greater economic impact, as the first to reopen during the first stage of the plan. those covid-19 © s h u tt e rs to ck .c o m 34v o l u m e 8 4 / 2 0 2 0 with a high infection risk, but with low economic impact, were placed at the tail end of the reopening plan, as seen below: phase 1 – construction, manufacturing and wholesale supply chain phase 2 – professional services, finance and insurance, retail, administrative support, real estate/rental and leasing phase 3 – restaurants, food services, hotels and accommodations phase 4 – arts, entertainment/recreation, education the mitigation strategies are: wearing of masks, washing of hands, weekly testing (where the resources exist), and social distancing. we have singled out this reopening plan, since it is wellthought-out, takes into account basic yet fundamental safety measures which each individual can employ, and can work in af rica. the following are ways that ai can assist with mitigation strategies: social distancing – as has been discussed, drones have been used successfully in other parts of the world for the monitoring of public spaces. this can be adopted in af rica, as these drones are mostly available ‘in a box’ or ‘off the shelf’. piloting them is relatively easy, and they can also be used as a means of supplying humanitarian aid to rural af rican villages and towns. face masks – south af rica is already using 3d printing to create face masks, shields and ppe. this idea can be replicated by other af rican countries. face masks can also be made locally and affordably by using recommended fabrics. rapid testing – ai tools can be used to identify infected cases, which will assist in deploying testing resources to the sectors of the population who are most likely to be infected. predictive models – while it is important for researchers and industry experts to keep building machine learning models that can predict the spread of the virus, we must emphasise that these models are limited by the credibility of the data which can be obtained. most models will be inaccurate, due to the issues discussed earlier in this article. hence, we advise that these efforts be used to further more productive ventures. online learning – a fundamental consideration across the globe is how to manage the education of our youth during the current crisis. there exist a host of f ree online tools and applications available to support teacher engagement with students. companies such as intel are also working towards technological solutions for virtual learning (swan, 2020). plagiarism checkers are easily available, and facial recognition software (designed with machine learning tools) is able to assess the person’s identity (via an uploaded id document) and then repeatedly monitor their presence during assessments. it is important to note that many software vendors around the world (including vendors of ai products and tools) are currently giving out f ree licenses to help in the fight against covid-19. af rican countries can apply for these licenses, which will provide them with access to technologies that normally would have been inaccessible due to the associated costs. what is the way forward for africa? af rican governments currently find themselves in a situation where they have to weigh the health of their people against safeguarding their countries’ economies. the consequences of not seeing to the latter will be increased levels of poverty and worsening social conditions. one thing is certain: any assistance will be appreciated – even if it comes f rom machines. in this article, we have discussed how ai efforts around the world are providing tools to mitigate the spread of covid-19. more can be done, and on a much larger scale, and it is to this end that we have provided a list of ai technologies that can be ‘ported’ to af rica. we have also discussed the issue of skewed data on the continent, which will limit the effectiveness of ai models built for the sole purpose of predicting the spread of the virus in covid-19 african governments currently find themselves in a situation where they have to weigh the health of their people against safeguarding their countries’ economies. the consequences of not seeing to the latter will be increased levels of poverty and worsening social conditions. one thing is certain: any assistance will be appreciated – even if it comes from machines. t h e t h i n k e r35 af rica. this is not to say that one may not pursue such ventures, but there needs to be an awareness of the degree of error involved in basing models on incomplete data. fundamentally, it would not be feasible to make decisions based on unreliable results. the question which invariably lingers in our minds is: how will af rica pay for these suggested technologies? most of the countries in question may not have the budget to invest in ai technologies and tools. hence, we call on the private sector to use this crisis as an opportunity to make themselves known through investing in the public. the private technology sector is capable of funding drones and sponsoring research into solutions of the kind discussed here. such efforts would not go unnoticed by a government and the people it would benefit. rather, it would serve to highlight those organisations who acted to support their clients during a time that has left many in dire straits. the governments of af rican countries should engage in discussions with experts regarding the pandemic we face, and the concerns which surround it. south af rica has a presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution, consisting of academics, industrial experts, and government officials who promote ai agendas. many other countries on the continent could also benefit f rom such a panel, and as such should take south af rica’s lead, if they have not already done so. ■ references akara robotics, (2020). violet. 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[online] 702. available at: http://www.702.co.za/articles/379849/uj-makesuse-of-3d-printing-to-make-surgical-face-shields [accessed 5 may 2020] covid-19 by lusanda batala | opinion 37 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion global, continental, and regional development agendas what does it mean to domesticate or localise these? abstract the domestication of regional, continental and global development agendas can be confusing, leading to one concluding that these are either an addition to or a replacing of, a country’s national development plan. what do these various development agendas mean for a country like south af rica versus the country’s domestic development focus as espoused in the national development plan (ndp)? what does domestication of the various agendas mean? the key idea to note here is that domestication is not about replacing a country’s development agenda with a regional or continental or global development agenda. what is important is to ensure that there is alignment of the domestic plan (objectives, priorities) with those of the rest of the world, the continent and the region. global, continental and regional agendas are not separate programmes. they are part of the national development plan. south af rica’s implementation of its own development plan indirectly implements other development agendas. opinion 38t h e t h i n k e r introduction a continuous confusion persists around whether the agreed global, continental, and regional development agendas – such as the united nations 2030 agenda (sustainable development goals (sdgs)), af rican union agenda 2063, and sadc regional indicative strategic development plan (risdp) – are meant to replace or complement individual countries’ development plans. after these development agendas were adopted (2030 agenda in 2015 and agenda 2063 in 2013), countries were meant to domesticate or localise the agreed goals. this is where the dilemma seems to still exist, with contrasting views in both the public and private arenas. occasionally, one hears questions about when will south af rica do something or implement either the au agenda 2063 or the un agenda 2030. clarity is needed as to what these development agendas mean for a country like south af rica, versus the country’s domestic development focus, as espoused in the national development plan (ndp). this brief aims to provide some clarity, linkage, and understanding of the various sustainable development plans – global, continental, and regional. the origins of global sustainable development the focus on global sustainable development by the united nations can be traced back to 1987 when the world commission on environment and development was tasked by the un general assembly to come up with a global agenda for change. the task entailed the following: • a proposal on long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond; • recommendations for greater co-operation among developing countries, and between countries at different stages of economic and social development, for the achievement of common and mutually supportive objectives that take account of the interrelationships between people, resources, environment, and development; • ways in which the international community can deal more effectively with environmental concerns; and • definitions of shared perceptions of long-term environmental issues and the appropriate efforts needed to deal successfully with the problems of protecting and enhancing the environment, a long-term agenda for action during the coming decades, and aspirational goals for the world community. the basis was that ‘the earth is one but the world is not’. we all depend on the same biosphere, but individual communities and countries strive for survival and prosperity with little regard of their impact on others. some consume the earth’s resources at a rate that would leave little for future generations. others, many more in number, consume far too little and live with the prospect of hunger, squalor, disease, and early death. the next key defining moment for change was in 1992 in rio de janeiro, brazil, during the united nations conference on environment and development (agenda 21). this conference recognised that ‘humanity stands at a defining moment in history’. global nations began to realise that they were conf ronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations; a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health, and illiteracy; and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which nations depend for their wellbeing. this was the beginning of a global partnership for dealing with environmental and developmental challenges. worth noting during this shift in global development was the global consensus reached that the ‘successful implementation is first and foremost the responsibility of governments. national strategies, plans, policies and processes are crucial in achieving global development. the role of international cooperation is to support and supplement national efforts.’ in 2000, the united nations millennium declaration was adopted, with eight goals to be reached by 2015 – the millennium development goals (mdgs). the mdgs demonstrated a greater focus on development compared to prior discussions. only one goal, number 7, placed a focus on environmental issues. in 2002, the johannesburg world summit on sustainable development assessed progress since rio and delivered three key outcomes: a political declaration, the johannesburg plan of implementation, and a range of partnership initiatives. key commitments 39 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion included those on sustainable consumption and production, water and sanitation, and energy. in 2012, in rio de janeiro (rio+20), discussion on a new global agenda to replace the mdgs began. the basis of the negotiation was that ‘poverty is the greatest global challenge’. in september 2015, the un adopted the 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs), which traverse various socio-economic issues and bring environmental issues to the centre of development. in all these development processes, it is worth noting that development work happens at the local and national level, and further, in collaborations among countries. what does the domestication of regional, continental, and global development agendas mean? is it about replacing a country’s development plans? or is it about mapping the two to see if they converge? where there is non-convergence, strategies must be devised to close the gap. the issue is not about replacing a country’s development agenda with a regional or continental or global development agenda. what is important is to ensure that there is alignment of the domestic plan (objectives, priorities) with those of the rest of the world, continent, or region. the process of domesticating global, continental, and regional development plans starts with finding areas of convergence. once this is done, it is easier to translate the global targets into programmes and actions that can be implemented locally. moreover, the process presents an opportunity to identify areas where there are gaps and strategies that could be utilised to close the gaps. in essence, all development agendas have similar core objectives which aim to tackle the urgency of addressing economic, social, and environmental issues in order to improve people’s lives. the plans seek to accelerate the implementation of initiatives for growth and sustainable development, deal with unemployment, eliminate poverty, and reduce inequality. hence, it is important to find synergies between domestic, regional, continental, and global development agendas. commitments to global, continental, or regional development plans do not necessarily indicate a replacement of the domestic plan. just imagine a situation where a country, such as south af rica, which has adopted the national development plan (ndp) in 2012 and is already in the process of implementation, has to change gears and focus on the sustainable development goals (sdgs) and agenda 2063, which were approved later. a country must deduce the extent of alignment of the domestic plan with the regional, continental, and global plans. areas of convergence and gaps must be identified, and where there are gaps, a country needs to devise strategies for how to tackle these. the process of alignment also helps when it comes to reporting on the various agendas. in the case of south af rica, this alignment process has been done with various agendas, such as the sdgs and agenda 2063. below is a snap shot of how the three development agendas (agenda 2063, sdgs and ndp) align with one another. agenda 2063 (2023 goals) national development plan (ndp) sustainable development goals (sdgs) goal 1: a high standard of living, quality of life and wellbeing for all. goal 1: end poverty in all its forms everywhere in the world goal 3: ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages chapter 11: social protection goal 2: well-educated citizens and skills revolution underpinned by science, technology and innovation goal 4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all chapter 9: improving education, training and innovation 40v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion agenda 2063 (2023 goals) national development plan (ndp) sustainable development goals (sdgs) goal 3: healthy and wellnourished citizens goal 5: modern agriculture for increased productivity and production goal 7: environmentally sustainable and climate resilient economies and communities goal 2: end hunger; achieve food security and improved nutrition; promote sustainable agriculture goal 3: ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages goal 2: end hunger; achieve food security and improved nutrition; promote sustainable agriculture goal 12: ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns goal 6: ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all goal 7: ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable goal 13: take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts goal 15: protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss chapter 10: promoting health chapter 6: an integrated and inclusive rural economy chapter 5: environmental sustainability – an equitable transition to a low-carbon economy chapter 8: transforming human settlement and the national space economy goal 4: transformed economies and job creation goal 6: blue/ocean economy for accelerated economic growth goal 8: united af rica (federal or confederate) goal 8: promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all goal 14: conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development goal 17: strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development chapter 15: transforming society and uniting the country chapter 3: economy and employment 41 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion agenda 2063 (2023 goals) national development plan (ndp) sustainable development goals (sdgs) goal 9: key continental financial and monetary institutions established and functional goal 11: democratic values, practices, universal principles of human rights, justice and the rule of law entrenched goal 13: peace, security and stability are preserved goal 15: a fully functional and operational af rican peace and security architecture goal 17: strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development goal 16: promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable goal 16: promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels chapter 7: positioning sa in the world chapter 13: building a capable and developmental state chapter 14: fighting corruption chapter 11: social protection chapter 12: building safer communities chapter 11: social protection chapter 14: fighting corruption goal 10: world class inf rastructure crisscrosses af rica goal 12: capable institutions and transformed leadership in place at all levels goal 14: a stable and peaceful af rica goal 16: af rican cultural renaissance is pre-eminent goal 9: build resilient inf rastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation goal 16: promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable goal 16: promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels chapter 11: social protection chapter 14: fighting corruption chapter 4: economy inf rastructure – the foundation of social and economic development chapter 13: building a capable and developmental state 42v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion agenda 2063 (2023 goals) national development plan (ndp) sustainable development goals (sdgs) goal 17: full gender equality in all spheres of life goal 19: af rica as a major partner in global affairs and peaceful coexistence goal 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls goal 17: strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development chapter 15: transforming society and uniting the country chapter 7: positioning sa in the world goal 18: engaged and empowered youth and children goal 20: af rica takes full responsibility for financing its developmentv goal 10: reduce inequality within and among countries goal 17: strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development chapter 9: improving education, training and innovation chapter 7: positioning sa in the world conclusion the domestication of regional, continental, and global development agendas does not mean replacing domestic development plans. rather, the process requires alignment, identifying gaps, and strategizing around these gaps. it is about mainstreaming the global, regional, and continental agendas into national development plans. global, continental, and regional agendas are not separate programmes. they are all part of the national development plan. the effective implementation of the national development plan means the effective implementation of the global, continental, and regional agendas. the goals and objectives of the global, continental, and regional agendas are reflected in the national development plan. the effective implementation of the national development plan will make it easier for the country to meet reporting commitments (progress) in all development agendas. therefore, it all begins with the country’s national development plan and its implementation. t h e t h i n k e r38 “do these new archival machines change anything?” jacques derrida, archive fever (1996: 4) by dominic pretorius wikipedia and archival problems: a derridean impression © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m global 39v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 a s much as archive fever: a freudian impression is jacques derrida’s meditation on the notion of archives as it relates to sigmund freud, the person and the psychoanalytic tradition, many of his insights can be applied to theories of the archive in general. moreover, he is particularly concerned with the meaning of archives at a moment of rapid technological development. derrida (1996: 17) writes, “[at] an unprecedented rhythm, in quasi-instantaneous fashion, this instrumental possibility of production, of printing, of conservation, and of destruction of the archive must inevitably be accompanied by juridical and thus political transformations.” these ‘transformations’, in 1996, were the hopes that as computers and the internet became more sophisticated and accessible, they would issue in a new era of knowledge production, storage, and reproduction, that is, a democratic archive. derrida did not know, but may have vaguely sensed, that he was writing shortly before the advent of wikipedia in 2001 which, as its cofounder jimmy wales says, “imagine[d] a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” (cited in gallert, mushiba, and winschiers-theophilus, 2016: 1). although wikipedia has arguably seen success, it has also failed to transcend many of the constraints, relating to privilege and power, that derrida expressed regarding the archive. in this article, i will apply derridean impressions onto contemporary debates regarding wikipedia’s exclusion, through policy and practice, of various people, languages, and knowledge systems. the word ‘archive’ stores its political function in its etymological roots. it means the place of the archons, the rulers in ancient athens who had the authority to make and represent the law. derrida (1996: 4) writes, “there is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory.” in the contemporary moment, there is not a singular place where knowledge and power coalesce as simply as in ancient greece. there are, of course, many archives – parliaments where legislation is formulated, the various courts where justice is distributed, universities where knowledge hierarchies are established. however, these archival places share two features: firstly, they have material substrates, for example, infrastructure, documents, and capital; secondly, they have officials who are invested with exclusive power over them (derrida, p. 2). over time, nation states have seen a general shift from monarchies’ absolute political power towards various forms of democracy with increased suffrage. concomitantly, these archival places are expected to be increasingly accessible and transparent, and ultimately to be by and for the people, the founding ideal of democracy. derrida (p. 4) writes, “effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation.” it is within this political trajectory that the internet, in its infancy, was celebrated as the next step towards a democratic archive. in a utopic imaginary, wikipedia would be the ultimate archive by and for the people: an easily, freely, and universally accessible repository of the vast and deep knowledge that has been accumulated throughout human history, where everyone could inscribe their own contribution in its ever-growing store. notably, these technological possibilities were announcing themselves at the same time that post-colonial societies were committing themselves in new ways to the process of decolonisation. for example, the empire writes back, a seminal account of post-colonial critiques of western notions of language and literature, was published in 1989.1 those who had for so long been oppressed by, and excluded from, the centres of power and knowledge were finally able to respond to those ideological systems and to speak on their own terms. for achal prabhala, an activist who served on the advisory board of wikimedia foundation from 2006 to 2018, wikipedia came at a time, with dropping telecom prices and cheap smart phones, when equality seemed to be near. prabhala (2018) writes: let’s face it: we will never catch up with the accumulated mass of formal knowledge produced although wikipedia has arguably seen success, it has also failed to transcend many of the constraints, relating to privilege and power, that derrida expressed regarding the archive. in this article, i will apply derridean impressions onto contemporary debates regarding wikipedia’s exclusion, through policy and practice, of various people, languages, and knowledge systems. global t h e t h i n k e r40 by europe and the us. not going to happen. but in the digital world? i did think it was the one place where we could have a kind of equality; new rules for a new world. and yet, in reality, the internet and wikipedia did not become the laudable knowledge commons that many prophesised. in fact, the internet very quickly became subject to the ‘tragedy of the commons’, a communal resource compromised by a few people acting in their own self-interest (hardin, 1968: 1244). as the internet became increasingly commodified, a minefield full of click-bait and advertising, wikipedia remained staunch in its belief that it would be an oasis for freedom. in 2005, cofounder jimmy wales assured the public, “we help the internet not suck” (cited in prabhala, 2018). but in a different sense, wikipedia was under threat from a ‘tragedy of the commons’ in which its openness apparently allowed for people to exploit and abuse it. many were sceptical about the reliability of its usergenerated content. malicious people could lead misinformation campaigns, thereby ruining the resource for everybody else. as garrett hardin (p. 1243) the economic theorist behind ‘the tragedy of the commons’ writes, “freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” many of us who attended school in the 21st century will remember a teacher forbidding the use of wikipedia because it was not considered a reliable source. consequently, there was increasing pressure for wikipedia to assert more control over the production of its content. the issue caused major controversy when a hoax article was published on wikipedia, accusing a prominent american journalist of being a suspect in the assassination of former us president john f. kennedy (wikipedia contributors, 2019, ‘wikipedia seigenthaler biography incident’). the fallout from this article caused the site to apply, amongst other things, more stringent policies on referencing information and on who gets to publish and edit articles (giles, 2013). the only apparent way to guard against the ‘tragedy of the commons’ was for the site to become more regulated even if that meant foregoing its founding democratic values. hardin (1968: 1247) writes as a justification for this conservative turn that is, the privatisation of the commons “[i] njustice is preferable to total ruin.” consequently, wikipedia became increasingly constrained by two related things, text-based sources and a relatively small community of volunteer editors who are predominantly white, educated men living in the europe or north america (giles, 2013). in fact, 90% of all wikipedia editors are male, which would not surprise derrida (1996: 3), who noted that archiving has always been a patriarchal act. the site has been criticised for “reflecting a western, maledominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the encyclopaedias it has replaced” (cohen, 2011). it is necessary to pause here and reflect that these two things – citation and verification – represent the derridean physical substrate and authority that determine political power. and so, as derrida (p. 37) writes, “the question of the archive remains the same: what comes first? even better: who comes first? and second?” it is easy to lose sight of the underpinnings of wikipedia content, because it is on the internet, which is still a strange virtual world, and cannot be thought simply as a place in which an archive is stored and protected. but, remember, there are very real materials needed for wikipedia to function: the servers, the physical and digital texts it requires for sources, the telecommunication infrastructure, the personal computers and phones, and the volunteer labourers, who need homes, spare time, money, and education. these factors all contribute to what derrida (1996: 3) called the “privileged topology” of the archive which, although the internet may seem to exist everywhere and nowhere at once, has decidedly geographical implications. firstly, the archive excludes information about places and people that are on its periphery, because of the conscious and unconscious biases of its keepers. according to jim giles (2013), quoting research done at the university of oxford, “…many african nations have fewer articles than the fictional realm of middle earth. these regions… are ‘virtual terra in fact, 90% of all wikipedia editors are male, which would not surprise derrida (1996: 3), who noted that archiving has always been a patriarchal act. the site has been criticised for “reflecting a western, male-dominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the encyclopaedias it has replaced”. global 41v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 incognita’.” secondly, the knowledge produced on those peripheries is considered suspect, even if it conforms to the text-based (that is, not oral) sources required by wikipedia. prabhala (2018) notes an example in which articles about makmende, a kenyan superhero character, were blocked from wikipedia, despite their references to well-known kenyan newspapers. the article on makmende was only permitted to enter the archive when the subject received a mention in the the new york times. prabhala (2018) concludes with not a little exasperation, “…nothing really happens unless it happens in a journal published out of cambridge or a newspaper in manhattan. and wikipedia is passionately committed to this warped, outmoded, colonial view of the world.” furthermore, paul gallert et al (2016: 2), who have promoted the integration of indigenous knowledges into wikipedia, note that even the design of technology excludes certain groups of people because it replicates “cultural logics and literacies.” derrida (1996: 40) explains that “there could be no archiving without… archontic principles of legitimization… without criteria of classification and hierarchization.” importantly, here, derrida expresses the archive’s two-pronged concern regarding knowledge, that is, what constitutes knowledge and, moreover, what knowledge is notable or a matter of consequence. consequently, the many undocumented knowledges, many of which are archived in oral and embodied traditions, cannot enter wikipedia, which remains humankind’s most extensive archive. in archive fever, derrida (p. 34) draws attention to the “archival problems” of, for example, oral traditions and transgenerational heritage, ways of knowing that cannot be reduced to scientific inscription. on the other hand, those in the so-called developing world lack access to text, whether it be in printed or electronic form. and even if the knowledge has found a place in text, one of wikipedia’s 1,300 administrators, a position earned through the selfaffirming and myopic community of wikipedians, has the power to delete any article he determines to be inconsequential or frivolous. there is the story of anasuya sengupta, an activist from bangalore, who demonstrated this point at a 2010 conference for african wikipedians. she wrote a wikipedia article on bisi adeleye-fayemi, a prominent women’s rights activist in nigeria, during the conference proceedings. her entry was “marked for speedy deletion… [it was] judged to be trifling” (chafkin and kessenides, 2016). this editorial decision is telling when a meme regarding chuck norris has had its own wikipedia page since 2006 (giles, 2013). wikipedia’s archive, by limiting what constitutes valuable knowledge, in turn asserts what constitutes being human. the archive is stored in an ‘ark’, which we must think of in its two connotations: a chest and noah’s ark. a chest is for files, but is also your body’s chest, where your heart is, where your life and love are stored. in the story of noah’s ark, after making a covenant with the lord, noah constructs an archive of life on earth in case the world is wiped clean and human society must start again. analogously, wikipedia can be seen as the archive for everything ‘we/they’ know. and, contrary to common sense, the archive is not just about the past that it stores. future writing is based on the repository of knowledge and also on its footnotes that small archive at the bottom of each of these pages, those works that have become accepted in the archive, and thus the archive produces the future as much as it stores the past. as the story of noah shows, the ark is about reconstituting the future. it is based on a constant anxiety about the fragility of the present moving into the future, a future that will be defined by its archive and those who control it. derrida (1996: 36) notes accordingly: “it is a question of the future, the question of the future itself.” there may never be a biblical flood, but there is a constant dying, a piecemeal annihilation of human beings and their languages and culture. or as public enemy would say: “apocalypse bin in effect” (cited in eshun, 2003: 299). we live at a moment of knowledge prabhala (2018) notes an example in which articles about makmende, a kenyan superhero character, were blocked from wikipedia, despite their references to wellknown kenyan newspapers. the article on makmende was only permitted to enter the archive when the subject received a mention in the the new york times. global t h e t h i n k e r42 death, as globalisation assimilates and obliterates certain people, languages and cultures, all of which are carriers of knowledge, but knowledges that will transform or disappear in this process. it is the archived knowledge, stored in legible, exterior mediums, that will survive, thereby ensuring the survival of its officials’, and their descendants’, political power. instead of producing an infinite and diverse store of knowledge, archives “aim to coordinate a single corpus, in a system or a synchrony in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration” (derrida, p. 3). and, for wikipedia, that ‘ideal configuration’ is decidedly western and male. with its proliferation becoming ubiquitous, it imposes a ‘we’ on an ‘other’ in what derrida (p. 42) calls “the violence of [a] communal dissymmetry.” in this violent relation, the ‘we’ – the custodians of knowledge – becomes the overseers of the ‘other’ who cannot resist becoming subservient to the dictates of the archive, because of the uneven power dynamics present in that address. wikipedia’s concern as an archive with the future can also be read in terms of what mark fisher calls ‘sf capital’ – science fiction capital – which creates a “positive feedback between future-orientated media and capital” (eshun, 2003: 290). most simply, global capital flows towards the likes of elon musk and mark zuckerberg, and technologies like cryptocurrency, because they are believed to be producing the future. similarly, wikipedia can attract usd 104.5 million during the 2017/2018 financial year because it is believed to be the future’s archive (wikipedia contributors, 2019, ‘wikipedia: fundraiser statistics’). the foundation’s leverage is its promise to produce “reliable, neutral information” and to ensure “access to knowledge for everyone, everywhere” (wikipedia contributors, 2018, ‘2016-2017 fundraising report’). but, as i have argued, that funding is going towards producing a particular kind of knowledge for a particular kind of person, all of which will produce a particular kind of power structure in the future. importantly, kodwo eshun, as an afrofuturist, has theorised that black culture in africa and its diaspora was denied a history during the colonial period in order to subjugate black people. thereafter, eshun argues that there is a risk that black intellectual culture is, and will be, overdetermined by its concern with revising that historical archive, thereby leaving the future open to colonisation by former colonial powers. eshun (p. 288) writes, “the vigilance that is necessary to indict imperial modernity must be extended into the field of the future.” therefore it becomes of utmost importance that people work towards, and fight for, a future archive that is inherently democratic, because there is always the risk of history repeating itself. to try to rectify the archive, activists like prabhala have valiantly tried to change wikipedia, its culture and its citizens. in 2010, prabhala produced a film entitled people are knowledge, which documented his attempt to integrate knowledge from rural communities in india and south africa into wikipedia (prabhala, 2010). the documentary seeks to expose what derrida (1996: 4) calls the “limits declared to be insurmountable” by the keepers of the archive. in limpopo, a northern province of south africa, he interviewed sepedi people regarding mokgope, a drink made from fermenting marula fruit, and then facilitated the writing of a sepedi-language wikipedia article about it, while using the recorded audio files as the sources. although the article is active, it remains untranslated by other wikipedians because it is in a minor language and because of the audio references (prabhala, 2018). this stands in contrast to an entry on a french drink called pastis, which has been translated into 22 different languages. this is another example of how wikipedia’s archival limits restricts the spread of some knowledges compared to others. although prabhala had minor victories, ultimately, he quit trying to fundamentally change the structure and make-up of the site, because partially due to harassment from seasoned wikipedians. under perceived threat, they have become increasingly protective over their property. prabhala (2018) this archive and the internet in general are, therefore, like many archives before it, a nexus point for acquiring significant political power in determining what constitutes valuable knowledge and, moreover, what constitutes being human. global 43v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 concludes: “[don’t] be fooled: it’s merely the old system of power, wrapped in a dazzling gauze of technological emancipation and repackaged with a benevolent liberal bow.” in summary, i have tried to show how wikipedia, which for a time may have seemed to offer a significant opportunity to shift the power dynamics in the global production of knowledge, has fallen foul to the oft-hidden constraints of the archive. reading wikipedia seems a common, natural, and politically neutral research method. however, applying derrida’s insights onto contemporary debates regarding wikipedia’s policies and practices shows that, in fact, there are physical substrates and archons to this archive. this archive and the internet in general are, therefore, like many archives before it, a nexus point for acquiring significant political power in determining what constitutes valuable knowledge and, moreover, what constitutes being human. in the collective human body, the heart, in its archival chest, refuses to love large proportions of humankind, and this will inevitably have an impact on the future of this body, and how it constitutes and remembers itself. i think of koleka putuma’s ‘storytelling¹’, the opening poem in collective amnesia (2017), a body of work that writes back to the archive of western patriarchy, highlighting the voices that the archive keeps silencing. the poem’s title sits at the top of the page, but the page remains blank, not empty but full of whiteness; the title is footnoted though, directing your eyes to the bottom of the page in order to read below the footnote separator line because that’s where the power lies: “1) how my people remember. how my people archive. how we inherit the world” (putuma, 2017: 11). finally, one might want to consider or support initiatives that promote internet accessibility and literacy, which may lead to a more democratic wikipedia or an entirely different future archive. for example, the university of the western cape in south africa has worked with residents in mankosi, eastern cape, since 2012 to set up zenzeleni (translated as ‘do it yourself’), the country’s first cooperative-owned internet service provider network (tucker, 2017). this is a south african instantiation of a movement to close the internet connectivity gaps that exists globally, particularly on the african continent, through community networks that democratise the digital. ■ references cohen, n. (2011). when knowledge isn’t written, does it still count? the new york times, 7 august 2011. available: https://www.nytimes. com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowledge-atwikipedia.html derrida, j. (1996). archive fever: a freudian impression. trans. eric prenowitz. chicago: university of chicago press. eshun, k. (2003). considerations on afrofuturism. the new centennial review, 3(2): 287-302. available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41949397 gallert, p., mushiba, m., and winschiers-theophilus, h. (2016). on persuading an ovaherero community to join the wikipedia community. 10th international conference on culture, technology, and communication, london, united kingdom. pp. 1-18. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-501093_1 giles, j. (2013). ‘free for all? lifting the lid on a wikipedia crisis. new scientist, 10 april 2013. available: https://www.newscientist.com/article/ mg21829122.200-free-for-all-lifting-the-lid-on-a-wikipedia-crisis/ hardin, g. (1968). the tragedy of the commons. science. 162(3859): 12431248. doi: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243 kessenides, d., and chafkin, m. (2016). is wikipedia woke? bloomberg, 22 december 2016. available: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ features/2016-12-22/how-woke-is-wikipedia-s-editorial-pool putuma, k. (2017). collective amnesia, cape town: uhlanga. prabhala, a. (2010). people are knowledge. vimeo, video. available: https:// vimeo.com/26469276 prabhala, a. (2018). writer and activist achal prabhala on expanding the parameters for what is considered knowledge. bubblegum club. interview with christa dee. available: https://bubblegumclub.co.za/art-and-culture/ writer-and-activist-achal-prabhala-on-expanding-the-parameters-forwhat-is-considered-knowledge/ tucker, b. (2017). how a rural community built south africa’s first isp owned and run by a cooperative. the conversation, 28 november 2017. available: https://theconversation.com/how-a-rural-community-built-south-africasfirst-isp-owned-and-run-by-a-cooperative-87448 wikipedia contributors. (2019). wikipedia seigenthaler biography incident. wikipedia, last revised 13 may 2019. available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ wikipedia_seigenthaler_biography_incident wikipedia contributors. (2019). wikipedia: fundraising statistics. wikipedia, last revised: 6 april 2019. available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index. php?title=wikipedia:fundraising_statistics&action=info wikipedia contributors. (2018). 2016-2017 fundraising report. wikipedia, last revised 25 september 2018. available: https://foundation.wikimedia. org/w/index.php?title=2016-2017_fundraising_report&action=info 1 the empire writes back was first published by routledge in london. it is, of course, ironic that the seminal work regarding the literary opposition to the empire was originally published by western academics within the empire. © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m global https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=2016-2017_fundraising_report&action=info https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=2016-2017_fundraising_report&action=info _goback 8 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 background in 1999, sweden introduced legislation that prohibits and criminalises the purchase of sex – while continuing to decriminalise the selling of sex. referred to as the ‘swedish model’, or the ‘nordic model’ after neighbouring countries followed suit, this legal f ramework is built on an understanding of ‘prostitution’ as exploitation and a form of violence against women. examined through this lens, the selling of sex can never be regarded as work. through its feminist foreign policy platform (in place between 2014 and 2022), sweden declared that it would engage in ‘persistent and robust commitment and agency’ to encourage other countries to adopt similar legal f rameworks. yet, evidence of the presumed success of the swedish model is scant at best, with recent research raising concerns over how the sex purchase act in conjunction with immigration law and thirdparty regulation has contributed to increased vulnerability of migrant sex workers – who make up the majority of people selling sex in the nordic region (vuolajärvi, 2019). in south af rica, both the selling and buying of sex is criminalised, in spite of the country being party to several international treaties that recognise the right to f ree choice of work. as decriminalisation of sex work in south af rica is currently high on the public agenda, and the ‘swedish model’ is one of the alternatives discussed, critically examining the possible consequences of adopting this model is crucial. in this paper, we draw on research and activist interventions in sweden and south af rica to examine the possible implications of the adoption of the ‘swedish model’ in south af rica – a country with markedly different historical and demographic trajectories, migratory patterns, and a much less extensive and supported social welfare system. we caution that such a move may not achieve the aim of reducing sex workers’ vulnerability and exposure to violence. furthermore, f raming the selling of sex as violence rather than work may risk silencing causes for social justice by stripping sex workers of their agency and autonomy, while simultaneously casting them as victims. by suruchi thapar-björkert, marion stevens, åsa eriksson, and johanna gondouin silences and vulnerabilities: sex work and genderbased violence in south africa and sweden p e e r r e v i e w 9v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction the swedish sex purchase act, which prohibits the purchase of a ‘temporary sexual relationship’, became effective on 1st january 1999, making sweden the first country in the world to criminalise purchasing but not selling sex. prior to this, neither the selling nor the buying of sexual services was criminalised1. the idea of shifting the criminal focus and moral guilt f rom the seller to the buyer has a historical genealogy which can be traced to before 1919, when women’s movements, in various petitions to the swedish government, foregrounded ‘curbing of male demand’ (svanström, 2017: 31). the contemporary case for client criminalisation was also made using feminist arguments: indeed, the legislative changes were introduced by the ruling social democratic party to parliament as part of the women’s peace (kvinnof rid) bill in 1997. the proponents of the legislation perceive prostitution2 as violence against women who sell sex; as something which contributes to violence against women in society more broadly and as something that emanates f rom but also entrenches gender inequality even further. constructing all prostitution/ sex work as a form of violence, swedish policy diverges f rom recommendations by un agencies that understand sex work as consensual sex between adults, and cautions states not to conflate sex work with trafficking, as it risks leading to inadequate responses, and to denied access to rights and increased exposure to violence and oppression for sex workers and victims of trafficking (unaids, 2021). when the legislation was introduced, client criminalisation was presented as a measure that would be combined with social support to persons selling sex, with the ultimate aim of assisting them to exit the industry. this combined approach of criminalising the buyer while decriminalising the selling of sex, and providing social support to persons selling sex, is referred to as the ‘swedish’ or, more recently, the ‘nordic model’. since its adoption, the political support for the legislation has continued to grow. in may 2011, when the parliament approved a government bill which extended the maximum penalty for the purchase of sexual services f rom imprisonment for six months to imprisonment for one year, few critical voices were raised in the preceding debate – a sharp contrast to the late 1990s, when several political parties opposed the legislation (svanström, 2017). yvonne svanström (2017) suggests that the reason for this consensus is a shift in the f raming of the model, where the question of selling and buying of sexual services has become embedded in broader human rights discourse, linked to measures aimed at preventing trafficking in human beings for sexual purposes. the adoption of an anti-trafficking f rame, which was absent when the legislation was first introduced, was prompted by trafficking emerging as a key policy concern within the eu, as well as by the un palermo protocol on trafficking in 2000 (svanström, 2017). within this f rame, trafficking of human beings for sexual purposes cannot be eliminated unless measures to combat prostitution and sexual exploitation are in place (ekberg, 2004). thus, prostitution is subsumed under the rubric of trafficking. linking sex purchasing and trafficking, and arguing that client criminalization helps prevent sex trafficking, has also been central in sweden’s recent efforts of exporting the model to other countries within the eu and beyond. promoted as part of sweden’s feminist foreign policy (launched in 2014 and in place until october 2022, when it was revoked by the newly formed coalition government3), the model seeks to advance an understanding that ‘prostitution’ can never be regarded as work, and that it is always exploitative (ministry for foreign affairs, 2019: 71). furthermore, supporters of the swedish model have in recent years increasingly started referring to it as ‘the equality model’. this has to be located within the understanding of the swedish welfare state as a state feminist/women-f riendly entity (svanström, 2017). through the feminist foreign policy, sweden, as the first country in the world, committed to ‘systematically [integrating] a gender perspective throughout [its] foreign policy agenda’ (ministry for foreign affairs, 2019: 9). activist and academic petra östergren (2006), a vocal critic of the swedish model, has suggested that one of its key functions is to embed in the larger discourse of swedish exceptionalism; the national identity that constructs sweden as genderequal, anti-racist, and detached f rom a colonial past. this moral high ground has been reinforced through sweden’s strong welfare state identity (habel, 2012). furthermore, anthropologist don kulick (2003) has suggested that through this legislation, as a relatively new eu member state, sweden wanted to depict itself as the conscience of the eu, and a beacon of morality p e e r r e v i e w 10 with regards to the protection of women’s rights. one of the leading proponents of the legislation, former minister for gender equality, margareta winberg, indeed spoke of sweden as a ‘shining star’ when it comes to gender equality (winberg, 2006, cited in östergren 2006: 208). nonetheless, the attribution of gender equality and empowerment of women to western liberal values and practices is in itself deeply problematic (see towns, 2009). as noted by langford and skilbrei (2022: 166), sweden ‘both drew on and sought to strengthen its nation brand in promoting the criminalization of the purchase of sex’. in recent years, france has emerged as a close ally to sweden in attempts to export the model to countries within and outside of the eu. besides france, the model has become exemplary for countries such as canada, norway, iceland, northern ireland and israel who all have adopted a similar legislation (ministry of foreign affairs, 2019). while the notion of a swedish or nordic model has emerged as a well-known, strong brand, langford and skilbrei (2022) note that policy differences between the four nordic countries having implemented some aspect of client criminalisation is too great for it to reflect an actual model. the ‘nordic model’, they suggest, functions rather as an important construct and resource in attempts to reform prostitution policy in various countries, often with different aims, focus, and outcomes (langford and skilbrei, 2022; mcmenzie, cook and lang, 2019; kingston and thomas, 2019). with the ‘swedish model’ being one of the exemplary alternatives looked at in south af rica, where a bill regarding decriminalisation of sex work was recently published, a close reading of critical scholarship f rom the nordic region, and predictions by south af rican activists and practitioners on the possible implications of adopting this model, are crucial. this article contributes to such a reading using three different entry points. first, we bring critical research on the swedish model and its consequences in sweden into dialogue with contemporary activist and researcher debates in south af rica. second, we discuss the possible implication for south af rica in adopting a model aimed at strengthening gender equality, which does not address other hierarchies of power that shape women’s everyday lives, such as race, class, and migration status. third, we scrutinise the importance accorded to the swedish/ nordic model in south af rica against the backdrop of the historically close ties between the countries, emanating f rom sweden’s solidarity with the struggle against apartheid, and the present-day relationships which are marked by power inequalities and northsouth dependence. following these three threads, we argue that a possible adoption of the ‘swedish model’ in south af rica – a country with markedly different historical and demographic trajectories, migratory patterns, and a much less extensive and supported social welfare system – would risk enhancing the vulnerabilities of sex workers while silencing causes for social justice. conundrums and contestations: sweden in spite of the swedish government’s endeavours to widely market the swedish model abroad, state-led initiatives to evaluate the impact of the sex purchase act are curiously few. the only large-scale evaluation to date was published in 2010 (sou, 2010: 49) and it suggests that sex purchases and trafficking have decreased substantially since the introduction of the legislation. this was corroborated by the minister of justice and home affairs, beatrice ask, who stated that ‘the police, as well as social workers, state that criminal groups that sell women for sexual purposes view sweden as a poor market. they choose not to establish themselves in sweden because of our legislation’ (ask, 2011). these conclusions have received criticism f rom researchers in the field, who argue that the knowledge base for such claims is insufficient. a the ‘nordic model’, they suggest, functions rather as an important construct and resource in attempts to reform prostitution policy in various countries, often with different aims, focus, and outcomes (langford and skilbrei, 2022; mcmenzie, cook and lang t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 11 scoping study by holmström and skilbrei (2017) on the consequences of the sex purchase act notes that while there may be grounds for claims that fewer sellers operate on the streets since the legislation was adopted, there is no reliable data regarding sex purchase in less visible sites such as indoor and/or online sex (see also levy and jakobsson, 2014). this was corroborated in the 2007 enquiry on prostitution by the national board of health and welfare (2008), which stated that ‘hidden prostitution’ was even harder to account for after the implementation of the law (socialstyrelsen, 2008).4 furthermore, holmström and skilbrei (2017) note that the 2010 sou evaluation ignores other social processes that are likely to have impacted the market, including the rapid increase in the use of online sites for client contact in the same period. the research evidence reviewed by the authors, which they describe as patchy and often biased, also does not give a clear indication of whether trafficking for sexual purposes, an activity that is even more difficult to research, has increased or decreased. parallel to this, a global media content analysis of the spread of the ‘nordic model’ notes several discrepancies between the actual implication of prostitution policy reform packages in the nordics and how the model is communicated by its promoters on the international scene (langford and skilbrei, 2022: 175–178). for instance, while criminalisation of clients and third-party agents was the key policy shift introduced in the nordics, the communication puts a lot of focus on the decriminalisation of the selling of sex and strengthened welfare services for people selling sex as cornerstones of the model. nonetheless, the selling of sexual services had been decriminalised in sweden long before the introduction of the model. furthermore, the provision of welfare support for persons selling sex in the country is described as weak (langford and skilbrei, 2022: 177). the lack of comprehensive evidence backing the exportation of the ‘nordic model’ discussed above, and the dissonance between its marketing and implementation on the ground, represents two of the contradictions and conundrums surrounding the legislation. below, we delineate what we see as several additional discrepancies built into the model, drawing on experiences in the swedish context, emanating in the question of whether this seemingly progressive policy approach ultimately may aggravate the very problems it seeks to address. whither gender equality? as discussed above, gender equality has been used to f rame the prostitution debate in sweden, with prostitution seen as incompatible with ‘f reedom of the individual’ and ‘gender equality’ (sou, 2010: 49). assessing people’s attitudes towards prostitution in norway and sweden through an internet-based survey, jakobsson and kotsadam (2011) argue that gender egalitarian attitudes have more purchase in sweden (while in norway the debate was triggered by reactions to the increased presence of nigerian sex workers on the streets) and can be traced to feminists within ruling political parties in sweden (preceding the criminalisation of buying sex) viewing prostitution as patriarchal oppression of – and violence against – women. this ‘neo-abolitionist’ policy approach (kingston and thomas, 2019: 423) makes the static link between prostitution as a result of ‘male oppression of women’ and the consequent enforcement against men as the assumed clients. furthermore, this legislation, as well as other gender equality policies in sweden, largely builds on an understanding of ‘women’ as a unitary and homogenous political subject with shared interests, for whom marginalisation is primarily experienced on the basis of gender. as highlighted by critical scholars, this gender equality f raming has in effect led to a privileging of the interests of white, middle-class, heterosexual women, while ignoring the (growing) inequalities between women (see tollin, 2011; de los reyes, 2005; de los reyes, 2016). in other words, what is lacking is an intersectional understanding of gender, without which the experiences of workingclass women, women of colour and trans women, and the ways in which overlapping structures of social inequality interact, tend to be marginalised in swedish gender equality policy as well as in swedish feminism more broadly (crenshaw, 1991; de los reyes et al, 2002; de los reyes and mulinari; de los reyes, 2005). another component to the ‘gender equality paradox’ is the assumption that women sell sex and men buy those services. it thus fails to acknowledge instances in which women and couples pay for sex and men and trans people sell sexual services (kingston and thomas, 2019). v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 12 niina vuolajärvi’s (2019) ethnographic study draws on over two years of fieldwork and 195 interviews with people who sell sex and other informants working within the field of commercial sex in sweden, norway, and finland. she draws attention to how the ‘nordic model’ fails to offer support to, and in fact contributes to the increased vulnerability of, migrants who sell sex in the region. vuolajärvi observes that the majority of persons selling sex in the region are migrants (70–80%), often entering the nordic countries on a tourist visa or a residence permit f rom another eu country. this resembles the south af rican context, where a large share of persons selling sex are foreign nationals, who are furthermore highly vulnerable to violence as is evident in the recent spate of murders of sex workers in johannesburg (njilo, 2022). in sweden, norway, and finland, the third-country nationals – many of whom are citizens of russia, nigeria, or latin america – are subjected to punitive measures through immigration policies and made particularly vulnerable (vuolajärvi, 2019). for instance, thirdcountry nationals operating in sweden risk being deported, or denied entry, on suspicion that ‘he or she will not support himself or herself by honest means’ (swedish aliens act, 2005, chapter 8, section 2). this points to an additional ambiguity in the swedish policy, where the selling of sexual services is neither criminalised, nor regarded as a legitimate (or ‘honest’) form of work.5 furthermore, all forms of facilitation of the selling of sex are criminalised through third-party (‘pimping’) laws in the nordic countries, also when facilitation is not for profit, and not exploitative. this includes providing a space where sexual services are sold, such as letting out an apartment or a hotel room to a person selling sex, and it further prohibits sex sellers f rom working together as a form of protection (vuolajärvi, 2019). combined with racialised profiling and policing (vuolajärvi (2019) notes that nigerian women are particularly vulnerable to arbitrary controls and deportation) many women have no choice but to pay exorbitant prices for housing where they can meet their clients. the nordic model may be found appealing through its humanitarian claim of protecting women. it is important to highlight a paradox here about the gendered and raced nature of victimhood. it is well established that a moral paternalistic attitude f rames the discourse on sex work with sex workers being cast as ‘victims’ in need of ‘saving’ and justifies interventionist impulses (also reminiscent of the discursive f raming of imperialist ideology which cast the ‘third world woman’ as ignorant victims of their culture (see mohanty, 2003)). levy and jakobsson (2014: 602) also point out that some of their respondents were expected to ‘adopt a victim status’ in order to be eligible for assistance. furthermore, research participants in anna hall’s (2021) qualitative study describe being questioned or even seen as guilty when reporting physical and sexual abuse f rom a violent client, if they resist identifying themselves as victims of prostitution who wish to quit selling sex. on the one hand, this discourse is as problematic as one that overemphasises the agency of the sex workers – at the other end of the spectrum. on the other hand, if we were to accept the f rame of victimhood as uncontentious, then the lack of its extension to third country nationals is baffling in itself. the ambiguities embedded in how persons selling sex are expected to relate to the notion of ‘victim’ is again visible in how the sex purchase act f rames the buying of sexual services f rom an adult as a public-order crime, to which the person selling sex is assumed to have consented. women (and other persons) selling sex may thus be called as witnesses in the court of law, but are not granted a ‘crime victim status’, which would make them eligible for legal representation and damages (see johansson and östergren, 2021; hall, 2021). furthermore, the model’s decoupling of gender f rom other relations of power – including class, race, and migration status – thus negates the experiences of third country migrants who are engaged in selling sex. research points out that when it comes to matters of immigration and immigrants, the ‘exceptionalism’ of the nordic model falls short in addressing the material realities for women f rom ethnic minority backgrounds. corroborating this and drawing on an ethnographic study with swedish sex workers, levy and jakobsson (2014: 603) state: ‘where the sex purchase law appears to be used to displace sex workers f rom public space, immigration legislation and trafficking rhetoric is used to displace migrant sex workers.’ moreover, also in cases when non-eu citizens have been trafficked to sweden for sexual purposes, they risk facing deportation, as the government, regardless of which party has been in power, has ref rained f rom granting the right to permanent residency to victims of trafficking (svanström, 2017). t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 13 but what alternative livelihood strategies are offered for exiting the industry, especially for migrant women who lack permanent residency? this is pertinent since immigrant women and minority ethnic women in sweden are less integrated in labour markets, in politics, and in society in general (lister, 2009). among vuolajärvi’s respondents, foreign thirdcountry nationals looking for jobs outside of the sex industry received no support to do so and were unlikely to succeed, as only long-term employment is grounds for obtaining a working visa. this speaks to the limitations of analysing violence solely through the lens of gender relations, and individual men’s behaviour. drawing on an interview study with women selling sex in sweden, anna hall (2021: 140) observes that a single-axis focus on gender-based violence that women face f rom individual male clients risks making invisible the structural violence that conditions sex work for many women in the first place, namely: unequal access to rights and resources, cuts in or exclusion f rom the social welfare system, lack of access to trauma support, racism, and restrictive migration regimes. the linking of the sex purchase act with harshly policed immigration laws and third-party laws, in vuolajärvi’s analysis (2019: 164), produces a nordic model that is ‘ultimately a form of punitivist humanitarianism, or governing in the name of caring’. increasing stigmatisation and ambiguous readings of ‘violence’ research mapping attitudes towards the sex purchase act in sweden shows that there is strong support for the legislation (holmström and skilbrei, 2017). however, in addition to this, quantitative surveys also indicate that the majority of swedes favour a complete criminalisation, a view that is particularly strong among women (kuosmanen, 2011). in other words: rather than imagining women (and other persons) selling sex as victims, the general public appears to view sex sellers as (potential) culprits. persons selling sex have in opinion pieces and in interviews with researchers reported facing increased stigma and being more vulnerable since the introduction of the sex purchase act – while those who had stopped selling sex were generally positive to the legislation (see sou, 2010; östergren, 2006). the 2010 government evaluation of the sex purchase act curiously suggests that increased stigmatisation could be regarded as a positive rather than a negative outcome, given that the legislation ultimately aims at eliminating prostitution (sou, 2010: 130). as noted by holmström and skilbrei (2017), this reflects a dissonance with the legislators’ f raming of prostitution as a form of violence against women. at the same time, a high share of persons selling sex in sweden, like elsewhere, have been physically and sexually assaulted by clients – with trans-persons and people with disabilities being particularly exposed to violence (holmström et al, 2020). such violence often goes unreported, as many sex workers have had negative experiences in their contact with the police, and may also ref rain f rom seeking healthcare services out of fear of not being taken seriously; of being reported to the social services (which in turn may lead to losing social welfare support or even custody of one’s children); or out of fear of losing clients (holmström et al, 2020; östergren, 2006; levy and jakobsson, 2014). hall observes that while asserting one’s agency (as a sex worker) in meetings with clients is perceived by her informants as a key strategy for avoiding violence, asserting one’s agency (as a sex worker) in encounters with the police and other authorities may be perceived as a threat, leading to a questioning of one’s status as a ‘true’ victim of violence f rom clients. this ultimately raises questions as to which women the ‘swedish model’ is designed to protect. as noted by critical scholars, the aim of abolishing prostitution appears to override concerns of protecting individuals involved in selling sexual services here and now – unless they are swedish permanent residents and willing to exit (see holmström and skilbrei, 2017; vuolajärvi, v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 this ultimately raises questions as to which women the ‘swedish model’ is designed to protect. as noted by critical scholars, the aim of abolishing prostitution appears to override concerns of protecting individuals involved in selling sexual services here and now – unless they are swedish permanent residents and willing to exit (see holmström and skilbrei, 2017; vuolajärvi p e e r r e v i e w 14 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 2019; rydström, 2021; hall, 2021). put differently, one may ask if it is primarily hegemonic (white) female respectability and (white) heteronormative swedish ideals of gender equality that the swedish policy makers aim to protect and market abroad? conundrums and contestations: south africa in relation to sweden, south af rica is a country with markedly different trajectories: historical, demographic, migratory patterns and a much less extensive and supported social welfare system. as a former settler colony where wealth was accumulated through slavery and indentured labour, south af rica remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, where inequalities have increased since the end of racially privileged, white minority rule in 1994. the majority of the country’s black population continues to live in poverty, lacking access to basic services (seri, 2018). furthermore, while both the south af rican and the swedish economy have depended on the availability of (cheapened) migrant labour over the past decades, south af rica’s historical migrant labour system has a particular trajectory, linked to the demand for ultra-cheap labour on the mines, in commercial agriculture and private households under colonialism and apartheid, combined with repressive laws prohibiting black labourers f rom permanently residing in the areas where they worked, together with their families. as unemployment rates have continued to rise in present-day south af rica, and the country continues to be a destination for migrants seeking refuge f rom conflicts or better economic opportunities (mainly f rom the democratic republic of congo, somalia, and zimbabwe), xenophobic violence is rife, with fearful consequences, particularly in poor communities (greenburg, 2010).6 reflecting on the persisting inequalities in postapartheid south af rica, political theorist neville alexander (2002, 2012, 2013) believes that the ideals of solidarity embodied within the post-1994 notion of south af rica as a ‘rainbow nation’ masks the unequal socio-economic and political structures (high income inequality, poverty and unemployment), where ‘a few thousand black middle class people have boarded the gravy train and are being wooed into the ranks of the established (white) elite, but the nature of the state remained fundamentally unchanged’ (alexander, 2002: 64). paradoxically, this not only heightens racial competitiveness and ethno-racial consciousness (moodley and adam, 2000), but also undermines the ‘non-racialism’ that post-apartheid transition was supposed to embody. furthermore, the current democratic government’s failure to provide basic services to a large portion of society must both be understood against the backdrop of post-apartheid and post-colonial legacies, and the political factionalism and cronyism within the af rican national congress, which exposes the vulnerability of the institution of democracy. with regard to gender equality, the bill of rights7 in south af rica’s constitution provides for the right to equal protection and outlaws discrimination on the grounds of, among other things, gender, sex, pregnancy, race, and sexual orientation. despite the strong legal protection, structural discrimination is rife in the deeply patriarchal south af rican context, with very high rates of sexual and gender-based violence, disproportionally affecting poor and working-class women of colour. feminist scholars have traced the legacy of sexual violence in south af rica back to the period of slavery (practiced between 1658 and 1838 in the cape colony, with slaves being brought in f rom south east asia, east af rica, and the southern af rican region) (see, for instance, gqola, 2015). sexual violence and forced prostitution were key features of slavery, with the slave lodge in cape town operating as a brothel, while marriages as well as concubinage between white male settlers and enslaved and f ree non-white women were common (keegan, 1996). furthermore, throughout white minority rule, f rom colonial times (including the dutch cape colony, the british cape (and other) colonies, the union of south af rica (a self-governing dominion of the british empire), the sovereign, white-ruled republic of south af rica f rom 1931, the apartheid era f rom 1948) until the first democratic elections in 1994, south af rica has had a legacy of both informal and formal policing of sexualities. in particular, relationships across race were increasingly perceived as a threat, and were barred through the immorality act of 1927 (amended in 1957). during the apartheid era (f rom 1948 until the early 1990s), police actively patrolled the intimate lives of citizens (klausen, 2004, 2015). with regards to sex work, the formal policing by colonial powers of women selling sex was for the most part lenient during the 15v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 19th century, when legal measures primarily sought to control the (primarily black or mixed race) sex workers as potential vectors of disease, or as a public nuisance (thusi, 2015). however, this changed with the arrival of white female sex workers f rom europe in great numbers at the turn of the century, who were entertaining both white and black male clients in the rapidly increasing number of brothels. the relationships between white female sex workers and black clients sparked moral panic among the racist white regime and in ‘respectable’ white communities, prompting a decision to criminalise such interactions through the adoption of the 1902 morality act in the cape colony, later extended to other parts of presentday south af rica (thusi, 2015). in other words, the white colonial regime took action based on the fear of the so-called ‘black peril’ putting at risk the purity of ‘respectable’ white women, not out of concern for the bodily integrity and sexual and reproductive health of black women (and) sex workers. another example of this disinterest is reflected in the instrumentalization of black women’s bodies during apartheid, through the extension of well-funded family planning services to black townships f rom the 1970s onwards, aimed at reducing fertility rates among black communities and addressing the political concern around ‘overpopulation’ (norling, 2019). the sexual offences act 23 of 1957 formally criminalised the selling of sexual services, while the purchase of sex was made an offence through the sexual offences and related matters amendment act 32 of 2007, to more explicitly criminalise clients. thus, both the sex worker and the client are presently criminally liable (spies, 2021). south af rican laws also prohibit a range of activities viewed as sex work, including running or owning a brothel, living off the earnings of ‘prostitution,’ and enticing a woman into ‘prostitution’. the global influence of the swedish or nordic model discussed above is visible also in the south af rican context. the south af rican law reform commission’s (salrc) report sexual offences: adult prostitution (project 107) approved by the cabinet and released in 2017, discusses the ‘swedish model’ at length. while recommending that both the selling and buying of sexual services remains criminalised, the report suggests, among other things, that research on the swedish model ‘reflects a decline in trafficking and illegal immigrants’ (south af rican law reform commission, 2015: 225). the trajectory of the salrc report has spanned nearly 20 years, with a starting point in the 1997 ‘investigation into adult prostitution’ (originally entitled ‘sexual offences by and against children’). unlike sweden, where sex workers and their organisations have been marginalised in the public debate by both the state and the women’s movement (goodyear and weitzer, 2011), sex workerled organisations in south af rica have invested large amounts of time and resources to remain active participants over this 20-year process. however, influential organisations like the sex workers education and advocacy task force (sweat) argue that the lack of commitment by government towards reforming laws governing sex work makes it evident that the government lacks the political will to take the lives of sex workers seriously (richter and chakuvinga, 2012). yet, in a surprising turn of events, swift policy initiatives aimed at decriminalising sex work were taken at the tail end of 2022. on november 30, the cabinet approved the publishing of the criminal law (sexual offences and related matters) amendment bill of 2022 regarding the decriminalisation of sex work, for public comments. the bill repeals the sexual offences act (previously immorality act), 1957 (act no. 23 of 1957) and section 11 of the criminal law (sexual offenses and related matters) amendment act, 2007 (act no. 32 of 2007) to decriminalise the sale and purchase of adult sexual services. in a briefing on december 9th, the minister of justice, john jeffery, said: ‘the bill follows a two-step approach to sex work. it does not decriminalise and regulate the industry all at once. it deals with decriminalisation only, with regulation to follow at a later stage. it was thought to be important to deal with the decriminalisation first, so as to ensure that sex workers are no longer criminally charged. this will mean greater protection for sex workers. decriminalisation will de-stigmatise sex work and enable access to basic services and protection by law enforcement agencies. existing laws prohibiting children f rom selling sex and trafficking for sexual purposes, remain in force.’ this briefing took place days before the f raught political conference of the af rican national congress where the minister was a key figure in the leadership contest. while the outcome is yet uncertain, this risky political behaviour of introducing a bill on a topic that has attracted fierce p e e r r e v i e w 16 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w conservative opposition, may indicate that this move has strong support in the parliament as well as f rom global actors such as unaids and human rights watch. some of those who oppose decriminalisation call the bill the ‘jeffery’ bill, referring to the deputy minister, ostensibly linking him to the disgraced sex offender jeff rey epstein. sex work as violence – or violence against sex workers? as noted above, proponents of the swedish legislation spoke of prostitution as violence against women who sell sex, and also as something which contributes to violence against women in society more broadly. in an attempt to infuse a position to address genderbased violence, the salrc (2015: 4) report’s reasoning includes the contention that ‘exploitation, particularly of women in prostitution, is inherent in prostitution’ and that decriminalising sex work would make women who already face high levels of interpersonal violence in south af rica ‘even more expendable.’ this perspective was countered by sweat, which, on the contrary, views criminalisation of sex work as enabling gender-based violence. the organisation argues that it drives sex work underground and prevents sex workers f rom accessing public services, whether health or education. today, most persons selling sex in south af rica are poor, black, and female, and they sell sex primarily in order to support their children, as well as other dependents,8 some referring to themselves as engaging in ‘survival sex’ while others identify as (commercial) sex workers (wojcicki, 2002). they endure extraordinarily high levels of violence – including rape, beatings, extortion, and theft – often at the hands of clients and police officers (hands off! 2016: 5). furthermore, as noted by leigh manoek and abrahams fayker (2014: 118), sex workers experience ‘layered levels of stigmatization’ and abuse, intersecting with power hierarchies of gender, race and class. the criminalisation of sex work may thus be understood as a systemic legacy emanating f rom the racialised violence and policing of sexualities under apartheid, where the bodies of poor black women were made particularly vulnerable and expendable. in other words, activists and researchers in south af rica suggest that by criminalising sex work, policy makers are contributing to, rather than addressing, violence against female (and other) sex workers.9 health programming for sex work – and the influence of foreign funding since the transition to democracy, south af rica has progressively introduced laws protecting a range of sexual and reproductive rights that were earlier seen as controversial. this includes the extension of the right to safe abortion (the choice on termination of pregnancy act of 1996) and to same-sex marriage (the civil union act of 2006, amended in 2020). furthermore, the legal challenges concerning hiv treatment resulted, after successful campaigning by civil society, in the provision of access to antiretroviral therapy. curiously, sex work reform – albeit currently high on the political agenda – remains one of the few contested sexual and reproductive health and rights (srhr) issues that has not been resolved, despite 28 years of democracy and commitment to transforming injustices. stevens et al (2022) consider srhr as a continuum of intersecting services, f rom information about sexuality and reproduction, care for cancers, stis and hiv, contraception and abortion and note how these are poorly provided to sex workers. they conclude that reproductive justice – which envisions full access to reproductive rights in a safe and healthy environment – is undermined by both the criminalisation of sex work and the denial of quality and humanising sexual and reproductive healthcare to sex workers. reproductive health care to sex workers is primarily provided as part of hiv prevention for ‘most at risk populations’, motivated by the need to address the ‘threat’ that sex workers present to public health in general (stevens et al, 2021: 21). stabile (2020) cautions that this risk and rescue focus, a dominant discourse in western feminist scholarship, undermines sex workers’ human dignity and reproduces racism and colonial hierarchies of power as well as sex and gender binaries. the public health arguments addressing stis, including hiv, and the health and safety of sex workers were presented to the sa law reform commission in favour of full decriminalisation. it cannot be denied that sex workers are at a greater risk of contracting hiv because of their exposure to multiple sexual partners, the ever-present threat of violence in sexual encounters, and riskier sex (manoek and fayker, 2014: 104–5). however, criminalisation of selling of sexual services in itself fosters an unsafe environment for sex workers by undermining their access to justice 17v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 for crimes committed against them and exposing them to unchecked abuse and exploitation by law enforcement officials (rangasami et al, 2016). notwithstanding the department of health’s national strategic plan on hiv for sex workers being informed by a respect for the human rights of sex workers, outreach, and non-discrimination,10 public health researchers have cautioned that criminalisation hinders sex workers’ access to health care (see louskieter et al, 2021), including hiv prevention, treatment, care and support (strathdee et al, 2015). as noted above, while there has been legal and policy reform aimed at increasing access to srhr in south af rica, these laws are poorly implemented and women experience the burden of poor social determinants of health (stevens, 2021). furthermore, given that many key stakeholders in south af rica – sex worker organisations, the commission for gender equality, and the south af rican national aids council (sanac) – favour a decriminalisation of sex work, the question which arises is what causes this inaction? the substantial deficits in government capacity and provision of resources to provide a basic package of sexual and reproductive health services has resulted in a gap which is presently filled by predominantly foreign donors (klugman, stevens and van den heever, 2000). the gates foundation and buffet foundation are large funders of reproductive health care in sa currently. this development, where essential services are delivered by donors, is a cause of concern, due to the possibility of agendas being aligned with the interests of foreign donors rather than south af rican policies and local priorities – something which is perhaps even more challenging where there exists a political legacy of solidarity (stevens, 2021). foreign donors also fund a large share of the research on sexual and reproductive health and rights in south af rica, including large-scale research projects with sex workers. here, sex workers fall between the cracks, as they are invited to take part in research regarding public health concerns often related to hiv or cervical cancer projects, yet they do not have their general health, including sexual and reproductive health needs met. this is due to sex workers experiencing being stigmatised and judged when they access public health care facilities, linked to sex work being criminalised (stevens et al, 2022). the concern of the strong influence f rom usbased private funders, who engage in srhr work in south af rica without investing in a sustainable local movement for reproductive justice (stevens, 2021) have been corroborated by gerber fried and hendrixson (2014: 22) who describe the gates foundation as having an ‘outsized leadership role in initiatives to promote contraception in the global south’. the gates foundation’s policy to not fund abortion work (in place since 2014), gerber fried and hendrixson note, results in ‘a wall dividing abortion f rom family planning’, which in turn contradicts south af rican policy decisions to provide integrated sexual and reproductive healthcare packages. favier et al (2008) further note the ‘creep’ of us international ngos taking over the purview of the state public sector and undermining the work of public health systems’ sustainability. in displacing government action and public decision making, international ngos may thus exercise quasi-governmental power – imposing paternalistic restrictions and incentives while simultaneously overriding people’s decisions on how to live their own lives (saunders-hastings, 2022). while the us is the largest donor, including both public and private foundations (stevens, 2021), sweden is also an important player in the region, both when it comes to development assistance to sexual and reproductive health and rights and to policy dialogue initiatives by the ministry of foreign affairs. as noted above, sweden actively worked to promote the adoption of the ‘nordic model’ in other countries and regions, as part of its feminist foreign policy (in place 2014–2022). through this work, sweden has among other things provided a platform to south af rican ngos, such as embrace dignity, that advocate for the adoption of the model.11 given the history of self-gagging on matters of srhr in south af rica, as evidenced by the experience during the us global gag rule and the simultaneous decision by the gates foundation not to fund abortion work (du plessis et al, 2019), it may well be that the south af rican government would in similar ways ref rain f rom undertaking legal reforms with regard to sex work, if this is not favoured by foreign allies. while this is the purview of the department of justice within south af rica, one may ask if the lack of traction and engagement in reforming sex work legislation in south af rica, despite evidence f rom human rights and public health actors, may be linked to, or reinforced by, not wanting to jeopardise good p e e r r e v i e w peer review 18 t h e t h i n k e r another area of concern raised in the article is the extensive reliance on foreign funding for the provision of, and research on, sexual and reproductive healthcare services in south af rica. the risk of agendas being aligned with the interests of foreign actors rather than south af rican policies and local priorities was raised in this regard. while the us is the largest donor, including both public and private foundations, sweden is an important player when it comes to support for sexual and reproductive health and rights in the region. furthermore, sweden has actively promoted the adoption of the swedish model as part of its feminist foreign policy, including by giving visibility to south af rican actors in favour of the model. however, we argue that in south af rica, as well as in sweden, full or partial criminalisation contributes to stigma and unfair discrimination against sex workers and facilitates the non-observance of sex worker’s human rights, rights that all persons living in sweden and south af rica are constitutionally entitled to. criminalisation also jeopardises longfought feminist battles over bodily autonomy and integrity. this increases the sex workers’ vulnerability to violence and abuse. in fact, policy standpoints of un international bodies including unaids suggest that full decriminalisation would enable better access to health and social services for sex workers and their children, since sex workers fear functionaries of the state and experience violations. thus, introducing the swedish model in south af rica would be inconsistent with an ambition to strengthen the position of women engaging in sex work, who experience multiple and interlocking forms of discrimination and violence. more broadly, it would work against the efforts being made at various levels to improve gender equity and to bring an intersectional feminist perspective to foreign policy. notes 1. while the regulation of prostitution was abolished in 1919, vagrancy legislation (in place until the 1960s) continued to be used to monitor (working class) women selling sexual services, who, if found guilty, could be sentenced to forced labour (svanström, 2022). relations with sweden and other like-minded foreign allies and development partners. conclusion the central aim of our paper is to bring critical research on the swedish sex purchase act known as the nordic or swedish model, in dialogue with contemporary research and activist debates in south af rica, where it has been exemplary in the lengthy process of reforming sex work legislation, an issue presently high on the political agenda. in sweden, the initiative to criminalise buying sex was driven by feminist policy makers who argued that prostitution is an expression of gender inequality, and a form of male violence against women. consequently, the objective of this legislation is to eradicate all forms of sex work. however, to this date, the only existing evaluation of the model is inconclusive as to its efficiency to curtail the selling of sex. the swedish model, as well as the f raming of debates on prostitution in sweden, have been criticised for building on a universal female subject for whom marginalisation is primarily based on gender, whereas the majority of women selling sex are migrants, subjected to punitive measures through immigration policies which creates an environment conducive to high levels of abuse and violence. a growing body of research indicates that the swedish model’s failure to address other vectors of inequality such as class, race, sexuality, and migration status has in fact increased their vulnerability. in south af rica, as opposed to sweden, organisations supporting sex workers are vocal in debates on sex work. south af rica has a larger sex worker population (mainly women but also men and transgender persons) where disparities, compounded by racial inequalities, disable poor women f rom accessing ‘decent work’ – with sex work being seen as the only viable means of survival. furthermore, the criminalisation of sex work may be understood as a legacy of the racialized violence of colonialism and apartheid, where the bodies of poor black women were made particularly vulnerable and expendable. thus, in spite of different entry points and different historical trajectories, a common denominator between the two countries is that sex work is mainly performed by marginalised populations. t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 19v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 2. we are aware that the f raming and terminology is contested and reflected in the theoretical stances of feminist approaches. radical feminists align themselves with the vocabulary of prostitute/ prostitution as it emphasises the exploitation inherent in selling sex. liberal feminists, on the other hand, choose the terminology of sex work as it is no different f rom other kinds of work/ labour that women may choose to do (spies, 2021). nonetheless, self-identification by sex workers associates the derogatory nature of the word ‘prostitute’ while recognising that this terminology f rames many legal documents (see www.nswp.org/ sites/nswp.org/files/stellainfosheetlanguagematters.pdf). state organisations such as folkhälsomyndigheten in sweden choose the term ‘sex mot ersättning’ (sex for a fee) instead of prostitution or sex work. in public health work that engages with sexual and reproductive health and rights (srhr), the term ‘give or receive compensation for sex’ is used even when the compensation consists of other exchanges besides money, such as clothes, gifts, alcohol, drugs, or sleeping accommodation. 3. the newly formed government comprises a coalition between the moderates, the christian democrats and the liberals with heavy reliance on the far-right party the sweden democrats. the latter in particular is well known for its resistance to progressive gender policies. furthermore, the new government, unlike its predecessor, ref rains f rom associating itself with feminism. 4. for a gendered breakdown of those who have received financial or other compensation for sex, see www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/pubreader/pdfview/ display/60999?browserprint=1 5. sweden’s new conservative government is furthermore investigating the possibility of making ‘bristande vandel’ (an old expression referring to immoral/unrighteous ways of living) grounds for expulsion of foreigners, listing prostitution as one such condition, as one of its policy manoeuvres aimed at driving a deeper wedge between the mutually exclusive categories of citizens versus foreigners. 6. the unemployment rate among women was 37,3% in the third quarter of 2021, compared to 32,9% among men according to the official definition of unemployment. the official unemployment rate 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(2006). porr, horor och feminister. stockholm: pocketförlaget. p e e r r e v i e w https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2021.1918008 https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs/243 https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs/243 introduction this article compares conditions in south af rica before and after apartheid to the circumstances in america during and after segregation. during the eras of segregation and apartheid, conditions for black people in america and south af rica were oppressive in the extreme. the two systems had some differences, but the overall impact was the same. black people were physically separated and treated differently, and less favourably, than their white counterparts. the progress made by af rican americans during the 50 years since the end of segregation has been substantial, but significant disparities between black and white people still linger. in the 25 years since the elimination of apartheid in south af rica, significant improvements have been made, but most poor black people still reside in impoverished communities in townships and the countryside. the broad-based, grass roots, civil rights movement started in america in the 1950s. over the next decade, marches, boycotts, and other forms of nonviolent protests were organised and executed. these activities culminated with the enactment of the civil rights act of 1964, the voting rights act of 1965, and the fair housing act of 1968. in the years that followed, af rican americans made significant advances in educational before and after segregation and apartheid: a comparative analysis by leland ware | peer review 63v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the south african government is in danger of becoming the political stereotype of what is wrong with post-colonial africa: corrupt african leaders who exercise power through cronyism, bribery, and patronage. attainment levels, employment opportunities, family income, home ownership, and wealth. in south af rica, black people and other non-white groups stepped up their opposition to apartheid in the 1950s. the south af rican government responded with a campaign of strenuous, and often violent, reactions to those activities. in the 1990s, under international pressure, the apartheid laws were repealed, and nelson mandela was elected by a multiracial electorate. in the 25 years since, substantial changes have been made but more work must be done to reduce the enormous disparities between affluent and impoverished black af rican families. economic inequality is high and has increased since 1994.  the top 1% of south af ricans own 70.9% of the country’s wealth,  while the bottom 60% hold just 7%. south af rica is the world’s most unequal society and the split is largely along racial lines. although a new, black middle class is slowly emerging, and a small black elite has accrued tremendous wealth, many black south af ricans have not seen substantial improvements in their lives. this must be addressed. the south af rican government is in danger of becoming the political stereotype of what is wrong with post-colonial af rica: corrupt af rican leaders who exercise power through cronyism, bribery, and patronage. ‘state capture’ refers to practices in which private entities redirect public resources for their own benefit (gevisser, 2019). this must be ended. the final section of this article examines the proposals contained in new cities new economies: south af rica and af rica’s grand plan. the proposed solution to many of south af rica’s problems involves a total spatial reconstruction consisting of the creation of new mega-city regions that will produce new economics for south af rica. the author, dr. tshilidzi ratshitanga, presents a bold, new vision for development and provides a roadmap for achieving prosperity and equality for all south af ricans. segregation in the u.s. plessy v. ferguson was the historic decision by the u.s. supreme court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws as long as the separate facilities were equal to those reserved for white people. the events leading to plessy began with the enactment of a new orleans ordinance that required railroad carriers to provide ‘equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.’ a group of new orleans citizens organized a test case to challenge the law. when the case was tried, plessy’s lawyers argued that the ordinance violated the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments of the united states constitution. the case eventually made its way to the supreme court. plessy lost. writing for the majority, justice henry brown dismissed the thirteenth amendment claim almost summarily. the amendment, he wrote, was enacted to abolish slavery. an ordinance that established a distinction between the races did not, in his view, destroy legal equality or re-establish involuntary servitude. turning to the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, justice brown cited a series of earlier decisions as authority for states to enact statutes that made distinctions based on race. segregation’s vision was that black people would serve white people as domestic servants or as inexpensive laborers. after the supreme court’s endorsement, racial separation was imposed in virtually all aspects of everyday life. whites and blacks were born in separate hospitals, educated in different schools, and buried in segregated graveyards. schools, restaurants, hotels, theatres, public transportation, and waiting rooms were segregated, as were elevators, parks, public restrooms, hospitals, drinking fountains, prisons, and places of worship. segregated waiting rooms were required in professional offices, as well as building entrances, cemeteries, and even amusement-park cashier windows. af rican americans could not live in white neighbourhoods. black people could own property, 64 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies there were, in effect, two criminal justice systems: one for white people and another for black people. when the colour line was breached, violence was unleashed against offenders by the ku klux klan and local white people; often in concert with local law enforcement officials. but practices in the real estate industry and federal government regulations limited them to shabby and deteriorating ghettos. segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, asylums, jails, and homes for the elderly and disabled. the labour market was segmented. there were white jobs and black jobs; men’s work and women’s work. af rican americans were domestics, janitors, laborers and the like. these were the lowest paying and least desirable occupations. in atlanta, georgia, af rican americans testifying in court cases were sworn in using a different bible to that used by white people. marriage and cohabitation between white people and black people was strictly forbidden in most southern states. in the midwest, ‘sundown towns’ were not uncommon; signs were posted at city limits warning af rican americans that they were not welcome after dark (loewen, 2006). all branches of the u.s. military were segregated. in 1913, president woodrow wilson segregated the federal civil service (yellin, 2013). in 1915, he screened d.w. griffith’s ‘birth of a nation’ in the white house. the movie glorified the ku klux klan and portrayed black people as ignorant brutes. wilson said: ‘it’s like writing history with lightning. and my only regret is that it is all terribly true’ (benbow, 2010). segregation was codified in state and local laws and enforced by intimidation and violence. there were, in effect, two criminal justice systems: one for white people and another for black people. when the colour line was breached, violence was unleashed against offenders by the ku klux klan and local white people; often in concert with local law enforcement officials. in atlanta, georgia, black people could not serve on juries. the races were indexed separately on tax rolls. atlanta’s banks maintained separate teller windows for white and black customers. in some southern communities, black people could attend public performances using separate entrances and sitting in the ‘colored’ section. in public halls, theatres, and movie houses, black people were required to sit on a balcony. state fairs had a ‘colored day’ when black people could attend. laws separated the races in public transportation. there were segregated waiting rooms in train and bus stations. black people were required to sit in the rear of streetcars and buses. black people could not try on clothes in department stores. in stores, they were expected to wait until white customers were served before they were helped. there was a jim crow etiquette that was scrupulously observed in interactions. black people were expected to address a white person by the title of ‘mr.’ ‘mrs.’ or ‘miss.’ white people addressed black people by their first names, even if they hardly knew each other, or by the epithets ‘boy’, ‘uncle’, ‘auntie’ or the like. if a black person entered a white person’s home, they were obligated to use the back door. the purpose of these unwritten but well-known rules was to provide a continual demonstration that black people were inferior to white people and recognised their subordinate status (myrdal, 1944). the american civil rights movement on december 1, 1955, rosa parks was arrested after refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger (branch, 1988; 1999; 2006). a few days later, the montgomery improvement association was organised by local black leaders. martin luther king, who was just 26 years old at the time, was elected president. after a tense year, in which carpools were organised and weekly prayer meetings held, in november of 1956 the u.s. supreme court ruled that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional. in 1963, martin luther king launched the birmingham campaign. the effort started with a boycott and switched to marches and sit-ins. eugene ‘bull’ connor, birmingham’s commissioner of public safety, ordered police officers to use high-pressure water hoses, police dogs and tear gas to control protesters, many of 65v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies whom were children. the extreme brutality inflicted on protestors was featured on nightly newscasts. after weeks of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached that provided for the desegregation of birmingham’s stores, restaurants, and schools. the historic march on washington was convened on august 28, 1963. it was the result of the collective efforts of several civil rights groups. the march was the largest civil rights demonstration in american history. it received international media attention. approximately 250,000 people gathered peacefully on the mall in washington, d.c. king captivated the audience with his ‘i have a dream’ speech. that summer, the civil rights act of 1964 was enacted. the major provisions of this landmark legislation are title ii, which outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theatres, and other public accommodations; title vi, which authorised the withdrawal of federal funds f rom programs, including public schools, which practiced discrimination; and title vii, which prohibits discrimination in employment and created the equal employment opportunity commission (loevy, 1997). the 1964 civil rights act did not address voting rights. the fifteenth amendment of the constitution guaranteed af rican americans the right to vote. however, by the end of the nineteenth century almost all of the southern states enacted laws that disenf ranchised af rican americans. the selma, alabama, voting rights effort was publicised in january of 1965, when martin luther king addressed a mass meeting in that city. the student, nonviolent coordinating committee workers had been attempting to register voters for several weeks (lewis and d’orso, 1999). during their first march, the protestors were stopped by police officers who savagely attacked them with clubs and tear gas. after a second march was aborted, king led a group of demonstrators on a journey f rom selma to montgomery. they set out on march 21 with approximately 3,000 demonstrators. four days later, they reached montgomery with 25,000 marchers. president lyndon johnson signed the voting rights act into law on august 6, 1965. on april 4, 1968, king was fatally shot by an assassin while standing on a balcony on the lorraine motel in memphis. in the following days, riots erupted in 130 american cities. twenty thousand people were arrested. washington, baltimore, and chicago were the heaviest hit among the cities that experienced unrest following king’s assassination (risen, 2009). while many of the nation’s cities were still smouldering f rom the riots, the fair housing act of 1968 was enacted. this law forbade discrimination in the sale and rental of housing and allowed black people to move away f rom the ghettoes to which they had been confined. with the passage of the fair housing act, the civil rights movement’s legislative agenda was achieved. post-civil rights advances conditions for af rican americans are different and immeasurably better than they were before the enactment of the civil rights laws of the 1960s. the black middle class has grown significantly. levels of educational attainment, employment opportunities, and family incomes are higher. over the last 20 years, more af rican american families have moved to suburban communities than those who headed north during the great migration of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. the election of barack obama as president in 2008 signalled an unprecedented advance in race relations in america (ware and davis, 2012). today, an examination of the status of af rican american families reveals a mixed picture; the best of times for some, the worst of times for others. for those in a position to take advantage of the opportunities created by the civil rights revolution, the gains over the last generation have been remarkable. for black people left behind in america’s impoverished communities, the obstacles to advancement are more daunting today than they were a generation ago. conditions are only marginally better for af rican americans residing in all black or racially mixed working or lower middle-class suburbs. for this group, building wealth continues to be a problem, with the 2008 recession having brought many socio-economic gains to a halt. educational attainment levels the advances in af rican americans’ educational attainment levels since the late 1960s are significant. 66 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies approximately half of the black population is now employed in white-collar jobs. in 1972, only 34.8% of black workers were employed in white-collar occupations. by 2006, this had increased to 49.5%. in 1940, the vast majority of black people (92.3%) had completed less than 4 years of high school. only 6.4% completed high school and 1.3% completed 4 or more years of college (u.s. census bureau, 2006). by 1970, the proportion of black people 25 years and older with less than 12 years of school had declined to 66.3 %. the proportion of black people aged 25 and above with less than a high school education declined f rom 66.3% in 1970 to 15.8% in 2010. black people significantly increased their educational attainment levels during the forty-year period between 1970 and 2010. the proportion of black people who had attended 12 or more years of school increased f rom 33.7% in 1970 to 84.2% in 2010. occupational advances during the first half of the twentieth century, black people abandoned the fields of the agrarian south and found employment in factories in the industrialising north and midwest. over the last 40 years, they moved f rom factory floors to retail outlets and office suites. in 2010, 29% of employed black people were employed in management, professional, or related occupations. an additional 25% were employed in sales or office occupations. another 25% were employed in service occupations (such as food and beverage preparation, lodging, cosmetology, recreation, protection, personal services, etc.) that required modest educational attainment levels and afforded a moderate income (u.s. bureau of labor statistics, 2019). approximately half of the black population is now employed in white-collar jobs. in 1972, only 34.8% of black workers were employed in white-collar occupations. by 2006, this had increased to 49.5%. during the 1970s, the proportion of black people in white-collar positions only grew by 3.8%; in the 1980s this proportion grew by 7.3%; and in the 1990s by 5.9%. although black people have made substantial advances in occupational classifications, they still lag behind white people in the proportion of their population employed in white-collar occupations. in 1972, the difference in the proportion of black and white people employed in white-collar occupations was 22.5%; by 2006, the difference was down to 12.9%. family income the average family incomes of af rican americans have increased significantly over the last 40 years. there is ample proof of a growing black middle-class after the late 1960s. for the purposes of this article, black families were divided into three income groups. the lower-income group consisted of families with incomes under $49,999, which was $10,089 under (or 83%) of the national median. the moderate-income group consisted of families with incomes between $50,000 and $99, 999 annually. the upper-income group included families with incomes above $100,000. since 1970, the proportion of black families in the lower-income category has declined by an average of 5.3% per decade, with the exception of the 2000s. in 1970, the proportion of black families in the lower-income category was 76%; by 2009, this had declined to 61%. however, between 2000 and 2009 the proportion of black people in the lower-income category increased by 3%. the greatest decline in the proportion of black people in the lower-income group took place during the 1990s when there was an 8% drop in the proportion of the black population in this group. overall, since 1970, there has been a steady expansion in the proportion of black families in the upper-income category and a substantial decrease in the proportion of black families in the lower-income group. despite a significant decline in the lower-income category, over half of black families still have annual incomes below $50,000. between the mid-1980s and 1990s the proportion of middle-class black people steadily expanded. however, changes in the percentage of black families across the three groups levelled off during the 2000s. 67v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies even though more african americans have been able to enjoy middle-class incomes in the last few decades, this advance has not been necessarily reflected in overall black wealth. increases gained in black net worth were depleted during the 2008 recession. home ownership home ownership is another indicator of the economic disparities within the black community. equally important, it is a gauge that can be used to measure the continuing significance of race for black people in general and a dilemma in the accumulation of wealth for middle-class black people. since 1994, there has been an increase in black home ownership. between 1994 and 2003, the percent of black home owners increased f rom 42.6% to a record high of 49.4%. from 2003 to 2010, however, the percentage of black home owners declined to 44.9%. much black home ownership in the past was the direct result of white people moving to the suburbs and black people purchasing older homes in largely black central city or (in recent years) inner-ring suburban communities (boustan and margo, 2011). the black middle-class has been the beneficiary of the opportunities created by the civil rights laws of the 1960s. over the last generation, there have been significant advances in the occupational classifications of middle-class black people. half of the black population is employed in white-collar occupations and a third of that group occupies upper-level, white collar jobs. the levels of educational attainment have increased significantly. af rican americans have enjoyed a significant rise in family incomes. families with incomes over $100,000 per year occupy a socioeconomic status that is essentially the same as that of their white counterparts. despite its remarkable advances, the black middle class still lags far behind its white counterpart. black people have moved to suburban communities in significant numbers. most black suburbanites reside in majority white neighbourhoods. some middle-class black people live in upscale, all-black communities that are not adjacent to low-income neighbourhoods. they live comfortably among people like them and do so as a matter of personal choice. however, many of those earning less than $100,000 reside in inner-ring suburbs that were formerly white neighbourhoods. these are often contiguous to lowincome communities. the proximity means that the middle-class residents are exposed to the deleterious conditions that plague inner-city communities. net worth even though more af rican americans have been able to enjoy middle-class incomes in the last few decades, this advance has not been necessarily reflected in overall black wealth. increases gained in black net worth were depleted during the 2008 recession. one way of measuring this is by considering net worth. this is calculated by taking household assets and subtracting liabilities. assets may consist of holdings such as real estate, stocks, interest earning accounts, business equity, vehicles, etc. in 1989, the median net worth of black families was $8,020, which was a far cry f rom white families, who had a median net worth of $134,680. by 2001, the median net worth  for af rican american families climbed to $26,150 as the white median net worth soared to $198,620 by 2004. as a result of the 2008 recession, by 2013 the black median net worth dropped to $13,490, which was lower than it was in 1992 and anytime since. the white median net worth also dropped, but only to $146,320, making the black/white gap even wider than it was in the ‘80s or the ‘90s. household net worth is concentrated more in home ownership than other assets. af rican american home ownership and value was hit hardest in the recession (by -23%). black people also lost larger percentages in stocks and mutual funds (-71%), retirement accounts (-28%), and business equity (-57%) (black demographics, 2020). south africa under apartheid in 1910, the cape colony, natal, the transvaal, and the orange free state united to create the union of south af rica. in 1913, with the passage of the natives land act, hundreds of thousands of black af ricans 68 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies were forced off land they owned or inhabited. the law required black people to live in af rican ‘reserves’. at about the same time, segregation was introduced in the mining industry. black af ricans were barred f rom higher-paying, skilled labour jobs. apartheid laws forced the different racial groups to live and develop separately and prohibited inter-racial marriage and social integration (dubow, 2014). translated f rom the af rikaans term meaning ‘apartness’, apartheid was the ideology supported by the national party government. in 1948, the af rikaner national party won the general election. their goal was not only to separate south af rica’s white minority f rom its non-white majority, but also to separate non-whites f rom each other, and to divide black south af ricans along tribal lines. apartheid did not differ significantly f rom the segregation policies that existed before the af rikaner party came to power, but it made segregation legal and enforceable. with some limited differences, apartheid in south af rica operated in the same way as segregation in america. in both countries, black people were subjugated and subordinated. black south af ricans could not own property. black americans could, but they were limited to ghettos in the least desirable areas of cities. in south af rica, numerous laws were passed to create and maintain the apartheid state. they included the population registration act of 1950, which required people to register according to their racial group. people were required to register as white, coloured, black, indian, or asian. the group areas act forced these groups to live in separate areas. townships evolved f rom land acts enacted in 1913 and 1936, which defined several scattered areas as ‘native reserves’ for black people. by the 1950s, the combined areas of the reserves represented 13% of the total land area of south af rica, while black people made up at least 75% of the total population. these areas were relabelled as ‘homelands’ in which specific ethnic groups could reside. later, the bantu homelands citizenship act of 1970 designated black people living throughout south af rica as citizens of homelands, thus stripping them of their south af rican citizenship and political rights. between the 1960s and 1980s, the white-dominated south af rican government removed black people living in white areas and forcibly relocated them to ‘bantustans’. land ownership was limited to white people. other laws included the prohibition of mixed marriages act of 1949, the immorality amendment act of 1950, and the separate representation of voters act of 1951. under the apartheid regime, black and white people were required to use different beaches and public restrooms. signs designated facilities that were reserved for white people. black people earned meagre wages compared to their white counterparts. their children attended poorly funded schools. the native laws amendment act of 1952 stipulated that all black people over the age of 16 were required to carry passes. the document contained details such as their fingerprints, photograph, the name of their employer, address, length of employment, and other information. no black person could stay in an urban area for more than 72 hours subject to limited exceptions. under apartheid, black townships were highly controlled communities, often located at some distance f rom the ‘white city’. in a few cases – such as the alexandra neighbourhood in johannesburg – some older townships were adjacent to white enclaves, separated only by walls and fences. however, in most places a vast expanse of uninhabited land separated the townships f rom the city. getting to work often involved a long and expensive commute to a job that could be three hours away. transportation was limited to state-owned buses and trains. leisure activities were strictly regulated. the only legal beer halls were in government buildings. schools were poorly maintained, barrack-like structures with barred windows and second-hand desks. dirt lots served as soccer fields. there were no cultural facilities, except for churches, which provided places of community and belonging. people bought their goods f rom ‘spaza shops’ (informal convenience  shops usually run f rom a home). the inadequate supply of official housing was supplemented by informal settlements located either on the periphery of the sprawling townships or integrated within their boundaries as shacks on subdivided lots. these areas remain an integral feature of south af rica’s landscape. cities were designated ‘for whites only’, and townships became the mechanism for housing the non-white labour force (south af rican history online, 2011). 69v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the south african government estimates a current national shortfall of 2.1 million homes for about 12.5 million people. it has set a target of 2030 to fill that gap (south african government, 2020 the anc’s 1952 defiance campaign prompted thousands of black af ricans to defy the apartheid laws in hopes that their arrests would overwhelm the country’s prison system and bring attention and reform. thousands were arrested, but the anc ended the campaign after scores of protesters were injured by police (south af rican history online, 2012). in 1960, south af rican police killed 69 protesters gathered outside the sharpeville police station for a nonviolent protest (south af rican history online, 2011). the killings led to an international outcry and calls for armed struggle by the anc and other groups. by the end of the ‘80s, political and economic boycotts by foreign governments, bolstered by the activistpressured exodus of private businesses operating in the region, left south af rica politically isolated and economically devastated. much of the non-white population ignored the pass requirements, territorial restrictions and segregation policies. on june 16, 1976 between 3,000 and 10,000 students mobilised by the south af rican students movement’s action committee marched peacefully to protest apartheid. they were met by heavily armed police who fired tear gas and live ammunition at demonstrating students. this resulted in a widespread revolt that turned into an uprising against the government. the uprising began in soweto and spread across the country until the following year. the united nations general assembly denounced apartheid in 1973. in 1976, the united nation’s security council voted to impose an embargo on the sale of arms to south af rica. in 1985, the united kingdom and the united states imposed economic sanctions. under pressure f rom the international community, the national party government of pieter botha sought to institute some reforms, including the abolition of the pass laws and the repealing of the ban on interracial sex and marriage. the reforms fell short of any substantive change, however, and by 1989 botha was pressured to step aside in favour of f.w. de klerk. the south af rican government subsequently repealed the population registration act, as well as most of the other legislation that formed the legal basis for apartheid. de klerk f reed nelson mandela on february 11, 1990. a new constitution, which enf ranchised black people and other racial groups, took effect in 1994, and elections that year led to a coalition government with a non-white majority, marking the official end of the apartheid system. progress after apartheid since the end of white minority rule, south af rica has held six peaceful democratic elections, all f ree and fair, and all won by mandela’s party – the af rican national congress. south af rica is the continent’s most industrialised country. its main industries are manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, f inancial services, transportation, mining, agriculture, and tourism. its gross domestic product rose f rom $139.8bn in 1994 to $368.9bn in 2018. housing apartheid is often seen as a political construct, but architecture and planning were critical to implementing apartheid policies. design practices became cultural extensions of state power. eliminating the lingering vestiges of apartheid will be diff icult. there was a dramatic growth in construction in the early years of anc rule. between 1994 to 2018, the south af rican government constructed 3.6 million homes. but, after reaching a peak in 1999, the rate of house building has slowed, particularly over the past few years. the south af rican government estimates a current national shortfall of 2.1 million homes for about 12.5 million people. it has set a target of 2030 to f ill that gap (south af rican government, 2020; reuters, 2017; fihlani and bailey, 2019). the reconstruction and development program (rdp) homes built across the country were provided f ree of charge to those whose monthly incomes 70 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies were less than 3,500 rand. but these have their own problems. despite the improvements in individual living conditions, there is a growing realisation that the rdp housing program reinforced apartheidera segregation, continuing to consign the poor to ghettos at the furthest edges of the city. when many people f inally get an rdp house, often after years of waiting, they realise that it makes more economic sense to build a shack in the backyard for themselves and to sell the rdp house illegally for about 40,000 rand (a third of what it costs the state to build them) and to use this cash to set up a business f rom the shack. the proportion of households living in formal dwellings increased f rom 65.1% in 1996 to 77.6% in 2011. the proportion of the population living in informal dwellings (shanties) decreased f rom 16.2 to 13.6%. informal settlements are housing areas that are often illegally built on municipal land. these settlements are found in a variety of areas and are home to a large percentage of the country’s impoverished population. many black south af ricans still live in townships and informal housing, work multiple jobs, earn very little money, have little access to quality schools or health care, and have few opportunities to move out of the townships (baker, 2019; jones, 2019). income south af rica has made progress in reducing poverty since its transition to democracy;  18.8% of south af ricans were poor in 2015, a drop f rom 33.8% in 1996. according to the 2011 census, the incomes of black south af rican households grew by 169% over the preceding decade. white south af ricans still earn six times as much as non-whites. the black middle class more than doubled in size f rom 2.2 million in 1993 to 5.4 million in 2008 (mohamed, 2020). the average annual income of black south af rican households is r60,613 (about $5,700), while for white-headed households it is r365,134 ($34,300). south af rica’s wealth inequality is even more striking than its income disparity. overall, household incomes more than doubled during the 10 years f rom 2001 to 2011. the top 1% of south af ricans own 70.9% of the country’s wealth,  while the bottom 60% holds only 7% (reuters, 2017; zwane, 2019; statistics south af rica, 2019). unemployment south af rica’s official unemployment rate in 1994 was about 20%. a more recent labour force survey reported an unemployment rate of 24.1%. under an expanded rate of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped actively looking for work, this rate rose f rom 31.5% in 1994 to 34% in the last quarter of 2013. education primary school enrolment is 87%. last year, the government spent about 17% of its budget on basic education. pre-school enrolment has risen by 270% since 2000. the proportion of people aged 20 or older with no schooling has fallen f rom 13% in 1995 to 4.8% in 2016. the proportion of candidates receiving bachelor’s degrees has increased f rom 20.1% in 2008 to 28.7% last year (south af rican government, 2020). higher education participation rates have risen f rom 15.4% in 2002 to 18.6% in 2015. university enrolment numbers climbed 289.5% since 1985. just under half of children who enrolled in grade 1 will make it to grade 12. roughly 20% of grade 9, 10, and 11 pupils are repeaters. just 28% of people aged 20 or older have completed high school. only 3.1% of black people over the age of 20 have a university degree. just one in three schools has a library and one in five a science laboratory. the unemployment rate for qualified professionals has increased f rom 7.7% in 2008 to 13.2% today. corruption south af rica ranked 21 of 42 countries on transparency international’s corruption perceptions index (cpi) in 1995. in 2004, it ranked 44 of 145 countries. by last year, south af rica’s ranking slid to 72 of 177 countries (majavu, 2020). the world bank produces annual worldwide governance indicators. in 2012, south af rica’s control of corruption was ranked 113 out of 210 countries (south af rican government, 2019). this must stop. new cities in the twenty-five years since the end of the apartheid regime, south af rica has made tremendous strides. 71v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the new cities vision is predicated on a state-led development trajectory. the goal is the creation of a national reconstruction project. once the question of land ownership is resolved, the state can implement a new master plan. the transfer of power f rom the white minority to the black majority has been successful, but there are still many problems. unemployment is high, and the poverty rate is even higher. in his book, new cities new economies: south af rica and af rica’s grand plan, dr. tshilidzi ratshitanga presents a bold, new vision for development and provides a roadmap for achieving prosperity and equality for all south af ricans. this book explains the legacy of spatial injustices inherited f rom apartheid’s social, political, and economic engineering as the central cause of the challenges which are inhibiting progress. the ghosts of apartheid still haunt south af rica. dr. ratshitanga’s proposed solution is a total spatial reconstruction spawned by the creation of new mega city regions that will produce new economics for south af rica and the rest of the continent. the new cities visionary f ramework is presented as a developmental paradigm that will contribute to solutions for the challenges of human settlement patterns. the new cities vision is predicated on a state-led development trajectory. the goal is the creation of a national reconstruction project. once the question of land ownership is resolved, the state can implement a new master plan. this will entail the identification of unoccupied places to build the new cities. this would offset the cost of relocation and compensation. most of the land is in the hands of private entities and individuals and is registered as farming or mining land. since the new cities will create a construction boom in south af rica, the training of young people to prepare for construction work will be needed. the country will need to implement innovative skills training programs that will create a large number of skilled black people over a short period of time. the country’s educational institutions would be mobilised to produce qualified artisans, engineers and technicians who will become the labour force for the new cities building program. new cities will also incorporate schools, clinics, hospitals, and other social amenities. these will require teachers, nurses, doctors and other skilled workers to be deployed to work there. the objective is to offer people quality of life, through the creation of equitable living environments, where people cohabitate in a safe, cohesive and socially uplifting manner. the ingredients for this are access to transport, safety and security, adequate healthcare, nutrition, housing, water, electricity and sanitation services. the new cities will be compact communities anchored by high-density human settlements. transit oriented developments will enable linkages between mass transport systems, residential spaces and work places. the location of residential settlements along transport corridors will alleviate the current burden of travel times between homes and work places. south af ricans spend the longest time in daily commutes to and f rom work, while more than 50% of poor urban residents spend more than 20% of their household income on transport. the government has provided housing for the poor by building f ree rdp houses. however, these have been constructed in a similar manner to apartheid spatial patterns, located at the outskirts of economic activities and without all the relevant amenities, such as adequate schools, hospitals, and recreational facilities. housing for ordinary citizens who will be integrated in these new cities will be a source of wealth creation. unlike the rdp houses that are not wealthcreating assets, the new subsidy schemes should be structured in ways that can create wealth building for the masses. the involvement of the state in investing heavily in the inf rastructure of these new cities will complement this approach. new cities will provide employment opportunities, housing, schools hospital and health care facilities which were non-existent for black people under apartheid. 72 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies conclusion under the segregation and apartheid regimes, conditions for black people in america and south af rica were extremely oppressive. segregation and apartheid had some differences, but the overall impact was the same. both regimes were challenged and eventually ended. the progress made by af rican americans during the 50 years since the end of segregation has been substantial, but significant racial disparities linger. in the 25 years since the elimination of apartheid in south af rica, significant improvements have been made, but most poor black people still reside in impoverished communities in townships and the countryside. if dr. ratshitanga’s recommendations for the development of new cities are implemented, all south af ricans will be the beneficiaries. references baker, a. (2019). what south af rica can teach us as worldwide inequality grows [online] time. available at: http://time.com/ longform/south-af rica-unequal-country benbow, m. e. (2010). birth of a quotation: woodrow wilson and ‘like writing history with lightning’. the journal of the gilded age and progressive era, 9 (4), pp. 509–33. black demographics. (2020). the af rican american middle class. [online] available at: https://blackdemographics.com/households/ middle-class/ boustan, l. p. and margo, r. (2011). white suburbanization and af rican-american home ownership, 1940–1980. working paper 16702, national bureau of economic research. branch, t. (1988). parting the waters: america in the king years 1954– 63. new york: simon & schuster. branch, t. (1999). pillar of fire: america in the king years 1963–65. new york: simon & schuster. branch, t. (2006). at canaan’s edge: america in the king years 1965– 68. new york: simon & schuster. dubow, s. (2014). apartheid, 1948–1994. oxford: oxford university press. fihlani, p. and bailey, d. (2019). south af rica elections: charting divides 25 years after apartheid. [online] bbc news. available at: https://www. bbc.com/news/world-af rica-48050197 gevisser, m. (2019). ‘state capture’: the corruption investigation that has shaken south af rica. the guardian [online]. available at: https:// www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/11/state-capture-corruptioninvestigation-that-has-shaken-south-af rica jones, r. (2019). apartheid ended 29 years ago. how has south af rica changed? [online] national geographic. available at: https:// www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/04/how-south-af ricachanged-since-apartheid-born-f ree-generation/ lewis, j. and d’orso, m. (1999). walking with the wind: a memoir of the movement. harvest books. loevy, r. d. (ed.) (1997). the civil rights act of 1964: the passage of the law that ended racial segregation. albany, ny: state university of new york press. loewen, j. (2006). sundown towns: a hidden dimension of american racism. touchstone. majavu, m. (2020). corruption in south af rica: echoes of leaders who plundered their  countries. [online] the conversation. available at: https://theconversation.com/corruption-in-south-af rica-echoes-ofleaders-who-plundered-their-countries-130136 mohamed, h. (2020). 30 years since mandela was f reed, where does south af rica stand? [online] al jazeera. available at: https://www. aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/30-years-mandela-f reed-south-af ricastand-200209051129596.html myrdal, g. (1944). an american dilemma: the negro problem and modern democracy. harper & row. reuters. (2017). black south af ricans still earn far less than whites: survey. [online] available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/ussaf rica-economy/black-south-af ricans-still-earn-far-less-thanwhites-survey-iduskbn15b152 risen, c. (2009). a nation on fire: america in the wake of the king assassination. wiley. south af rican government. (2019). brand south af rica on south af rica’s performance in transparency international corruption perception index 2019 [online]. available at: https://www.gov. za/speeches/brand-south-af rica-south-af rica’s-performance transparency-international-corruption south af rican government. (2020). human settlements. [online] available at: https://www.gov.za/about-sa/humansettlements south af rican government. (2020). education. [online] available at: https://www.gov.za/about-sa/education south af rican history online. (2011). apartheid legislation 1850s–1970s. [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheidlegislation-1850s-1970s south af rican history online. (2011). sharpeville massacre, 21 march 1960. [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960 south af rican history online. (2012). the defiance campaign against apartheid laws begins. [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org. za/dated-event/defiance-campaign-against-apartheid-laws-begins statistics south af rica. (2019). inequality trends in south af rica. [online] available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/ report-03-10-19/report-03-10-192017.pdf u.s. bureau of labor statistics. (2019). employed persons by occupation, race, hispanic or latino ethnicity and sex. [online] available at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat10.pdf u.s. census bureau. (2006). a half-century of learning: historical statistics on educational attainment in the united states, 1940 to 2000. [online] available at: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2000/ dec/phc-t-41.html ware, l. and davis, t. j. (2012) ordinary people in an extraordinary time: the black middle-class in the age of obama. howard l.j. 55, p. 533. worldwide governance indicators. (2020). world bank [online]. available at: https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/ yellin, e. s. (2013). racism in the nation’s service: government workers and the color line in woodrow wilson’s america. university of north carolina press. zwane, t. (2019). black middle class more than doubled but the struggle continues. [online] city press/news24. available at: https:// www.news24.com/citypress/business/black-middle-class-morethan-doubled-but-the-struggle-continues-20190429 73v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies 44 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract there are those who argue that a state embodying good international citizenship (gic) must actively seek to improve the world around it, thereby making a positive contribution to overcoming global challenges. a good international citizen (state) must also be a proponent of multilateral cooperation, usually manifesting in global platforms such as the united nations (un). scholars refer to middle power states being ideally situated in the power rankings of international affairs, respected by major and minor powers, to become custodians of emerging international norms and to pave a pathway forward for the community of states. both south af rica and sweden are seen as pivot countries in their respective regions and have a long history of shared desires and supports for f reedom. this article will explore the notion of gic and its desirability, and applicability, in relation to south af rica and sweden. it employs a case study methodology approach in its research design and interrogates the extent to which south af rica and sweden qualify as good international citizens according to four characteristics, drawn f rom the literature. the article finds that both sweden and south af rica demonstrate elements of good international citizenship. by suzanne graham south africa, sweden, and good international citizenship 45 introduction after world war ii and the increasing growth, and interest, in multilateral organisations, the spirit of state harmony and cooperating for peace had become a sought-after goal in the liberal international community, with many states attempting to work collectively to respond to global problems. unfortunately, the cold war interrupted this process, making this goal a simmering and unrealised vision for many parts of the globe. when former united states president george bush (senior) spoke of a new world order in 1991 (bush as cited in nye, 1992), reflecting just treatment of all peoples and peaceful nations working together, the concept of good international citizenship (gic) had already surfaced in diplomatic fields many years before1 – although it is most often attributed to gareth evans, former australian minister for foreign affairs (see evans, 1989). when a group of like-minded states, such as democracies, ‘conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions’, an international society exists (bull, 1977: 13). although some have dismissed the notion of an international community as a cliché (and unattainable) (see beeson, 2015); if ever there was an example of states needing to cooperate to resolve global challenges, it is the global coronavirus pandemic – an unprecedented (in the 21st century) disease sweeping across the world regardless of borders, nationality, wealth, land size, or population. one could argue that in the face of this global disaster, states should work together for the good of all, in harmony and not with selfish interests in mind because the problem is everyone’s problem. however, even then examples of discrimination, unfairness, and inequality persist, in relation to vaccine access and roll out across the globe (see achiume, 2022 and bajaj and maki, 2022 for reference to what has been labelled ‘vaccine apartheid’ by these and other authors). at the potential tail end of the pandemic, a possible third world war arises with russia’s invasion of ukraine in february 2022, solidifying for realists that ‘states will always be states’ and causing liberalists to scratch their heads in bewildered disbelief. what does it take for states to stand up and advance a global cause ahead of selfish national interest but as part of a natural and moral obligation to contribute and make a difference in the international system of states? where are the good guys? where and who are the good international citizens? this article will explore how (if at all) south af rica and sweden may fit within this category of states. it will begin by offering a literature review of gic, then move on to apply the four characteristics of gic as deduced f rom the literature to the two cases: south af rica and sweden. it will then offer a conclusion based on this application. literature review gic represents a role identifier for states keen to promote multilateralism and inclusive diplomacy and the facilitation of state harmony through mediation and other dialogic measures. international relations theories such as realism, cosmopolitanism, and rationalism each try to make sense of what defines gic: ‘[r]ealism beats a path for the state, rationalism defines a middle road in international politics, and cosmopolitanism attempts to change the world for the better through the moral unity of human society’ (graham, 2008: 87). pert (2014) as cited by abbondanza (2021: 181) highlights five areas that characterise gic: ‘compliance with the international law; support for multilateralism, willingness to ‘pitch in’ to international tasks, ‘international good deeds’, and leadership.’ scholars, such as ahlhaus (2014) and youde and slagter (2013) refer to middle power states2, ideally situated in the power rankings of international affairs and respected by major and minor powers, as potentially good international citizens. examples f rom the literature include canada (wylie, 2009); australia (lightfoot, 2006; hoffstaedter and lamb, 2019; abbondanza, 2021); and south af rica (graham, 2008; jordaan, 2010; geldenhuys, 2011 and 2015). müller and wunderlich (2013) explore canada, germany, and sweden in the field of gic with a focus on arms control. this article intends to contribute to the literature by offering an updated and more holistic, albeit brief, exploratory review of south af rica and sweden and gic in relation to four key descriptors or characteristics of gic as drawn f rom the literature. the characteristics will be outlined later in this article. both south af rica and sweden are perceived to be middle powers3 and pivot countries v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 46 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w in their respective regions and have a long history of shared desires and supports for f reedom (cilliers, 2018). a moral reputation is important in international affairs. it helps to influence cooperation as a form of a state’s soft power (crescenzi and donahue, 2019). it has economic weight too: ‘reputation determines whether people support a country through their behaviors [sic]. good reputation means more exports, more investments, more people coming to visit’ (trad, chief operating officer at the reputation institute, quoted in forbes, 2019). methodology this article briefly explores the notion of gic in relation to south af rica4 and sweden. it employs a case study methodology approach in its research design. although sweden is considered to be the 19th wealthiest5 state in the world, compared to south af rica in 93rd position (ventura, 2021), both states can be labelled as middle powers with between 0.3% and 2% of global power potential6 (cilliers, 2018). in terms of bilateral relations, historically sweden has longstanding ties with south af rica dating back to 1930 when a south af rican legation opened in stockholm. in 1994, relations were raised to ambassadorial level. sweden supported liberation efforts during the apartheid regime in south af rica and former swedish prime minister, olof palme, was well known for his speeches in international platforms against the ‘repulsive system’ (palme quoted in the presidency, 2022). palme was awarded the order of the companions of o.r. tambo in gold by the democratic south af rican presidency for his ‘exceptional contribution to the struggle against apartheid and for a just world’ (the presidency, 2022). this article will critically interrogate the extent to which south af rica and sweden qualify as gics according to the following four characteristics, drawn f rom the literature, and summarised by graham (2008: 90–94): · as the largest multilateral international organisation in the world, a good international citizen must respect the un7, its goals for peace, and especially its chief operating organ, the united nations security council (unsc). · good international citizens must place international society’s welfare ahead of the incessant pursuit of national interests and must ‘forsake’ those interests where they conflict with human rights. good international citizens should not support regimes which are gross violators of human rights. · good international citizens must respect the equal sovereignty of other states, uphold international law and respond to demands for justice. they must act multilaterally by relying on diplomacy and must seek to extend the level of harmony between states by mediating conflicts. · a gic must help to build regional and international organisations and promote democratic values including equality and human rights. sweden and south africa: gic status? according to the economist intelligence unit’s democracy index (2021), which measures the democratic political institutions and f reedoms in most states worldwide, sweden is labelled as a full democracy and receives a score of 9.26 out of a possible 10. full democracies are consolidated with an independent media; well-functioning, legitimate and accountable systems of governance, and protected liberties and f reedoms. south af rica is a flawed democracy and scores 7.05 out of 10. flawed democracies have f ree and fair elections; this article briefly explores the notion of gic in relation to south africa4 and sweden. it employs a case study methodology approach in its research design. although sweden is considered to be the 19th wealthiest5 state in the world, compared to south africa in 93rd position (ventura, 2021), both states can be labelled as middle powers with between 0.3% and 2% of global power potential6 (cilliers, 2018). 47 together in the lead up to south af rica’s third term on the council. in late 2018, the two countries led an initiative for non-permanent members to meet up and talk about council working methods, as a way to strengthen the role of these members in the council. the south af rican delegation continued this initiative throughout its term and beyond (mbete, 2021). sweden has never served on the 47-member un human rights council (hrc), although it has submitted its candidature to the body. south af rica has served four terms on the hrc (two terms between 2006 and 2010 and two further terms between 2014 and 2019); and played an important role in the transition of this body f rom the commission on human rights to the hrc in 2006. south af rica has also submitted its candidature to the hrc for a further term (2023– 2025). despite the promotion of human rights serving as a principle priority in south af rica’s foreign policy goals upon democratisation (mandela, 1993), it has not fared too well in this regard, refusing to comment on country-specific human rights situations in global platforms, preferring to recommend that internal state processes be allowed to unfold or that regional bodies take ownership of human rights crises, and being criticised for its inconsistencies in this regard (graham, 2016: 299). despite never having served on the hrc, sweden has nevertheless been an active participant in the workings of the hrc and has ‘contributed to a wide range of cross-regional resolutions and initiatives’ (government offices of sweden, 2012: 4). the country has also successfully projected a very public persona to the international community of a nation ‘committed to promoting and respecting human rights…[as] a core commitment [in its foreign and domestic policy]’ (government offices of sweden, 2012: 1). this continued in april 2022, when sweden voted along with 92 other nations, in favour of suspending russia’s membership of the human rights council in response to russia’s invasion of the sovereign territory of ukraine and related reports of human rights violations against the ukrainian people by moscow’s troops. in that resolution, south af rica chose to abstain (united nations digital library, 2022). there was backlash for south af rica on this, and other related un votes on russia’s actions, as this was considered by some to be a soft and weak response (charbonneau, 2022). south af rica’s second v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w fundamental liberties are protected but in practice there are inconsistencies, as well governance issues. sweden is ranked at number 4 in the world, and south af rica is number 44. according to freedom house (2022), sweden is 100% ‘free’ and scores perfectly with 60/60 and 40/40 for civil liberties and political rights respectively. south af rica is also rated as ‘free’ with a score of 79 out of a 100 with 33 out of 40 for political rights and 46 out of 60 for civil liberties. based on these measuring tools, both countries are considered to be democratic, although south af rica can improve in areas (for example: addressing corruption; low voter participation; unemployment rates creating desperate citizens; mass looting as witnessed in july 2021; and xenophobic attacks (gounden, 2021)). in terms of the world’s most reputable country index (2019), sweden is number 1. south af rica is number 38 (although the first out of af rican-listed states). admittedly, only 55 countries are considered in this index and only a group of 7 countries (canada, france, germany, italy, japan, the united kingdom, and the united states) are surveyed for their views so it does depend on their familiarity with the countries under investigation. sweden has been ranked at number 1 in 2018 and 2019. in terms of profiles at the un, both nations have an impressive scorecard. dag hammarskjöld, a swedish economist and diplomat, served as the second secretary-general of the un f rom 1953–1961 (united nations, 2022). he was very well-liked and did much to unify the organisation and improve its responsiveness. navanethem pillay, a south af rican jurist, served as the united nations high commissioner for human rights f rom 2008 to 2014 (office of the high commissioner for human rights, 2022). sweden has consistently contributed troops to un peacekeeping operations – over 80,000 since 1948. south af rica too has contributed to un operations since the late 1990s, with an average of 2000 uniformed personnel deployed per month to un missions (de carvalho, 2018). as of 31 may 2022, sweden had 200 troops and south af rica 1131 in the field (united nations peacekeeping, 2022). sweden has served as an elected, non-permanent, member of the unsc four times (1957–1958; 1975– 1976; 1997–1998; 2017-2018). in its relatively short democratic history, south af rica has served three times already on the council (1997–1998; 2011–2012 and 2019–2020). south af rica and sweden began working 48 in charge at the un, ambassador xolisa mabhongo, explained that the republic preferred to afford the ‘newly established international commission of inquiry to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international law, and related crimes in ukraine’ the time to do its job. he declared that the resolution to suspend russia was premature and political and instead the use of mediation and diplomacy and non-biased decisionmaking in the un systems should be emphasized (a/es-11/pv.10, 2022: 9). a technical argument exists that by supporting the workings of the un system, south af rica demonstrated its commitment to good international citizenship, as this is one of the criteria. however, what of a gic’s role to respect the equal sovereignty of states? it appeared to onlookers that south af rica was not willing to do enough, to stand with the majority, in defending ukraine’s sovereignty against russian aggression. a case can also be made for the argument that good international citizen states should make use of the global, liberal, platform to loudly advocate for human rights promotion and the protection of democratic principles and not reduce the organisation to a political talk shop through inaction. south af rica’s reputation wobbled a bit over this,8 although the government did respond quickly to explain its reasons via national and international communication channels. the swedish institute offers the world a bird’s eye view of the country, telling a very neatly packaged and well-branded story of sweden’s policies and global goals on its website ‘sharing sweden’ (2022). impressively, what sweden sells on the global market is not simply rhetoric. it has been praised for its progressive feminist foreign policy position, being the first country to launch such a policy, in 2014, and its dedication to gender equality. swedish foreign minister at the time, margot wallström, explained the move as a significant attempt by sweden to stand ‘against the systematic and global subordination of women’ (wallström, quoted in vogelstein and bro, 2019). although a seemingly radical move at first, sweden has set the bar and led other nations9 to take up the call to action as canada and australia, amongst others, have now taken ‘steps to integrate a focus on gender equality and women’s rights into their international work’ (vogelstein and bro, 2019). south af rica has also taken up the mantle in relation to the global women, peace and security (wps) agenda. in 2019, former south af rican minister of international relations and cooperation, minister lindiwe sisulu, declared that south af rica would use its third term to prioritise the wps agenda including overseeing negotiations around, and the eventual adoption of, unsc resolution 2493. this resolution commits countries to supporting the full inclusivity of women at all stages of peace processes and although the final resolution was seen as a watered-down version, it was nevertheless a positive step forward for wps. however, south af rica’s reputation in this area has been tarnished somewhat as south af rican peacekeepers have been implicated in allegations of sexual abuse in af rican peacekeeping missions (mail & guardian, 2018). south af rica has emerged as a moral leader in the field of global disarmament. regardless of the debated motivations behind the decision of the f.w. de klerk government (see friedman, 2017), south af rica is the only country to have voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons programme in 1989/1990. since then, south af rica has continued to play a prominent role in this field at the unga’s disarmament and international security committee or first committee, as well as at the international atomic energy agency (iaea) and in other arenas such as signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (npt) and the nuclear suppliers group (nsg), which it joined in 1995, and which it chaired for the period 2007–2008. south af rica was also the ‘first af rican state to destroy its stockpile of anti-personnel landmines and the first to publicly support the ottawa process by hosting the first continental conference of af rican experts on landmines in kempton park in may 1997’ (graham, 2016: 160). south af rica became a member of the un conference on disarmament in 1996. south af rican diplomat adbul minty sat on the iaea board of governors and was in the running for the directorgeneral position in 2009, although he was later defeated by japan’s yukiya amano. similarly, sweden has also played a prominent, consistent role in multilateral platforms on disarmament and non-proliferation – referred to as the ‘white knight state’ on these issues. this term is ‘applied to a select few countries well known for longestablished support and advocacy of nonproliferation and disarmament’ (bergenäs, 2010). swedish diplomat and politician hans blix became director general t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 49v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w of the iaea f rom 1981 to 1997. later, he took on the position of executive chairman of the united nations monitoring, verification and inspection commission (unmovic). sweden’s former foreign minister, anna lindh, spearheaded the initiative leading to the european union’s strategy to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (bergenäs, 2010). in 2019, sweden’s capital city was host to the launch of the stockholm initiative for nuclear disarmament involving ministers of 16 non-nuclear weapon states. this grouping worked as an advocacy group to ensure that the role of the non-proliferation treaty (npt) and its review conferences be upheld and reaffirmed as the cornerstone of the global disarmament and the non-proliferation regime. south af rica has also chaired regional and continental bodies and has declared itself an advocate of af rica’s interests in multilateral forums. south af rican president cyril ramaphosa chaired the af rican union in 2020 and was lauded for his initiatives to increase af rica’s access to vaccines (in response to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe), through the establishment of the au’s af rica vaccine acquisition task team (avatt) (mlaba, 2021). whilst south af rica’s government worked to project the vaccine interests of developing nations, sweden contributed to the global vaccination campaign by donating 5 million astrazeneca vaccines through covid-19 vaccines global access (covax). in sweden’s 2022 budget, the state has allocated the equivalent of 3 billion south af rican rands ‘to support access to vaccines in low-income countries’ (donor tracker, 2022). the swedish government has consistently committed to supplying official development assistance (oda) to countries in need of aid, ranking number 6 in the world and number 1 in terms of proportion of aid in relation to the size of its economy (spending around 1.4% of its gross national income) (donor tracker, 2022). sweden took on the international responsibility of accepting iraqi refugees in 2006 and 2007, taking on nearly twice the number of iraqi refugees taken by the united states (sassoon, 2009: 102). in 2020, sweden reported 12,991 registered asylum-seekers. in 2022, south af rica hosts a quarter of a million refugees and asylum-seekers f rom seven other af rican states (un refugee agency, 2022). despite sweden’s self-identifying as a multicultural, antiracist and post-racial society, examples of racism and xenophobia have been reported (hübinette, 2013). the government of sweden has developed national plans to combat racism. in 2001, at the world conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, hosted by south af rica, swedish minister of industry, employment and communications at the time, mona sahlin, (2001) argued that: governments have the primary responsibility for fighting racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. but the shared responsibility of the international community must also be emphasised. if we cannot create a world in which everyone is respected and treated equally, we will endanger the future of every individual. sweden does make use of global platforms to fight the scourge of racism. south af rica’s archbishop desmond tutu referred to democratic south af rica as a rainbow nation and the republic has been lauded for its relatively peaceful transition to a democracy and its overcoming of its racist past (everding, 2004). however, racism and xenophobia persist in this society too. nevertheless, the south af rican government has, since 1994, repeatedly and publicly declared its international commitment to combat xenophobia, racism, sexism and other related intolerances by using the un system and related international conferences. another global issue that is a concern for all states and their people is climate change. sweden ranks highly in the climate change performance index in 2022 at number 5 out of a pool of 64 states. south af rica is ranked at number 39 and categorised as low performing. however, in the overall climate policy table, south af rica moves up to the 27th position and reflects a score of ‘medium’ in its international climate policy performance. once again, sweden ranks highly in this table (burck et al., 2021). south af rica has different energy needs and capabilities compared to sweden and as south af rica’s president cyril ramaphosa stated in february 2022: ‘a one-size-fits-all approach to complex issues, such as a transition f rom fossil fuels that disregard the realities on the ground in af rica, will simply not work, and is neither just nor equitable’ (quoted in gerber, 2022). this underscores the point that different levels of development require different 50 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w policy responses depending on different needs. just because one country finds itself in a position to do something positive, and another cannot perform at a similar level, does not and should not mean that they are not committed to change but simply that they are conf ronted by different realities at that moment in history. ultimately, all states can make a contribution to ‘building a better world’.10 conclusion this article employed a case study methodology approach in its research design and briefly interrogated the extent to which south af rica and sweden qualify as good international citizens according to four characteristics, drawn f rom the literature. the article finds that both sweden and democratic south af rica demonstrate elements of good international citizenship. as good international citizens, together, both countries have committed themselves to advancing women’s human rights in international relations forums, as well as in improving the working methods of the un security council, and these are two areas in which the two countries could collaborate more on in future. despite varied economic status, histories and points of reference, both have positioned themselves as states wanting to play positive roles in international relations in multiple platforms and in multiple ways. admittedly, it is impossible for states to be absolute ‘saints’ in world affairs. the international system of states operates in a far more complex and nuanced fashion for this to be a realistic goal. however, states, by way of their government’s foreign policymaking; global initiatives and consistent efforts to better the world through democratic principles, can be role models for other states. if we factor in that national interest will always be a given, as states have a duty to their citizens, by demonstrating that it is in the national interest to operate internationally through goodwill and cooperation, good international citizens can make a positive difference in global humanitarian affairs. notes 1. the phrase gic had not been well recorded publicly until evans spoke of it in the late 1980s, ‘although it is sometimes attributed to the great liberal canadian prime minister of the 1960s, lester pearson’ (evans, 2015). however, the former governor general of canada daniel michener had publicly adopted this expression for the first time in a speech he made in 1967 (see michener, 1967). 2. middle powers are often referred to in four ways: geographically, normatively; positionally and behaviourally (cooper, higgott, and nossal, 1993 cited in abbondanza, 2021). later scholars take into account the impact of a state’s foreign policy (carr, 2014), as well as states’ self-identifying as middle powers when attributing power to states (teo, 2018). 3. although spies (2022) refers to south af rica as having more ‘awkward’ power than any other kind of power, spies contends that ‘south af rica is often included in analyses of middle power on account of its international reputation and foreign policy behaviour. the country’s norm entrepreneurship is evident in matters such as nuclear non-proliferation, conflict resolution, the provision of development assistance and diplomatic leadership in multilateral forums. however, in quantitative terms, south af rica’s material capabilities fall short of the conventional middle power range. in qualitative terms, its international behaviour is atypical as well and riddled with contradictions. these anomalies reflect the complex domestic identity of ‘the world in one country’. it straddles the global north–south divide, and this microcosmic symbolism contributes significantly to the country’s ideational power.’ the article finds that both sweden and democratic south africa demonstrate elements of good international citizenship. as good international citizens, together, both countries have committed themselves to advancing women’s human rights in international relations forums, as well as in improving the working methods of the un security council, and these are two areas in which the two countries could collaborate more on in future. 51v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 4. this refers to democratic south af rica (since 1994). 5. it is difficult to measure wealth, as all countries have impoverished people and wealthy people, but gross domestic product (gdp) is a useful indicator of the financial health of a state. in 2022, south af rica’s per capita gdp was $4,932,724 compared with sweden’s $48,768,503 (world population review, 2022). 6. ‘…[a]nalysis of potential middle-power partnerships offers some insight by drawing on the global powers index (gpi), part of the international futures (ifs) forecasting system. gpi is unique as it attempts to include aspects of soft power in its calculations and forecasts of state power capacity, such as the number of embassies and treaties a state is party to. other components in gpi include the contribution of demographics, technology, size of the economy and military capacity’ (cilliers, 2018). 7. bearing in mind that arguments do exist around the utility of this organisation and some of its outdated, immoveable structures; it remains the only universal organisation offering members states, down to the smallest state, the equal opportunity to have a voice in global affairs. 8. democratic south af rica does have a history of resorting to ping-pong politics at the un (graham, 2016: 104). 9. currently, other states advancing a feminist foreign policy agenda are canada (since 2017); luxembourg (2018); france (2018); mexico (2020); spain 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to genius, it is hoped that those of us who are engineers or those that intend to become engineers will be made aware of the respect and reverence which national leaders have had bestowed upon them, through all industrial resolutions. indeed, some national leaders have been engineers and scientists themselves. the article gives some early examples of geniuses of ancient egypt and latterly those in europe, asia and the united states. the article discloses that what we call steam (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) was in fact not new and gives examples of thomas edison and benjamin franklin of the united states. with these examples, it is hoped that engineers will embrace roles in public life and national governance. the article goes into particular depth the importance of a broadened curriculum, bemoaning the present trend of overspecialization. here the article gives an example of the curriculum he himself followed in the 1970’s. in what can be called an autobiographical sketch, the article describes his own experience as a trainee / graduate engineer with the national railways of zimbabwe, which had a solid training reputation, especially during the 1980’s. in this sketch, the importance of humility, order, and adherence to professionalisms are recommended as part of the repertoire to a future successful engineer. 48v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion for engineering to champion future industrial revolutions, it must look to the past by edward chikuni | opinion [this article first appeared in engineer magazine botswana on 16 february 2021] 49 t h e t h i n k e r opinion in early history, engineering, art, philosophy, and politics were the same thing the first engineer (i.e. genius), f rom 2600 bc, was an af rican: imhotep of memphis, egypt. imhotep was an incredibly wise and clever man, architect, astrologer, chief minister and spiritual adviser to pharaoh d joser (reigned 2630–2611 bc), the second king of egypt’s third dynasty. he designed the 61m, step-pyramid of saqqara. italian leonardo da vinci, born 15 april 1452, was also undoubtedly a genius. he was an inventor, designer, painter (of the mona lisa fame), sculptor, architect, scientist, musician, mathematician, engineer, writer, anatomist, geologist, astronomer, botanist, palaeontologist, and cartographer. da vinci was clearly a genius and very clever. there were several other very clever men and women throughout history. benjamin franklin was one of the founding fathers of the united states. franklin was a leading scientist, inventor, journalist, writer, printer, politician, diplomat, and post master general of the united states. another great engineer was thomas edison, owner of over 1000 patents which included the electric light, electric train, and telephony. among edison’s employees were henry ford and nikola tesla. tesla was the inventor of the alternating current electric motors (which replaced horse and donkey power) and the technology of what we now call robotic drones. so far, we have only spoken of the achievements of men. women also achieved. hertha marks, inventor of electric arc light, qualified for a degree at the university of cambridge. she had to settle for a certificate, however, since women could not be given degrees. in the us, mary engle pennington completed the requirements for a bs degree in chemistry at the university of pennsylvania in 1892, but was given a certificate of proficiency instead. i suspect that men were involved in these kinds of regulations. enter the late modern period (1750–1945) engineers like da vinci lived in what is called the early modern period. this was the period of the renaissance, the age of discovery (or exploration), the age of the sail, the reformation, and the qing dynasty of china which lasted almost 300 years. the early modern period was followed by the late modern period, associated with revolutions and wars. one of these revolutions, the industrial revolution, was obviously less deadly than the political revolutions associated with this period. it was the period of german-born king george ii of great britain. the present queen elizabeth ii is a descendent of george ii. her husband, prince philip, was born in greece. the first steam engine was designed by an af rican, hero of alexandria, whose lecture notes span the fields of mathematics, mechanics, physics, pneumatics, and cybernetics. the well-known stephenson’s rocket locomotive was invented much later in the late modern period. at this time, the definition of ‘engineer’ was a man who could build a steam engine with his own hands. a genius of note f rom the asian subcontinent was indian mathematician srinivasa ramanujan, frs, who authored almost 4000 theorems. it took several cambridge mathematicians, among them godf rey harold hardy, frs, to actually understand some of them. his country understood and recognised him even less. he got a job as a clerk, grade iii, at the accountant general’s office, which paid him 20 rupees (about 5 pula) a month. surely, 5 pula, 40 us cents per month, is not a living wage. ramanujan died at the age of 32. in almost no time, the proper definition and attributes of ‘engineer’ – genius and cleverness – were lost. in the united states, an engineer is a locomotive driver; even here in af rica, if you say you are an electrical engineer, you will find people dropping off broken electric kettles and irons at your doorstep. we see in this period that the open and f reethinking genius of da vinci and imhotep vanished. the organisation of engineering the f reethinking, inventiveness, and genius of engineers soon became both an asset and a threat during the wars. many german scientists were lured to ‘f ree world’ countries such as the united states. one of them was albert einstein, a nobel-winning scientist and philosopher who after graduating with a doctorate f rom the famous eth of zurich, switzerland, failed to land a lecturing position there, ending up as technical assistant at the patent office in bern, the capital. it was perhaps at eth that he experienced the ugly face of homophobia. einstein was born in germany. later, einstein was offered the position of president of israel, and he declined. engineering, as we know it today, is largely the decimation, at best, 50v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion dilution of genius. worse than that, science, which was integral to it, transformed itself into a discipline, with engineering becoming a mere cousin. engineering became more of construction. there was more division! a class of engineers called civil engineers was formed, to distinguish themselves f rom military engineers. in norway, the ‘civil engineer’ is a protected title and an umbrella of all engineering programmes: perhaps more like a tree under which all can shelter f rom extreme heat. ask the kombi bus loading tout, (they call them ‘mawindi’ in zimbabwe) and he would say: ‘a kombi is like a tree, everyone has a place under its shade’. and so: a 14-seat kombi can accommodate over 20. outside of norway, civil engineers today are more associated with construction. look at us now: civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, electronics, control, mechatronics. the list goes on. there is now a plethora of degrees programmes and a clamouring for even more new engineering programmes. the consequences of engineers forgetting art and philosophy the distancing of science f rom engineering was indeed unfortunate, but the two have remained cousins. the separation of art f rom engineering was the most unfortunate. the general perception among engineers was that art was second best. at the university of zimbabwe, where i used to teach, it was said that the premier professions were medicine, engineering and law. medicine, which it is claimed paid most, was the hardest to get into: you needed three as. some of those who couldn’t make it into medicine would enrol into engineering; if not, then into science; if not, then into art – typically, political science and administration. to their surprise, the engineers found that these ‘poly-admins’ became their bosses, selecting them for positions in the industry and determining their salaries and conditions of service. many years ago, men like benjamin franklin, thomas edison, and rolls royce realised that to be in control, you need to own and control your own enterprise. in the case of thomas edison, charles rolls and henry royce, they made sure that their products would bear their names. perhaps they remembered the misfortunes of napoleon. for all his exploits and fame, there is not a single street in paris named after him. we see here that the f ree and exploring minds of ages and decades have been split into pieces, often competing pieces. to see that the battle is not completely lost, let us go to america. coming to america over 20 years ago, i was conf ronted with a situation when i observed that our son was more inclined towards motor mechanics than to academics. one day, to my horror, i found that he had taken down the gearbox and steering rack of our broken car all by himself. through an internet search, we spotted a community college in kentucky. he excelled in mechanics, getting 95% or more. why not? his grandfather, my father, was a renowned mechanic in the district. in no time, he had mastered the course. computers and computer networking were becoming the fields to be in, and so he enrolled into that associate degree programme. one day, i was looking at his transcript. there was so much time spent on subjects such as english, literature, history, and the customs of the mountain people of appalachia. my son soon completed the associate degree and enrolled for a full bachelors. when he graduated, we were very happy. to our surprise, he was made commencement (graduation) speaker. where did he get the english and the confidence f rom? i now know that american universities make sure that the graduate is ‘whole’. my secondary school studies were at the local school run by canadian, american, and british missionaries. we studied maths, science, latin, and english and english literature. i liked latin and literature a lot and can still recite some of the poems we learned. my english teacher even thought that i should pursue english before science. now back to america. my second visit to the us was as visiting scholar at the university of wisconsinmadison (an ivy league university) wisconsin electric machines & power electronics consortium (wempec) in 1996/1997. my host professor, thomas lipo, is an illustrious researcher and a very affable man. he is a world authority of the electrical machines and their control. shortly after my courtesy call, prof. lipo issued instructions to have me taken care of. i was given an office and a visitor programme. i have made at least four academic visits to the us and have learned that americans make sure that you become as busy as they are; you always get a programme. wempec is an innovation and research hub that creates technology for efficient power electronic control electric motors. during the time i was there, corporates like ge, abb, hitachi were vying for know-how to give them a leading edge. on one of the days, i was scheduled to meet professor robert (bob) lorenz, co-director of wempec. i was directed to the department of mechanical engineering. ‘i am professor of mechanical and electrical engineering here,’ he said. wempec is an innovation hub which registers scores of patents per year. bob lorenz, now late, was one of the most prolific inventors. ‘right now, i am working on a system to control induction motors without sensors,’ he told me. ‘my invention is based on examining the patterns and signatures which result f rom their operating currents. i am professor of mechanical and electrical engineering, but in all my inventions, i start f rom mathematics and physics.’ this conversation with this illustrious professor reminded me to go back to the past, even to my own past as a student and young engineer. my visit to the university of wisconsin-madison ended in good spirits, almost literally. i was invited to join the full complement of wempec researchers at the university pub. this was also an experience. draft beer was placed in a very big jug, f rom which everybody gulped. the jug was passed around and replenished along the way. so, these americans were af ricans too! the bad replacing the good and the dangers of overspecialisation the bachelor of engineering (beng.) curriculum we followed at fourah bay college, the first university in af rica, south of the sahara, was based on that of the university of london. the topics included drawing, physics and mathematics (taught by two catholic priests and one egyptian professor), thermodynamics, strength of materials, fluid mechanics, and electrical networks. electronics and communications, which were my clear favourites, were towards the end of the curriculum. first year students were accommodated in former military barracks and on the first night you learned what it was like to be dined upon by mosquitoes. there was therefore a very compelling reason to pass the first year. multi-disciplinary programmes such as these, however, pay off. at riic in kanye they made me in charge of the power house, as well wood and metal workshops. that in addition to my substantive title of research and development engineer. in this article, i am making the proposition that we must now seriously embrace steam. steam reminds me of the national railways of zimbabwe (nrz), the last place in the world to have steam locomotives in commercial service. the rhodesia railways (rr) preceded it. before botswana railways (br), the rr ran the train f rom bulawayo, through mahalapye, to mahikeng. i was interviewed for a position in the nrz in newcastle, england, by merz & mclellan, engineers for the kariba hydro power project. when asked which branch of railways i preferred, i said ‘signals’, because it was the most electronics and communications intensive branch. bluntly, i was told there was no position there. i passed the interview easily and started off at the railway training centre. we were called trainee officers. the railways of rhodesia/zimbabwe have had many notable employees: joshua nkomo, late vice president of zimbabwe; sir roy welensky, last prime minister of the federation of rhodesia and nyasaland; and sir frank edward hough, former chief mechanical engineer. the designation ‘officer’, i later learned, arose f rom the tendency for the organisation to employ military general managers, especially during times of crisis. this practice has continued to this day. col. henry everard, obe, was one of these general managers. i got the sense that sir everard had some followers in the training centre. the railways had devised a twoyear training program for us and the first part of the training involved metal working and machining. we were placed under mr field. after safety training, we got to our first task, which was to file a brass cube into a perfect sphere. our first thought was to resist. we were ‘officers’. we complained to the training centre manager, saying that we were being abused, since we were electrical engineers. he said he would 51 t h e t h i n k e r opinion ‘my invention is based on examining the patterns and signatures which result from their operating currents. i am professor of mechanical and electrical engineering, but in all my inventions, i start from mathematics and physics.’ this conversation with this illustrious professor reminded me to go back to the past, even to my own past as a student and young engineer. 52v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion investigate. soon enough, we realised what he meant by investigate. mr field told us that after filing the cube into a sphere, we should file the resulting sphere back into a cube. it was not easy to satisfy mr field. after you thought you were done, he would come to measure the sphere in every direction with a micro millimetre calliper. of course, it was not easy to satisfy mr field, also a former military man. he was the only machinist in the country hired by the national parks to make precision darts for immobilising elephants. you can imagine what would happen to the shooter if the dart failed to immobilise the elephant. what else did mr field teach us? he taught us that after working at a bench, you must clean up. further, trainees must clean up the whole workshop. officers, clean up! today’s students don’t know that they should clean up their area of work. when all initiation at the training centre was complete, we progressed within the organisation to become chief engineers. in my position, the training centre and several other departments fell under me. we still applied the same rigor and strictness that mr field had taught us. i try and do this to this day (however, i admit that i have become softer with age). what are we saying? super achievers like da vinci and edison operated before we became formerly organised. during this process of becoming ‘organised’, the more creative parts of our brain were narrowed. in designing new curricula, let us remember that genius is the sum and embodiment of the thinking about everything around us. you would think the engineer-geniuses that preceded us were thinking outside the box; actually, i believe, they were thinking without boxes. today, we talk about industry 4.0; others are already talking about industry 5.0. no, let’s think industry x.0. introduction it has become customary, when conceptualising twenty-first-century urban landscapes, to describe them as existing in two states. the first state is one in which scholars of modern metropolises conceptualise them as new articulations of social, economic, and political identity. scholarly consensus holds that these geographies and their growth are implicitly and explicitly linked to major social, economic, political, and ecological stability (united nations, 2016). their growth is closely connected to the three pillars of sustainable development: economic development, social development, and environmental protection (united nations, 2014). the development of cities provides a myriad of socioeconomic benefits. through the agglomeration process – concentration of people, resources, and investments – cities heighten the possibilities for economic development, innovation, and social interaction (un/desa, 2013). they concentrate key inf rastructure assets which provide opportunities for diversified investments and labour provision, thus improving overall quality of life. the aesthetic values linked to the image of cities have modified the social rhythm through the transformation of social ideals, ties, lifestyles, and aspirations (harvey, 2008). cities are also central to political stability. harvey, for example, a cosmopolitan ghetto: the shifting image of kibera slum from ‘flying toilets’ to a centre for metropolitan innovation by john m. wambui | opinion 19v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies concerns about the sustainability of cities are enlarged by the growing research on slums. un habitat defines a slum as a ‘contiguous settlement that lacks one or more of the following five conditions: access to clean water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area that is not overcrowded, durable housing and secure tenure’ (world bank group, 2016). argues that no country has attained stability without experiencing urban growth. the growth of cities not only provides the promise of global social, economic, political, and ecological stability; it also offers the promise for social transformation (harvey, 2008). this promise is, however, increasingly becoming overshadowed by the second state in which cities exist. while the growth of cities offers a promissory note for social, economic, political, and ecological redemption, their rapid expansion brings a multitude of challenges. one of the defining elements of twentyfirst-century urban development is the movement of rural populations to cities. urbanisation, ‘the gradual shift in the residence of human population f rom rural to urban areas’, has become the most transformative development trend in the twenty-first century, especially in the global south (united nations, 2016; united nations, 2018). statistics suggest that 55% of the global population resides in urban areas today and this proportion is expected to increase to 68% by 2050 (united nations, 2018). approximately 90% of this increase is projected to take place in low and middleincome countries (lmics), particularly in af rica and asia. studies show that the urban population in these regions has been increasing at a rate of almost 70 million persons per year (psup, 2016). this shift demonstrates the impact that urban development has on the reorganisation of the global social order. this has resulted in concerns among urban scholars about the sustainability of cities. these scholars view the current uncontrolled and unplanned trend in urban growth as being socially, economically, and environmentally unsustainable. concerns about the sustainability of cities are enlarged by the growing research on slums. un habitat defines a slum as a ‘contiguous settlement that lacks one or more of the following five conditions: access to clean water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area that is not overcrowded, durable housing and secure tenure’ (world bank group, 2016). this body of research highlights slums as symbolising the many facets of poverty, inequality, and deprivation in cities, especially in lmics today (world bank group, 2016). studies indicate that slums have been growing steadily and consistently in the last few decades. for example, in 1990 an estimated 689 million people lived in slums in developing nations. today, the un estimates this population to be around 1 billion people, accounting for 1 in 8 people globally (participatory slum upgrading programme (psup), 2016). since 2000, the global slum population has been growing by an average of six million people per year. sub-saharan af rica alone accounts for 56% of the total growth in the number of slum dwellers among the developing regions (psup, 2016; world bank group, 2016). in developing nations, particularly in af rica, slums have become the contemporary image of the metropolitan lifestyle. the presentation of everyday experiences in slums provides accounts of social struggles, disenf ranchisement, and disintegrating ecological structures against a backdrop of institutional failures and scarcity of means and resources. slums have become equated with increased rates of urban crimes, poor health and nutrition outcomes, low literacy achievement, high unemployment rates, poor sanitation, and overall lack of access to reliable and decent human settlements. with more than half of the urban population in af rican metropolises residing in slums (see figure 1 below), the image of the slum is a harsh contrast to the glittering illusion of urban promises held out but denied to many. the precariousness of urban slums, as highlighted by the growing body of research on urban poverty, offers the image of slums as a globalised allegory of failed modernisation, especially in the global south. slums are not a new phenomenon in modern cities, having been well documented in the historical literature of western metropolises predating the industrial revolution. two dominant views of slums have governed this literature. the first is the traditional neoliberal view which conceptualises slums as geographies of urban decay. this articulation 20 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies regards slums as urban human petri dishes where social, economic, political, and environmental misery ferments. scholars who use this construct perceive slums as interesting only if they affirm the ideas of disenf ranchisement, precariousness, and social marginalisation (dovey, 2012; gilbert, 2007; holston & caldeira, 2008). both the theoretical and practical discussions within this view focus attention on slums as symbols corresponding to chaos, disorder, and social and spatial illegitimacy. viewed within this f ramework, slums have been interpreted as decaying urban environments that do not correspond with the mainstream image of a city. figure 1: share of urban population living in slums in af rica (urban dynamics: facts and figures, 2015) p45) 21v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies what contemporary theorists assert is that, given the current trends in both the growth of the city and the persistence of slums, it is imperative to embrace the idea that slums are increasingly becoming part and parcel of the new urban identity, particularly in lmics. this view of slums has generated what jane jacobs calls a paternalistic approach to policy responses (jacobs, 1992: 271). the urban renewal theories and policies which have emanated f rom this paternalistic narrative have often focused on eliminating slums through strategies such as forced eviction, clearance, resettlements, and slum upgrading projects (dupont, jordhus-lier, sutherland & braathen, 2016; kayizzimugerwa, shimeles & yameogo, 2014). these methods have failed or have had limited success (psup, 2016). at best, such a method succeeds in shifting ‘slums f rom here to there, adding its own tincture of extra hardship and disruption. at worst, it destroys neighbourhoods where constructive and improving communities exist and where the situation calls for encouragement rather than destruction’ (jacobs, 1992: 270–71). parallel to the neoliberal view, an emerging group of scholars has formed what i term the contemporary view of slums. this perspective conceptualises the development of slums as a process of social construction and reconstruction. through this process, the urban marginalised populations compete for and appropriate resources and opportunities which are otherwise unavailable, inaccessible, or denied to them. contemporary urban theorists view slums as forms of instant urbanity that highlight alternative ways of self-organisation among marginalised populations (zappulla, suau & fikfak, 2014). they view them as places in which generative possibilities emerge out of desperation and deprivation. informality, which is a defining characteristic of the identity of slums, is conceived as an ‘organising logic, a system of norms that governs the process of urban transformation itself’ (heitzman, 2005). by highlighting the generative dynamism and vibrancy of the social and spatial alchemy of slums, contemporary urban theorists argue that informality offers an alternative structure of urban governance outside the formal structures (abdoumaliq, 2004; dovey, 2012; gilbert, 2007; holston & caldeira, 2008; neuwirth, 2006; roy, 2011; tavares & brosseau, 2013; united nations, 2014; whyte, 1981; yiftachel, 2009). this informal structure highlights the daily informal social experimentations which are marked by incremental adaptation and improvisation in the face of uncertainties (thieme, 2017). while these two perspectives differ in the way they theorise slums and ultimately in how they practically respond to their existence, they nevertheless face the same conceptual and practical dilemma. modern slums are not only expanding in size parallel to the evolution of cities, they are also growing in their population density. by 2050, the global slum population is projected to reach about 3 billion people. it is worth emphasising that much of this growth has been projected to take place in af rica, especially in sub-saharan af rica. the question that has been problematic to both neoliberal and contemporary urban theorists is how states – given the scarcity of means and resources – can successfully manage the threats and challenges that slums present to the sustainability of cities and their social inf rastructure. neoliberal scholars stick with the grand old ideas that the only logical way of addressing the challenges of slums is by eliminating them. contemporary scholars, on the other hand, while acknowledging the social, economic, political and ecological challenges which are characteristic of many slums, emphasise the need to embrace slums as new forms of social identity and alternative human settlements in modern metropolises (harvey, 2008; neuwirth, 2006; roy, 2011; un-habitat, 2003). this is by no means to say that the precariousness of slums should be condoned or normalised. what contemporary theorists assert is that, given the current trends in both the growth of the city and the persistence of slums, it is imperative to embrace the idea that slums are increasingly becoming part and parcel of the new urban identity, particularly in lmics. therefore, there is a need to recognise them as places in which residents use their ingenuity to create connections, adaptations, and survival tactics in modern metropolises where they are disenf ranchised (bayat, 2007; holston & caldeira, 22 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies 2008; holston, 2008; jacobs, 1992; whyte, 1943). to overcome slums, contemporary theorists postulate that: ‘…we must regard slum dwellers as people capable of understanding and acting upon their own self-interests, which they certainly are. we need to discern, respect, and build upon the forces for regeneration that exist in slums themselves, and that demonstrably work in real cities. this is far f rom trying to patronize people into a better life, and it is far f rom what is done today’ (jacobs, 1992: 270–71) this analysis invites the examination of different ways in which the residents of slums creatively and innovatively navigate the contours of urban struggles. guided by the concept of civic imagination, the goal of this article is to challenge both the theoretical and practical representations of slums which tend to focus on what is lacking, while undermining the very generative possibilities arising f rom everyday social experimentations and contestations. building upon the contemporary view of slums, this article undertakes the task of theorising slums as a new form of urban practice that is increasingly becoming part of urban identity. the article examines how dayto-day individual and collective experiences inspire creativity and innovations that have become vital to the sustainability of livelihood in modern slums. using evidence gathered f rom my dissertation work in kibera slum in nairobi, kenya, the goal of this presentation is to emphasise the cardinal importance of urban informality to contemporary thinking and practice in urban studies. it is important to underscore the fundamental roles that the urban poor play to alleviate their conditions, given the state of their depravity. by highlighting civic imagination in kibera slum, i am calling for a radical reconsideration of urban informality. i believe that the assemblage of human enterprise within this informality provides unique opportunities to examine new theoretical and practical approaches when investigating the geographies of urban struggles, particularly in slums. defining civic imagination civic imagination is the ‘capacity to imagine alternatives to current social, political, or economic conditions’ (jenkins, sangita, lian & neta, 2016: 300). it is the ‘ways in which people individually and collectively envision better political, social, and civic environment’ (baiocchi, bennett, cordner, klein & savell, 2014: 54). it is a collection of human processes, activities, adaptations, and innovations which arise as enactments of alternative ways of living in response to existing social realities. using kibera slum as a case study, this article focuses on underscoring a set of human activities that highlight civic imagination in a place otherwise understood by its social, economic, political, and environmental disillusionments. i will utilise my personal accounts, as well as evidence obtained f rom various documents and field visits, to portray a set of well-crafted activities and f rugal innovations that exemplify civic imagination in kibera. this portfolio of human experimentations will set the ground for reimagining contemporary slum-hood. ‘a cosmopolitan ghetto’ about two decades ago, in 1997, i was a third-grade pupil at christ the king primary school. the school was situated deep in the heart of kibera slum, about thirty minutes’ walk f rom the homeless shelter for children where i resided, also located in kibera. to get to and f rom school, the other boys f rom the shelter and i had to wake up at 5 am and start the trek by 5:30 am to be in school no later than 6:15 am. i dreaded these morning treks for so many reasons! first, it was always dark, which made it very difficult to see where and what we were stepping into. the hikes to and f rom school involved traversing lowly-built shanties, jumping over cesspools, and climbing over garbage hills. we also had to be vigilant of open sewer systems spread across the trails. the second reason i dreaded these walks was because of the infamous ‘flying toilets’. there were very few public and private toilets in kibera. to compensate for this, people used plastic or polythene bags to relieve themselves before throwing them away into the streets or onto the roofs of nearby shanties. they were dubbed ‘flying toilets’ because, at any given moment, a plastic bag filled with faecal waste could come flying through the air like a meteorite on a clear blue night sky. we had to be cautious walking to school in the wee hours of the morning, lest we stepped on one of them or, 23v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies in places where i was expecting to be robbed or attacked, i found an established network of digital policing. people had found a way to use the widely available and accessible mobile phone technology to create an online platform of information detailing the security of various locations in kibera. like in the old days. however, when i got to kibera, instead of a prolonged line of ‘flying toilets’ along the dirt roads traversing the corroded shanties, i discovered dozens of public and community-sponsored toilets and bathrooms spread across the slum. i found dozens of communityoperated multifunctional bio-centres. these are sanitary blocks that use bio-digester systems to treat waste to produce biogas that the community then uses for various purposes. the community had found innovative ways of transforming human waste into gas for energy and fertiliser for various purposes, and liquid waste into treated clean water. these bio-centres also served multiple purposes beyond treating human waste. they created opportunities for economic stability through employment, environmental sustainability through waste management and clearance, and social and political stability by providing venues for various social activities that brought the community together. in places where i was expecting to be robbed or attacked, i found an established network of digital policing. people had found a way to use the widely available and accessible mobile phone technology to create an online platform of information detailing the security of various locations in kibera. the community constantly updated this system, thus providing accurate security information to the public. the system also served as a vital virtual information board where residents could post ongoing events and activities which united the community together through similar interests. even worse, one came flying and landed on our heads. the third reason these morning walks horrified me was for security reasons. it was all too common that, on our way to school, we might encounter a mutilated dead body dumped along the narrow dirt trails meandering through the shanties. i recall many times we had to jump over mutilated bodies stretched across the trails with our eyes closed because we were too f rightened to look at them. most of these corpses were the victims of violent robberies or what we called ‘mob justice’ – a form of public retaliation towards petty thieves. as a result, we were terrified of travelling in the dark anywhere in the slum and always travelled in groups. the fourth reason i despised the long treks to school was the situation we faced on rainy days. the rain turned the dirt roads into a long stretch of thick stinking nasty sludge. it was a nightmare plodding in this mess to school! in early 2001, i graduated f rom christ the king primary school, one of the few schools that served kibera. after my graduation, i was accepted to an all-boys seminary for my high school education. i packed the few belongings i had and left the homeless shelter and kibera with no intention of returning. forward 15 years later. in 2015, after spending 10 years in the united states pursuing higher education, i finally returned to kenya to visit my family. one of my priorities, after reuniting with my family, was to visit kibera again – partly to see how the place had changed, and partly to explore the state of the ‘flying toilets’. i was starting my first year of a doctoral degree at the university of delaware at the time and was struggling to put my thoughts together on what i wanted to do. while my orientation was towards exploring issues related to urban poverty and collective creativity, i had no sense of direction. so, my visit to kibera was also to search for ideas worthy of dissertation research. a few days after my arrival in kenya, i found myself tucked in between five passengers on the squeaking back seat of a matatu (minibus) headed to kibera. the bleak memories of my early life there were still f resh in my mind. i had an image of kibera in which i was expecting to see a protracted line of ‘flying toilets’ spreading across and along the dirt trails. in preparation for such an occurrence, i was dressed in heavy tall boots. i was not carrying anything of value because i was af raid that i would get mugged, just 24 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies to address the issues of water hygiene and water deserts, people had found innovative ways of providing clean and accessible water to residents. there was an extensive system of water atms supplying clean water to residents at a low cost. these atms utilise smart cards where users buy and add points into their cards, then use the points to dispense clean water f rom an atm vending machine. the slum had also adopted an extensive aerial water system which comprises of above-the-ground water pipes and tanks hovering across kibera. these ensure that the community can access clean water, therefore addressing most of the health issues that were common two decades ago when i was a resident there. i also discovered the existence of an extensive community mapping system. for a long time, kibera as a community was not recognised in official government maps. this meant that when the government was planning and distributing public goods and services, kibera was left out of these benefits. as some of the individuals i interviewed noted, kibera was considered a blank space in official government maps which only became important during political seasons due to its rich repertoire of young energetic voters. however, in late 2009, a group of youths f rom kibera, realising that their community was considered a blank spot on official maps, undertook the task of mapping their community. utilising f reely accessible technology such as the openstreet mapping system, they created mapkibera.org – the first f ree and open digital map of their community. using feedback f rom residents, the group aggregated various resources available in kibera into one open f ree interactive system that locals could access. this system has now become a vital information and awareness mobilisation tool for the inhabitants of kibera and surrounding slums in nairobi, kenya. figure 2: circles show the number, date, and types of sports events in kibera and their specific locations (kibera news network) 25v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies additionally, residents have also created a plethora of social organisations that focus on mobilising information. organisations such as habari kibera, voice of kibera, kibera news network, humans of kibera, pamoja fm and mapkibera, among others, focus on mobilising awareness of local issues that impact the community’s social, economic, political and environmental development. the two images below are examples of the efforts of the community to mobilise information. the first image shows the distribution of schools in kibera based on their location, type, and sponsorship. the second image shows the impact of recent demolitions of schools in kibera. it highlights which schools were relocated and where they were relocated to as a result of these demolitions. the information in these images is gathered and aggregated by the community itself to document and share available resources, as well as to indicate how the community is changing. image 1: water atm vending machine in mathare slum (left) (unfcc/chris mcmorrow); aerial water system in kibera (top right) (daniel wesangula); water atm in mathare slum (bottom right) (grundofs) 26 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies primary operators/sponsors % ngo/cbo 37% private 29% religious 27% government 4% school type number of schools pre-primary school 144 primary school 147 secondary school 31 vocational school 13 figure 3: schools map (mapkibera.org) figure 4: impact of recent demolitions in kibera (www.mapkibera.org/blog/) 27v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies instead, what i found became a source of remarkable inspiration to me. the creative social enterprise emerging and thriving in such a vulnerable environment aroused my curiosity to want to learn more about what has inspired such unique social experimentations and what implications these have to development theory and practice. individuals or groups employ to address common threats in the face of precarity. a review of existing documents cataloguing these innovations in kibera revealed that local grassroots organisations have been at the core of these innovative adaptations and experimentations. for example, an analysis of aggregate data f rom openschoolskenya.org detailed that there are currently over 364 formal and informal schools in kibera providing primary, secondary, and vocational education. compared to early 2000 when i was last in kibera, this number of academic institutions had more than quadrupled in a period of fewer than two decades. my return to kibera was filled with anticipations of the bleak images of struggle and despair that i had witnessed as a child growing up in this slum. even though i had done some research before travelling back, just to see how the slum i used to know had transformed within a period of two decades, much of the information i had gathered had portrayed kibera as a labyrinth of social, economic, political, and environmental decay. therefore, i was not expecting much more than what the youtube videos, tourist blogs, and newspaper reports i had encountered had painted into my mind: eye-searing misery. instead, what i found became a source of remarkable inspiration to me. the creative social enterprise emerging and thriving in such a vulnerable environment aroused my curiosity to want to learn more about what has inspired such unique social experimentations and what implications these have to development theory and practice. this became part of the aim of my dissertation: to unearth the untold truth about human resilience in the most broken of places. the examples of innovative adaptations highlighted above exemplify what this article terms as civic imagination, a set of creative alternatives that sponsors numbers of schools number of students number of teachers religious institutions 96 12065 579 community-based organisations 99 15374 664 ngos 17 1685 95 government 13 14260 328 international ngos 3 732 22 ngo/cbo 3 762 38 private 92 8200 394 unknown 8 9 167 further analysis of this data exposed even more surprising news. of the 364 schools in kibera, 99 of them are sponsored and operated by local community-based organisations (cbos), 96 of them are run by local religious institutions, and 92 are privately operated. the table below dissects this analysis. what is even more interesting is the level of government involvement in the provision of education in kibera. of the 364 schools, only 13 of them are government-sponsored and about 3 are operated by international ngos, according to reviewed data. 28 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies when viewed from the outside, residents of slums appear disorganised and in dire need of aid. however, when seen from the inside, they are intricately organised according to their own standards and are fairly insistent on finding inventive ways to create alternatives to the realities presented by their unforgiving environment. a review of another dataset f rom mapkibera. org revealed that there are at least 216 healthcare institutions spread across kibera. these institutions include hospitals, pharmacies, and dispensaries. they are operated by local organisations and founded by residents. in early 2000, the number of healthcare facilities in kibera was less than half this number. this combined set of data underscores one major point that suttles (1968) makes: when viewed f rom the outside, residents of slums appear disorganised and in dire need of aid. however, when seen f rom the inside, they are intricately organised according to their own standards and are fairly insistent on finding inventive ways to create alternatives to the realities presented by their unforgiving environment. the organisation of kibera residents in this study, for example, was better articulated in the manner in which people have coalesced their strength to address common threats. while there is consensus among scholars of social movements that social organisations are vital instruments in ensuring and enhancing the stability and sustainability of a community (coleman, 1990; fox, 1996; putnam, 2000), this study also revealed that social movements are an expressive articulation of individual and collective ingenuity, particularly in places of marginalisation. such movements highlight how individual/s creatively envision, conceive, and model solutions to their common threats by forming collectivities. for example, between 2000 and 2010, the total number of grassroots organisations in kibera more than doubled f rom 31% to 69%. other studies reveal that there are over 100 grassroots organisations working in kibera (ochieng’ & matheka, 2009). most of these groups are hybrid organisations pioneered by residents to address common threats by providing diversified services and resources. an analysis of the mission statements of these organisations, using basic word-cloud software, exposed at least five major areas of service concentration. these areas include: health and wellness, sanitation and water, social and economic development, environmental preservation, and information mobilisation. interestingly, the data did not corroborate the mainstream assumption that housing is the biggest problem facing residents of slums. even when i asked interviewees to identify some of the most exigent issues facing their community, housing was not high on the list of challenges mentioned. this observation was particularly important because it highlighted a common policy fallacy that housing is the primary problem in urban slums and that the solution to the challenges faced by slum dwellers is therefore to relocate them to better residential areas. as the image below illustrates, some of the most common phrases in this analysis fall under health and wellness, environment, mobilisation, sanitation, information, and economy. notice that housing was not one of the phrases! 29v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies to mainstream society, the housing conditions of slums present an image contrary to what is considered as stable and reliable. in the case of kibera, however, the data analysed revealed that while housing was a concern, it was not on the top of the list. this finding was corroborated by my interviews with kibera residents. for example, the photo below shows the home of a resident i visited during my field study. as i was observing the singleroom mud shack that the respondent shared with her husband, daughter, and granddaughter, all i saw was dire desperation. there was only one bed for four people, which also served as a place to store clothes. many of the family’s belongings were hanging on the wall to create room for movement. as an outsider, my assumption was that the respondent needed a bigger house and i expected her to acknowledge this as she was discussing some of her challenges. however, after forty minutes of conversation, housing was not mentioned as part of her problems. she had a myriad of other challenges, ranging f rom health to economic issues, but not housing. strength from broken places it is customary to assume that places like kibera are breeding environments for social, economic, political, and environmental vices. while there is undeniable evidence of the human struggle for survival, there is also overwhelming proof of alternative adaptations that have surfaced out of human ingenuity and creativity. a closer look at the day-to-day life of kibera residents reveals a society that is in a constant reconstruction for betterment, as the images below – taken during my field study – pinpoint. in contrast to the image of the slum as the epitome of urban decay, these images highlight the slum as a symbol of urban social reconstruction, where the urban marginalised progressively re-innovate themselves f rom their subtle creativity. image 2: a kibera resident’s home during my field visit (edwin, o., 2018) 30 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies image 3: daily hustles in kibera (wambui, j., 2018) 31v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies it is easy to dismiss this creative reconstruction when we look at a place like kibera from afar through the neoliberal telescopes. however, when we zoom in and look at life through the kaleidoscope of those living it, we are ‘made all the more aware of how our own ideals have blinded us to the practicality of the slum residents’ (suttles, 1968: 12). we are also made more aware of the captivating beauty and aspirations often concealed from the mainstream narrative of slums, which instead focuses on the contents of their discontents. re-imagining slums in the last few decades, scholars of urban studies have been struggling with how to break away from the old paradigms and regulations that have dominated both the theoretical and practical understanding of urbanisation. the reigning neoliberal theories on the urbanisation process have traditionally operated on the idea that cities everywhere follow a similar basic standardised template of development (murray, 2017). this belief has resulted in global replications of urban development policies and theories that are rooted in the generic caricatured portrait of cities as glittering centres of social, economic, political, and environmental stability and sustainability. this utopian image of cities has dominated the public imagination for the last century, but in recent decades it has come into sharp contrast with the hardened realities that are now defining contemporary metropolitan experiences and lifestyles. this is particularly true in the expanding megalopolises of the global south that have been subjected to the twin pressures of uncontrolled population burst and an unprecedented rate of urban inequality. while the traditional image of the city has often offered a comforting assurance of social, economic and political success, as well as convenience and privilege, the increasing rate of urban marginalisation is now unsettling this promise. this is particularly true in the cities of developing nations where more than half of the urban population resides in slums (mo ibrahim foundation, 2015). initially seen as a ‘transitory phenomenon expected to fade away with economic growth and modernization, slums have not only failed to disappear, but they have grown in size, and density in land occupation, becoming the rule, rather than the exception, for the city growth’ (smolka & larangeira, 2008). a dense body of urban scholarship demonstrates that as urbanisation increases in lowand middleincome countries, so too does urban inequality and the growth of slums (united nations, 2016). it is becoming increasingly clear that slums are now part and parcel of the urban development process. in 2003, un-habitat called for cities in the global south to start embracing them as the new forms of human settlements (unhabitat, 2003). in this call, the un-habitat argued that while slums continued to present many challenges, it was becoming clear that their growth and persistence were inevitable. it was, therefore, necessary not only to re-conceptualise them, but also to find ways of integrating them into the overall urban development framework. image 4: the superheroes of kibera is an initiative that helps children in kibera reimagine themselves as local superheroes using simple recycled materials. images courtesy of superheroes of kibera at https://www.facebook.com/ groups/superheroesofkibera/ 32 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies ‘unslumming’ does not mean the demolition or relocation of slums, as seen with current upgrading megaprojects. rather, it means improving slums using the resources embedded within them. successful ‘unslumming’ hinges on the quality and quantity of the existing regenerative forces often inherent in the social infrastructure integrating slums into the urban development f ramework requires that urban scholars adopt a new language, one that is different f rom the traditional view of slums as petri dishes of human misery that need to be eliminated at whatever cost. the work that this extract f rom my dissertation research has presented is part of an ongoing search for this new language. it is a continuation of the existing body of contemporary scholarship that views slums as places where residents use f rugal innovations to navigate the harsh realities presented by their environment (jacobs, 1992; neuwirth, 2006; gilbert, 2007; holston and caldeira, 2008; roy, 2011; dovey, 2012; kayizzimugerwa, shimeles & yameogo, 2014). using practical evidence f rom kibera, one of the largest slums in the world, i have unpacked and exposed dynamic and creative innovations and transactions that are at the core of the livelihoods of the slum’s residents. the ultimate purpose was to further debunk the traditional neoliberal understanding of slums by providing practical evidence of the creative reconstruction that is taking place there. the article has focused on highlighting various ways in which the diy (do-ityourself) innovations in kibera are compensating for the lack of formal service delivery institutions. the set of f rugal experimentations captured in this work offer a strong rebuke to the neoliberal conceptualisation of slums as places of ‘metropolitan decay’. contrary to this view, the evidence i present supports the argument that slums are places of metropolitan innovations. indeed, jane jacobs argues that the inherent resources necessary for ‘unslumming’ the slum exist within the slum itself (1992). according to jacobs, ‘unslumming’ does not mean the demolition or relocation of slums, as seen with current upgrading mega-projects. rather, it means improving slums using the resources embedded within them. successful ‘unslumming’ hinges on the quality and quantity of the existing regenerative forces often inherent in the social inf rastructure (boo, 2012; gilbert, 2007; jacobs, 1992; neuwirth, 2006; roy, 2011). this requires an understanding of the structural and relational arrangements of the existing social inf rastructure. attention to its capacity to absorb the present and emerging social, economic, political, and environmental shocks is important. given the limited scholarly work attempting to analyse the transforming nature of the social inf rastructure of slums in the last decade, this work provides a crucial entry point to the new discourse of slums that pays attention to the regenerative forces that emerge out of social desperation for survival. this article provides strong evidence to support the emerging theoretical narrative that the creativity, resilience, ingenuity, and social capacity in slums are potential tools for ‘unslumming’ the slums (bayat, 2007; coleman, 1990; field, 2003; holston & caldeira, 2008; jacobs, 1992; putnam, 2000; whyte, 1943). conclusion this article has focused on providing a twin story of contemporary cities, especially those in emerging economies. first, the article has highlighted the increasing promise that cities in developing nations offer as centres of social and economic development. second, the extract has illustrated the competing narrative of the city highlighted by the growth of slums, which demonstrates the existence of increasing inequalities. slums illustrate the uneven development of cities and the unequal distribution of their benefits. it is undeniable that the development of slums parallel to the growth of cities poses considerable concerns to the question of urban sustainability, especially in areas that lack the means and resources to address the undesirable outcomes of slums. by nature, slums do not highlight the best of society. they underscore a caricature of arrested development that often impacts those with little means to compete with and in the rapidly growing metropolises. however, as studies have demonstrated, slums are here to stay as an integral part of the new urban identity. in fact, in emerging 33v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies economies, especially in sub-saharan af rica, slums represent the new urban f rontiers. it is therefore imperative, in both theory and practice, to start embracing them as the new forms of metropolitan identities. while the call to embrace slums as the new urban f rontiers can be seen as an overreach or a deviation f rom the traditional theories and practices that have governed urban development discourses, it is undeniable that unless we embrace them as so, any attempts to address their challenges and threats will continue to be futile. this article has made a case for adopting slums as the new forms of urban identities and f rontiers by underscoring creative diy innovations that are transforming the lives of slum residents for the better, as evidenced in kibera. these diy innovations offer new ways of looking at slums and their residents as what dr. anil gupta calls ‘hidden hotbeds of inventions’ (ted, 2009), or what one resident of kibera termed a ‘cosmopolitan ghetto’, where f rugal innovations emerge out of collective ingenuity and a desire to create change with little means. to address the problem of slums, and thus the question of urban sustainability in emerging economies, we must look into and work with the resources already embedded in slums themselves. this article provides just an entry point to both the theoretical and practical reconsideration of slums as places of metropolitan innovation, rather than just of metropolitan decay. i would like to conclude this article by highlighting some lyrics f rom a song written and produced by a group of artists f rom kibera slum. using a hybrid genre that mixes western hip hop and rap with a local swahili rhythm, the artists not only recognise the challenges that face the residents of slums, but also acknowledge the many ways in which residents unite to create f rugal yet effective innovations to address their collective needs. the song sends a message that despite the chaotic nature of slums, there is nonetheless hope and resourcefulness that breeds progress and transformation. more importantly, there are people whose identity is not defined merely by the state of their existence, but more deeply by their character, collectivity, and vision for a better community: ‘ t h ey s ay t h a t n o t h i n g g o o d n eve r co m e o u tt a a s l u m , b u t l o o k w h a t we b ri n g o u t t h e s l u m fo r yo u to l ea rn , a r two rk a n d h a n d wo rk i s t h e t a l e n t t h a t we h ave , t h e a b i l i t i e s we h ave , we s t ri c t l y p re s e r ve , w hy t h ey d e s p i s e a n d c ri t i c i ze , b u t o n ce yo u ’ re i n t h e p l a ce , m e n a n d wo m e n s o n i ce , a n d t h e ch i l d re n s o w i s e , d e s p i te t h e ch a l l e n g e s t h ey m ay fa ce , h a p p i n e s s i s o n t h e i r fa ce , o n e l ove i s w h a t t h ey e m b ra ce . i c a l l i t h o m e t h ey c a l l i t a s l u m , m y m o t h e rl a n d i l ove i t m o s t , ki b e ra , ki b e ra …’ ( m a d e i n ki b e ra , 201 6 ) references abdoumaliq, s. 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(2014). the pattern making of megaslums on semantics in slum urban cultures. journal of architecture and urbanism, 38(4), pp. 247–264.   35v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies 35v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract this paper focuses on stokvels in contemporary south africa.  it examines the resilience and persistence of mutual aid in a modern setting. it seeks to build a qualitative model to understand the persistence and adaptation of the stokvels in a modern society where banking institutions coexist with informal credit practices. the concept of cooperation is key to the analysis. we argue that stokvels continue to persist in modern society, despite the rise of banking institutions, because of their cooperative nature. mutual aid and informal finance: the persistence of stokvels1 by elise m. dermineur and unathi kolanisi 36 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 south af rica, stokvels represent an economy of r50 billion, contradicting popkin’s prediction (koenane, 2019; lukhele, 1990b). why did stokvels continue to thrive? how can we explain such a success? this paper attempts to answer these questions by building a theoretical model. it examines the resilience and persistence of mutual aid in a modern setting. we are especially interested in the persistence and adaptation of the stokvels in a modern society where banking institutions coexist with informal credit practices. we focus especially on the concept of cooperation. we theorise this concept further while using the theorical f ramework used by joseph heath (heath, 2006). our aim is to offer a model to explain the resilience and persistence of stokvels in south af rica. this paper examines first the economic needs for stokvels in post-apartheid south af rica. then, it focuses on the cooperative nature of stokvels to explain their persistence in modern society. an economic need: the persistence of mutual aid schemes a long history the origin of stokvels is uncertain. reciprocity and mutual aid are understood to be features of traditional communities and belonged to a timeless tradition, part of the indigenous knowledge system, dating well before the time of colonisation, something anthropologists have long hinted at (graeber, 2002). south af rican scholars think the term ‘stokvel’ originated f rom the nineteenth-century ‘stock fairs’. at such fairs, farmers and agricultural workers engaged not only in economic negotiations and the bargaining of livestock, but also in socialisation. popular with rural black communities, these meetings quickly spread and thrived in urban areas as well (grietjie verhoef, 2001). stokvels remained popular with the black communities under apartheid. formal banking services then were not accessible to a large chunk of the population. black people had ‘very restricted access’ to loans f rom commercial banks (james, 2014: 7). pay slips were mandatory to apply for a loan and many lacked such documentation. additionally, introduction the national stokvel association of south af rica (nasasa) estimates that about 11 million south af ricans, or about 40% of the adult population, are members of a stokvel, the south af rican variant of a rotating savings and credit association (roscas).2 about 810,000 stokvels are currently active. together, they collect about r50 billion annually. yet, these figures might only be the tip of the iceberg. more people than nasasa estimates may in fact participate in this informal financial system. a stokvel is a club where voluntary members help each other by taking turns in receiving the contributions of all members of the group (see, for instance: ardener, 1964; kok and lebusa, 2018; lukhele, 1990). each stokvel has its own rules, practices, and purpose. the common denominators are mutual trust and a strong sense of mutual responsibility. these informal financial schemes have developed outside the scope of the authorities and have not been subsidised, regulated, or supervised in any way. there is no intermediation, just peer-to-peer exchange. only social norms regulate stokvels. the behaviour of each member is monitored via collective self-regulation; enforcement is thus made easy. because of this set of norms and rules, a stokvel is usually considered as a social institution. women are the most active members and the most numerous (grietjie verhoef, 2001; ardener, 1995). these credit circles appear like an alternative way to save money for funerals, daily supplies, and even investments (see the recent hossein and p.j, 2022). but when apartheid ended in the 1990s, one might have predicted the end of the stokvels. as the country opened up both internationally and domestically, its credit industry developed and grew. banking was made easier thanks to a new set of regulations. and the demand for credit exploded under the impulse of unrestrained consumerism. an increasing number of people became ‘banked’, i.e. hold a bank account. in 2010, 63% of the adult population above the age of 16 had a bank account. this number jumped to 81% by 2021 (financial sector conduct activity, 2022). in this context, what about the old stokvels? samuel popkin claimed that the survival of mutualist schemes is theoretically unlikely because they are non-inclusive and insufficient for survival (popkin, 1980). today in p e e r r e v i e w 37v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 f rom the 1950s onwards, black ownership of property was forbidden and mortgages were therefore not granted. many turned thus to informal solutions. along with stokvels, mashonisas – loan sharks – also granted people funds, often for emergency needs. informality was therefore common. post-apartheid credit and indebtedness in 1994, the first multiracial elections were held in south af rica and saw the victory of nelson mandela’s party, the af rican national congress. the end of apartheid signalled a new era for the country and its inhabitants. new economic opportunities became available, especially for the black community, long discriminated against. jobs were created and growth took up again. the black middle-class thrived and many engaged in unrestrained consumerism. in the meantime, regulation was relaxed, and a liberated market witnessed the rise of a newly burgeoning credit industry, today the most important sector in terms of gdp. banks and microlending institutions thrived. the number of ‘banked’ people increased tremendously. as a result, south af ricans borrowed as they never did before. many credit actors, however, attracted by easy profits, engaged in reckless and predatory lending (james, 2014: 67). some microcredit institutes charged outrageous interest rates to new customers, who did not necessarily have the financial acumen to deal with unscrupulous lending practices.3 the microlending sector grew f rom almost nothing in 1994 to r35 billion in 2007 (james, 2014: 66). commercial banks also witnessed increasing profits. household debt to gdp reached an all-time record of 51.9% in the first quarter of 2008, only to be beaten in 2020 with the covid-19 crisis (52.7%).4 indebtedness crept everywhere. in january 2018, the economist published an article with the provocative title: ‘in south af rica, more people have loans than jobs.’5 ‘a neoliberal-style economy’ was being created, engendering an indebtedness epidemic (james, 2014: 1 and 5). the borrowing craze evidently did nothing to alleviate poverty in a country where economic recovery after apartheid was difficult (thompson, 2001). in 2020, about 55% of the south af rican population lived in poverty and 19% in absolute poverty, having less than $1.90 per person to live on. the country’s gini index measuring the dispersion in wealth among the population reached 63, the highest score in the world.6 even worse, both poverty and inequality have now continued to progress under the covid-19 pandemic (parry and gordon, 2021). in this context, despite the rise of banks, stokvels continued to thrive. for those who could not borrow via formal banking actors, stokvels remained a way to save and borrow money to make ends meet and to consume. stokvels are even now considered to be ‘among the key poverty-alleviation strategies’ and social advancement tools (verhoef, 2001; matuku and kaseke, 2014; van wyk, 2017). in an earlier study, verhoef found that 57% of her respondents belong to a stokvel to survive economically. and 60% of her respondents stated that they cannot survive economically without participation in a stokvel (out of 115 respondents) (verhoef, 2001: 530). in fact, if stokvels continue to be an important cornerstone of the household economy it is partly because the banking sector does not compete well with the purposes and aims of the stokvels. in south af rica, banking institutions of different types offer bank loans, insurance products, investment opportunities and grant access to the payment p e e r r e v i e w in this context, despite the rise of banks, stokvels continued to thrive. for those who could not borrow via formal banking actors, stokvels remained a way to save and borrow money to make ends meet and to consume. stokvels are even now considered to be ‘among the key poverty-alleviation strategies’ and social advancement tools 38 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 system. they mostly do this for people with regular incomes and pay slips. stokvels offer capital that would not be accessible otherwise to many households because they lack regular incomes and/or collateral to secure loans. accessing loans via a banking institution appeared exceedingly difficult for many (see also aliber, 2001). many rural dwellers had never had access to a loan offered by a bank (finaccess, 2019). microlending institutes offer smaller loans than traditional commercial banks. but because of the lack of rules and regulations before the nca, many of these actors had to seek profit above all, resulting in a growing distrust among their clients (james, 2014: 69). after 1994, many of the microcredit companies were opened by the af rikaans-speaking minority, complicating further the relationship with a largely black clientele. many believe that banks and microcredit institutes discriminate against their black clients (james, 2014). paradoxically, while traditional banking institutions do offer high interest rates, they are often lower compared to the ones proposed by stokvels. but it is understood that the stokvel interest rates go to members of the community and not to a bank, therefore members perceive the process differently. members’ strategy may not be viewed as optimal f rom a self-interested point of view, but nonetheless it is seen as worth pursuing f rom a social point of view (simon, 1983; bowles, 2016). the situation has changed recently. an increasing number of people own a bank account. many more use a bank account for savings but are also members of a stokvel (aliber, 2001: 54–55). while stokvels help people to accumulate cash, banking deposit accounts offer a safe place to store the accumulated capital. people therefore use both systems (see also hutchison, 2020). overall, stokvels did persist after 1994. poverty, unemployment, and the absence of regular incomes pushed many to continue turning to the informal sector out of habit, but more especially out of necessity. new banking actors often ignore a large segment of the population who could not present sufficient guarantees to secure a loan. but many people also came to distrust the formal banking sector; they perceive it as discriminating. many believe the stokvel system, by contrast, is more reliable because it is based on interpersonal exchanges. the cooperative nature of stokvels stokvels and cooperation stokvels did persist despite the rise of modern banking. one of the reasons, as we have seen above, was economic. many could not pretend to a bank loan. the lack of formal banking opportunities and banking access encourages individuals to turn to informal options such as stokvels (platteau, 2006: 822). but another reason for this persistence resides in the social character of stokvels, and, in particular, its cooperative nature. in this part, we aim to highlight the features that enable stokvels to persist in modern south af rica, with special reference to social and moral norms. a stokvel is a cooperative arrangement. instead of choosing an individual strategy, stokvel members choose a single joint strategy, leading to what they consider an optimal outcome. individuals join a stokvel because of the prospect of new benefits achieved mutually, through cooperation (gauthier, 1987). it is either the possibility to save money and/ or to borrow money. but it is also the possibility to be part of a network which can provide social assistance, solidarity in many different forms, as well as information access. the benefits of stokvel cooperation are thus manifold. we aim to show here how cooperation – that is, pooling resources together in stokvels – works in practice. we use partly joseph heath’s model of cooperation to highlight the social and economic advantages of stokvels while also reflecting on their flaws (heath, 2006). economies of scale: the community or the strong incentive to cooperate the first obvious mechanism of cooperation is what joseph heath called ‘economies of scale’; ‘nature sometimes organizes things in such a way that people can do better working together than they can working individually’ (heath, 2006: 319). in traditional and rural communities, cooperation between villagers is often indispensable. harvesting the fields, curing livestock, mending fences or houses, or taking care of each other’s children, for example, require mutual assistance and imply reciprocity. rural dwellers often p e e r r e v i e w 39v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w rely on each other for communal labour in times of need (verhoef, 2001). women, in particular, perform efforts collectively with special reference to informal labour and child rearing. because of the need for mutual assistance, traditional communities are usually regarded as societies ‘where predispositions toward altruistic or norm-following behavior are pervasively present’, although these societies are not deprived of conflicts and social tensions (platteau, 2006: 821). in fact, cooperation is made possible because of people’s self-interest. by helping others, they hope to receive the same assistance when the time comes. reciprocity is one of the constitutive characteristics of a small community (taylor, 1982). this reliance on one’s neighbours is naturally extended to economic needs and, by extension, to stokvels. in such a setting, cooperation is thus made easier. individuals are used to relying on each other for their needs. this environment not only creates the conditions for the setting of mutual arrangements such as stokvel but also favours cooperation. cooperation is sustained further via social norms. stokvels and shared norms the second mechanism of cooperation is tightly related to the first one. shared norms and values make cooperation easier. holding beliefs and values in common is a common feature of small af rican communities. one of these major values is the concept of ubuntu. this pan-af rican norm and value literally means that a man can only be a man through others. ‘in its most fundamental sense,’ writes verhoef, ‘it stands for intense caring and sharing’ (verhoef, 2001: 522). several studies mentioned ubuntu as an important factor in the functioning of stokvels (van wyk, 2017; rodima-taylor, 2022). beyond this concept, communal social norms are of importance. because of a shared common background, people often do share the same social norms. upon the formation of a stokvel, most of the members are usually of prior acquaintance. enrolment in a stokvel happens either upon recommendation or via co-optation. members often share the same background. they belong to the same community, live in the same street or village, f requent the same church, or are involved in the same trade. some of them are even related to each other. most of the existing stokvels are all female. this can be explained because women are often in charge of their households’ finances and budget. homophily in terms of gender, socio-professional background, ethnicity, and religion constitute a critical criterion of recruitment. social norms are a set of informal rules collectively understood and subject to change, which circumscribe economic exchange in ways that defy purely economic rationality so that it is fair and mutually beneficial in a community of advantage (sugden, 2018). what kind of role do social norms play in stokvels? social norms sustain cooperation in at least three different ways. 1. social norms incite stokvel members to follow the rules they agreed upon. there is a shared understanding that rules and practices need to be followed to reach the common goal. and there is mutual trust that each member will stick to the rules; members expect reliability f rom one another. meanwhile, there is also room for flexibility and negotiation. 2. members comply with social norms because of the fear of condemnation and ostracism f rom their social group. stokvels are self-enforcing institutions. strong social norms not only prevent default, but also prevent or sanction noncompliance. in the case of non-compliance with the rules, members avoid resorting to the formal justice system (in which the black population historically would not have been treated fairly).7 a system of fines punishes both late contributions and non-attendance at the mandatory stokvel meeting, emphasising the importance of participation. negotiations between the stokvel members are conducted in cases of likely default. if these talks fail, violence and ostracism may occur. if a member does not repay the interest and the capital as agreed, sanctions must ensue. first, some of the stokvel members are sent to negotiate with the defaulter. if the group fails to obtain either the repayment or insurance of future payments, a community disciplinary forum may decide to physically seize a defaulter.8 physical 40 special edition t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 violence may occur as a means of coercion (bähre, 2007). such a shaming mechanism is used to underline the untrustworthiness of a stokvel community member in the public eye. the shaming acts both as an information channel to warn about a particular individual, but also to warn other potential defaulters. as a result, the default rate in such lending and savings groups is apparently very low. because of the closetight character of small communities (many stokvels are rural stokvels or/and stokvels based on prior acquaintance), sanctions to address ‘bad’ behaviour work better in such a setting; norms of exclusion are more effective in smaller groups (cook, 2005: 34). social norms make the incentive not to default very strong, not only because of the direct economic effects but also because of the social consequences. 3. and, finally, members follow certain (‘moral’) norms for intrinsic reasons consistent with their own preferences, even when such conduct is against their own interests and is not subject to social monitoring and condemnation; (re)negotiation and flexibility towards other members for instance (hedström, bearman, and bearman, 2009; sugden, 2018; bowles, 2016). we underline that the combination of shared social norms and high homophily encourage and sustain trust between stokvel members. in the literature, respondents often emphasise the importance of trust in the formation of a stokvel (cook, 2005). in fact, trustworthiness works as a collateral in a system where tangible guarantees are non-existent. shared social norms, therefore, encourage and sustain cooperation because of the common understanding of rules but also because of the fear of sanctions. tight-knit communities and information transmission the third mechanism of cooperation is directly tied to the previous two. in tight-knit communities, informational problems are almost inexistent (platteau, 2006: 855). agents can come by the information they need because of the intimate, closeknit character of the community. tied social networks encompass more or less everyone in the community. information access is made easy. for example, people know about their neighbours’ income – or have a rough estimate of it – as well as about their harvests, livestock, personal difficulties, etc. this direct access to information means that no third party is needed and that trust – or distrust – can happen firsthand. in other words, stokvels can remain informal because information flows well. there is no need for monitoring and screening, such as a credit score, because members do have access to the information they need. stokvel members do not need to outsource the access to information to external parties against a fee. local information access creates the conditions for cooperation and sustains it. evidently, in a context where parties know each other and where there are no external screening or monitoring mechanisms, overconfidence can mislead people. they can rely on false information. they can also ignore missing or negative information because of the embeddedness of economic exchanges in the social fabric. we will come back to this point in the last part. risk pooling: stokvels as insurance the fourth mechanism of cooperation in stokvels is risk pooling. uncertainty about the future is something all of us are exposed to. for poor households, unfortunate events can tip them over and engulf them into deeper poverty and destitution. in order to get uncertainty under control, insurance is the usual answer. formal institutions, and in particular those of the welfare state, usually provide a safety net for their citizens (douglas, 1987). but many poor south af rican households are left without employment and proper insurance. the social grants distributed by the government often proved to be insufficient to palliate all the needs and uncertainties that households face. stokvels can act as a risk-pooling arrangement, a safety net in case of unexpected events. burial stokvels are perhaps the best example; they work as a life insurance scheme and not only allow their members to bear the cost of burial but also offer social assistance in a delicate time. in an estimate f rom 2014, 65% of the stokvel population belonged to a burial society for which the average contribution is r134 per month per member.9 in small communities, the pooling of resources via a stokvel is made easier thanks to social proximity and shared social norms. people have an incentive to come together to save money to shield their families against uncertainties. p e e r r e v i e w 41 this incentive is magnified by the lack of other alternatives. formal insurance schemes usually require formal documentation, additional transaction costs (transportation, communication, etc.) and fees that might be a deterrent for many. cooperation and conflicts despite these mechanisms of cooperation, the reality and practices of stokvels are made up of conflicts and tensions. in the literature, respondents often emphasise the social aspect in stokvel membership. in fact, the social and entertainment functions of a stokvel are tremendously important not only to cement the group and smooth the exchanges, but also as an incentive to join a stokvel. membership in a stokvel is often perceived as being part of a social group, like being among f riends. precisely because of this deep embeddedness of economic transactions in the social fabric (granovetter, 1985), tensions and conflicts are common (see, for instance: bähre, 2007). the high degree of personalisation is a fertile ground for disputes of all kinds. as such, stokvel arrangements might not be the most efficient mechanisms. the lack of intercession and monitoring by an external party does not deter conflicts. directly related to this problem of embeddedness is the question of power in financial relationships. there has not been much research on this because roscas are usually considered equitable (bähre, 2007a; 2007b). but financial transactions bind people together in a social relationship (mauss, 2011). pierre bourdieu refers to ‘the exercise of gentle violence’ when referring to credit (bourdieu, 1977: 193). for him, credit is ‘an attack on the f reedom of one who receives it (…) it creates obligations, it is a way to possess, by creating people obliged to reciprocate’ (bourdieu, 1998: 94). the first stokvel members to retrieve money f rom the common pot became a debtor while the other members became creditors. another dimension of this imbalance of power problem resides in forced cooperation. by forced cooperation, we mean the participation in stokvels because of social pressure to do so but also the pressure to extend the capital obtained to non-members who might be relatives and f riends (wherry, seefeldt, and alvarez, 2019; baland, guirkinger, and mali, 2011). again, there is not very much research on this aspect. future research will certainly shed much-needed light on this issue. concluding remarks stokvels continue to persist in modern society, despite the rise of banking institutions, because of their cooperative nature. these mutual arrangements are based on reciprocity, social norms and cooperation. this pattern of cooperation is certainly not new. small communities have relied on each other for communal tasks and labour and continue to do so. this is naturally extended to the economic sphere and thus to the stokvels. stokvel members trust each other, they share and respond to the same social norms. and they don’t need external actors to come by information as the close-knit and intimate character of a small community enables them to access information. social norms act as a deterrent against default and uncooperative behaviour. stokvel members pool risk together to face uncertainties in a world without adequate security nets. yet, conflicts and tensions are common. considering the current success of stokvels, the benefits of cooperation seem to overcome their downsides. the rise of information technology has given birth to new fintech apps proposing to mimic stokvel mechanisms (rodima-taylor, 2022). yet, as we perceive it, there is a risk that those new intermediaries harm the cooperative mechanisms of stokvels. as we have seen in this paper, stokvels are perceived as successful because they are cooperative; because of the embeddedness of economic exchanges in the social fabric of communities. altering this process could engender dis-embeddedness and change the nature of cooperation in stokvels. acknowledgements dr dermineur would like to acknowledge the generous support of riksbankens jubileumsfond via a pro futura scientia fellowship. dr dermineur and dr kolanisi would like to acknowledge the generous support of sasuf (south af rica-sweden university forum). notes 1. the data for this research has been gathered, processed, and stored in south af rica. it does not involve sensitive data categories as defined by the gdpr. v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 42 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w 2. there are other terms used to refer to stokvels such as gooi-goois, makgotlas, kuholisana, etc. the variation depends largely on local practice. the literature on roscas is vast. 3. the national credit act of 2005 put a halt to abusive practices by regulating interest rates and introducing comprehensive affordability testing (calvin, 2010). 4. international monetary fund, household debt to gdp for south af rica [hdtgpdzaq163n], retrieved f rom fred, federal reserve bank of st. louis; fred.stlouisfed.org/series/hdtgpdzaq163n, september 6, 2022. 5. see: www.economist.com/middle-east-andafrica/2018/01/18/in-south-africa-more-people-have-loansthan-jobs 6. world bank data available here: databankfiles. worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/33ef03bb-97224ae2-abc7-aa2972d68afe/global_poveq_zaf.pdf 7. the latest statistics indicate that the number of civil summonses issued for debt is about half a million per year for a population of 55.7 million inhabitants. see: www.statssa.gov.za/ publications/p0041/p0041october2020.pdf 8. seizing a defaulter physically was a common practice in medieval and early modern europe. 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(2001). ‘savings and survival in a modern african economy: informal savings organisations and poor people in south africa.’ historia, 46(2): 519–42. verhoef, g. (2001). ‘informal financial service institutions for survival: african women and stokvels in urban south africa, 1930–1998.’ enterprise & society, 2(2): 259–96. wakelam, a. (2020). credit and debt in eighteenth-century england: an economic history of debtors’ prisons. routledge. wherry, f.f., seefeldt, k.s. and alvarez, a.s. (2019). ‘to lend or not to lend to friends and kin: awkwardness, obfuscation, and negative reciprocity.’ social forces, 98(2): 753–93. wyk, m.m. van. (2017). ‘stokvels as a community-based saving club aimed at eradicating poverty: a case of south african rural women.’ international journal of community diversity, 17(2): 13–26. v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w introduction when we convened a workshop with several young scholars to work on diverse issues in 2018, we could not have foreseen the accentuation of the crises facing south af rica and the continent. the workstreams included identifying challenges and, more importantly, opportunities in the following areas: • economy and unemployment • education • land reform • migration • the rise of new media and fake news since then, we have seen a series of seismic shifts, including the covid-19 pandemic, the accelerated uptake of fourth industrial revolution (4ir) technologies, and ever-widening unemployment. alongside these shifts, there have been the continued fees protests in institutions of higher education and the 2021 looting of malls and other commercial and strategic sites. all of these have long-term significance, made more apparent when we consider that they mostly disproportionately impact the youth, even in the short term. when we began this project, the dominant theme was how to reverse stagnation.today we are speaking of ‘recovery’ and ‘reconstruction’. this shows the degrees to which our country and continent have been afflicted by the many onslaughts of the past few years. these occur at every level and every dimension. from a theoretical standpoint, this eclectic special issue hopes to contribute to the understanding of these challenges. at a practical level, we also hope to have showcased opportunities wherever possible. introduction by bhaso ndzendze and gift sonkqayi | peer review 7v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 introduction economy at around 1% a year and not much higher, south af rica’s gross domestic product (gdp) growth had reached stagnation and a number of recessions even before the onset of covid-19 (stats sa, 2020). by almost all measures, south af ricans have been just barely getting by for decades. economic growth is an urgent and pressing issue – in lieu of which the country could find itself in dire straits. in addition to this, south af rica is one of the most economically divided countries in the world, an issue which is further compounded by the race-class correlation which remains pronounced even after 23 years of political transformation. there are also significant male-female and rural-urban dichotomies. with the then-new administration seeking solutions, the jobs summit seemed to modus operandi miss the mark and has resulted in very new practical ideas for resolving rampant joblessness. this problem, perhaps the most pressing in the country’s socio-economic interface, could in time be the country’s achilles’ heel. three papers in this special issue seek to tackle this concern. in ‘development in south af rica: bridging the rural-urban gap,’ masenya takes a look at the country’s attempts to close the gap between rural and urban development in economic activity generally, and more so in the wake of covid-19. in ‘alleviating unemployment in south af rica: harnessing comparative advantage in the services sector,’ mzungulu and ndzendze propose the alleviation of unemployment through the development of a niche in services as a response to the environment created by existing policies. both these papers provide a rich understanding of the context and seek to draw lessons f rom other countries. there is also an appreciation of the difficulty in implementing these policies in the wake of the pandemic and ‘4ir’ technologies. ‘intra-af rican trade: prospects and challenges’ by hollington focuses on the promise and peril of growing intra-continental trade f rom the currently disappointing levels of 12% (tayo, 2021). the article reviews the uneven landscape among the regions. it comes to some conclusions regarding non-tariff barriers that policymakers should focus on if the newly introduced continental f ree trade area is to gain traction and reverse the current state of affairs which is characterised by outward orientation on the part of af rica. it also fleshes out risks and opportunities f rom the f ree trade arrangement, especially for the youth demographic. education internationally competitive basic and higher education are widely recognised as the critical link to skills attainment and, therefore, economic growth in any given country (canals, 2017). yet, in both sectors, the south af rican education system is in need of considerable review (presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution, 2020). at the primary and secondary levels, there continues to be a lagging behind in terms of: bridging the rural-urban as well as digital divides; improving teacher training; eliminating absenteeism by both learners and teachers; and a strong curriculum that prepares the youth for higher education as well as the workplace. furthermore, in 2015 and 2016, the country saw a nationwide crisis sparked by a problem whose return continues to be a probability: student uprising in demand of f ree, quality, and decolonised university education. in ‘the state of south af rican education: a critical exploration of distributive and epistemic injustices,’ sonkqayi asks crucial questions around this sector and makes some f resh observations at philosophical and policy levels. land reform south af rica stunned the world more than two decades ago by undergoing a peaceful transition f rom minority to majority rule – an almost unheardof occurrence among the nations of the continent and the world as a whole. the modern practice of this ancient idea, sometimes referred to as the worst form of government except for all the other ones (churchill, 1947), is loaded with problems and dilemmas implicative for a country’s political and economic landscape. one such problem for south af rica is its ‘land question’. how the country succeeds or fails in dealing with it will increasingly impact its social and economic dynamics. for this reason, it has become increasingly politicised. matseke, in his article ‘land reform in south af rica,’ closely examines developments within the context of the land question, which has seemingly reopened with vigour as of early 2018. the article traces the recent literature and current dynamics and prognosticates 8 t h e t h i n k e r introduction some implications and scenarios for south af rica going forward. new media and fake news ‘the rise of fake news’ by chirwa and manyana takes us through the rise and impact of fake news, a phenomenon of immense consequence to every corner of the globe as it touches on the very fabric of how democracies and societies reproduce themselves: information. the phenomenon has become increasingly pronounced in the past five years, catalysed by the ascendance of donald trump to the us presidency. this poses a doubleedged sword: as more people get access to means of distributing information, so too rises the risk of deliberate manipulation. sophisticated algorithms seem designed precisely for this purpose. the outcome is political tribalism, as well as f ractures along other faultlines. in a context in which truth is disputed, many risks abound, the article argues, and this needs to be mitigated. in this regard, the article offers some prescriptions to curb the proliferation of fake news and the erosion it has already visited upon political discourse. migration ‘addressing the global migration crisis’ by nadine hakizimana takes a look at the global migration crisis, which has had an incalculable impact on millions of lives, stemming f rom political and economic crises, and which has subsequently spawned numerous crises in other countries. the article takes stock of the severity of the crisis and proposes some measures to mitigate it through a combination of traditional and emerging technologies. book reviews and interview the book reviews in this special issue largely dovetail with the themes detailed above. one consists of a book that ponders the future of youth participation in south af rican politics, while another delves into the nature of borders and their future. our interview is an in-depth discussion with ayabonga cawe, the author of the economy on your doorstep, a recently published book that has resonated for the richness with which it depicts and treats the complex nature of the south af rican economic landscape. the author fleshes out the themes of his work and his hopes for the country and its young people. acknowledgments we wish to thank the contributors for their thoughtful articles and the painstaking work which has gone into their research. we also thank ambassador baso sangqu for his early comments on the papers, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their role in further polishing the submitted works. bibliography canals, c. (2017). education and economic growth. [online] caixabank research. available at: https://www.caixabankresearch.com/en/ economics-markets/labour-market-demographics/education-andeconomic-growth. cawe, a. (2021). the economy on your doorstep: the political economy that explains why the south af rican economy ‘misfires’ and what you can do about it. johannesburg: tracy macdonald publishing. churchill, w. (1947). the worst form of government. [online] international churchill society. available at: https://winstonchurchill. org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/. stats sa. (2020). economy slips into recession. [online] stats sa. available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=13049. tayo, t. (2021). af rica’s f ree trade agreement: great expectations, tough questions. [online] iss. available at: https://issaf rica.org/isstoday/af ricas-f ree-trade-agreement-great-expectations-toughquestions. 9v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 introduction 64 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract this article offers a reflection on the potentials of cultural diplomacy and cooperation, situating itself in the long-term relationship between south af rica and sweden as well as the specific context of the professional practice of sweden’s first counsellor for cultural affairs in south af rica, hedda krausz sjögren. providing a first-hand account of cultural diplomacy, it adopts a self-reflexive position and, largely, a first-person perspective. co-authored by krausz sjögren and one of her collaborators during this period, a theatre director and researcher, kristina hagström-ståhl, it also attempts to reflect the shared experience of collaborative work in this sphere. as such, the text is written f rom within a combination of diplomatic, cultural, and professional practices, as well as f rom within a diverse set of skills informing the practices that shaped the body of work to which the article refers. we use a combination of personal and collective pronouns throughout this article to place emphasis on our reflections; the use of personal pronouns denotes krausz sjögren’s reflections. we aim to share a sense of the possible impact of work dedicated to democracy, f reedom of expression, and gender inclusion. by hedda krausz sjögren and kristina hagström-ståhl the promise of cultural diplomacy: reflections on the work of a counsellor of cultural affairs 65v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 introduction sweden and south af rica have a long history of diverse bilateral connections involving trade, development cooperation, research and educational exchange, as well as traditional diplomacy (concerning security, foreign policy, etc.) to name a few major areas. formal relations between sweden and south af rica date back to the 1930s when a south af rican legation was opened in stockholm. sweden strongly supported the struggle for democracy in south af rica during the apartheid period, keeping its own legation in pretoria but upgrading relations to the ambassadorial level only in 1994. more recently, in 1999, the south af rican-swedish bi-national commission was inaugurated by then-president thabo mbeki and then-swedish prime minister, göran persson (swedish ministry of foreign affairs, 2009: 4). for decades, culture, arts, and civil society contacts have also been part of the many primarily unoff icial connections that have impacted both countries. with the swedish government’s 2016 decision to appoint its f irst counsellor for cultural affairs to south af rica (indeed the f irst ever to the af rican continent), a new channel of bilateral connections that had not been in place previously was established, in what can be labelled a cultural diplomacy connection. hedda krausz sjögren, a cultural producer with a background as an actor i am trying to recall the feeling i had when it was confirmed that south af rica would be the guest of honour at scandinavia’s biggest literary fair? as an organization, it sounded like an opportunity to showcase some of the best stories f rom the tip of tvhe continent. it sounded like someone believed in our stories and was willing to listen. albeit through technical difficulties, being in sweden with south af rica’s hardest working young writers is exactly what the poetry community needs. it is as though we need to leave home in order to reach deep within ourselves. sweden serves as a mirror into our artistry. from an administrative lens, it is intriguing to watch poets and writers learn f rom like-minded individuals. how conversations form and how new work unfolds. with every visit, a community of literary role players and enthusiasts becomes bigger and stronger. what of these relationships? the trips birth connections and opportunities for cultural sustainability, but the experiences themselves are always life changing. being in a room with hedda and ntate lefifi tladi was a special moment in many ways. the moment itself was exemplary of sweden south af rica relations. it was even more momentous for young poets who had travelled all the way f rom south af rica to meet and fellowship with a literary giant in sweden. — phomolo sekamotho, poet, co-founder of hear my voice and playwright, was appointed in 2017 and served as counsellor for cultural affairs until 2021. prior to her appointment, in 2016, she had written a report on cultural relations between south af rica and sweden in her role as expert advisor to the swedish ministry of culture. this article offers a reflection on the potentials of cultural diplomacy and cooperation, situating itself in the long-term relationship between south af rica and sweden as well as the specif ic context of krausz sjögren’s professional practice. providing a f irst-hand account of cultural diplomacy, it adopts a self-reflexive position and, largely, a f irst-person perspective. co-authored by krausz sjögren and one of her collaborators during this period, a theatre director and researcher, kristina hagström-ståhl, it also attempts to reflect the shared experience of collaborative work in this sphere. as such, the text is written f rom within a combination of diplomatic, cultural, and professional practices, as well as f rom within a diverse set of skills informing the practices that shaped the body of work to which the article refers. we use a combination of personal and collective pronouns throughout this article to place emphasis on our reflections; the use of personal pronouns denotes krausz sjögren’s reflections. we aim to share a sense of the possible impact of work dedicated to democracy, f reedom of expression, and gender inclusion. p e e r r e v i e w 66 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 methodological considerations as authors, we are cognisant of our position within this complex and will attempt a self-reflexive approach to analysing and describing the work. we are conscious of our role in the co-construction of knowledge (finlay, 2002) and seek to steer clear of the (remnants of) colonial perspectives often informing encounters between actors of the global north and global south. as such we are wary of assuming our own position as somehow privileged in terms of assessing and understanding impact. the central argument that we want to advance is that the arts, and with it, creative practitioners as ‘voicebearers of democracy’1 who contribute to and deserve inclusion into foundational principles of democracy such as f reedom of expression, equality and transparency, as well as sustainable peace and security, are of vital importance for long-term effects toward democratisation and peacekeeping. from this follows that cultural diplomacy has the potential to create sustainable impact within but also beyond the cultural sphere. reflections from a counsellor of cultural affairs when i was appointed as counsellor of cultural affairs in march 2017, i had been following the south af rican cultural scene for some time. having limited time (a three-year contract, with the possibility of a oneyear extension) and additionally limited resources (my budget on arrival was in the realm of sek 100,000/€10,000), i was particularly interested in how we could have the biggest impact with what i had at my disposal. the analysis i had conducted in my role as expert advisor at sweden’s ministry of culture had shown that while south af rica was no longer a recipient of international development funding f rom the swedish international development cooperation agency (sida), the country was not yet a ‘market’ for swedish arts and culture, nor were south af rican organisations or institutions resourced enough to invest in swedish guest performances or culture. the need to develop new forms of collaborations and financing was urgent and dependent on collaborations being reciprocal and partnership oriented with equal vested interest, with big outcomes f rom small budgets. i could see that there was a need for new platforms for interaction between young creatives f rom both countries. interviews i conducted2 with young south af ricans revealed that in spite of the numerous and long-standing contacts between sweden and south af rica pre-1994, and in spite of there being a priority for swedish public diplomacy in south af rica, the generation born after 1994 had scant or no relationship to, nor knowledge of, sweden. (moreover, the same seemed to be true of young swedes’ knowledge of south af rica, although that impression is anecdotal.) i could also see that several priorities of the cultural and foreign policies of the then-swedish government, such as the agenda 2030 priorities for the foreign policy, the feminist foreign policy, the focus on artistic f reedom within the ministry of culture, and the 2019 drive for democracy campaign, could be used as a lever in establishing stronger cultural ties between the countries. my intention was therefore to identify areas where these perspectives could intersect. i had for some time been following the south af rican spoken word scene. i noticed that young artists (born around or after 1994) self-organised (often collectively and inclusively beyond language, gender, and cultural background); started to get bigger followings; worked in several platforms and media (some of which were international); and experimented with multiple forms, including mixing languages and art forms, to express life experiences. in other words, the poetry and spoken word scene in south af rica seemed to promote democracy, equality, access, by virtue of its own developing form. this was not poetry about democracy or promoting democracy, but rather a practice of writing, performing, developing, distributing, spoken word poetry in a manner that embraced all these qualities. another important area identified was how witness accounts of women during apartheid started to emerge in 2017 through two ground-breaking publications: an interview by journalist carl collison in october 2017 in the mail & guardian with sibongile ‘promise’ khumalo, who stepped forward to talk about the abuse she experienced f rom male counterparts as a f reedom fighter in exile and the publication in september 2017 of the book titled khwezi: the remarkable story of fezekile ntsukela kuzway by p e e r r e v i e w 67v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 lauded journalist redi tlhabi. the biography details, through interviews, the life of the woman called khwezi, who suffered serial rapes as a child by former president jacob zuma who was acquitted in 2006 while khwezi proceeded to be vilified by zuma’s supporters and got nation-wide attention. with this analysis, i set out to test and examine possible artistic collaborations, with a primary focus on building trust and gaining a deeper understanding of the premise of practitioners in the arts and culture sector. policy context if sweden’s relations with south af rica in the cultural field until 2016 had been primarily characterised by formal and informal cultural relations, a decisive step toward government-led practice was taken by the addition to the diplomatic corps in pretoria of a counsellor for cultural affairs. the mandates of this inaugural counsellor, beyond promoting swedish cultural expression or advancing national interests, were to strengthen bilateral cooperation and exchange through specific artistic and cultural practices. drawing on her experiences in the cultural sector, krausz sjögren sought to extend and reinvigorate cultural cooperation and collaboration by paying attention to, as well as learning about and f rom, existing and emerging cultural actors in south af rica. meanwhile, this work was grounded in, and sought to implement, values and positions on international cooperation as articulated in sweden’s government policies, including the priorities of agenda 2030, the ministry of foreign affairs’ drive for democracy campaign centring artists and cultural workers as voice bearers of democracy (government of sweden, 2019), and the feminist foreign policy adopted by sweden in 2014. the ‘drive for democracy’ campaign initiated by the swedish ministry for foreign affairs aimed to ensure that support for, defending and promoting democracy continued to be a priority for the swedish government. the ‘drive for democracy’ aimed to create conditions for dialogue and greater knowledge about democracy throughout the world. the ministry for foreign affairs had identified ten focus areas for the drive that were to provide the point of departure and inspiration for continued efforts. these included protecting human rights and strengthening f ree media as well as women’s political participation. trade union rights and the rights of lgbtqi+ people were other examples of priority areas. efforts to protect these issues were to be integrated into all activities, and there was to be a special focus on highlighting young people and their voices. key among established policies was also the feminist foreign policy adopted by sweden in 2014. seeking to ‘systematically integrate a gender perspective into our foreign policy agenda’ (swedish ministry of foreign affairs, 2019: 6), this policy posited gender equality as ‘an objective in itself’ but also as ‘essential for achieving the government’s other overall objectives, such as peace, security and sustainable development’ (swedish ministry of foreign affairs, 2019: 9). the swedish government’s handbook on feminist foreign policy additionally mentions ‘cultural cooperation actions’ as a ‘method for norm changes and gender equal values’ (swedish ministry of foreign affairs, 2019: 56), drawing attention in particular to its support of staged readings of the documentary play seven, which had been organised since 2009 in cooperation between local swedish embassies and cultural actors around the world, under the direction of krausz sjögren, who initiated the project in collaboration with sweden’s national touring theatre (riksteatern) and the swedish institute. p e e r r e v i e w the ‘drive for democracy’ campaign initiated by the swedish ministry for foreign affairs aimed to ensure that support for, defending and promoting democracy continued to be a priority for the swedish government. the ‘drive for democracy’ aimed to create conditions for dialogue and greater knowledge about democracy throughout the world. 68 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w with the intention of promoting democracy and human rights, the staged readings of the documentary play seven3 – which depicts seven women’s rights activists f rom afghanistan, cambodia, guatemala, nigeria, northern ireland, pakistan, and russia – were undertaken with local stakeholders, ranging f rom government agencies to civil society actors taking on the play’s different parts. by naming this project as a part of an official government strategy, supported by swedish embassies across the world, the swedish government thus drew on initiatives that would perhaps not be characterised as traditional cultural diplomacy to exemplify and operationalise its foreign agenda promoting sustainability and democracy through gender equality and gender equal values. it could be argued that what is at hand is cultural cooperation as democratisation process as an already established working method, via the comprehensive production model developed by krausz sjögren (see end note 3), based on local ownership and agenda setting while all the time using the swedish embassy in pretoria as a lever for local stakeholders. in keeping with this government strategy and the methods developed through, for example seven, as counsellor of cultural affairs krausz sjögren concentrated on locating actors working to integrate cultural work and democratisation, including questions of gender equality, the rights of women and children, and lgbtq+ rights, and offering support and collaboration by embassy means. reflections from a counsellor of cultural affairs (continued) in early 2017, the performance poet koleka putuma (b. 1993) had published her first collection of poetry, titled collective amnesia, with uhlanga, a small press started by writer nick mulgrew (b. 1990). i had been following her trajectory, moving between theatre and performance poetry, and had noted the attention her poem ‘water’ was receiving, not in the least in the digital sphere. it seemed to embody a particular moment, a decision to move f rom stage to page and explore a new means of reaching audience/readers. when putuma was scheduled to come to pretoria to launch her book at the main library downtown, i sought out the organisation that was to host her, hear my voice. i asked them if the embassy, with its limited resources, could support the event in any way. hear my voice is a non-profit organisation based in the city of tshwane, south af rica. they describe themselves in the following way: ‘our focus is developing spoken word artists as well as creating open and uncensored platforms for self-expression through spoken word poetry. we achieve this through organising local and international exchange programs, workshops, live spoken word shows, open mics and other literature programs for schools, private companies, government, libraries, festivals and other cultural institutions.’ importantly, the organisation was doing this in 2017 without much external support, and had developed a model that worked, but could be expanded, deepened, and harnessed. i took a chance – or a risk – with the launch of collective amnesia, given that embassy resources can only be used in service of swedish interests or activities with a swedish connection. i proposed to support the event with 1,000 rand, about 600 swedish krona. the question did indeed come up at the embassy – the ambassador, signing off on the decision, asked what the swedish connection was. i replied that uhlanga press was due to travel to sweden to attend the gothenburg bookfair, in order to scout for swedish books to translate. at the time this was merely a suggestion i had made to uhlanga, that they apply for the gothenburg book fair fellowship. however, as it turned out, uhlanga received the fellowship and did travel to sweden in september of that year. that trip in itself resulted in something rather unusual, possibly unique, namely the direct publishing of a swedish author via a south af rican publisher, without going through the major english language publishing houses based in great britain and the us. the book in question was the translation into english of white blight (vitsvit) by acclaimed poet athena farrokhzad. this in turn led to athena travelling to south af rica in 2018 to take part in a program curated by hear my voice, spanning several cities, workshops, single readings, and festivals. hear my voice accepted my contribution toward the launch of collective amnesia in pretoria in may 2017, and i went to the highly anticipated and ultimately packed launch, attended by over 200 fans roughly between the ages of 18–30. i was the only white person in the audience, and i was probably the only one over 45 years old. many copies of the book were 69v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w sold at the event, in spite of most young people very rarely having the means to buy books, and the event was well organised and communicated to the media (pretoria rekord, may 25, 2017 book tour to open a can of worms). i had been asked to speak at the event as a sponsor, but i deemed it was inappropriate to speak about sweden and swedish interests in such a setting, and limited my remarks to about three sentences, saying we were excited to support great writing. this was the starting point of a work that would eventually branch out into a number of swedish and south af rican contacts, and long-term activities, some of which will be detailed below. the next step in this work was to deepen the collaboration with hear my voice. in november 2017, we signed our first collaboration contract, where hear my voice (hmv) would host and curate programs for early-mid career swedish poets and writers over the coming year with hmv self-organising a tour in sweden, with me as a liaison. for this i used parts of my sweden promotion budget and part of the support i had applied for f rom swedish arts council, earmarked for cultural attachés (‘projektbidrag för utsända kulturråd’, project funding for sent out counsellors for cultural affairs). hmv invested their time and began themselves to apply for funding and to seek partnerships in sweden and south af rica to harness their longand short termplans, using the embassy connection as a lever. an important step in the process was also to invite hmv to arrange poetry readings at the ambassador’s residence, both as ‘entertainment’ during receptions for stakeholders other than in arts and culture, and eventually to host evenings at the residence wholly curated by hmv. this was a break away f rom more traditional ways of organising events in the diplomatic corps, especially the mandate hmv had f rom me to curate, plan and also invite their followers to the residence. we used this as a way to signal mutual respect and trust, and it elevated the status of hmv in other contexts. it also provided them with a rapidly expanding network, a fact that they could use both in contact with swedish and south af rican stakeholders and funders. i believe this was, in all its simplicity, a crucial move. it was made possible by the strategic work to create trust with the ambassador and the embassy staff and vouch for the quality of the work of hmv and the purpose of the work of hmv being in line with swedish priorities, and create trust with hmv and their community of young, often radical born-f ree followers, who would have a natural hesitancy to engage with western european states, not differentiating between those with a colonial past and those who supported f reedom. the mantra on my part was: ‘the swedish embassy supports and collaborates with great writers/poets/performers in sweden and in south af rica whether early career or established.’ incorporating a swedish context meanwhile, at the university of gothenburg, the interdisciplinary arts platform ‘platform for artistic research sweden’ (parse) was initiating a series of thematic research ‘arcs’ with the intention of establishing and strengthening relations in the international arts research community, as well as with artists and civil society sectors. one of these research arcs was to be headed by kristina hagström-ståhl, then a professor at the university’s faculty of fine, applied, and performing arts. entitled ‘intersectional engagements in politics and art’, the research theme aimed to explore, in diverse ways, the nexus of gender, race, sexuality, and (de-)coloniality in contemporary artmaking, scholarship, and artistic research. focusing on socially engaged practices related to memory, history, and embodiment, the project sought to initiate collaborations and invite speakers f rom diverse disciplinary and geographic areas, exploring practices at the intersection of the artistic and the political and addressing questions of intersectionality in artistic practice. over the course of roughly two and a half years, between 2018 and 2020, ‘intersectional engagements’ collaborated with local as well as international academic and cultural institutions to host dialogues, talks, and conference strands with speakers f rom various locations and artistic disciplines, and additionally resulted in a peer-reviewed issue of parse journal4. with existing research interests in post-apartheid art and theatre, and aware of the appointment of krausz sjögren as counsellor for cultural affairs, hagströmståhl saw in the attempts to form new collaborations 70 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 and explore relationship-building a potential for the kinds of co-thinking and exchange that lay at the heart of the research theme. a research trip to johannesburg in early 2018 was combined with conversations with the embassy and other stakeholders on ideas to take forward. what resulted was a multi-faceted form of interaction and collaboration taking place through research output, creative expression, and public events in both countries. reflections from a counsellor of cultural affairs (continued) prior to kristina’s first visit to johannesburg, i had been in conversation with the market theatre – one of south af rica’s landmark arts institutions, the first theatre to mix black and white audiences and casts, with a number of offshoot departments like the market theatre photo lab and windybrow arts centre. while a long-time collaborator with several swedish institutions, as well as a recipient of swedish development funding, the market theatre’s relationships with – and memories of – swedish stakeholders were dormant and played no real role in our re-kindling of contacts. as kristina arrived, market theatre was planning a public, fairly controversial conversation, titled: ‘pro-black is not anti-white’ on questions of race in contemporary south af rican society. again, i asked if the embassy could contribute in some small way, and if they would be open to including kristina on the panel, as a scholar/artist active in this complex matter, but f rom the northern hemisphere. the organisers agreed to include kristina as one of six speakers, and what resulted was a broadranging conversation engaging many of the attendees and drawing a large number of viewers through the event’s livestream on facebook. this collaboration with the market theatre marks a ‘moment’ with parameters similar to that of the collective amnesia book launch. it included risk-taking on our part, as well as an attempt to build mutual trust; it contained investments f rom all stakeholders, and the embassy functioned as a lever. outcomes both of these ‘moments’ became catalysts for a string of collaborations and exchanges that were eventually shooting off in many directions. for example, hear my voice went on to create numerous exchanges involving poets and writers f rom south af rica and sweden, forging relationships with individual artists as well as with agencies like the swedish institute and the swedish arts council, in addition to organisations like göteborgs litteraturhus, olof palme international centre, the global square, the swedish church, the theatre company unga klara, the cultural journal glänta, and notably, gothenburg international book fair.5 the book fair is sweden’s largest cultural event, visited by roughly 100,000 persons, with several thousand events over four days. while koleka putuma had visited sweden already in 2017 to participate in the 20-tal international poetry festival, and featured on swedish television and radio on that occasion, an invitation to gothenburg through the ‘intersectional engagements’ research arc in 2018 resulted in several readings, performances, and dialogues, widespread public interest and media attention, as well as, eventually, a translation into swedish of collective amnesia. this visit was undertaken in the context of parse’s collaboration with the embassy in pretoria as well as through ‘local’ cooperation with the international book fair and the literary festival scener och samtal (approx. ‘stages and conversations’, arranged by göteborgs litteraturhus and the museum of world culture). the connections to gothenburg international book fair were further cultivated in 2019 through an exchange with the swedish embassy in pretoria that included a study visit to the bookfair of that year p e e r r e v i e w this collaboration with the market theatre marks a ‘moment’ with parameters similar to that of the collective amnesia book launch. it included risk-taking on our part, as well as an attempt to build mutual trust. both of these ‘moments’ became catalysts for a string of collaborations and exchanges that were eventually shooting off in many directions. 71v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 and culminated in the curated program for the fair in 2022. in south af rica, hear my voice came on the radar of several institutions through the swedish collaborations, and their curation of programs for visiting swedish writers and performers came to include nirox foundation, the department of sports arts and culture, south af rica’s national library, the open book festival, the european union commission, centre for the creative arts in durban, as well as the market theatre. in most, if not all, of these contacts, the aim was to develop relationships between swedish and south af rican writers, to jointly deepen their artistic skills, to perform and teach workshops together, instigate dialogue about relevant topics for the poets and writers, such as multilingualism, minority languages, and questions of translation. a key aspect of the work was to introduce audiences in both countries to new writers/performers and trends in poetry and spoken word poetry. reflections from a counsellor of cultural affairs (continued) an important outcome of the relationship with hear my voice became apparent during the covid-19 pandemic. with the advent of covid-19 in europe and south af rica, the south af rican government decided on a strict lockdown, virtually closing down the country.6 in short, the country closed, and people were not allowed out at all. in a crisis, communication, hope, and ability to adapt quickly is crucial. while the embassy quickly moved into working to safe-guard swedish citizens stuck in south af rica, there was no real strategy for communication or for maintaining contacts within south af rica. as the cultural affairs office at the embassy of sweden in pretoria was not included in the crisis management, i decided to see how we could contribute f rom our end. the result was the co-creation between hear my voice, my communication consultant sara chitambo, and myself of a public diplomacy channel, entitled digitally yours, initially brought about to create some modest income for artists who had seen their incomes vanish overnight, both in sweden and south af rica. the idea was to broadcast digital programs over facebook, with live conversations and performances by artists in both countries, as well as with welcoming remarks by the ambassador. the program was launched mere weeks after the south af rican lockdown, quickly drew (mostly south af rican) digital audiences of more than 30,000, and was later named best practice by the swedish institute. the traffic to the embassy’s social media channels went up enormously, and a strong line of live communication was established. the success of this initiative can be attributed to several factors; among these were arguably the longstanding relationship developed to a young, local, digitally savvy organisation with deep ties to swedish counterparts, the capacity to delegate mandate to a local organisation (indicative of mutual trust), and risk-taking in the form of trying new formats while learning on the job. additionally, the possibility of using the embassy as a lever for this new format, in addition to my own ability to re-allocate funds, quickly, f rom activities planned for 2020 to the digital platform, including funding for the performers on the program. from this initiative emerged yet another collaboration between sweden and south af rica, as stakeholders at gothenburg international book fair engaged hear my voice online programming for the 2020 digital bookfair, several of which are still available for streaming through the digital channel bokmässan play. outcomes (continued) from the first visit and public conversation in 2018 at the market theatre flowed ideas and discussions between the authors of this article, the market theatre, and south af rican/swedish/ethiopian, johannesburgbased curator katarina hedrén on taking another step in the work around women and experiences of war/struggle and narration. an important backdrop for this discussion was the publication in 2017 of carl collison’s and redi tlhabi’s journalistic work mentioned earlier. the first instalment, in october 2018, of our joint initiative became a conversation and reading at the market theatre lab under the heading of ‘women, war, struggle, stories’.7 in this public conversation, the participants together with the audience explored definitions of war, struggle, and heroism, as well as the impact of the exclusion of women’s contributions, experiences, and voices. a vital part of the instalment was the exploration of the narratives of women who have shared their experiences of armed conflict and struggle in different parts of the world. introductions were made by the p e e r r e v i e w 72 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 ambassador of sweden cecilia julin. the event, mixing personal, written testimonies with those of established writers, artists and academics on the panel, was fully booked. it was broadcast live and recorded, it reached record numbers of viewers, and audience responses reflected how the conversation was breaking taboos and bringing new voices into public discourse. this event conf irmed the impact and f ruitfulness of choosing a catalyst role for the cultural affairs off ice, over a merely promotional or producing one. outcomes f rom this project dovetailed with the activities including hear my voice and koleka putuma mentioned earlier, and also resulted in the publication of several essays across south af rican and swedish languages (sami, khoisan, english, swedish and more), performances, seminar series and knowledge exchange. the embassy of sweden added cultural activities to its political reporting; putuma’s collective amnesia was published in swedish by rámus förlag; a second installment in the public dialogue series, entitled skin + bones (with-nessing whitenesses), took place at the market theatre as well as at drama for life/wits university in february 2019, featuring a performance by stacey sacks with audience discussions to follow. other activities and outcomes, which followed and were linked to these initial contacts and collaborations, included a memorandum of understanding on arts and culture between sweden and south af rica, which stipulated special attention to literary exchanges and encouraging a culture of reading; south af rica becoming the guest of honor at the 2020 gothenburg international book fair (postponed to 2022 due to the pandemic); hear my voice being included by the national library south af rica in the reference expert group on curating and proposing participants and topics for the 2022 book fair; south af rica’s guest of honor presence in gothenburg in 2022, including more than forty south af rican writers visiting sweden and taking part in seminars, readings, and performances; and spoken word performances by swedish and south af rican poets taking place at venues in gothenburg and stockholm during this visit. conclusions in this article, we focus primarily on two threads of activities enabled by efforts of cultural diplomacy as catalyst: spoken word and what we can call the women’s voices thread. this is because they represent our collaboration. activities undertaken under krausz sjögren’s tenure in the areas of design, fashion, and fine arts can also be said to fall within the same method of approach. what we hope to demonstrate with the above examples, which are tokens of the web of interlinked activities and contacts created, re-ignited and nurtured by the cultural affairs office in pretoria between 2017–2021, is a certain promise of cultural diplomacy. envoys with specific expert knowledge may function as a catalyst for relationships and artistic endeavours, as well as for strengthening local networks of independent artists to the benefit of the democratic inf rastructure of that country – by developing stronger international ties. the expertise includes, but is not limited to, a capability to analyse and identify emerging cultural expressions and actors, trends, artistic quality, and deploying the diplomatic skill of creating trust between emerging cultural players, state actors, and non-government actors in local as well as international actors including cultural institutions. the analysis made by envoys of local cultural organisations and practitioners must include aspects of relevance to foreign policy such as in the cases demonstrated; inclusion, gender parity, and democratic structures within the organisation. in addition, this catalyst and trust building approach can be crucial in crises when the need for trustworthy communication channels as well as senders are a vital part of keeping functioning societies. this was demonstrated during the severe lockdown policy of the south af rican government and the restrictive travel policy of european countries during the pandemic, and the response of swedish and south af rican cultural actors to create a virtual, public platform for continued dialogue and expression (‘digitally yours’). as the cases show, the embassy was involved not as producer, nor as determiner of communication messages, but simply as lever and catalyst allowing emerging actors the trust and endowment of the embassy to forge deep contacts nationally and p e e r r e v i e w 73v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 bilaterally. their artistic work was inherently shaping democratic and stabilising networks of artists and civilians exercising their f reedoms. there was never a message or other greater goal underpinning or set for the interactions. this is a concrete work to strengthen civil society and thereby democracy, and indeed the voice bearers of democracy. a policy that wants to avoid a propaganda stance (and here the difference between ways to achieve successful ‘nation branding’ and propaganda can be quite diff icult to def ine), to promote the idea of arm length to artists and cultural workers while being resource conservative, the promise of cultural diplomacy can deliver on multiple goals of both foreign policy (equality, f reedom of expression) as well as on un sustainability goals – now including cultural aspects, since the 2022 mondiacult congress in mexico8. by being a catalyst for emerging (and established) cultural exchanges and collaborations, the foreign missions contribute to the sustainable existence of cultural practitioners who exercise their right to artistic expression and f reedom and thereby also form a durable part of a democratic societal fabric necessary for stable peaceful and democratic societies. we would like to add, f inally, that in a world riddled with complex conflicts, instability, and a radically shrinking space for civil society, it might be well worth for state actors to reconsider and expand the notion of cultural diplomacy, less as a tool to promote nation branding, or market separate cultural goods, but rather as a necessary ingredient and catalyst for peace and prosperity. in light of our documentation and our arguments, we are concerned that the cultural affairs off ice at the embassy of sweden in pretoria has been closed down and the position annulled, and that the swedish government is considering letting several other cultural affairs positions, including the one in moscow, remain vacant after current counsellors’ mandates are at an end. this points to ineffective policy in the short-term and to the detriment of the potential for flourishing cultural cooperation (as mandated by mous, recent and promising networking and projects). it will also, in our estimate, counteract reaching the long-term goals of swedish and european policies for peace, security, and democracy. notes 1. the notion of ‘voicebearers of democracy’, in swedish demokratins röstbärare, was coined by then-state secretary for international development cooperation per olsson fridh. the term refers to those actors who by their actions (painting, writing, organising civic engagement, i.e., exercising their f reedom of expression) create the democratic fabric outside of the state actors. 2. the interviews were conducted as part of an internal analysis for the ministry of culture in my previous position as expert advisor (2016–2017) and are not referenced in this paper. 3. seven is a documentary play by paula cizmar, catherine filloux, gail kriegel, carol k. mack, ruth margraff, anna deavere smith and susan yankowitz for which hedda krausz sjögren developed a production model employed in 30+ countries. for more information, see: voicesprojects.com/portfolio/seven-on-tour/ 4. for more information about the research theme, and to access this issue of parse journal, please visit: parsejournal.com/themesa rch i ve d / # i n te rs e c t i o n a l e n g a g e m e n t s i n politics-and-art 5. this work is partially documented in the reports f rom first, second and third project in democracy and literature exchange gothenburg literature house and hear my voice 2019–2022 for co-funder swedish institute, diarised with the swedish institute, available f rom gothenburg literature house and hear my voice. 6. see: www.tralac.org/news/article/14617-southa f r i c a s p o l i c y r e s p o n s e t o t h e c o v i d 1 9 pandemic.html 7. participants in the seminar were beverly ditsie (director and producer for film and tv/activist), kristina hagström-ståhl, mmabatho montsho p e e r r e v i e w 74 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 (actress/filmmaker/visual artist), gail smith (writer/journalist/spokesperson) and redi tlhabi (author/broadcaster/talkshow host). the forum was moderated by katarina hedrén (film curator/writer) and featured phemelo motene (actress/radio host) and me in an old role – as actor. 8. for more information on this 2022 unesco conference, please see: www.unesco.org/en/articles/ mondiacult-2022-states-adopt-historic-declaration-culture references finlay, l. (2002). ‘negotiating the swamp: the opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in research practice.’ qualitative research, vol. 2 (2): 209230. government of sweden. (2019). ‘statement of foreign policy in the parliamentary debate on foreign affairs, wednesday 13 february 2019.’ stockholm: government of sweden. south african department of international relations and cooperation (dirco). (2020). ‘memorandum of understanding between the government of the republic of south africa and the government of the kingdom of sweden on cooperation in the field of arts and culture.’ dirco [online]. available at: treaties.dirco.gov.za/dbtwwpd/images/20200925swedenartsandculture.pdf swedish ministry of foreign affairs (2019). handbook: sweden’s handbook on feminist foreign policy. stockholm: swedish ministry of foreign affairs. swedish ministry of foreign affairs (2009). strategy for the full range of cooperation with south africa, january 2009–december 2013. stockholm: swedish ministry of foreign affairs. unesco (2022). ‘final declaration: world conference on cultural policies and sustainable development – mondiacult.’ mexico city, unesco. unesco [online]. available at: www.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/ fichiers/2022/10/6.mondiacult_en_draft%20final%20declaration_final_1.pdf p e e r r e v i e w https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/mondiacult-2022-states-adopt-historic-declaration-culture https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/mondiacult-2022-states-adopt-historic-declaration-culture george floyd, bad governance, and the silent violations of african human rights by tata emmanuel sunjo | opinion 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 abstract in 2020, george floyd – a black man in the united states – was brutally killed by a white police officer. the world was unequivocal in denouncing such an outrageous act, but black people living in sub-saharan af rica continue to face multiple right violations. this can be attributed to fundamental governance crevices associated with poor leadership that characterise many of these af rican states. this article outlines a number of examples of the incessant suppression of the socio-economic, civil, political, and overall human rights of af ricans in the face of dictatorship, anarchy, and bad governance. the clamour for good governance on the continent is critical for upholding the dignity of black af rican lives. opinion it is also a direct and outrageous peril to the existence of the black race in particular and the human race as a whole if humanity does not, as one, stand up to massively promote and protect universal human rights and f reedoms, as enshrined in the 1948 united nations declaration of human rights overview while the world is still struggling to fully grasp the agonising socio-economic and political ramifications brought about by the covid-19 pandemic, the recent killing of george floyd, a black man, in the united states of america on 25 may 2020 portrays one of the most despicable human rights violations in modern times, especially in a country that parades itself as the bastion and champion of democracy and good governance. what irony! according to the new york times, the killing came after ‘minneapolis police officers arrested george floyd, a 46-year-old black man, after a convenience store employee called 911 and told the police that mr. floyd had bought cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill’ (hill et al., 2020). the criminal investigation showed that the police officer, mr. derek chauvin, kept his knee on mr. floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds despite the fact that he had lost consciousness and showed no sign of life one minute after paramedics arrived at the scene. the police officers were fired a day after floyd’s arrest and death. undoubtedly, this heinous act in the 21st century clearly serves as a conspicuous vista of complex and deeply engrained racial and structural inequalities and discriminations. it is also a direct and outrageous peril to the existence of the black race in particular and the human race as a whole if humanity does not, as one, stand up to massively promote and protect universal human rights and f reedoms, as enshrined in the 1948 united nations declaration of human rights which are domesticated in various continental, regional, and national platforms. reflections on floyd’s death and african human rights records the killing of floyd has been received with outrage and protests across the world. however, citizens and leaders f rom af rica – the cradle of humanity and a continent predominantly inhabited by black people – have expressed relatively few concerns on the continuation of black discrimination and inhumane treatment. the reluctant public response, especially f rom the continent’s political leadership, does not come as a surprise due to the incessant suppression of the socio-economic, civil, political, and overall human rights of af ricans in the face of dictatorship, anarchy, and bad governance. in other words, if leaders dare talk about black lives matter in this context, they will be deluged with questions about the lives of their own populace, which are being lost on a daily basis due to poverty and underdevelopment, unemployment, chaotic healthcare systems, lack of quality education, limited rule of law, conflicts of all dimensions, gender and other inequalities, and many other vices. certainly, george floyd’s repeated cry of ‘i can’t breathe’ when derek chauvin, aided by three other police off icers, kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes, is just a glimpse of the pains, torments, tortures, and premature deaths that af ricans have gone through and continue to go through as a result of bad political leadership. yet, these do not capture global empathy due to restrictions on press f reedoms, as well as on f reedoms of assembly and peaceful protests, even though these are clearly provided for in many af rican countries’ constitutions. indeed, amnesty international reported in 2019 that af rica was ‘marked by widespread repression of dissent – including crackdowns on peaceful protests, and attacks on media, human rights defenders and political opponents. in over 20 countries, people were denied their rights to peaceful protest, including through unlawful bans, use of excessive force, harassment and arbitrary arrests’ (2019: 5). 2 t h e t h i n k e r opinion in 2020, in the wake of enforcing sweeping restrictions on movement to fight the covid-19 pandemic, more than half of the 54 af rican countries – including burundi, kenya, nigeria, south af rica, uganda, and zimbabwe ¬– had not pretended to register their names in records of rights violations of their populations, ranging f rom torture, to arbitrary arrests, to extra-judicial killings. in the case of nigeria, for example, before 20 april 2020, at least 18 people had been killed by security forces while implementing the country’s draconian covid-19 lockdown measures, at times preventing the population f rom accessing even basic necessities. ironically, at the time, the number of contagions f rom the virus had not reached the number killed in the process of implementing lockdown. despite being overwhelmingly blessed with stupendous natural resources, af ricans have continued to live degrading lives. before the majority of af rican countries gained independence in the second half of the 20th century, most of the blame for the continent’s underdevelopment was attributed to the cruel slave trades and to european colonialism. however, even though a multiplicity of factors account for the continent’s backwardness more than 50 years since independence, leadership inadequacies in many af rican countries are to be held responsible for the failure to generate an economic miracle on the continent similar to that of the east asian tiger economies in the second half of the last century. it is indeed horrendous that the majority of af ricans who dominate the black populations both on the continent and in the diaspora continue to live at the margins of a civilisation which commenced on af rican soil. this situation is largely attributed to systemic structural problems which are a function of poor-quality leadership. in much the same way that floyd cried out ‘i can’t breathe’ to the police officers and finally died, bad governance in af rica has for a long time created similar scenarios for af ricans. thus, bad governance and its adverse human rights effects in af rica, with the complementarity of external factors, is very reminiscent of derek chauvin’s kneeling on george floyd’s neck, aided by three other then-police officers. drawing f rom this analogy, therefore, a number of pains, tortures, and deaths on the continent can be inferred as follows: 1. it is bad governance that makes af ricans continue to cry out: ‘i can’t survive unless i engage in a suicidal journey to europe’ through the dangerous and deadly mediterranean waters. even though the number of migrant deaths has significantly declined due to relentless efforts headed by the international organization for migration (iom), 1,283 deaths were still recorded in 2019 through the three main mediterranean sea routes, adding to the 19,164 migrant lives lost since 2014 (iom, 2019). 2. it is bad governance, typically represented by weak and biased judicial systems, as well as limited respect for the rule of law, that has resulted in extrajudicial killings, targeted killings, summary execution, and the non-guarantee of a fair trial to all af ricans –especially those who are political opponents. this is well-captured in the 2019 amnesty international report, which accuses a number of af rican governments, characterised by rising insecurity, of using state security forces to commit human rights violations such as extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture (amnesty international, 2019). 3. it is bad governance that has promoted massive squandermania and jaw-dropping bribery and corrupt practices, leading to the deepening of poverty and inequalities and the loss of many af rican lives. the 2019 organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) report reiterates that 20–30% of investments in publicly funded construction projects may be lost because of mismanagement and bribery (oecd, 2019: 17). in 2016, the united nations economic commission for af rica (uneca) observed that corruption is certainly one of the major obstacles to structural transformation in af rica. in this report, corruption on the continent is attributed to three main factors: the level of institutional weaknesses which provide the basis for political leaders and public servants to misuse national resources and abuse power without being checked; the continued decline in the standards of public servants associated with poor incentives; and the blind eye often turned to corruption by western countries (uneca, 2016). 4. it is bad governance that has failed to tackle infectious and non-communicable diseases that continue to claim thousands of af rican 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion lives due to limited medical research and poor healthcare systems. while other regions of the world have made significant strides in improving their healthcare systems, nutrition, drinking water, and sanitation – which all contribute enormously to reducing mortality rates and raising life expectancy -– the atlas on regional integration in west af rica (2008) observes that sub-saharan af rica remains the last world region where mortality rates (particularly child mortality) continue to be high, and life expectancy low (ecowas-swac/oecd, 2008). according to the world bank’s 2019 report, rates of communicable disease morbidity and mortality remain stubbornly high due to a combination of factors, key of which is weak healthcare systems. the poor development of healthcare systems is attributed to the general lack of political will of the continent’s leadership, complemented with the illicit financial flows of money f rom bribery and corruption. this explains why most of the continent’s political elite quickly rush to hospitals in developed countries with well-developed systems for medical attention, while the majority of their citizens are victims of the disease burden. 5. it is bad governance, represented by derek chauvin’s kneeling on floyd’s neck, that is responsible for the lack of basic, yet critical, inf rastructures of water and sanitation, energy, housing, and education that increases the vulnerability of af rican populations to premature deaths. while some gains have been made largely through the efforts of un and international development partners, the gap on accessing these critical amenities still remains wide. for instance, in one of its briefing documents, the german development agency giz states that: ‘only 56% of city-dwellers have access to piped water, down f rom 67% in 2003, and just 11% to a sewer connection’ (2019: 10). this situation could become more precarious due to other factors, such as growing population, pollution, and climate change. inadequacies in providing amenities such as water expose the population to dire hygiene and sanitation situations, water-related diseases, and gender-based violence against women and girls who have to search for potable water. 6. it is bad governance that has created deep divisions among and between af rican sons and daughters over political, social, cultural, and natural resources issues – giving rise to complex conflicts and growing insecurity which continue to result in more deaths, forced movements, and rising poverty and disillusionment. a 2017 oxfam report noted that data on conflict fatalities in af rica are scarce and inconsistent. however, most of the recorded deaths in conflict and security-challenged environments are caused by uncontrolled arms. the report notes that millions of lives were lost as a direct result of wars in af rica (adeniyi, 2017). while state-based conflicts have significantly reduced over the years due to advances in clearly defining states’ geographical boundaries and growing multilateral cooperation, non-state and one-sided conflicts still remain a serious concern on the continent due to a combination of factors linked to poor governance, election rigging, discrimination against minorities, and growing fundamentalism among others. the institute for security studies (iss) has indicated that: ‘conflict in af rica is becoming more complex as the numbers of conflict actors have increased. rebel (and extremist) groups are more numerous and often f racture into additional groupings’ (cilliers, 2018: 3). conclusion we could go on and on to demonstrate the systemic human rights issues fundamentally caused by bad governance on the continent, which all demand the democratisation of advocacy through peaceful civil protests, as guaranteed in most af rican countries’ constitutions. while the massive and largely peaceful protests in the us and around the globe in response to floyd’s death advocated for serious structural reforms, af rican countries in particular require fundamental institutional reforms that will address governance crevices in a bid to propel and sustain socio-economic developments that will improve human dignity in general and black af rican lives in particular. achieving this will not only halt the brain drain on the continent, but will create a conducive and receptive ground for diasporic af ricans and other global citizens to feel that they can come back to af rica and lead rewarding lives, as they would elsewhere in the world. without these reforms, the 2030 sustainable 4 t h e t h i n k e r opinion africa. oecd [online]. available at: https://www.oecd.org/regional/ atlasonregionalintegrationinwestafrica.htm giz, (2019). access to water and sanitation in sub-saharan africa, part ii – briefing document. oecd [online]. available at: https://www.oecd. org/water/giz_2018_access_study_part%20ii_narrative%20report_ briefing_document.pdf hill, e., tiefenthäler, a., triebert, c., jordan, d., willis, h., and stein, r. (2020). how george floyd was killed in police custody. the new york times [online]. available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/ george-floyd-investigation.html international organization for migration (iom), (2019). iom press release: mediterranean arrivals reach 110,699 in 2019; deaths reach 1,283. world deaths fall. [online] available at: https://www.iom.int/ news/iom-mediterranean-arrivals-reach-110699-2019-deaths-reach1283-world-deaths-fall oecd, (2019). 2019 policy report on africa: infrastructure and regional connectivity. [online] available at: https://www.oecd.org/dev/ development-philanthropy/africapolicynote%20_2019.pdf united nations economic commission for africa, (2016). african governance report iv 2016: measuring corruption in africa: the international dimension matters. [online] available at: https:// repository.uneca.org/handle/10855/23012 world bank, (2018). combined project information document / integrated safeguards datasheet (pid/isds), africa cdc regional investment financing program, (p167916). development goals and the af rican union’s agenda 2063 will all remain nebulous ventures. as a continent with independent states strongly wedded to the doctrine of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, addressing governance issues domestically seems to be yielding insignificant results at a very slow pace. thus, the task of pressuring for the effective and swift implementation of these reforms lies with the global political leadership spearheaded by the un and her partners, as well as with continental and regional organisations. the guarantee of civil and political rights for af rican citizens is equally critical in advocating for these structural reforms to be made to pave the way for good governance and sustainable development. just as there are growing debates and efforts to mitigate systemic and institutionalised racism in some western countries, af rican countries must work to eradicate systemic bad governance practices which are responsible for defacing the value of black lives on the continent. in other words, unless the continent’s political leadership gives dignity to the lives of their citizenry, it will be difficult for that dignity to be accorded f reely to black people in other parts of the world. this is possible and will go further to lay bare the barren argument of the superiority of some races over others. throughout the history of human civilisation, cases abound where significant strides have been made by people of all races in areas of peace and security, science and technology, arts and culture, and all facets of human society. to complement good governance efforts, the collective action of people f rom all races to give dignity to human life is equally critical to end the pervasive and, in many cases, gruesome human rights violations occurring in many countries today. this can only be guaranteed by enhancing good governance practices across the continent. references adeniyi, a. (2017). the human cost of uncontrolled arms in africa. oxfam [online]. available at: https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/human-costuncontrolled-arms-africa amnesty international, (2019). human rights in africa: review of 2019. [online] available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/ cilliers, j. (2018). ‘violence in africa: trends, drivers and prospects to 2023.’ africa report 12, august 2018. ssrn [online]. available at: https:// papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3254122 ecowas-swac/oecd, (2008). atlas on regional integration in west 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion a note from the editor: in october 2020, the thinker received an open letter from waghied misbach as part of a call for papers on a special edition on “race. racism. anti-racism.” as this letter was about what he termed, “the erasure of black lives” in publishing, i decided to publish the letter and invited terry morris from pan macmillan to respond in the interests of fairness and open debate. terry morris, in turn, sent the letter to fiona snyckers. while fiona snyckers send me a response, it was not addressed as an open letter. as such, it has not been published here. what follows is the original open letter from waghied misbach, terry morris’ response and finally waghied misbach’s response in return. due to publication deadlines for this issue, we have not been able to follow up on this debate any further at this time. the thinker supports open debate and academic freedom. however, a portion of the first letter has been redacted with the author’s permission, due to the potential for litigation. the thinker encourages a scholarly engagement of ideas and does not serve as a vehicle for potentially litigious comment. the publishing race: a debate by a.w. misbach | opinion 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion opinion i want to raise my concerns about your representatives’ marginalisation of my work as a black writer foregrounding characters and issues that have been ignored over many decades in academia and the publishing industry, and then signing up a white author to do a similar but highly flawed work pan macmillan south africa’s erasure of black lives: an open letter re: pan macmillan south af rica wanted my full manuscript, but signed a white author instead attention: pan macmillan south af rica md terry morris dear ms morris it has been two years since my last interaction with some representatives of your company and i think it is now time to write this open letter. i want to raise my concerns about your representatives’ marginalisation of my work as a black writer foregrounding characters and issues that have been ignored over many decades in academia and the publishing industry, and then signing up a white author to do a similar but highly flawed work, which raises issues of integrity and ethical responsibility. i will, over the course of this letter, sketch the background to my work and my submission to your company. i will then conclude with a specific critique on content, highlighting what i believe are the racist and orientalist tropes in the work published by pan macmillan south af rica. my novel the girl with the red flower is a response to nobel prize laureate j.m. coetzee’s controversial booker prize-winning 1999 novel disgrace, f rom the perspective of the marginalised character soraya, the muslim woman who is portrayed by professor coetzee as a sex worker, who i consider a rape victim. my view goes against the almost overwhelming consensus of the literary establishment over two decades that she is not a victim of rape, in comparison with other female characters, which has resulted in scant critical attention and further marginalisation, a situation i consider to be the trahison des clercs. my novel is the creative component of an academic study at the university of the western cape, completed in 2017. f. fiona moolla, professor in the english department, supervised my work, and professors imraan coovadia and ashraf kagee (f rom the university of cape town and the university of stellenbosch respectively) assessed it cum laude. after an initial submission to your company on 6 june 2018, your representatives responded positively on 25 june 2018 asking for the full manuscript of the girl with the red flower and promising a review in six to eight weeks. surprisingly, your company announced on 11 september 2018 that a white author, fiona snyckers, would write on the same topic, covering the same issues with a novel entitled lacuna, which would highlight the plight of the character lucy lurie, who is also a rape victim in disgrace. i will discuss later what i consider to be your company representatives’ unsalutary conduct. worse still, ms snyckers, believing that lucy lurie was the only rape victim, lacuna, or missing voice in disgrace, proceeded to exclude all the black, raped women i had attempted to foreground in my work. ms snyckers and her supporters do not even recognise as a rape victim the student melanie isaacs, who is violated by professor coetzee’s protagonist david lurie. in addition, ms snyckers’ novel is marked by several orientalist (racist) tropes, as i indicated earlier. only two critics, whom i will discuss later, unaware of my work and its connection to lacuna and your company, have identified lacuna as a work of ‘privileged white feminism’. ms morris, i now want to, as briefly as i can, talk about my 2017 academic study, in which i raise concerns about the portrayal of soraya in disgrace and in the critique that followed, including the use of the words ‘sex worker’ for people who are often forced to sell their bodies to live and feed their children, risking life and limb. i consider these people to be enslaved and rape victims. as you know, people of colour, particularly women and girls of colour, have long been 2 t h e t h i n k e r victims of rape during south af rica’s slave, colonial, and apartheid eras – a violence that continues today. disgrace has divided opinion because of its perceived negative representation of black people, with critical responses f rom several people, including the late nobel prize laureate nadine gordimer and booker prize winner salman rushdie. professor gordimer would write quite negatively about disgrace, as quoted in j.c. kannemeyer’s insightful 2012 biography of professor coetzee, a life in writing. this criticism could well be equally applied to ms snyckers’ lacuna: in the novel disgrace there is not one black person who is a real human being. i find it difficult to believe, indeed more than difficult, having lived here all my life and being part of everything that has happened here, that the black family protects the rapist because he’s one of them. if that’s the only truth he could find in the post-apartheid south africa, i regretted this very much for him. (563) the girl with the red flower merges the character of soraya with that of mrs noerdien, a muslim assistant bookkeeper, who is another minor female muslim character in professor coetzee’s fictionalised autobiography, scenes f rom provincial life (2011: 479–480). mrs noerdien is objectified, orientalised, and presented as a docile, submissive stereotype by professor coetzee in the novel, through the eyes of the fictional john coetzee. the surname noerdien is actually nur al-deen, arabic for light of the faith, and is indicative of how muslim people in the cape have attempted to counter discrimination and sought to assimilate with af rikaansor english-sounding surnames, or have had their names spelt or mangled in this manner by white government bureaucrats. professor coetzee juxtaposes the oppressed, industrious, and sexually-arousing mrs noerdien (she wears a headscarf and likely needs a male guardian, who is absent f rom the text as most oppressive, black oriental/af rican men usually are in the existential tales of white males), with benevolent jewish male figures who own an auto-parts firm (480). this is similar to the way the exoticized, sexually industrious soraya is placed opposite the disgraced and somewhat redeemed david lurie, who may also be jewish. (ms morris, for a possible etymology of the name david lurie, consider chaim potok’s 1975 novel in the beginning, with the main character being an orthodox jewish boy, david lurie, growing up in the bronx in the 1920s.) professor coetzee’s portrayals of muslim women opposite jewish men perhaps hints at what i view as his ‘flexible positional superiority’ over the orient, which is all about power and dominance ‘which puts the westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand’, as edward said argued so convincingly in orientalism, which i will discuss later with regard to ms snyckers’ novel. this is professor coetzee writing through the fictional john coetzee: ‘how does it happen that mrs noerdien, who wears a headscarf and is presumably muslim, comes to be working for a jewish firm, one where there is no male relative to keep a protective eye on her?’ professor coetzee then uses the fictional john coetzee to ask that if he were married to ‘such a woman, what would it take for a man to traverse each day the space f rom the exalted heights of the feminine to the earthly body of the female?’ (480). ms morris, i am writing at a time of much debate on the value of black lives. your company has identified this as an important moment in history in a blog post on 26 june 2020, stating: ‘in this seminal moment, remaining silent and neutral on these matters of representation and commitment to change is not an option.’ your blog talks further about developing black talent and identifying new voices through your annual open window for submissions, as long as it also makes business sense. i remain a sceptic. i have waited two years in vain to see whether your company would do something significant with regard to my work, which is eminently publishable, no matter its harsh and ‘anti-intellectual’ tone. i wrote the girl with the red flower in the manner i did as a challenge to the seemingly intelligent and ironic novels by white (and self-loathing black) authors that obscure a real love for black people. i submitted the girl with the red flower to your company during your annual ‘open window’ that you have identified as a positive mechanism to identify black voices. several questions arise: what are the obligations and ethical responsibilities of pan macmillan south af rica towards authors whose 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion work is solicited directly in this manner? i raise these questions because you had three chapters of my work and a full summary. your representatives then asked for my full manuscript, which i contend means they read my summary and were very much interested in seeing more. what follows then is that they seemingly decided to ask a white author to write a similar work. when i sent two emails to your representatives with the essay i wrote as part of my 2017 academic work, as a means to seek some clarification on your promised review, your company fell silent. so, what exactly did your representatives need to see in my full manuscript? there are similarities in our books: these include soraya’s unreliable narration in parts of the novel, and the foregrounding of a relatively minor character, although i do not consider lucy lurie to be as marginalised as soraya in disgrace: she speaks her mind, has agency, and makes her own decisions. she also has a full name and a complete family history. the other similarities between lacuna and the girl with the red flower are the focus on the life of a raped woman, her existential crisis, her involvement in legal wrangles, and having david lurie as a crooked and immoral father (in my novel david lurie is soraya’s husband) who is eventually convicted of sexual assault. the plot twist at the end of my novel, in which david lurie is found guilty of sexual assault, is repeated exactly in ms snyckers’ novel in slightly different circumstances. why was her manuscript chosen for publication over mine? in addition, the similarities extend to the critique of the largely white-controlled, publishing industry and academia; the debunking of the myth of white genocide; and in particular the critique of professor coetzee himself, who is one of many male authors who uses rape as a metaphor/allegory for political debates, apart f rom his quite orientalist and racist depictions of black people. in my view, professor coetzee is one of those super-literate writers whose orientalism is often hard to identify, but not so with disgrace. ms snyckers is less literate, but her orientalism in lacuna is equally easy to identify, although one would not think so if one reads or listens to the critics’ positive reviews of her novel. i would appreciate your company’s representatives indicating whether this is a case of some kind of excusable lack of oversight involving some of pan macmillan south af rica’s employees. there is the question of how to classify this type of conduct. ms morris, i look forward to your response to this. further, do your company’s representatives believe that a black man cannot write about a black woman’s life? or that a black man has no understanding of rape? or that a boy or man cannot be raped by a man or a woman and therefore cannot conceive of a raped person’s emotions? or does your company simply think that the lives of a muslim woman and her children and family are not worth the attention and investment? what made you choose the white author when you clearly had a choice? i believe your representatives knew well that a novel challenging a world-renowned author like professor coetzee using the ‘minorcharacter elaboration’ genre has become increasingly popular and wanted the white author to gain all the benefits that would likely accrue f rom it. i wonder then how your current contracted black authors fare in terms of your company’s advertising and marketing spend, and support for literary agency representation and publication on international markets. of course, to emphasise a point i made earlier, i argue that your representatives’ core belief was that lucy lurie was the only rape victim in disgrace and that my story of soraya was therefore not as worthy. this is what soraya thinks about how she is presented to the world by her dead former husband, david lurie, in the girl with the red flower: she is convinced this is how a rejected lover would have wanted to present her: as half a person, with no real name and her two boys, her living, breathing children, also unnamed. in this he was much like his settler forefathers who, unable to possess the land they so desired, made the people invisible – a land without people. so, like those who came before her, she became an ephemeral woman, with no history, no past, no future, and not even an existential crisis. a figure f rom the margins of history, as david ironically described his own condition. but she was beyond a further border – a figure f rom the margins of the margins of history. it is a crime he committed. not only did he shackle her with his words, he murdered her. 4 t h e t h i n k e r opinion women writers in south af rica and globally. the papers mention the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the literary world. there is much talk, and rightly so, of lucy lurie, at 124 mentions, but a lamentable lesser mention of melanie isaacs at 19, over whom there is a debate about whether she is raped or not. in contrast, there is not a single mention of soraya or mrs noerdien. in my novel the girl with the red flower, i included lucy lurie as a rape victim and as a lesbian, as professor coetzee portrayed her, with a daughter f rom her rape, anna magdalena. ms snyckers ‘unqueered’ lucy lurie and erased her former partner, helen, described in disgrace as ‘a large, sad-looking woman with a deep voice and a bad skin, older than lucy’ (58) for the purposes of exploring how a raped woman can get her libido back in an intimate relationship with a man. perhaps it would have been more insightful to ask how abused people who identify as gay or lesbian, whose narratives are often marginalised in literature, would attempt intimacy with their own partners. see ms snyckers talk about this at a panel discussion at the 2019 franschhoek literary festival: ‘the women left behind: who are feminists really fighting for? fiona snyckers and ena jansen (like family) discuss how good intentions can sometimes get in the way of impactful results in the pursuit of equality.’ strangely, none of the black women left behind by ms snyckers in lacuna, including soraya and melanie, are mentioned during the discussion. the purpose of my work was not to marginalise lucy: the issue of rape is far too important in this country to do that (although there is another view of lucy’s here she is waiting, hawking silence in the wings of a stage, for condolences or just an apology that no one is going to give. (1) ms morris, as you may know, soraya, her unnamed children, and invisible partner/husband, have been routinely ignored by academics studying professor coetzee in south af rica and around the world. a quick observation on her invisible partner/husband: as i indicated earlier, in many works by white authors, black men are either rapists, villains, general layabouts, or lifeless two-dimensional ironic representations à la professor coetzee, who need to be shunted aside so that their abused women can be saved by the rational and sensitive white/occidental/western man, as our own colonial masters had often told us. i deliberately muted the voice of the father of soraya’s children in my novel to make this point about what white authors do. on soraya’s presence in literary criticism, the academic and poet gabeba baderoon has written several insightful paragraphs in her excellent 2001 work regarding muslims (91–93). however, i do not agree with professor baderoon’s defence of professor coetzee’s portrayal of soraya. ms snyckers foregrounded characters in her novel lacuna that have received widespread attention in academia and the literary media. i am sure you know just how much has been written about the existential crisis of david lurie and the plight of lucy lurie – literally hundreds of mentions in journal and newspaper articles and books, apart f rom academics giving lectures and speaking at conferences around the world, while supervising tens of theses on professor coetzee’s oeuvre that barely mention a word about soraya. i am simply saying black lives matter too. ms morris, if you think that i am exaggerating about all this, i have a quite illustrative example that would indicate just how far this rabbit hole goes. i will summarise: sue kossew and melinda harvey of monash university in melbourne, australia, edited a collection of essays reading coetzee’s women, published by palgrave macmillan in 2019, based on the papers presented at a conference held in italy in september 2016. the papers were written by academics f rom all over the world, all admirers of professor coetzee, who himself attended and delivered a speech. the papers consider all of professor ‘coetzee’s women’ – his narrators, his characters, his relationship to 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 black men are either rapists, villains, general layabouts, or lifeless two-dimensional ironic representations à la professor coetzee, who need to be shunted aside so that their abused women can be saved by the rational and sensitive white/occidental/ western man opinion rape that i will discuss at another time). but i wanted to highlight that it was time to also write about the women of colour f rom disgrace, because no one else seemed to have done it, bar michelle cahill with her short story ‘letter to john coetzee’ in 2016 that foregrounds melanie isaacs, although professor cahill does not identify her as a raped woman. ms snyckers and her supporters do not consider melanie a rape victim, much like professor coetzee’s former student david attwell, the academic. professor attwell, who was also a participant at the italian gathering, believes david lurie is a ‘near-rapist’ despite forcing melanie to have sex with him, and her repeatedly saying ‘no’, as quoted in professor kannemeyer’s biography (559). before moving onto the specific critique of ms snyckers’ work as containing quite marked orientalist tropes, i want to quote here both professor coetzee and professor gordimer. professor coetzee, despite recognising how his own writing has been ‘deformed and stunted’ by apartheid, still continued to ironically silence and marginalise black people in disgrace. this quote is f rom his speech when accepting the jerusalem prize in 1987, twelve years before the publication of disgrace, f rom his 1992 collection of essays, doubling the point: at the heart of the unf reedom of the hereditary masters of south af rica is a failure of love. to be blunt: their love is not enough today and has not been enough since they arrived on the continent; furthermore, their talk, their excessive talk, about how they love south af rica has consistently been directed toward the land, that is, toward what is least likely to respond to love: mountains and deserts, birds and animals and flowers. (97) and this is what professor gordimer had to say about love and professor coetzee’s disgrace as quoted in professor kannemeyer’s biography: now in this elegantly and powerfully written novel there is no deep feeling (except, maybe…selfdisgust), no love, until there is a need to put down a stray dog, the feeling for which is the sole lifeaffirmative emotion for anyone or anything in the professor. (562) ms morris, i will now move onto the part of my letter that deals with what i consider to be the quiet violence of orientalist nostalgia and ‘privileged white feminism’ because what writers do on the page, and publishers do in the boardroom, to vilify or marginalise or erase, can certainly be considered violence of a social, cultural, and economic sort. this entire argument is contained to some degree in my 2017 essay and novel, and is supported by danyela demir and lucy valerie graham in their articles published in september 2019 and march 2020 respectively. i need not repeat all their arguments. i choose here part of dr demir’s argument in her review of ms snyckers’ work: ‘who is the real gap?: reviewing fiona snyckers lacuna’, which appeared in the thinker volume 81, published in the third quarter of 2019. dr demir states clearly that in disgrace: ‘the lacuna is not the white woman as snyckers would have us believe. coetzee’s lacuna is the voice of the black woman and the woman of colour: soraya, melanie, and a nameless black sex worker, who david picks up f rom the side of the road towards the end of the novel, are the voiceless, the women without agency (73).’ further, dr demir points out how ‘lucy’s ordeal is 247 pages long while melanie’s rape is referred to as a ‘misunderstanding’’ (73). i make this same point in chapter two of the girl with the red flower with soraya thinking (the italics are indicative of soraya’s thoughts) about her dead husband david lurie and identifying melanie isaacs as a rape victim: does anyone want to know how many times that doos david mentioned me in his overrated story but never even gave my full name? thirty times. even byron’s dead teresa is mentioned more than me at forty-six, and gets a surname and whole family history. melanie, that student girl he raped, is at seventy-three. bev shaw, his married girlf riend, is at ninety-three. and how many times did he mention animals? also more than me at thirty-seven. and dogs? wanna take a wild guess? one-hundred-and-forty-one-fucking-times. i’ve counted, gone through every godforsaken page, that’s how i know. (18) i have added to the critiques by dr demir and dr graham by identifying soraya as equally, if not more, marginalised than melanie, and as a victim of rape because of the structural inequalities and violence in south af rica that force young women to sell their 6 t h e t h i n k e r opinion orientalism, which are ‘knowledge and power’. this is how the late professor said rightly describes it in his seminal 1979 work orientalism, which he uses as an example of how this was used by colonial administrators, including arthur james balfour and lord ‘over-baring’ cromer, as justification for the imperialist enterprise or mission civilisatrice in egypt and elsewhere (32). this followed the work of those eminent scholars silvestre de sacy and ernst renan, two of their era’s leading anti-semites, erudite thinkers to a degree but lacking in their love for arabs, muslims, and jews. they are, i argue, some of professor coetzee’s literary forefathers, in setting up an orientalist genre that allowed the rational and civilized occident to study and then represent in journals, novels, poetry, and travel writing the barbaric, violent, and irrational orient and af rica. the whole idea that ms snyckers reinforces here is that to have knowledge of a thing is to ‘dominate it, to have authority over it’, as professor said describes it (32). this means ms snyckers’ intelligent, academically trained lucy lurie knows the minds of these people f rom degraded civilizations and belief systems. in addition, they are not af rican like the other real af ricans whom she refers to later, and to whom she looks for an education on rape and abuse. these orientals, ms snyckers argues, can easily be countered with the understanding and rationality of the white feminist, who reads this post about the protests of muslim women quite calmly, or as a ‘soothing’ read, as she puts it. further, it is not enough for ms snyckers to simply dismiss muslim women, those half-literate and invisible orientals who are not feminists like white feminists. she then goes on to set part of her novel in a run-down bo-kaap (a historically largely muslim neighbourhood, as i have indicated previously), which is not populated by any real people, only poor, uneducated souls, with one clearly uneducated guard character speaking in the vernacular, or her version of it, of kaaps, which ms snyckers mocks through lucy lurie, and then says that she knows exactly what she is doing and that she cannot participate in ‘blackface’ (269). apart f rom ms snyckers ‘knowing’ exactly how to speak like this person, one can reasonably ask here: would ms snyckers have dared to mimic/mock bodies to make a living, risking not only their physical and mental health but also that of their families, particularly if they are mothers like soraya, and possibly married, as professor coetzee has suggested with his portrayal of soraya in disgrace. in addition, i want to argue that ms snyckers, having knowingly marginalised soraya, the one muslim woman in disgrace, then makes a revealingly orientalist statement through the character lucy lurie about muslim women, indicating that she as a white feminist knows exactly what is on the minds of these nameless and faceless muslim women, f rom some imaginary, homogenous group that she has concocted in her mind. this is much like the manner in which the superior western occidental considers and represents the homogenous orient despite the dizzying diversity of ancient cultures and languages in af rica, the middle east, and the far east. reasonable questions to ask are these: what muslim women is ms snyckers referring to, whom lucy lurie can so easily identify and label, and whose thoughts she can read? are they feminists f rom muslim/asian/ oriental/arab/mideast/north af rican/brown/black backgrounds like several of her fellow writers at pan macmillan south af rica and journalists currently working in the media? or does ms snyckers want to go further back to the older generation of activists, like the late fatima meer, many of whom have ancestry traced to asia and arabia? what, also, does ms snyckers think of men of this above category, or are they of a brutish type, of no intellectual consequence and easily brushed aside? this is what ms snyckers has lucy lurie say in lacuna: i retreat into the world of my phone, scrolling through social media posts and news sites. it is a soothing world. everything that appears in my feed is designed to reinforce my world view. i permit no cognitive dissonance to intrude. it is a world i can lose myself in for hours. i am in the middle of reading about ‘10 things that muslim women wish white feminists would stop doing’ when i become aware of a weight descending onto the bench next to me. it is a policewoman. she is fanning herself with a manila folder. (2019: 161) what ms snyckers tries to say here about muslim women highlights the ‘two great themes’ of 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion the accent of a ‘real’ af rican, say a xhosa-speaking person, in the same manner? this is similar to professor coetzee’s orientalist depiction of soraya, in the opening pages of disgrace, as uneducated and having no moral compass, similar to the ways in which professor coetzee portrays all the other black characters throughout the novel (and in many of his other novels), including the sly and villainous petrus and the mentally deficient pollux. in disgrace, this is how professor coetzee has david lurie describe soraya: in bed soraya is not effusive. her temperament is in fact rather quiet, quiet and docile. in her general opinions she is surprisingly moralistic. she is offended by tourists who bare their breasts (‘udders’, she calls them) on public beaches; she thinks vagabonds should be rounded up and put to work sweeping the streets. how she reconciles her opinions with her line of business he does not ask. (1) further, ms snyckers and professor coetzee adopt a position of superiority or ‘architecture moralisée’, as the late linda nochlin described it in her seminal essay ‘the imaginary orient’ which analyses french orientalist painters including jean-léon gérôme through the lens of professor said’s orientalist arguments. professor coetzee places the naked and desirable soraya in the sparsely furnished, lifeless, and seedy flat at windsor mansions in green point, cape town; ms snyckers goes much further by describing bo-kaap as quite empty of muslim people, rundown and neglected, in their colourful houses, an imaginary bo-kaap that hardly fits the reality of the diversity of the community. as professor nochlin states in the may 1993 edition of the magazine art in america: the lesson is subtle, perhaps, but still eminently available, given a context of similar topoi; these people – lazy, slothful and childlike, if colourful – have let their own cultural treasures sink into decay. there is a clear allusion here, clothed in the language of the objective reportage, not merely to the mystery of the east, but to the barbaric insouciance of moslem peoples, who quite literally charm snakes while constantinople falls into ruins. (123) dear ms morris, i will have to end here, for the time being. i have so much more to say about the publishing industry, the continued depictions of imaginary backward af rican and oriental peoples, and of course about soraya. i hope we can initiate a conversation that would delve into these issues and find solutions that would benefit the industry and society. sincerely, waghied a.w. misbach references baderoon, g. (2014). regarding muslims: from slavery to postapartheid. johannesburg: wits university press. kindle edition. coetzee, j.m. (2000). disgrace. london: vintage. kindle edition. coetzee, j.m. (2011). scenes from provincial life. london: penguin. kindle edition. coetzee, j.m. (1992). doubling the point: essays and interviews. london: harvard university press. demir, d. (2019). ‘who is the real ‘gap’? reviewing fiona snyckers’ lacuna’. the thinker, issue 81, quarter three. [online] available at: http://www.thethinker.co.za/resources/thinker_81/81%20demir.pdf graham, l.v. (2020). ‘intercepting disgrace: lacuna and ‘letter to john coetzee’’. safundi, 21:2, 166–175. [online] available at: https://doi.org/10.10 80/17533171.2020.1728956 kannemeyer, j.c. (2012). ‘n geskryfde lewe. jeppestown: jonathan ball publishers. misbach, a.w. (2017). the girl with the red flower. university of the western cape. [online] available at: http://etd.uwc. a c . z a / b i t s t rea m / h a n d l e / 1 1 3 9 4 / 5 8 8 4 / m i s b a c h _ m a _ a r t s _ 2 0 1 7. pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y nochlin, l. (1983). the imaginary orient. art in america. pp. 118–131, pp. 187–191. [online] available at: https://aestheticapperceptions.files. wordpress.com/2013/01/nochlin_imaginary_orient.pdf said, e. (1979). orientalism. new york: vintage books. snyckers, f. (2019). lacuna. johannesburg: pan macmillan south africa. kindle edition. 8 t h e t h i n k e r opinion our small team is unable to read all of the submissions received in an open submission period. as a result, we recruit a wider team of readers, both in-house and f reelance, to aid us in the reading and review process. these readers are provided with guidelines but we do rely on their input and initiative. it was one of our trusted f reelance readers who brought the initial submission of lacuna to our attention and then recommended the manuscript to us for a closer look after she had reviewed the material received. we have been aware of the shortcomings in the administration of our open submission process. as a result, we have taken steps to ensure that the opportunity for would-be authors is managed more effectively and closely to deal with the high number of submissions we receive. pan macmillan is only able to publish four or five novels a year owing to our capacity and the relatively small consumer market for local novels. we don’t therefore claim to have a flawless system and a model whereby we are able to publish as widely as we would like, but we do endeavour to provide a platform for diverse voices. a look at the fiction titles we have published over the past few years showcases a broad range of south af rican authors, and several of the novels published have gone on to win awards. finally, we note your critique of lacuna and disgrace; each of these novels has provoked diverse reactions f rom readers and critics. and that is, at heart, what we hope our fiction publishing contributes to: a local literary landscape that allows for a range of responses, questions, reflections and critique, which enrich the reading experience for all. yours sincerely terry morris on behalf of the publishing team dear mr misbach in acknowledgement of your open letter to be published in the the thinker, pan macmillan south af rica appreciates this opportunity to respond where appropriate to some of the issues you raise. we apologise unreservedly for the lack of followup in 2018 to the email you received requesting the full manuscript of the girl with the red flower. we have a small local publishing team made up of three full-time employees and we make use of the services of a few f reelancers, who understand our publishing ethos and commercial imperatives. the open submission period you refer to in 2018 is not one that we are proud of in terms of how it was managed. the in-house employee who was overseeing the submission process resigned and left the company at the end of august 2018. this departure unfortunately led to several tasks not being effectively followed up or completed, including the open submission period. there were several would-be authors, yourself included, who heard nothing more f rom us on their full manuscript submissions, which were not read or reviewed any further. this is extremely unprofessional, and it is a failure we acknowledge, which is why we offer our sincere apologies in this regard. it is important for us to comment further on two related points. the first is that as publishers we absolutely guarantee and protect the intellectual property of the works and the authors who submit material to us. each manuscript is unique to an author and there is no sharing of concepts or ideas between projects. we wouldn’t have a business model if we didn’t prioritise this. the second point, which is related, is that however flawed our open submission process was in 2018, pan macmillan received the full manuscript of lacuna by fiona snyckers a few days after the girl with the red flower via the same open submission process. we do therefore feel that the accusation levelled against us that ‘what follows then is that they seemingly decided to ask a white author to write a similar work’ is untrue, unsubstantiated and unfair to pan macmillan and, more importantly, to fiona snyckers as an author, who had spent several years crafting lacuna before submitting the manuscript to pan macmillan. 9v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion feb 2021 response to terry morris’ response racism and islamophobia probe of pan macmillan sa urged full transparency and revelation of all facts in the public interest dear ms morris, in response to your letter i acknowledge with reservations your unreserved apology for the manner in which the girl with the red flower disappeared without trace during your company’s open window period in 2018, while fiona snyckers’ deeply flawed work on the same subject and in the same genre was published. your explanation leaves several unanswered questions on transparency, which i believe is a disservice to me and the public. i have rightly asked you several probing questions, sketching out possible scenarios of what may have happened, concerning the circumstances around the disappearance of the girl with the red flower. and i have asked you about lacuna’s possible conversation with and similarities to the girl with the red flower because ms snyckers was aware of my work in 2018, months before lacuna’s april 2019 publication (i have the screenshots f rom facebook that attest to this, if you need to see them). you have now responded rejecting some of these possible scenarios that i posed. i believe i am the aggrieved party who had my manuscript lost, so i can also adopt my journalist hat to ask any further follow-up questions, in a bid to get access to all the facts for an interested public. as a follow-up, i believe it is in the public interest for pan macmillan south af rica to launch a thorough independent probe on issues of process, representation and inclusion, including whether racism and islamophobia exists within pan macmillan south af rica and then to publish the full f indings. this would allow your readers/consumers to know the full details of what transpired, so that we can retain our trust in the intellectual products you produce with your suppliers/collaborators. i propose that this probe should include all your f reelancers and editors, especially those involved intimately with lacuna. these are some of the questions i believe you should answer in the public interest: who read my initial submission and made the assessment of the manuscript for further review? who was this assessment sent to for approval and communication with me? was this a senior person? if not, do you have junior employees making such decisions? you point out that one of your ‘trusted f reelance readers’ flagged ms snyckers’ work, can you indicate who read my work? you say that the in-house employee who left at the end of august 2018 coordinated the submission process, but my email correspondence included one of your most senior executives, namely sandile nkosi, who is still with your organisation and is responsible for editorial coordination, which i assume happens at regular editorial meetings. i would like to know why ms nkosi did not flag my work to publisher andrea nattrass, as would be expected f rom a senior employee. ms morris, in your probe of racism and islamophobia and institutionalised forgetting, i would urge you to ask why ms snyckers mentioned my work for the f irst time only on 1 february 2021, referring to ‘an unpublished novel’ without naming me or the title, in her interview and webinar with sarah mosoetsa, chief executive off icer of the national institute for the humanities and social sciences. what is further worrying to me is that ms snyckers did not acknowledge that soraya and melanie are rape victims. she simply said to professor mosoetsa that they are the ‘marginalised’ women f rom disgrace. ms morris, this photoshopping of the black women f rom disgrace by ms snyckers and pan macmillan south af rica is mirrored by the almost unanimous agreement by the critics. it is perhaps important to place this all on record, to show how pervasive it was. this is what black people have to contend with on a daily basis, which has become so entrenched that some of us black people even partake in it. of course, many of us do so for the obvious reason of survival, to literally put bread on the table. 10 t h e t h i n k e r opinion frame on 15 may 2019 with ‘lacuna disputes the rape narrative of disgrace’, states that professor coetzee’s lucy has ‘an absence of real agency’, but does not recognize the other agency-less black women. eusebius mckaiser, the former radio host, also had unqualif ied praise for lacuna, in interviews with ms snyckers in 2018 and 2019 while offering no incisive commentary on or even naming the missing black women. also following this narrative was radio host jenny crwys-williams. ms morris, i will now return to the probe i have proposed. i believe it is perfectly reasonable for pan macmillan south af rica’s investigation to determine the views of both ms snyckers and helen moffett, her editor, in producing a work about the female character lucy lurie (whose religious beliefs are not identif ied clearly), of a muslim like me writing about a clearly muslim female character. this question goes to the heart of the issue of representation and inclusion that pan macmillan south af rica and others are grappling with as blacks and muslims across the world are being marginalised and slaughtered. pan macmillan south af rica should ask ms snyckers and dr moffett why they think it is acceptable to single out (or ghettoise) and then render invisible and nameless muslim women in relation to white women and the feminist lucy lurie. why not single out, and name, melanie isaacs (clearly identif ied in professor coetzee’s disgrace as christian but not so in lacuna) in the same way? ms morris, unconsciously or likely quite consciously, i argue that ms snyckers and dr moffett are here clearly drawing on the ideological work of the late bernard lewis and his much-touted essay ‘the roots of muslim rage’ that appeared in the atlantic in september 1990. dr lewis’ work then inspired the late samuel huntington’s 1993 questioning essay ‘the clash of civilisations?’ and later 1996 book with the emphatic title the clash of civilisations. these works have been used as intellectual backing for various imperialist adventures in the middle east; and further bolster the notion of dr lewis that the judeo-christian civilisation was under threat f rom islam, meaning muslims and arabs. it now ms snyckers mentioned to professor mosoetsa about other writers who had responded to disgrace in the past, without naming them. this includes elleke boehmer’s short-story collection sharmilla, and other portraits published in 2010. there is clearly an allusion here to a sex worker f rom cape town in professor boehmer’s work. but what is most remarkable is that professor boehmer does not mention sharmilla or soraya in her essay published as part of the reading coetzee’s women collection of essays that i mentioned to you in my original letter. in addition, sharmilla is not mentioned in professor boehmer’s biography published at the f ront of the book, although her 2019 second short story collection is mentioned. there is a further purge of soraya (melanie gets two mentions) in academic richard alan northover’s ‘lucy’s precarious privilege in fiona snyckers’ lacuna’. professor northover defends ms snyckers as being a critic of white privilege, which is similar to the arguments supporting professor coetzee’s disgrace over the past twenty years. in litnet on 10 july 2019, publisher and author karina magdalena szczurek (wife of the late andre brink, who himself responded to disgrace), erases her black sisters f rom disgrace. there is a similar glowing tribute f rom author nthikeng mohlele in ‘a novel response to disgrace’, in the mail & guardian on 12 april 2019, who also renders invisible his black sisters. another positive short review is f rom wellknown author lauren beukes, who declared on the pan macmillan south af rica facebook page on 30 august 2019: ‘fiona snyckers’ novel lacuna is furious and incandescent, told f rom the perspective of the rape survivor in [j.m.] coetzee’s disgrace. it deserves to win all the awards.’ ms beukes clearly thinks that there is only one rape survivor in disgrace. another positive review is by jonathan amid ‘disgrace op sy kop gedraai’ on 8 july 2019 in beeld who also makes no mention of the black raped women f rom disgrace. in the same vein is the rapport review on 16 june 2019 of fanie olivier, the translator of disgrace into af rikaans (titled ’n oneer) with ‘verkragte vrou praat hier terug’. reviewer lloyd gedye, in new 11v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion appears that this is how ms snyckers views lucy on one side, versus soraya and her muslim/arab ‘rage’ on the other. ms morris, what i am essentially arguing here is that ms snyckers and pan macmillan south af rica are appearing to indulge in a discredited ideology under the guise of progressive liberalism. words and representations do matter. this raises the obvious question of ms snyckers’ political aff inities, as well as those of pan macmillan’s south af rica’s ‘trusted’ f reelance reader who had flagged her book as important in the f irst place. ms snyckers raises the issue of the attitude of muslim women toward white women. why not now ask what she feels about muslims, arabs and palestinians and the continued violation of their human rights? i must say, ms morris, that i am not surprised by the insouciant tone of moral equivalence and flexible positional superiority that pervade your letter. i suppose this is to be expected considering how you described lacuna on twitter on 7 october 2020 when ms snyckers won the novel prize at the national institute for the humanities and social sciences awards: ‘what a book – congratulations @fionasnyckers! adding to [the] evening’s excitement level.’ it seems fairly obvious that you have decided that the white voice is the superior one to bolster what appears to be your small, book-buying white public, and that black voices, bar the outstanding individual performers (in your assessment of course), is to simply make up the numbers in your publication list. i want to emphasise the commitment to diversity and inclusion and the pledge adopted by your parent company in september 2020. for the benef it of the uninformed, i will quote a short extract f rom the ‘the pan macmillan diversity and inclusion pledge and associated action plan – september 2020’. we believe that racism and prejudice of many kinds are still insidious in our societies and that these issues must be effectively addressed. there is an urgent need for individuals, and companies such as ours, to be better allies and equitable employers to poc [people of colour] staff, authors and illustrators, to educate ourselves on issues of racism and prejudice, and to commit to sustained and effective action to oppose racism and ensure that it has no place at pan macmillan. ms morris, i look forward to further interaction but considering your response, i am not conf ident at all that you will make more than just cosmetic changes. i hope i am wrong. best, waghied. a.w. misbach 12 t h e t h i n k e r opinion abstract this essay on william kentridge’s ideas and practice, in particular regarding his multi-media theatrical works, was prompted by a visit to zeitz mocaa to see his retrospective in 2019. watching a documentary on the making of the ‘the head and the load’, i was struck by the production’s f renzied energy, and the exhaustive attempt to break down any predictive or conclusive vision. this has always been kentridge’s approach – his animated works are exercises in a deconstructive erasure. i have addressed this matter elsewhere, in my essay ‘faith in a practical epistemology: on collective creativity in theatre’ (predicaments of culture in south af rica, 2005), but on this occasion, while watching the documentary, it was nietzsche’s view in contra wagner which proved the trigger, namely, that ‘wagner’s art is sick. the problems he brings to the stage – purely hysteric’s problems – the convulsiveness of his affects, his over-charged sensibility … the instability he disguises as a principle’. while kentridge does not share wagner’s reactionary ideology, i argue that there is a connection between the two whose root lies in a decadent sensibility. and the peculiarly late-modern western crisis that underlies it. the necessary accidental by ashraf jamal | peer review 4v o l u m e 8 7 / 2 0 2 1 peer review peer review if kentridge’s art is symptomatic, it is because it reveals illness. it tells us what we are, or what we are fast becoming. the reveal, however, is never stated. it is implicit. implicated. one enters trouble, engages in discord. it is the symptom articulated as art, as experience, that we absorb. introduction ‘wagner est une névrose,’ nietzsche declared (turner, 2014: 258). we know what people in glass houses shouldn’t do, but nietzsche never cared for censorship. when he damned wagner in his broadside, contra wagner (1889), it came at a great cost to himself. it was his third book on the composer, and his last. there, for the first time, he concludes that ‘wagner’s art is sick. the problems he brings to the stage— purely hysterics’ problems—the convulsiveness of his affects, his over-charged sensibility, his taste that craves stronger and stronger spices, the instability he disguises as a principle … presents a clinical picture which leaves no room for doubt’ (turner, 2014: 258). i am no clinician, but i think we can agree that wagner is a neurosis, a gateway drug for nationalist extremism and fascism, phenomena that are omnipresent today. it is intriguing that against extremism, nietzsche should champion bizet, a composer he found more soothing, more human—more ‘af rican’ (nietzsche, 2016: 182). that nietzsche was also ill when he wrote contra wagner does not diminish the force of his insight. that his own thinking would be distorted by his sister to mirror the man he eventually loathed is a curse he could not avoid. ‘i am just as much a child of my age as wagner—i am a decadent,’ said nietzsche, ‘the only difference is that i recognised the fact, that i struggled against it’. his judgement of wagner is also a judgement of himself. most of all, it is a judgement against their age. kentridge is no wagner. he doesn’t share the composer’s diseased fascination for myth or his extremist views. and yet, working my way through the kentridge retrospective (which spans over forty years) at the zeitz museum of contemporary art af rica (mocaa), it is nietzsche’s third critique of wagner that resurfaces. it is the immensity of the scale, the density and intensity of the experience, that leaves me dumbfounded and aghast. blockbuster shows do this to me. they dissipate far more than they articulate, preoccupied as they are with ensuring that the viewer exits the scene with their bruised head ringing— hobbled, hocked, reverent. after two hours standing in f ront of a small screen watching a documentary on the making of the head & the load (2018)—its theme the tragic fate of af rican soldiers, largely deployed as load-bearers in the first world war—it is nietzsche’s concern for the ‘convulsiveness’ of affect; the ‘overcharged sensibility’; the ‘taste that craves stronger and stronger spices’; the ‘instability’ that disguises itself as ‘principle,’ that comes flooding back. i withdraw f rom the screen, exhausted, overwhelmed, and like nietzsche, longing for the therapeutic calm bizet affords. ‘bizet’s music seems to me perfect,’ wrote nietzsche. ‘it comes forward lightly, gracefully, stylishly. it is lovable, it does not sweat’ (nietzsche, 2016: 182). kentridge’s music (and here i’m speaking of its mechanics), his shadow puppetry, his voice-songsound, his light projection, and his living bodies (as further prostheses), are diametrically other. kentridge conf ronts us with the destabilisation of the senses, the routing of causality and the embrace of what the german poet novalis (a.k.a. friedrich von hardenberg) termed ‘the necessary-accidental’. discomposure is the thing; art the nightmare f rom which we cannot awaken. derived f rom a ghanaian proverb—‘the head and the load are the troubles of the neck’ (kentridge, 2014: 28)—the drama, first staged at the tate modern in 2018, introduces us to the stressors that inform the work’s theme and making. i realise that, after nassim nicholas taleb, this production is ‘anti-f ragile’, a thing ‘that gains f rom disorder’. as writes taleb, ‘everything that does not like volatility does not like stressors, harm, chaos, events, disorder, ‘unforeseen’ consequences, uncertainty, and critically, time’ (2013: 12). the head & the load, however, is defined precisely by these invasive conditions. they are not conceived as anomalies. they are core elements in the making and experience thereof. the necessary-accidental is the artist’s engine-room. if the ghanaian proverb is fitting it is because, for kentridge, the problem—be it 5 t h e t h i n k e r the making of a work or the history that informs it— is in the head, the load it carries, and the neck that struggles to support it. physical and psychological, this burden finds its echo in nietzsche’s reading of the culture wagner embodies as decadent and neurotic. the key difference, however, is that kentridge never enshrines the problem or reduces it to a fetish. as the art dealer jeff poe remarked, ‘our business is to sell symptoms articulated as objects’ (thornton, 2008: 187). a symptom is a physical or mental manifestation of illness. it is a telling term when applied to art—what it does, how it works. if kentridge’s art is symptomatic, it is because it reveals illness. it tells us what we are, or what we are fast becoming. the reveal, however, is never stated. it is implicit. implicated. one enters trouble, engages in discord. it is the symptom articulated as art, as experience, that we absorb. if art has become a global opiate, this is certainly why. it is an intoxicant, a distraction for a world distracted by distraction. whether good or ill, art as an answer to life is a charged debate. in the case of kentridge, what interests me is why and how the artist arrived at that point of near hysteria—his own, but more importantly, the global hysteria that his art symptomatically expresses. when nietzsche declared that wagner is a neurosis, it was not the man he was solely assessing, but what he culturally represents. if kentridge represents a neurosis, it should be understood similarly. the root of the problem, which kentridge strives to convert into a strength, lies in the society that fostered his genius. here i am not only talking about south af rica, but the f retwork of empire and european influence upon which it is crucially founded. one cannot think of kentridge’s work outside of europe and empire. the ‘decadence’ which nietzsche failed to survive is also kentridge’s inheritance. it is a decadence that remains with us, that defines us. we are all ‘une névrose’. the art we make, live alongside, and inhabit is symptomatic of a cruel, unloving, and f renetic age that will not allow for the glitch that is bizet—a place for calm, for love. if wagner is kentridge’s thither world—the dark side which stalks us all—it is not bizet but henri bergson who is his corrective. ‘to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly,’ bergson writes (malarkey & pearson, 2014: 7). change (as a condition for making) is central to kentridge’s practice. it allows us to endure the load we fail to carry. for kentridge, this failing is not an error. it is inevitable. making is always an unmaking. nothing holds because nothing is fixed. time not only evolves; it reverts, flips, folds, comes asunder. we exist in snarled and ravaged bits and pieces. unlike wagner, kentridge is unmoved by predestination. there is no assigned point at which a being or work arrives. if the volatility built into a work can be said to err on the side of hysteria, it is not solely such. between anxiety and hysteria lies an infinity of symptoms. but what cannot be doubted is kentridge’s attentiveness to some or other complaint. sickness is the crux; art its manifestation (and, if you are an optimist, its antidote). *** whether kentridge’s art can save us depends on one’s understanding of what is happening, and whether resolution has a part to play in a given work’s structuring of feeling or affect. my view is that kentridge refuses closure. beginnings and endings are interruptions. movement is peripatetic. nevertheless, there is a method that is intuitive. one knows this, not because of kentridge’s distinctive signature—what his work looks like—but because of what it does, how it moves. if his art appears to bind it is because of the vitality with which it is infused, its energy (which, as i’ve noted, is nerve-wracked and raw). if a work appears to complete itself it does so under duress, as though thrust beneath a guillotine. the cut is visible; the f ragment torn, sutured, cut again. or dissolved, pooled, dissolved again. that some have insisted on resolution in the face of dissolution is perplexing. after bergson, i can only agree by conceiving kentridge’s works as ‘open wholes’ or subjunctive propositions. in his reading of bergson, gilles deleuze notes that ‘movement only occurs if the whole is neither given nor giveable. as soon as a whole is given to one in the eternal order of forms or poses … there is no longer room for real movement’ (2004: 7). this qualification is vital. as i understand it, one must intuit incompleteness as a critical part of the creative act. the ‘forms or pose’ a work assumes cannot succumb to the idea of itself. it must understand its aggregative existence within an unfinished schema. to suppose, as many do, that kentridge’s ‘forms or poses’ are iconic is to mistake their meaning and thrust the artist into a realm he refuses—that of mythic or symbolic art. an object (be it a megaphone, tripod, pruning shears, or 6v o l u m e 8 7 / 2 0 2 1 peer review coffeepot) is never reducible to itself. neither is it a symbol for some greater metaphysic. their purpose in a given situation is always-already provisional. their movements are never over-determined. rather, it is change—duration, movement, volatility—that matters. it is not what something is or what it represents, but what it does. if kentridge’s art is never closed (always open), this is because his intuitive method sees a solution as a ligature in a schema that remains intrinsically incomplete. *** no south af rican artist surpasses kentridge’s achievement. this is the message that tolls as i work my way through two encyclopaedic retrospectives, staged between 2019 and 2020 at the norval foundation and zeitz mocaa. if the norval showing had the languid elegance of a bizet score, it was hysteria that distinguished its display at zeitz mocaa. this agitation—most evident in kentridge’s films and dramas—was further amplified by the building that housed them. it is not that i seek to distinguish the event f rom its placement (they mirror and feed off each other). my point, however, is that zeitz mocaa is a sick building. it was once a grain silo, a locus for imperial trade. it was re-conceived by thomas heatherwick. the grain it once housed would prove the kernel for its redesign. in the end, however, the change was more cosmetic than substantive. it was more of a conceit, an idea about itself, than a genuine attempt at making the structure functional for the display of art. instead, it collapses under its hubris. once you have passed the awe and glamour that informs its towering atrium, through heavy-twinned, white hospital doors that divide an incoherent warren of rooms, lacking in oxygen, it is as though one has entered an unwholesome sanatorium. the building does not care for art. it cares for itself and its vainglorious statement: ‘look at me!’ the sixth-floor restaurant with its bug-eyed windows overlooking the harbour and atlantic ocean is the only other valve that allows one to breathe. if art must palpate the mind, move it between sickness and health, then zeitz mocaa is infected by the former while the norval foundation, with its acres of glass, its cathedral-like heart and lilting sequence of anterooms, achieves the latter. one can breathe and contemplate. if wagner and bizet are the two chambers in nietzsche’s mind, they find their mirror in the bipolarity of these exhibition spaces, and the differing stories they tell about the artist’s work and the age and culture it reflects. this is not to say that kentridge is solely subject to his time. on the contrary, his influences span millennia. but it is the splicing of past and present, and, more significantly, kentridge’s response to decadence—a culture spanning the latenineteenth century to the present—that is his surest focus. *** the american ethnographer, james clifford, wrote that the world became permanently surreal after the first world war (1988: 119). this is because it realised essences to be inessential, absolutes a mockery, betrayal a condition for living. at the root of the fall lies trauma. modernism, kentridge’s greatest resource, is the outcome of this trauma. nietzsche of course predicted it, as he predicted the persistence of conflict, the rise of fascism, and the toxicity of consensus and political correctness. it is within this trauma, and the neurosis it generates, that kentridge positions his art. his global celebrity, like the herculean joint retrospective, is a pyrrhic victory. the spoils of success are never the main concern but the ‘main complaint’—symptoms of a project forever protracted and unfinished. what matters is never the thing itself (let alone the accolades thrust upon it), but its processual articulation, and the inarticulacy built into that process—a work’s ever-changing changeling quality; how things accrete, moulder, blur, waver, morph, sicken. in the snare of making, the outcome cannot be predicted. the reason for its existence, trauma, is key. it asks that we suspend judgement. it is not what we want f rom a thing that matters, but what it wants, the anthropomorphic force that drives it. for bergson, it is this force which accounts for the molten power that is change. this is why, for kentridge, canonisation is akin to death. as for the system that rigs a work’s monetary value? therein lies madness. what matters far more, and what distinguishes kentridge’s oeuvre, is its irresolute avidity. the artist does not make things. he makes questions. whether static or mobile, his art is performative. it does not re-enact the reason for its existence, but existence itself, a condition for which any answer must be peremptory. 7 t h e t h i n k e r peer review guide, no segue f rom room to room, can account for his output in any resolute fashion. the artist does not memorialise what he does. as he has roundly declared, ‘i am only an artist, my job is to make drawings, not to make sense.’ if he acknowledges that his work appears ‘quaint,’ this is not the price one pays for looking backwards. if he repeatedly draws a 1950s bakelite telephone, it does not mean that he is being nostalgic. as he reminds christov-bakargiev, ‘the lines of communication are contemporary even though the instruments are old.’ and as j.m. coetzee further notes in his essay on the history of the main complaint (1999): it would be a mistake to conclude … that kentridge’s films are about a past era. a more likely explanation is that he simply finds the look, the style, the heft of those times congenial, perhaps also the mode of power then (centralised, dictatorial) is easier to image. there may even be a component of nostalgia in the backward look, as long as we recognise a certain loathing mixed in with the attachment (and is not the mix of loathing and attachment what defines obsession?) (1999: 87). coetzee’s qualification is vital to understanding kentridge’s mechanics of erasure, its roots in psychopathy, and its obsessive-compulsive expression. in kentridge’s world, nostalgia begets its comeuppance; the contemporary its conceit. he defines his polemic of uncertainty—through the act of drawing—as ‘a model for knowledge’ (christovbakargiev, 1999: 8). this model is never absolute. ‘what ends in certainty does not begin that way.’ therein lies our decadent late-modern paradox. what as bergson notes, ‘intuition is a method of feeling one’s way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it’ (benke, 2000: 28). by aligning method with feeling, the french philosopher evokes the systemic and its refusal. one needs both for something to work. a condition must be posited as an expressive act that can be overridden, broken down, rendered inexpressible. for if, as bergson resumes, ‘reality’ is thought to impact ‘directly on our senses and our consensus’—if a ‘direct communication’ can be said to exist ‘between the material world and ourselves’— then ‘art would be unnecessary’. for bergson and kentridge, there can be no collective agreement as to the meaning or value of anything. bergson’s aphorism—‘act like a man of thought and think like a man of action’ (malarkey and pearson, 2014: 457)—is an acute distillation of the kentridgean paradox. for the artist, thought and action are an affair, embroiled and ceaselessly interactive. nietzsche’s notion of the ‘physiological’ thought is also fitting in this regard, because what matters is a thought’s embodied articulation as an inscrutable feeling (2007: 34). it is not that one cannot (or should not) posit some rule for understanding what kentridge makes and does; it is that one should always acknowledge that such an endeavour is perilous. for kentridge, ‘vulnerability and the process of growth’ are ‘continuous acts of transition.’ he opposes the ‘sensation … of discovery’ and, with specific reference to charcoal, notes ‘the imperfection of erasure.’ elsewhere, he ponders why ‘passion can be so fleeting and memory so shortlived.’ emotionally, intellectually, and artistically, kentridge negates the fixities of place and time which a retrospective may suppose. he challenges each and every attempt to fix his art as something monumental, or worse, as a window onto a country’s history. rather, kentridge puts categorical imperatives under erasure. this process is both aesthetic and ethical. in the artist’s world, the two are inseparable. together they form ‘a polemic for a kind of uncertainty,’ he notes in a conversation with carolyn christov-bakargiev. ‘neither programme nor chance’ can define a given project. after stéphane mallarmé (or more recently, taleb), hazard always comes in the way of system, and the error factored into it (2006: 161–81). it would therefore be reasonable to question any parenthetical f raming of kentridge’s oeuvre. no 8v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the root of the problem, which kentridge strives to convert into a strength, lies in the society that fostered his genius. here i am not only talking about south africa, but the fretwork of empire and european influence upon which it is crucially founded. one cannot think of kentridge’s work outside of europe and empire. matters to kentridge is ‘the unwilling suspension of disbelief’ (christov-bakargiev, 1999: 19). this inversion of a prevailing view points to a non-aligned and highly ambivalent relationship to the finite meaning of an image, thought, or experience. kentridge’s relationship to politics is just as indeterminate— ‘concerned but distanced.’ this is because the artist has always had a strange relationship with the familiar, and a familiar relationship with the strange. this curious vertigo allows for belonging and nonbelonging. it gives his art its querulous, suspended, and cryptic quality. in ‘landscape in a state of siege’ (1988), kentridge strips af rica of a putative innocence before colonialism. instead, he affirms the ‘strange contradictory relationship between western conquest and the tribalism that still endures.’ against the ‘edenic’—akin to the ‘plague of the picturesque’—kentridge speaks of a ceaseless dismembering; a layering of history upon history which renders impossible the desire to fix or separate the past f rom the present: in the same way that there is a human act of dismembering the past … there is a natural process in the terrain through erosion, growth, dilapidation that also seeks to blot out events. in south af rica, this process has other dimensions. the very term ‘new south af rica’ has within it the idea of a painting over the old, the natural process of dismembering, the naturalisation of things new. in ‘the body drawn and quartered’ (1999), kentridge shifts f rom pentimenti to sonar, x-ray, mri, and cat-scan. here we f ind the core of his unsettling and highly suggestive vision: ‘dissect as deep as you like and you will never f ind the mimetic reference of the sonar. they are already a metaphor. they are messages f rom an inside we may apprehend but can never grasp. in their separation f rom the apparent they come as reports f rom a distant and unknown place’ (1999: 140). his work does not def ine itself in relation to an external source. the work in itself is metaphor. what this suggests is that art—as metaphor, devoid of mimetic reference—exists unto itself. as such, it is both ineffable and ontological. and yet, despite this insight, kentridge’s art remains burdened by a retrospective marker that sets it up as a beacon for south af rica’s new found sovereignty. *** timing is crucial, even for an artist for whom time is error stricken. yet what of bad timing? that kentridge arrives on the western stage at the precise moment when south af rica is reintegrated into the world—after the unbanning of the anc and before the country’s first democratic election—is fitting and vexing. then, there existed (and remains) an avid interest in ‘contemporary’ af rican art. that said, kentridge’s work has always been irreducible to the continent’s idea of itself, or more pointedly, its construction f rom without. why is it, then, that kentridge is more celebrated than any other south af rican artist? has his international success not skewed and deflected a domestic capacity to read his value? here i am well aware that i can be charged with parochialism. by challenging kentridge’s stellar international reputation, however, i am not implying that those who broker and report on art within the nation’s borders automatically know better. rather, i am interested in what it is that the rest—the west—find so deserving of praise. the answer lies in kentridge’s readability within an international, specifically european, context. other than dumile feni, his aesthetic sensibility is wholly european (buchner, goethe, daumier, hogarth, goya, max beckmann, and otto dix, among others). not only has he thoroughly digested and translated these influences but, by virtue of his postcolonial location, added to this european store of knowledge, revealing its tentacular global imprint. kentridge’s translation of this impact is never cravenly deferential. in ‘faustus in af rica! director’s note’ (1999), he pointedly states that faustus is a ‘risposte … to hegel’s high-handed dictum that “after the pyramids, world spirit leaves af rica, never to return”.’ in ‘landscape in a state of siege’, he challenges theodor adorno’s assertion that after auschwitz, lyric poetry is impossible. in short, kentridge questions the very heritage he has made his own. in his diagnosis of this heritage, its decadence in particular, he emerges as the bastard son of empire—its aggravated conscience. hand in hand with kentridge’s ethical riposte comes artistic innovation. the key is his technique—the redrawing and erasure of a given work which, at each instant of its mutation, is photographed then animated. no drawing is in and of itself complete. rather, each is assigned a fleeting place in an unfolding narrative that is never storyboarded in a strictly causal sense. 9 t h e t h i n k e r peer review and self-reflexive ambivalence. when he states that ‘irony’ is ‘the last refuge of the petit-bourgeoisie,’ we are alerted to the artist’s refusal to sit on the fence and bitch f rom a position of power or lack thereof. but what, then, is left? what makes kentridge so compelling? it is the unsettlement of his position, an unsettlement vitally needed in a society (domestic and global) that is caught between the toll of fatalism and the clarion call of hope. kentridge’s position is a non-position—a negative critique of a lived and unresolved contradiction. if his art is so appealing today, it is not because his work posits a solution to an existing dilemma, but because it exemplifies that dilemma and the hysteria that underpins it. is his work an attractive sop—in extremis—for a troubled conscience? if so, does this make the work worthy of acclaim? is this what we want and need—the convulsiveness of affect? a sensibility over-charged? a logic and a passion that is provisional, elliptic, trapped inside a rictus of irresolution? are these the sources of present-day satisfaction? and is this the end-game that defines the co-optation of south af rican art, a co-optation that suggests not the distinctiveness of south af rican art but its post-liberatory inscription into a global malaise? surely, what south af rican art emphatically does not need is the funereal glamour of a retrospective? a move of this nature is surely worrisome to an artist such as kentridge, who is better served by a healthy inquiry into his aesthetic and ethical dilemma and process. it is not only the international art community that should be held culpable in this regard. the domestic community has preferred craven reverence over an open-minded cultural engagement with his work. that his preoccupations have become global cultural capital says more about the art market’s nefarious attempts to transform its limits into a strength. the international success of kentridge’s work is ironic; the work is not. one could ask what artist in their right mind would resist such acclaim? here samuel beckett comes to mind, as does j.m. coetzee. the former declined the nobel prize, the latter—despite accepting it—remains uninspired by craven celebration. i imagine that kentridge, though temperamentally dissimilar, remains similarly wary. turn to any interview with the artist and one encounters a disarming modesty and a kentridge’s process finds its echo in deconstruction—a method maligned in our predictive and stalinist era— namely, jacques derrida’s theory of erasure, or sous rature. the method involves the crossing out of a word in a text that allows its cancelled iteration to remain legible. the process begs the question: where does meaning lie? in the projection, in its cancellation, or both? the ambiguous slippage is key. for kentridge, both must arrive at their exhaustion. they must both be up-ended; in effect, deconstructed. that this process is intellectually and ethically scorned in our absolutist era is deeply concerning. as michael godby notes in his response to the head & the load, ‘lunacy’ is central to the work’s schizophrenic and convulsive affect (2018). kentridge is not telling the story of the abuse and exploitation of the black body in the first world war, but performing its abjection. the vision of a ship dismantled and carried piece by piece by load-bearers is as deranged as it is obscene. unlike werner herzog’s comparable vision in the film fitzcarraldo (1982)—in which a ship is hauled across a mountain with the aid of a pulley-system and the use of slave labour—in the head & the load, bodies bare an oppressive weight. they are singly dehumanised mechanisms in a brutal imperial venture. ‘there is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism,’ walter benjamin reminds us (1969: 256). kentridge’s drama is precisely thus—a brutal paradox. the affect is neither discursive nor moral. it is immanent, deranged, deconstructive; wracked by a monstrous ambivalence which it cannot override. to what end, if any, does kentridge forge his logic and its expression? if it is not to correct a received lens, but to shatter it, then why? it is, i think, because ambiguity and the anxiety that courses through it cannot be easily resolved. like so many white male south af rican artists, kentridge has an avowedly uneasy relation to the country of his birth and the imperial stain that blots it. while i understand the artist’s agitation concerning a sense of place and purpose, i believe that the complacent appraisal thereof has blunted the complexity of its thrust. when kentridge asks that we keep ‘nihilism at bay and optimism in check,’ he is posting a grievous concern regarding the danger of these respective drives (1999b: 103). how he mediates them deserves closer examination. it is not mere ambiguity that kentridge values, but a charged 10v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review always open. at no point is it immune to puncture or leakage. therein lies neurosis; therein the fallout of trauma. the awe kentridge inspires comes after a fall. as such, it is always belated. as i understand it, kentridge offers no reprieve. he provides no final solace. what we have are sluices, sumps, diffusions, interruptions. the method— more f ree-fall than elevation—is crudely schematic. kentridge’s puppetry—a given work’s mechanism—is its entirety; the sum of ‘limbs’ and ‘articulated rods with primitive hinges’ that affirm an austere inclination. ‘time and again, kentridge looks for the basic forms of things,’ writes freedberg. the rudiment is the thing. the husk. bare-boned. inessential yet critical. for what exercises kentridge are worlds voided, without answer and without reprieve. his theatre is a stark expression of that constitutive void, an art reduced to an inchoate (if robust) gasp. if the people and things that populate his art—little more than mechanicals—appear vital it is because they inhabit their death. kentridge’s art thrives as an afterlife, a ghosting. things and people who revolve about their own corpses. i say this in full knowledge that others like freedberg believe his works to be infused with life. for me, however, their nullity is their surest tell. phantasmagorical, his is a traffic in death and dying, an art that thrives at the limit of expression. therein lies their greater strength. if we cheer at the close of a performance—i am usually the one who remains seated, dumbfounded, mute—it is because we are the victims of a rapture. enslaved to f renzy, riven with distress, ours is a somatic response to life’s futility, and kentridge’s articulation thereof. after guy debord, we know this unchecked f renzy as the ‘society of the spectacle’ (goniwe, 2017: 14). rallies, toxic and hypnotic, come to mind. as does edmund burke’s formulation of the sublime as a combine of awe and terror. once again, we find ourselves returning to wagner and the nuremberg rallies his music inspired. where kentridge differs—and i’m making a fine point here—is that he knows the monstrousness of his theatrical confections. if he deems them necessary, it is because sobriety is no longer viable, reason futile. ours is a culture of decadence which, having long ago arrived at its expiry date, nevertheless thrives as a death-in-life, a procession of corpses. what must we do? how can we countermand the mindpointed ambivalence. his reflections are hallmarks of intellectual and artistic clarity which, in the instant of their articulation, are always searching. the root of the problem lies in how his work has been positioned. here the prevailing fault lies with critics and curators, but also with a hapless public who, despite knowing better, invariably follow accredited opinion. or, then again, perhaps it is simply the work’s seductive articulation of the inarticulate that compels? and is this not what nietzsche, regarding wagner, warns us against? instability disguised as a principle? is it appropriate to assign a system and a meaning where there is none? what of kentridge’s belief that it is not the job of the artist to make sense? the resounding response to kentridge’s production, processione di reparazionisti (2017) in turin was expressed in a single word, notes david freedberg— imparagonible! (‘without peer’ or ‘beyond comparison’). the response is fitting because it defies reason. in the face of the anarchic—the absence of any governing principle—what is left to say? freedberg, however, maintains a belief in the restorative power of kentridge’s art. ‘when he makes forms explode, disintegrate and arrive near dissolution, he shows the possibility—and actuality of reconstitution.’ a question however persists: where does the reconstitution occur? in the work? in the audience’s singular minds? in group-think? surely the cry—imparagonible!— supposes something that cannot be measured, and therefore can never be reconstituted? the will to synthesise when conf ronted by an aggravated movement is only possible if, after bergson, one recognises that resolution is always temporary. it can only be understood as such by acknowledging that wholeness—as idea, principle, or belief—is only and v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the root of the problem, which kentridge strives to convert into a strength, lies in the society that fostered his genius. here i am not only talking about south africa, but the fretwork of empire and european influence upon which it is crucially founded. one cannot think of kentridge’s work outside of europe and empire. 11 unjust.’ the black sash, july 1963. south af rican history online (saho). [online] available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/ d e f a u l t / f i l e s / d c / b s j u l 6 3 . 0 0 3 6 . 4 8 4 3 . 0 0 7. 0 0 2 . j u l % 2 0 1 9 6 3 . 7/ bsjul63.0036.4843.007.002.jul%201963.7.pdf kēhaulani kauanui, j. (2016) “a structure, not an event”: settler colonialism and enduring indigeneity. emergent critical analytics for alternative humanities, issue 5.1. [online] available at: http://csalateral. org/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialism-enduringindigeneity-kauanui/ maldonado-torres, n. (2007). on the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept. cultural studies, 21(2–3): 240–270 maldonado-torres, n. (2008). against war: views f rom the underside of modernity. durham and london: duke university press mignolo, w.d. (2011). the darker side of western modernity: global futures, decolonial options. durham and london: duke university press mangena, f. (date unspecified). hunhu/ubuntu in the traditional thought of southern af rica. [online] the internet encyclopedia of philosophy (iep), issn 2161-0002. available at: https://iep.utm.edu/ hunhu/ numbing excessiveness of our age? one does so, not by ignoring the horror, but by living inside of it. this, by default, is kentridge’s gift. that nietzsche failed to pass through the decadence he railed against is unsurprising. no one can. nietzsche recognised it in wagner, as have i in kentridge. the critical difference is that kentridge does not exult therein. he merely articulates its unrelenting and morbid excrescence— our schizophrenia and lunacy, our hysteria, our neuroses. no one can dispute that ours remains an acutely nervous condition. in this neo-fascist moment, it might seem like hysteria and hyperbolic excess have returned with a vengeance. the truth is, they never left. we roam the earth, our bodies a set of pruning shears, our heads a megaphone. its grotesque flowering is certainly the aftermath of the first world war. it is then, long live david byrne of talking heads, that we stopped making sense. kentridge knows this. he has tolled this truth throughout his life and work. what is conveniently forgotten is that the artist is both more and less than the grotesque inflation he has become. unlike wagner, he has never courted reverence. snarled and unforgiving, his is an art that patently rejects its edification. references ahmed, s. (2014). the cultural politics of emotion. edinburgh: edinburgh university press al-saji, a. (2014). ‘a phenomenology of hesitation: interrupting racializing habits of seeing.’ in: e.s. lee, ed. living alterities: phenomenology, embodiment and race. albany: state university of new york press, 133–172 black lives matter, (2021). herstory. [online] available at: https:// blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/ butler, j. (2004). precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. london: verso butler, j. (2009). frames of war: when is life grievable? london: verso chisala, u. (2015). soft magic. createspace independent publishing platform cocks, j. (2012). ‘the violence of structures and the violence of foundings.’ new political science, 34(2): 221¬–227 diangelo, r. (2016) what does it mean to be white? developing white racial literacy — revised edition. new york: peter lang publishing fanon, f. (1959). a dying colonialism. new york: grove press hazell, k.j. (2017). immovability as the coloniality of f rozen affect: exploring ungrievability and the transformative potential of (e) motion in the modern world system. unpublished thesis, university of cape town hepple, a. (1963). ‘job reservation – cruel, harmful and 12v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review t h e t h i n k e r4 pan-african i n 2013, we saw one of the first broad-based consumer applications of article intelligence in apple and smartphone devices that began to predict how we wrote text messages. this was just one example of how the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) began, and how it directly affected our lives. klaus schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the world economic forum, first coined the term ‘fourth industrial revolution’ to describe the new era of machine and human augmentation and integration. he suggests that this is a time of enormous promise as machines can enhance the way people live, but if we are left behind by this revolution or it is not correctly regulated, it could also be a time of increasing peril for humanity (schwab 2016). in south africa, president ramaphosa is trying to ensure that south africa moves into the 4ir. he has spoken about it in his last two state of the nation addresses and appointed a commission on 4ir. many south africans are not exactly sure what 4ir is or how it will impact their lives, and many fear that it will take away jobs in a country that already has an unemployment rate of 29% and youth unemployment rate of 52% (stats sa 2019). the rise of pentecostal-charismatic cult-type churches in south africa as 4ir began to gain ground, the first wave of reports in the media (in 2015) about cult-type churches that seemed to be springing up all over south africa from limpopo to the eastern cape began to emerge. pastors were telling their congregants to eat grass, drink petrol and allow themselves to be sprayed with pesticides all in an effort to affect miracles. in horror, the media reported on this, often infantilizing congregants who were ‘so gullible’ as to join these churches. the rise of cult-type churches (like ‘seven angels church’ in the eastern cape, professor lesego daniel’s grass-eating church in pretoria or shephard bushiri’s ‘enlightened christian gathering’ or ecg), by maria frahm-arp a brief history of industrial revolutions: why at the start of the fourth industrial revolution do we see a rise in cult-type pentecostal churches in south africa? © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m 5v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 i give a brief historical overview of christianity and show that whenever we have a significant knowledge or industrial revolution, we see both positive and negative religious reactions to this revolution. often these have sparked the beginnings of new christianities. pan-african is in part, i argue a reaction to the 4ir and ordinary south african people’s sense of alienation from this revolution. for many, this is a revolution that seems to be when computers will do the work of people, leaving them unemployed and destitute. industrial and knowledge revolutions and christian disruptions while schwab and others think of this as an industrial revolution, i think we are also witnessing a knowledge revolution, mainly because data/ information is at the very heart of this revolution. many like gates and matthews (2014) argue that data will become the new currency of this revolution. a powerful example of this is cambridge analytica that used data collected from consumers in order to give political parties the information they needed to manipulate voter behaviour. for retail stores, an essential commodity is customer data, which allows them to target their marketing specifically to the needs and desires of individual customers. your store loyalty card means that the store knows exactly what your spending habits are and that, for example, at five in the evening, you are most likely to be craving a bar of chocolate. all of this data is a form of knowledge and has revolutionized marketing already. in this article, i give a brief historical overview of christianity and show that whenever we have a significant knowledge or industrial revolution, we see both positive and negative religious reactions to this revolution. often these have sparked the beginnings of new christianities such as the rise of the protestant church, following the knowledge revolution that came with the advent of the printing press or the methodist church following the advent of the first industrial revolution in england and wales. the first knowledge revolution one of the most critical knowledge revolutions was the invention of public libraries. the first library was set up in the seventh century bce and known as the “royal contemplation” of ashurbanipal, the assyrian ruler. it was located in nineveh (in modern-day iraq) for his personal use. the real revolution in libraries came about in the 300s bce when public libraries were established. under the romans, the library at alexandria became the most important intellectual centre in the ancient world. it housed scrolls of history, philosophy, mathematics, and literature. what made this library so revolutionary was that it was accessible to the public and was not just a private collection of manuscripts for private use. collecting data or information in one central space changed the way people had access to information and how they understood the world. this information or knowledge revolution was central to many of the political, social, and engineering feats that were the hallmark of the roman empire, particularly over the first three centuries of its existence. over time people moved away from writing on scrolls and began to write in leather-bound books. an essential part of the work of many monasteries during the middle ages was copying out bibles and selling them to rich feudal lords, the church, and kings. the second knowledge revolution and the rise of protestantism the invention of the printing press in 1440 led to the second knowledge revolution making information accessible to larger groups of people, particularly the emerging middle class that began to form through the centres of commerce in city-states like amsterdam, geneva, and london (woodhead 2004:163-5). it took three years for gutenberg to print 200 bibles, a major technological feat in the mid 1400s, but he died penniless because at first the consumption of books and bibles was slow as few people could read. during the mid to late fifteenth century, pamphlets, usually four pages long, were printed with news, political ideas, religious devotions, and stories. often these were read out loud by a paid reader who read to crowds in pubs and taverns. over the decades, the demand for information began to increase steadily. the technological advance of mechanized printing meant the wide-spread consumption of ideas as t h e t h i n k e r6 pan-african people began to consume tracks, pamphlets, and later books. books, including bibles, could now be ‘massproduced,’ and these bibles and books could be produced outside church structures because printers could print books using a printing press and were not dependant on cheap, educated labour in the form of monks. this technological advance separated the production of bibles from the catholic church in europe. while the catholic church did not want people to read the bible in vernacular languages, it, in effect, no longer had direct control over the means of production of bibles. before martin luther famously pinned his 95 theses on the door of the church in wittenberg in 1517 calling for a reformation within the catholic church, many others, such as wycliff and oakham, had campaigned for the bible to be translated into english, german and dutch (woodhead 2004). printed versions of one of the gospels or a book of the psalms began to grow in popularity as people started to demand greater access to information, including religious texts and ideas. a central argument within this call for reform was that people should be allowed to read the bible in their vernacular languages and challenge the teachings of the catholic church, particularly around ‘indulgences’. ‘indulgences’ was a system set up by the catholic church, which taught that by paying money to the church, people could minimize their sins and therefore their time in purgatory would be shortened. if they paid enough money, they might even be able to go directly to heaven without having to go to purgatory. there is no reference to indulgences or the sale of indulgences in the bible, and therefore, the catholic church was keen to ensure that laypeople did not have access to bibles. as most laypeople could not read or understand latin, the sale of latin bibles was less problematic, but once translated into vernacular languages, laypeople might begin to use scripture to challenge the catholic church’s methodologies at the time (woodhead 2004). the technological revolution of the printing press separated the means of the production of bibles from the catholic church in europe. the ‘fast’ production of bibles also meant that they became more affordable, enabling more people to buy bibles, gospel booklets or books of psalms. the printing press enabled ordinary people to have access to information either by reading it or having it read to them. the consumption of information created the necessary intellectual groundswell for a christian revolution, which blazed to life when luther nailed his thesis to the church door in wittenberg, and the protestant reformation was born. the first industrial revolution and the rise of the methodist church in england, the protestant reformation led to the establishment of the church of england and the wider anglican church. the first industrial revolution, in the mid-1700s, occurred with the invention of steam power to fuel engines. the revolution first took root in england and soon led to the first wave of mass urbanization as people flocked to industrial centres like liverpool and manchester to work in the factories. the living conditions in the cities were appalling as there was often poor sanitation, housing or access to fresh drinking water. many of the slum housing built for factory workers, coupled with the appalling working conditions in factories, led to high mortality rates. luddites were amongst the most vocal group fighting against all the negative changes brought about by the new (steam based) technologies that fuelled this revolution (deanne 1979). john wesley, an anglican priest, began to call for change within the anglican church. in 1744 he held the first ‘methodist’ conference after attracting crowds to his open-air sermons in coalmines, brickyards, and factors in the emerging industrial cities of great britain. wesley called people to a new intensely personal spirituality in which they were held accountable to their brethren in small chapel communities rather than large traditional churches. he encouraged the formation of small the printing press enabled ordinary people to have access to information either by reading it or having it read to them. the consumption of information created the necessary intellectual groundswell for a christian revolution, which blazed to life when luther nailed his thesis to the church door in wittenberg, and the protestant reformation was born. 7v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african meeting groups in which people shared their spiritual struggles and religious journeys. as people began to move to the new industrial centres to work in factories and coal mines, they felt alienated and alone, often losing touch with their home churches. the methodist movement with its powerful message of evangelism, personal discipline, hard work and leisure time, was particularly appealing to working-class people as industrialization changed people’s working patterns and social networks from rural settings to towns and cities (hempton 1996:4). connected to most chapels or methodist meeting rooms were schools for children, welfare activities and mechanisms through which poor people could access loans. during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people argued that methodism slowed down the industrial revolution in britain, particularly when compared to the fast pace of invention, production, and change in france. others suggest that methodism channelled people’s discontent towards religion rather than politics, thereby slowing down desperately needed political reforms (semmel 1973; walsh 1979). the second industrial revolution and the rise of classical pentecostalism the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the rise of the second industrial revolution. this revolution made the relatively affordable mass production of goods, from clothes to cars, possible on a larger scale. with the growing demand for consumer products came the need for cheap labour to make these goods as costeffectively as possible. working-class laborers had to deal with the poverty, oppression, illness and alienation experienced in mass production-based factories. pentecostalism taught people that, through the power of prayer, they would be able to take on a new agency in their lives by praying for the miracles of healing and work in order to sustain their families in the turbulence brought about by the second industrial revolution. a vital feature of the methodist movement, both in europe and north america where it proved so popular, was revival meetings. these revival meetings, often lead by lay preachers, another critical aspect of methodism, took place at various times and with different intensities throughout the nineteenth century – particularly in north america and to a lesser extent in britain. towards the end of the century, many revival preachers began to espouse a holiness gospel arguing that sanctification took place through the holy spirit. in the early 1900s, some preachers began to claim one could determine if a person was baptized in the holy spirit if they were able to speak in tongues, as the disciples had done at pentecost. one of the most famous of these preachers was william seymour, who began to preach his message of pentecost in los angeles in a store-front church on azusa street (synan 1997). places like los angeles in the early 1900s teemed with poor, dispossessed people who streamed to large cities in the hope of finding work. cities like los angeles attracted triply dispossessed migrants from all over the world who had no money, could hardly speak the language of the country, and were often not citizens of that country and were therefore vulnerable to extreme exploitation. the pentecostal movement, with its focus on speaking in tongues that no one but god and his angels could understand, opened up a new form of christian worship freed from the constraints of prayer books and hymns in particular languages (synan 1997). in south africa, the first pentecostal missionaries arrived in 1907 and began to attract followers, particularly in mining communities on the rand. people shared extraordinary miracles of healing in testimonies, and many new converts gave up alcohol and gambling, thereby enabling them to take better care of their families (maxwell 1999). the assemblies of god and the apostolic faith mission were among two of the earliest forms of classical pentecostal churches established in south africa. many of the ideas of the pentecostal movement sparked the emergence of zionist and apostolic type african indigenous forms of christianity (anderson 2000) in southern africa that emerged in the face of coping with racism during changes in work regimes. the third industrial and knowledge revolution and the rise of the health and wealth gospel fast forward to the 1960s and we encounter the beginning of yet another revolution. this third industrial revolution is also arguably the third knowledge revolution, as the invention and use of computers not only changed how people worked, what work they did, and what work computers t h e t h i n k e r8 did, but also their access to information. the invention of the internet in the 1990s radically changed people’s access to information with the world wide web, making information accessible to everyone at the click of a button. this was also a time of remarkable economic growth in which capitalist machinery and the marketing industry sold people the dream of’ rags to riches’, while dot. com millionaires in their twenties seemed to prove this idea that anything was possible (piketty 2017). before the third industrial revolution, two influential new waves took place within christianity. in the 1950s, the evangelical movement swept through the christian world and was followed in the 1960s by the charismatic movement. the charismatic movement emerged in mainline churches and was very similar to the pentecostal movement but did not believe that speaking in tongues was the only sign of holy spirit baptism. charismatics instead argued that any form of spiritual gift, from prophecy to teaching, including speaking in tongues or translating tongues, was a sign of holy spirit baptism. in the 1970s, a new variant of christianity emerged that drew from all three traditions and preached a gospel of health and wealth, otherwise known as the prosperity gospel. this movement rapidly grew in popularity as televangelists like kenneth hoggin used the medium of television to spread their gospel to millions of americans first and was then televised throughout the world (bergunder 2010). in the age of rampant capitalism, everyone could apparently become wealthy, and anything was possible, if only people were positive and worked hard according to the prosperity gospel which offered believers a secret weapon. the holy spirit gave them exclusive access to a power that would make them wealthy and healthy. this wealth could be obtained through prayer and not just through hard work. god wanted to bless all ‘his children’ with extreme wealth (daniels 2015) in the language of this health and wealth gospel -and being thin, fit, tanned, and shining with good health – just like a movie or soap opera star meant ‘health’. in south africa, pentecostal-charismatic churches (pcc) were preaching a similar message of a watered-down version of personal wealth and healing. churches like grace bible church and rhema became mega-churches in the late 1980s and early 1990s. they attracted thousands of followers who were not the dispossessed but were rather upwardly mobile, or those who aspired to upward mobility. these churches taught people that through hard work, prayer, and a disciplined lifestyle, an individual could attain their dreams. they encouraged people to break with their families and their past, and commit to god and their own path to upward mobility (martin 2001; meyer 1998) through the church. as south africa moved out of the dark days of apartheid, these churches offered social skills and business training that equipped believers for success in the modern world (frahm-arp 2010). the fourth industrial and knowledge revolution and the rise of cult-type pentecostalism however, the optimism and economic growth of the new south africa began to fade when jacob zuma and his followers took office. by 2015 the rand had fallen, unemployment levels were at very high levels, and the investment grade of the country was heading towards junk status. state capture had happened, and survival, not mobility, became the goal. onto the religious stage, professor lesego daniel burst telling people to eat grass and drink petrol. in 2016, lethebo rabalago, started to spray his congregants with doom. these churches loosely form some variant of the prosperity gospel. i suggest that they are a cult-type movement because they met the criteria as identified by sociologists of religion (mcguire 2008). they are hierarchical, with a charismatic leader who has all the answers but who only gives selected information to chosen people. cults tend to attract young adults and encourage people to make a complete break with their families and friends, while giving enormous amounts of time, money, and energy to the church. in many ways, cults often become new religious movements (beckford 2003). new religious movements often begin within a particular religious tradition. very often, it is mainly social, economic, political, or technical factors that drive a group of people who feel dispossessed into cult-like systems, thus pushing them to find answers or a sense of belonging in a new religious movement or a re-shaped form of a religious tradition. in much the same way, the rise of the cult-type churches in south africa should be understood, at least in part, as people’s attempts to try and make pan-african 9v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 sense of a world that they feel alienated from and are struggling to comprehend. statistics show that around 50% of young adults in south africa are currently unemployed, and unless something changes dramatically in south africa’s economy, these people will never find salaried employment. finding a job in their experience of the world is akin to experiencing a miracle. a church that ‘teaches’ them how to pray and perform their faith by eating a snake or being sprayed with a pesticide, is a church that is giving them the ‘tools’ or agency which they need to show god how much faith they have and how they are more deserving of the miracle of a job or a husband who has job then the people around them. these extra-ordinary religious feats of putting oneself into mortal danger, like drinking petrol or being sprayed with the insecticide doom, is a way for people who have no or little money to show their extraordinary faith and commitment. the prosperity gospel maintains that the more money people give to the church, the more god will bless them. by giving away all money, they have show just how strong their faith is. in poverty-stricken peri-urban environments of south africa where people do not have access to money, proving their faith through another means has become very popular. while abusing people, putting their lives in danger and teaching them that further impoverishing themselves by giving all they have to the church in order to experience a miracle, goes against the teaching of christ, these cult-type churches highlight the desperation and alienation that many people feel at the beginning of this fourth industrial/knowledge revolution. conclusion as i have shown with the previous knowledge and industrial revolutions, within the christian context, these revolutions have led to the establishment of new forms of christianity. the nature of these new forms of christianity are usually in direct response to the needs of ordinary people living through a technological revolution. in each previous revolution, profound technological changes have led to extraordinary social, political, and economic disruptions. these changes have often, but not always, led to the socio-economic dislocation and dispossession of groups of people. different forms of christianity have emerged with these various revolutions as churches and church leaders have sort to offer people a means to cope with change. not all these revolutions have been positive, but to the believers, these different christianities facilitate hope and a sense of agency to those who felt dispossessed, alienated and oppressed, as these revolutions changed the world and the place of people in that new world order. perhaps the key lesson to be learned from this overview of history is that as we embrace new technological changes, we as a society also need to find mechanisms to help those who are negatively affected by these disruptions. ■ references: anderson, allan. (2000). zion and pentecost: the spirituality and experience of pentecostal and zionist/apostolic churches in south africa (vol. 6). pretoria: unisa press. beckford, james. (2003). social theory and religion. cambridge university press. bergunder, michael (2010). ‘the cultural turn’. in studying global pentecostalism: theories and methods, edited by allan anderson, michael bergunder, andré droogers, and cornelis van der laan. berkeley: university of california press, pp. 51-73. daniels, david (2015). ‘prosperity gospel of entrepreneurship in africa and black america: a pragmatist christian innovation’. in pastures of plenty: tracing religio-scapes of prosperity gospel in africa and beyond, edited by andreas heuser. frankfurt am main: peter lang, pp. 265-78. frahm-arp, maria. (2010). professional women in south african pentecostal charismatic churches. leiden: brill. gates, c., & matthews, p. (2014). ‘data is the new currency’. in proceedings of the 2014 new security paradigms workshop (pp. 105-116). acm. hempton, david. (1996). the religion of the people: methodism and popular religion .1750-1900. new york: routledge. martin, david. (2002). pentecostalism: the world their parish. oxford: blackwell. maxwell, david. (1999). ‘historicizing christian independency: the southern african pentecostal movement c. 1908–60’. the journal of african history, 40(2), 243-264. mcguire, meredith. (2008). religion: the social context. long grove: waveland press. meyer, birgit. (1998). ‘‘make a complete break with the past’: memory and post-colonial modernity in ghanaian pentecostalist discourse.’ journal of religion in africa/religion en afrique, 28(3), 316. piketty, thomas. (2017). capitalism in the twenty-first century. cambridge ma: the belknap press. schwab, klaus. (2016). the fourth industrial revolution. london: penguin press. semmel, bernard. (1973). the methodist revolution. new york: basic books. stats sa (2019) p0211 quarterly labour force survey (qlfs), 2nd quarter 2019. http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&ppn=p0211&sch=7620. accessed 3 october 2019. publication date & time: 30 july 2019 @ 11:30 synan, vincent. (1997). the holiness-pentecostal tradition: charismatic movements in the twentieth century. grand rapids: wm. b. eerdmans publishing. walsh, j. (1975). ‘elie halévy and the birth of methodism’. royal historical society, 25, 1-20. doi:10.2307/3679083. pan-african perhaps the key lesson to be learned from this overview of history is that as we embrace new technological changes, we as a society also need to find mechanisms to help those who are negatively affected by these disruptions. http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&ppn=p0211&sch=7620 _goback 64 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract in 2014, sweden became the first country to adopt a feminist foreign policy. although a new swedish government abandoned the country’s feminist foreign policy in october 2022, sweden has inspired many other states to adopt such a foreign policy to advance the status of women and girls. these developments have not gone unnoticed in south af rica, where historical relations between sweden and the country’s liberation movements endure in post-apartheid south af rica. unlike sweden, south af rica never adopted or declared a feminist foreign policy due to historical and cultural reasons, and different conceptualisations of women, gender, and feminism. instead, under the leadership of the af rican national congress (anc) since 1994, south af rica has diplomatically capitalised on its liberation struggle and human rights credentials; the latter which, to some extent, have for some time superseded a more focused emphasis on women’s rights. a more nuanced foreign policy focus on improving the status of women and gender equality emerged partly due to international developments regarding women, peace, and security. hence, the contribution explores feminist and/or gendered aspects of south af rica’s foreign policy of ubuntu (human-ness and humanity) and diplomatic practice, and the implications thereof. it has shown that south af rica’s growing embrace of elements associated with a feminist foreign policy includes memorialisation and symbolism (i.e. linking the liberation struggle and female stalwarts to foreign policy), positioning women in progressive internationalism, and integrating women in the definition of south af rica’s national interests. by jo-ansie van wyk south africa: a growing embrace of feminist foreign policy? 65v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w eugene de kock, later testified that the apartheid government was behind the assassination (sellström, 1999: 28). as post-apartheid south af rica moves into its third decade, south af rica and sweden maintain full and extensive diplomatic relations, with elevated bilateral relations through a structured mechanism, the south af rican–sweden binational commission established in 2000. for south af rica, its relations with sweden are founded on strong nordic support and solidarity during the liberation struggle and are based on ‘mutually shared values of democracy, equality, and social justice, as well as mutually beneficial bilateral economic trade and cooperation’ (dirco, 2022). given the historical relations between sweden and the anc, the focus of this special issue, and mindful of the major differences between these states, it is an opportune time to focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment as a declared shared value. both states have in recent decades taken decisive foreign policy directions. south af rica, for example, has consolidated its af rican agenda (i.e. the centrality of af rica in its foreign policy), whereas sweden’s foreign policy has taken a decisive feminist turn f rom 2014. whereas scholarship on global examples of feminist foreign policy has proliferated since sweden adopted a feminist foreign policy, and whereas scholarship on south af rica’s post-apartheid foreign policy have proliferated, research on south af rica’s foreign policy in the context of the notion and practice of a feminist foreign policy remains scant, with schoeman and sadie (2004), masters (2017), van wyk (2019), mbukanma and strydom (2021: 17696–17712), haastrup (2020: 199–216), and magadla and cornell (2019) notable exceptions. hence, this contribution aims to fill this gap. moreover, the rationale for this study is that sweden’s normative entrepreneurship regarding feminist foreign policy is instructive and provides an analytical and practical f ramework to analyse and assess south af rica’s declared domestic and international commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment. moreover, the swedish experience have instructional value for states embarking on a process to craft and implement introduction sweden–south af rica bilateral relations go as far back as the colonial period in southern af rica. a truncated historical overview since the 17th century includes dutch rule at the cape, and numerous swedish missionaries, scientists, and sailors stepping ashore and travelling the interior of what is now south af rica. notable swedish travellers to and in the cape colony included, amongst others, explorer olof bergh, missionary otto witt, captain carl gustaf ekeberg, carl peter thunberg, anders sparrman (a student of the famous swedish botanist carl linnaues), and johan august wahlberg (sellström, 1999: 118–136; skott, 2010: 371). whereas these early contacts were predominantly scientific and commercial in nature, a more political dimension emerged prior to and after the boer war (1899–1902) in southern af rica. besides increased swedish immigration to the cape colony, a volunteer scandinavian corps and ambulance unit was organized in sweden and other nordic states and dispatched to join the boer side. the unit was deployed during the siege of mafeking and the battle of magersfontein where sweden encountered fatal losses and soldiers were captured. after the war, south af rica erected monuments in memory of the scandinavian corps (gerdov, 2016: 54–78). in the early to mid-20th century, relations were disrupted by the two world wars. by now, predominantly economic relations were soon compromised with the onset of legally enshrined apartheid after the south af rican elections of 1948. sweden’s activism and criticism against apartheid became the dominant feature of bilateral relations, while sweden invested heavily in south af rican liberation movements such as the af rican national congress (anc) which came to power in 1994 (sellström, 1999: 118–136). for decades, sweden provided humanitarian and financial aid amounting to almost us$ 400 million to the anc f rom the 1970s to mid-1990s, causing a diplomatic rift in official relations between stockholm and pretoria (washington post, 1996). diplomatic relations were also severely affected by the assassination of olof palme, the swedish prime minister, and a critical anti-apartheid supporter, on 28 february 1986. at the time, south af rica regarded palme as an ‘enemy of the state’ and a decision was taken that ‘necessary action’ should be taken against palme (south af rica, 1985). a former apartheid death squad commander, 66 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 a feminist foreign policy. it is also instructive to determine the outcomes of other states’ foreign policy and diplomatic emphasis on the status of women, and the wps agenda. scholarship on the substance, practice, effect of and analytical approaches to a feminist foreign policy differ widely, focusing on, among other aspects, an ethics of care, good states and good global citizenship (aggestam, rosamond, and kronsell, 2019: 23–39); a specific working method, an ability to conf ront contestation, and normative innovation (aggestam and rosamond, 2019: 37–48); and the practice of a feminist foreign policy (zilla, 2022: 1–7; cheung et al., 2021: 1–21). convergence, however, is evident in the position that the number of women in a foreign ministry does not necessarily constitute a feminist foreign policy. moreover, a masculine and male-driven global order has neglected – even ignored at times – women and gender in the world (youngs, 2004: 75–87); often contributing to, amongst many other consequences, gbv and gender inequality. these aspects resonate with south af rica’s declared foreign policy, gender commitments and wps agenda, but can south af rica’s foreign policy be typed as feminist, and what are the implications thereof? using a qualitative analytical methodology and reading of official swedish and south af rican sources, the contribution unfolds in four parts. the next section outlines the background to, substance and practice of sweden’s feminist foreign policy. against the background of the swedish feminist foreign policy model, the third part of the contribution explores feminist and/or gendered aspects of south af rica’s foreign policy of ubuntu (human-ness and humanity) and diplomatic practice, especially since the tenure of president cyril ramaphosa since 2018. since assuming office, president ramaphosa has focused on gender-based violence (gbv) in the south af rican context. moreover, during his tenure, south af rica has served in influential international leadership positions, including a third term on the united nations security council (unsc) (2019–2020), and chairing the af rican union (2020) and the brazilrussia-india-south af rica (brics) grouping (2023). the fourth part of the contribution reflects on the prospects of a feminist foreign policy for south af rica. the final part of the contribution ends with concluding remarks. made in sweden: background, substance, and practice of feminist foreign policy since 2014, sweden has been widely regarded as the normative entrepreneur and leading practitioner of feminist foreign and trade policy. under a red-green government coalition, it became the first country to adopt a feminist foreign policy to advance its historical commitment to human rights and gender equality (mfa, 2019: 11). following elections in october 2022, a more conservative new swedish government under the moderates party abandoned the country’s feminist foreign policy (svenska dagbladet, 2022), stating that the notion of a feminist foreign policy ‘obscures the content of the policy’ but that the focus on gender equality will remain (sjöbeck, 2022). despite these changes, the swedish socialist democratic party and the green party coalition that instituted the policy have created a new foreign policy f ramework (i.e. a feminist foreign policy) that had, for example, been adopted and/or under consideration by other governments around the world. for sweden, its feminist foreign policy has responded ‘to the discrimination and systematic subordination that still mark the daily lives of countless women and girls around the world’, as well as the country’s peace, security, and sustainable development agenda (mfa, 2019: 9). besides the normative substance of its feminist foreign policy, sweden has also paved the way for the practice of a feminist foreign policy, which, for for sweden, its feminist foreign policy has responded ‘to the discrimination and systematic subordination that still mark the daily lives of countless women and girls around the world’, as well as the country’s peace, security, and sustainable development agenda (mfa, 2019: 9). besides the normative substance of its feminist foreign policy, sweden has also paved the way for the practice of a feminist foreign policy p e e r r e v i e w 67v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 sweden, entails the application of a ‘systematic gender equality perspective throughout foreign policy’ (mfa, 2019: 9). focusing on the 4rs (rights, representation and resources, and reality), sweden has followed an intersectional approach that recognised differences in living conditions, levels of influence, and the needs of women. in recognising this, sweden has identified seven objectives of its feminist foreign policy: • full enjoyment of human rights • freedom f rom physical, psychological, and sexual violence • participation in preventing and resolving conflicts, and post-conflict peacebuilding • political participation and influence in all areas of society • economic rights and empowerment • sexual and reproductive health and rights (srhr) • internalisation and the practice of a feminist foreign policy in government (mfa, 2019: 11, 19, 30–48). to achieve these, sweden has proposed a practical methodology that entails gender-equality consciousness and gender-balanced domestic and international events, mainstreaming gender in communication, mobilising gender commitment and resources to achieve gender equality, gender awareness in cultural cooperation, and establishing networks and platforms for common gender agendas and practices (mfa, 2019: 59). the country has also identified several subsidiary areas where it has intended to apply this methodology: foreign and security policy (peace and security; human rights, democracy, and the rule of law; disarmament and nonproliferation), international development cooperation, trade, and promotion policy (mfa, 2019: 63–90). in 2017, sweden released a review of its implementation of its feminist foreign policy. in measuring this, it has used several indicators to determine whether it has achieved the seven objectives of its feminist foreign policy. this was followed in 2021 with the sweden’s ministry of foreign affairs (mfa) release of an action plan, the swedish foreign service action plan for feminist foreign policy 2019–2022, including direction and measures for 2021, i.e. an operational plan for the practice of its feminist foreign policy. the action plan identified several operational practices, normative commitments, objectives, and actions, namely: • analysis and information gathering • accountability and influence • agenda-setting, events, delegations, and visits • alliance-building, platforms, and groups of friends • dialogues to influence and collect information • promotion and skills development • negotiations, monitoring mechanisms and reviews • procedures for grant management, processes, and reporting • positions in multilateral organisations, institutions, and peace support operations (mfa, 2021: 22–28). it is too early to determine the success of the action plan and the overall impact and consequences of sweden’s feminist foreign policy, especially since its termination in october 2022. but how does sweden’s bilateral partner, south af rica, perform? south africa and sweden’s 4rs as the swedish experience has shown, a feminist foreign policy is a comprehensive foreign policy that abolishes ‘all forms of gender domination and oppression and aims to overcome gender stereotypes. it also seeks to give women the opportunity to participate in decision making, to represent the state, and execute the “hard” issues related to a country’s external relations and status’ (van wyk, 2019). a feminist foreign policy thus entails both abolitionism and democracy: abolishing male domination and patriarchy and enabling and maintaining women’s access to power at all levels. to achieve this, norms, numbers and practices have to be aligned. toni haastrup (2020: 199–216) has explored gender in the context of south af rican foreign policy by focusing on commitment, substance, and practice: aspects that this contribution builds on. these aspects resonate with sweden’s feminist foreign policy’s 4rs: rights, representation and resources, and reality (mfa, 2021: 22–28). p e e r r e v i e w 68 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 south af rica’s normative commitment to women’s rights, empowerment and gender equality is expressed in its constitution (south af rica, 1996). moreover, chapter 9 of the constitution has created seven ‘state institutions supporting constitutional democracy’, including a commission for gender equality. as laudable as this commitment to women’s rights and representation has been, contradictions have emerged between the law, society, and reality relating to the concepts of and definition of woman, gender, and feminist/feminism. legally and socially, in south af rica, a woman is predominantly identified in terms of heteronormativity. the concepts woman and gender are often used interchangeably, creating paradoxical policy, wasted resources, ineffective responses, and outcomes (realities). moreover, in south af rica, gender-based violence (gbv) is also predominantly regarded as violence against women, stressing the neglect of the nuances of the meaning of woman and gender. as recently as august 2022 and speaking on national women’s day, president ramaphosa again equates gender-based violence with violence against women only (ramaphosa, 2022). added to this confusion and conflation have been the notions of, for example but not limited to, feminism and womanism, and their divergent understandings. feminism in post-apartheid south af rica remains a challenged and a niche political practice, often equated with western liberalism and denying the role and status of women in an af rican and traditional context. besides this, the state of feminism and the feminist movement in post-apartheid south af rica have been questioned, especially in the context of liberation movements’ strong women’s liberation credentials and agenda. in addition to this, cognitive gaps have emerged. the ruling party’s women’s league remains the custodian of the anc’s women’s liberation credentials but in practice the women’s league has been accused of endorsing and maintaining heteronormativity and policies that are not advantageous to women (hassim, 2015). measured in terms of sweden’s 4rs, the creation of a cabinet portfolio on women (coupled with youth and disability) located in the presidency is laudable but evidently has not added a more nuanced gendered approach to the country’s domestic and foreign policy. moreover, in south af rica, numerical improvements on women’s representation and appointments, and on so-called gender mainstreaming, have not translated into accountable gender policies and outcomes improving women’s lived experiences and status. often, women who have benefitted f rom women empowerment opportunities have contributed to the further entrenchment of elite interests (hassim, 2022: 43). the swedish model requires women to be present and represented when agendas are set, and decisions made. moreover, women’s issues need to be on the agenda and women have to be appointed to key foreign policy and diplomatic positions, especially to realise the women, peace and security (wps) agenda. since 1994, south af rica has had four female foreign ministers (nkosazana dlamini-zuma, maite nkoana mashabane, lindiwe sisulu and the incumbent naledi pandor), and two female deputy foreign ministers (reginah mhaule and candith mashego-dlamini). compared to this, south af rica has never had a female president or a female head (i.e. director-general) of the foreign ministry. besides this, only one woman has served as the chairperson of the parliamentary committee on foreign relations and cooperation since 1994. within the ruling anc’s foreign policy machinery, women have also played a secondary role. no woman ever led the international relations desk of the party during exile, and it was only recently that women were elected to chair the international relations and diplomacy sub-committee of the anc. by 2023, lindiwe zulu serves in this position but oversees a committee consisting predominantly of men. ambassadorial appointments are also not reflective of south af rica’s gender demographics as women comprise less than 45% of the country’s ambassadors. these numerical advancements have not changed the challenges that south af rican women face. for example, gender-based violence (gbv) in south af rica reached war-like proportions during the global pandemic, preceded by, and coinciding with, rampant state capture in south af rica. sadly, women have been perpetrators and victims of state capture, which has had an impact on the country’s foreign policy architecture and fabric as connected women benefitted f rom lucrative contracts and other women experienced gbv in this environment. in the absence of a declared feminist foreign policy, south af rica can, at best, be described as a state that values and contributes to the improvement of the p e e r r e v i e w 69v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 role and status of women (haastrup, 2020: 199–216). however, normative commitment and practice have not translated into qualitative improvements in the lives of most south af rican women. more female parliamentarians have been elected and women have been appointed to major cabinet portfolios such as international relations and cooperation, and defence and state security. however, these women oversee bureaucracies and systems that maintain an entrenched gender bias. the country’s foreign policy bureaucracy illustrates this. the director-general of the foreign affairs department has always been male, and its internal structure follows a conventional masculine geographic approach to international affairs. in fact, a review panel of the department consisted mainly of men (mirco, 2019: 1), a trend followed predominantly by the parliamentary oversight portfolio committee. the said review panel, under the heading ‘some salient observations by the panel’, mentioned women twice only: 31. south af rica has also played an important role on the promotion of the rights of women as exemplified by the roles played by a number of south af ricans in the un and other multilateral bodies. this includes roles in the csw [committee on the status of women], beijing conference, cedaw [convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women], un women and in un peace missions. the challenge is to ensure consistent and reliable support for all those working in global structures (mirco, 2019: 10). despite this disappointing little reference to the status of women in a major foreign policy review, some tangible and symbolic developments have since become evident of a practical commitment and routinisation to improving the role and status of women, aspects that are not necessarily out of step with the ideals of a feminist foreign policy. as indicated earlier, sweden has identified seven objectives of its feminist foreign policy (mfa, 2019: 11, 19, 30–48). all, but one (internalisation and the practice of a feminist foreign policy in government), of sweden’s objectives converge with south af rica’s declared foreign policy objectives and principles. besides this, as outlined in the next section, evidence suggests new developments – in line with sweden’s 4rs – regarding the status of women in south af rican foreign policy. new thinking and practices regarding the status of women in south african foreign policy the remainder of this contribution focuses on three major developments in south af rica’s foreign policy practice that resonate with the 4rs of sweden’s notion of a feminist foreign policy. the first development relates to the memorialisation of the liberation struggle and linking it to the country’s international status and human rights credentials. this is not new as, for example, the memorialisation of nelson mandela and oliver tambo through a un day and the naming of the foreign ministry headquarters has shown. however, a new development is the practical memorialisation of women liberation personalities and linking it to south af rica’s foreign policy, illustrating a substantial and practical shift to symbolise and improve the status of women in foreign policy. the second development relates to the anc’s foreign policy discussion document released in anticipation of the party’s 55th national conference in december 2022, and third, the south af rican department of international relations and cooperation’s (dirco) release of the framework document on south af rican national interest and its advancement in a global environment. p e e r r e v i e w due recognition is given to women stalwarts that are memorialised as symbols of south africa’s foreign policy principles, practices and objectives, but it remains to be seen if these initiatives will produce a marked shift to a feminist foreign policy or a qualitative improvement of sweden’s 4rs relating to the status of women in south africa 70 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w memory and symbolism: linking the liberation struggle female stalwarts to foreign policy besides the reported increase of women in south af rica’s foreign policy architecture (mbukanma and strydom, 2021: 17696–17712), another development within the country’s foreign policy arena has been the recognition, remembrance, and veneration of, especially, high-profile women in the liberation struggle. memory and symbolism are powerful foreign policy sources and resources that reflect a state’s identity, values and interests. non-material in nature, memory and symbolism recalls past realities to address current realities and challenges. memory and symbolism can be mobilised to compensate for the lack of material resources, justify a particular foreign policy position and indicate intention and direction. the examples of gertrude shope and charlotte maxeke are illustrative of this. in response to unsc resolution 1325 (2000) which affirms the role of women in conflict prevention and resolution, and peacebuilding, dirco has operationalised the resolution by memorialising anc struggle stalwart gertrude shope by establishing the gertrude shope women’s mediation network and the getrude shope annual dialogue forum. annually, dirco hosts the gertrude shope women’s mediation network training in august (women’s month in south af rica) which is followed by the getrude shope annual dialogue forum where women peace-builders and mediators f rom af rica share their experiences and best practices in peace and security efforts. according to dirco, it had been training 350 af rican women mediators since 2015 (sagna, 27 august 2021). shope has thus come to symbolise south af rica’s peace diplomacy, and a practical response to unsc resolution 1325 (2000). another example of the memorialisation of women liberation leaders is that for some years, the south af rican government has declared certain years in memory of a struggle stalwart, declaring, for example, 2021 as the year of charlotte maxeke. foreign minister naledi pandor (2022) provided some insights into this practice, its symbolism and how her ministry has linked this to south af rica’s foreign policy and the status of women in foreign policy. once the year of charlotte maxeke was declared, dirco initiated a legacy initiative, the charlotte maxeke af rican women’s economic justice and rights initiative in memory of maxeke (1871–1919) as ‘an embodiment of her values and leadership qualities’ and describing maxeke as, amongst other descriptions, an internationalist, panaf ricanist, and human rights activist, thus connecting south af rica’s foreign policy principles and practices to the liberation struggle, and the status of women in the foreign policy context: as an internationalist she travelled to at least two continents when travelling was not as easy as it is today. this gave her exposure to other cultures and a broader view of the world beyond the shores of south af rica. ma maxeke was an early ambassador of our country, forging peopleto-people ties. throughout the choir tour, she exchanged ideas with her contemporaries, shared information, and used art to bring south af rica to the world. she also worked with suff ragists both in europe and the us during the tour. after she returned home, she participated in a number of international conferences, where she highlighted the plight of af rican women. she advocated for cooperation and understanding between the people of south af rica and those f riends she made through the tour and during her studies abroad. for example, she used her relationship with web du bois – one of her lecturers at wilberforce university – to continue to inform the world about the conditions of af ricans in south af rica. this is documented in some of her letters with this outstanding pan af ricanist. ma maxeke was also a powerful advocate for women’s rights. she led the first women’s march of 1913 in bloemfontein against the early introduction of passes. maxeke was a pioneer in one of the greatest of human causes, working under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, in the face of prejudice – not only against her race, but against her gender. her courage and leadership allowed her to transcend religious and cultural barriers (pandor, 2022). foreign minister pandor (2022) has also reiterated that the charlotte maxeke af rican women’s economic justice and rights initiative ‘is anchored in south af rica’s foreign policy, which is pan af ricanist in form 71v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w and internationalist in content’. elaborating on the foreign policy and diplomatic relevance of the initiative, pandor explained it as south af rica’s contribution to the global acceleration agenda to empower women and girls, stating that the charlotte maxeke af rican women’s economic justice and rights initiative is ‘an important component’ of south af rica’s women, peace, and security (wps) agenda and a practical expression of our diplomacy of ubuntu, as it aims to strengthen south af rica’s international solidarity work. it is an affirmation and a validation of women’s economic justice rights as fundamental human rights. south af rica recognises that while more efforts have gone to advocating for the civil and political rights of women, the economic rights of women and girls have been largely neglected. it is for this reason that south af rica chose to focus its efforts under the generation equality forum on economic justice and rights. furthermore, pandor indicated the significance of the initiative by explaining that president ramaphosa has attended the paris generation equality forum in 2021 that adopted the global acceleration plan (gap) for the empowerment of women and girls globally. in paris, ramaphosa outlined south af rica’s commitments to the gap for the next five years that includes the charlotte maxeke af rican women’s economic justice and rights initiative as one of the programmatic commitments. in fact, the paris generation equality forum has endorsed the charlotte maxeke initiative as a collective commitment, thus recognising maxeke as ‘a global icon and symbol of women’s economic empowerment’ (pandor, 2022). for pandor, this endorsement has created an opportunity for international collaboration with global stakeholders to mobilise global support for women’s leadership (pandor, 2022). commenting on the work of the charlotte mannyamaxeke institute (a maxeke-related family nongovernmental organisation), pandor (2022) explained that the institute plans to build the charlotte mannya-maxeke af rican girls school of excellence, which pandor described as aligned with dirco’s programme, af rica future leadership development program, to develop future leaders, and inculcating: [t]he values of pan-af ricanism, integrity and selflessness through mentorship and training opportunities for youth on foreign policy and diplomacy work. a platform will be created for women diplomats to share perspectives and explore opportunities to promote the empowerment of women and girls in af rica. besides the charlotte maxeke af rican women’s economic justice and rights initiative, dirco also hosted the af rican women’s leadership award  in may 2022 in recognition of af rican women leaders who have advanced af rican development (pandor, 2022). in addition to recognising women, dirco has established several short-term projects to enhance the status of women, as well as their role in foreign policy. these include the: • establishment of the af rican women’s leadership training program on economic justice and rights for af rican women leaders to provide insight on economic justice and rights, and a networking platform for af rican women leaders to share best practices and experience. • hosting of a women’s trade fair  to showcase af rican women’s products and services to continental and global markets, and to raise awareness about the opportunities provided through policy initiatives such as the af rican continental free trade area (afcfta). • establishment of an annual  fellowship for af rican women in diplomacy in honour of maxeke, ‘targeting af rican women in diplomacy’, offering degree and non-degree education opportunities to the ‘next generation of af rican women in diplomacy…to groom female public servants inspired by the values of charlotte maxeke, such as ethical leadership, empathy and excellence’ (pandor, 1922). the liberation struggle has also been a women’s struggle. due recognition is given to women stalwarts that are memorialised as symbols of south af rica’s foreign policy principles, practices and objectives, but it remains to be seen if these initiatives will produce a marked shift to a feminist foreign policy or a qualitative improvement of sweden’s 4rs relating to the status of women in south af rica as both shope and maxeke could be regarded as traditionalists in whose name a feminist foreign policy would seem misplaced. 72 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 foreign minister pandor’s (2022) reference to maxeke as an internationalist is linked to a second development, progressive internationalism, regarding the positioning of women in the foreign policy context. positioning women in progressive internationalism in preparation of the anc’s 55th national conference in december 2022, the party, as it always does prior to a national conference, released various discussion documents, including a document on the country’s foreign policy and international relations. these discussion documents are important future policy indicators. titled ‘in pursuit of progressive internationalism in a changing world’, the discussion document on foreign policy outlines, amongst others, an analysis of the ‘international balance of forces’ (anc, 2022: 83). it has acknowledged that this has a ‘gender dimension with patriarchal systems’ that remains globally entrenched while deepening poverty among women (anc, 2022: 83). in its assessment of the ‘international balance of forces’, the anc (2022: 83) has acknowledged it has: [a] gender dimension with patriarchal systems remaining entrenched the world over, that deepens poverty among women. women bear the brunt of global trends in socioeconomic inequality, conflict and violence, environmental degradation, exploitation, and oppression. however, while acknowledging increased international calls for women’s inclusion in the economy, politics, and global decision, it has lamented the failure to implement the beijing declaration and platform of action, adopted in 1995. the anc (2022: 83) has observed that: the need for a progressive feminist movement across the world has become even stronger. discussions on the meaning of feminist foreign policy in theory and practice have also gained momentum across the world, including in south af rica. the discussion document has further outlined the foreign policy organisational programme of the anc and has reorganised its foreign policy position around five pillars outlined in figure 1, which also indicates the reference to women and gender in terms of this reorganisation. table 1: the five pillars of the anc’s foreign policy reorganisation, 2022 p e e r r e v i e w pi lla r 1: b ui ld in g a be tt er a fr ic a an d w or ld •no reference to women or gender pi lla r 2: p ar ty -t opa rt y, in tr apa rt y an d m ul til at er al r el at io ns •no reference to women or gender pi lla r 3: t ra ns fo rm at io n of g lo ba l g ov er na nc e •women empowerment •anc should actively participate in dialogues and programmes of civil society, academics and un bodies pi lla r 4: p ol ic y d ev el op m en t •policy consideration and new policy areas: •women and gender inclusivity •women empowerment •anc must consider developing its written position on women and/in foreign policy pi lla r 5: s ol id ar ity a nd c am pa ig ns •no reference to women or gender (source: author’s own compilation adapted from anc (2022: 84–89)) 73v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 in terms of its foreign policy organisational programme’s five pillars (see figure 1), pillar 4 (policy development) has identified women and gender inclusivity, and women empowerment as foreign policy considerations and new foreign policy areas. however, the anc has stated that women and gender inclusivity into foreign policy should take the global focus on the achievement of the un sustainable development goals (sdgs) into account. moreover, such a foreign policy should also be mindful of the un, the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) and unspecified other international bodies’ focus on women empowerment ‘through climate change and technology and financial and economic inclusion’ in line with the af rican union decade on af rican women financial and economic inclusion, adopted in 2020 (anc, 2022: 88). in this regard, the party has mentioned that calls for women’s inclusion in the economy, politics and global governance have grown and that the role of un women is critical in this. it also recalled the failure to implement the beijing declaration and platform of action, adopted in 1995. following this, the anc has asserted that the ‘need for a progressive feminist movement across the world has become even stronger’ (anc, 2022: 83). the party has acknowledged that ‘discussions on the meaning of feminist foreign policy in theory and practice have also gained momentum across the world, including in south af rica’ (anc, 2022: 83). however, the discussion document did not mention any specific sources or signs pertaining to this. regarding feminist foreign policy, the anc has offered no details on and commitment to adopting such a foreign policy. instead, it has noted ‘the growing embrace of the idea of a feminist foreign policy’ amongst its international ‘progressive partners’ (anc, 2022: 88). it has noted ‘the danger that this is being hijacked by powerful western forces for reasons that have little to do with the interests of women of the world’ (anc, 2022: 88). however, the party has noted that it ‘must consider developing its written position on women and/in foreign policy’ (anc, 2022: 88). the ruling party’s 2022 foreign policy document and its reference to women in the context of foreign policy has been a marked departure f rom the party’s 2017 discussion document on foreign policy (anc, 2017) that made only two references to women and none to gender issues. despite these changes, the anc seems to sit uncomfortably with ‘powerful western forces’ that may have hijacked feminist foreign policy. on a more positive note, the anc has expressed its intention to consider the development of a position on women ‘and/in foreign policy’ (anc, 2022: 88). the anc comes short of committing itself to the notion of feminist foreign policy but is has surely taken note of international feminist foreign policy initiatives since sweden declared its policy in 2014. integrating women in the definition of south af rica’s national interests a third foreign policy development relating to women has been south af rica’s release, on 1 august 2022, of the ‘framework document on south af rica’s national interest and its advancement in a global environment’, which proposes: [a] definition of south africa’s national interest and its elements, the means to pursue these interests and their practical application in the domestic and global environment (dirco, 2022: 3). the framework document, released by dirco, has been the first foreign policy document that has been released since the publication of the zuma cabinet’s approval of a foreign policy white paper, ‘building a better world: the diplomacy of ubuntu’, in 2011 (dirco, 2011). the latter includes only two references to gender (in the context of addressing past injustices and changes in global demographics) and none to women (dirco, 2011: 3, 12). the 2022 framework document, however, contains more references to women. it refers to the historical role of women in the country’s liberation, which resonates with the memorialisation and symbolism of women in the foreign policy context mentioned. the framework document refers to, for example, safety as one of the elements of south af rica’s national interests. regarding this element, the document focuses on women in the context of gbv, gender equality, the wps agenda, and women’s empowerment (dirco, 2022b: 6, 10, 11, 14, 15). under the heading of means to promote and pursue the country’s national interest in relation to other states, the framework document refers to the country’s values and principles (including a reference to the wps agenda), the social dimension of economic diplomacy (including the plight of p e e r r e v i e w 74 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 women in south af rica and elsewhere in af rica), the role of women in country’s defence and security diplomacy, and health diplomacy (dirco, 2022b: 17, 18, 26). the framework document returns to the liberation struggle and describes the liberation struggle as, inter alia, against patriarchy, while it also refers to panaf ricanism as a reaction to, for example, patriarchy (dirco, 2022b: 8, 10). this is clearly aligned with the anc discussion document (anc, 2022) released a few months prior to the framework document. the dirco policy document outlines the negative impact of gbv on the status of women, and south af rica’s commitment to gender equality, and women’s empowerment, as well as reiterating the role of women in the wps agenda and economic development in af rica (dirco, 2022b: 10, 12, 14). the framework document signals a clear departure f rom south af rica’s previous foreign policy statements, i.e. that the status of women and gender equality are regarded as integral elements of the country’s national interest. women’s historical exclusion and activism is highlighted, as well as the value attached to the role of women. however, it is clear f rom the framework document that, for south af rica, the status of women remains a challenge despite the aspirations and efforts to improve it and to achieve gender equality. the document is silent on improving women’s representation, role and influence in foreign policy decision making but in a section under the heading ‘south af rica’s approach: past, present and future,’ the document: [r]ecognises the important role that women should play in all aspects of peace processes, prevention, peacebuilding, peacekeeping and post-conflict recovery and reconstruction. south af rica continues to champion the women, peace and security agenda at a un and continental level, advocating for their inclusion and leadership in decision-making during peace processes (dirco, 2022b: 18). south af rican foreign policy and diplomatic practice regarding women is often complemented with reference to and practice of gender. the south af rican government has repeatedly declared the promotion of women as a major focus of its domestic and international agenda. historically, the anc as the ruling party has been resistant to the notion of feminism and feminist policies as understood elsewhere. instead, the women/gender normative commitment and practice has been contextualised in the country’s broader constitutional context that focuses on addressing historical injustices, and the promotion of human rights. the developments regarding women in the context of south af rica’s foreign policy confirms south af rica’s principled position on women’s rights, as well as a growing embrace of women in/and foreign policy. conclusion the contribution has started with contextualising south af rica and sweden’s relations. it has distinguished sweden’s notion of a feminist foreign policy as an approach to south af rica’s foreign policy and the status of women therein. convergences have been found but south af rica remains hesitant to adopt the notion of a feminist foreign policy. however, south af rica’s growing embrace of aspects of what a feminist foreign policy entails have been identified. since the announcement of its feminist foreign policy in 2014 until its termination in 2022, sweden has provided a new analytical, conceptual, and practical foreign policy f ramework to understand and improve women’s status and gender equality by, inter alia, highlighting 4rs (rights, representation, resources, and reality) in this context (mfa, 2019). it is too soon to assess the impact of sweden’s feminist foreign policy, and whether it has indeed achieved its intended objectives. sweden has inspired several states to reconsider their foreign policies, development aid, and practices. in south af rica, given the close historical and contemporary links between sweden and the anc, the ruling party has taken note of these developments, and called for a consideration of the notion of a feminist foreign policy and to develop a written position on ‘women and/in foreign policy’ (anc, 2022: 88). south af rica does not have a declared feminist foreign policy but normatively, as indicated, the country’s foreign policy converges with the objectives of sweden’s feminist foreign policy. an ethics of care underlies the principle of ubuntu, and south af rica’s declared diplomacy of ubuntu. women have been p e e r r e v i e w 75v o l u m e 9 4 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 and remain in top foreign policy positions in south af rica. the country’s normative commitment to the improvement of the situation of women and girls has been expressed repeatedly. however, the practice of this commitment, and the country’s status as a good international citizen, remains a concern when it remains silent on human rights issues in, for example, china. moreover, the country’s wps agenda seems to be counterfactual in the context of its position on russia’s war on and in ukraine since the annexation of crimea in 2014, and since russia’s invasion of ukraine on 24 february 2022. south af rica is unlikely to institute a state-driven and endorsed feminist agenda as exemplified by sweden’s declared and practiced foreign policy. as indicated, the notion of feminism has somewhat lost traction in the ruling party’s greater emphasis on human rights, gender equality, and women’s rights. it is also unlikely that the country will adopt a feminist foreign policy as it is currently understood. however, the status of women in the country remains a concern as gbv runs amok and counters south af rica’s credentials as a good state where human rights are upheld as a break with the country’s past. these developments, notwithstanding, have not arrested south af rica’s engagement with and on women’s issues. numerical improvements in women’s representation in the country’s foreign policy establishment are not sufficient to aspire to be a good state or a good international citizen. global consensus converges on the practical recognition and visibility of women. three recent developments in south af rica’s foreign policy context have been presented. these developments have been linked to sweden’s notion of the practice of foreign policy. here, the practice of remembering, recognising and the visibility of women have been presented by focusing on linking the liberation struggle to women’s struggle through the operationalisation of the legacies of women liberation stalwarts, gertrude shope and charlotte maxeke. secondly, the contribution has shown the extent of sweden’s feminist foreign policy as it manifested in the anc’s discussion documents for its 55th national conference. the last example referred to focused on south af rica’s consideration of its national interests, a consideration aware of the wps agenda, and the domestic context in south af rica. these examples have illustrated south af rica’s own ‘growing embrace’ of key notions of a feminist foreign policy. irrespective of the nature of a state’s foreign policy, it must strive to and achieve improvements in the status and representation of women and the abolition of all forms of gender domination, oppression, and gender stereotypes. post-apartheid south af rica’s growing embrace of elements associated with sweden’s formulation and practice of feminist foreign policy is evident. this contributes to the evolution of foreign policy in general and feminist foreign policy specifically. first, the south af rican case, over time, has shown that positioning women in high profile foreign policy positions matters. it makes women visible and ensures that they are present at the table. second, south af rica has also shown that women’s numerical representation matters. over time, the number of women in the south af rican foreign policy establishment has increased and given substance to south af rica’s commitment to women in/and foreign policy. in the third instance, the south af rican case has shown than non-material resources such as memorialisation and symbolism can be an important element to recognise, empower, and promote women. the cases of gertrude shope and charlotte maxeke have shown how this has become institutionalised in the south af rican foreign policy context. unlike sweden, south af rica has been hesitant to adopt the term and full substance of a feminist foreign policy for the reasons mentioned earlier but this has not prevented south af rica’s own growing embrace of notions of feminist foreign policy. finally, the south af rican case offers insights into avenues for future research on the substance and practice of feminist foreign policy. the swedish case has shown that specifically formulated foreign policies can be disrupted by changes in government. moreover, the notion of feminist foreign policy has also evolved since sweden’s adoption of it, showing the impact of sweden’s normative entrepreneurship. for south af rica, mexico’s intention to adopt a feminist foreign policy will also be instructive as mexico also represents a non-european country. the expectation is that mexico will not just transplant the swedish model but adapt it to domestic realities. p e e r r e v i e w 76 t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 references african national congress (anc). 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https://theconversation.com/south-africa-doesnt-have-enough-women-in-foreign-policy-why-it-matters-114758 https://theconversation.com/south-africa-doesnt-have-enough-women-in-foreign-policy-why-it-matters-114758 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/10/19/swedens-secret-anc-aid-made-enemies-in-pretoria/78985bc3-9f82-4560-9356-29332e74f3a2/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/10/19/swedens-secret-anc-aid-made-enemies-in-pretoria/78985bc3-9f82-4560-9356-29332e74f3a2/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/10/19/swedens-secret-anc-aid-made-enemies-in-pretoria/78985bc3-9f82-4560-9356-29332e74f3a2/ https://www.swp-berlin.org/publications/products/comments/2022c48_feministforeignpolicy.pdf https://www.swp-berlin.org/publications/products/comments/2022c48_feministforeignpolicy.pdf https://www.government.se/49700e/contentassets/9992f701ab40423bb7b37b2c455aed9a/utrikesforvaltningens-handlingsplan-for-feministisk-utrikespolitik-2021_eng.pdf https://www.government.se/49700e/contentassets/9992f701ab40423bb7b37b2c455aed9a/utrikesforvaltningens-handlingsplan-for-feministisk-utrikespolitik-2021_eng.pdf https://www.government.se/49700e/contentassets/9992f701ab40423bb7b37b2c455aed9a/utrikesforvaltningens-handlingsplan-for-feministisk-utrikespolitik-2021_eng.pdf t h e t h i n k e r22 by carolyn pedwell global transforming the human: algorithms, and networked activism intuition © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m 23v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 i n the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, digital, smart and algorithmic technologies, it is claimed, may be fundamentally transforming ‘the human’. they may, that is, be radically re-mediating human senses, habits and capacities. in thumbelina (2015), for example, the late french philosopher and media theorist michel serres argues that millennials are not only the first generation to experience the internet and related forms of digital media in their adolescence, they have also been comprehensively ‘[re]-formatted by the media’, and, thus, ‘no longer have the same body or behavior’ as previous generations (2015: 5-6). while ‘thumbelina’ and ‘tom thumb’, as serres affectionately names his millennial prototypes, are characterised by their profound affinity with digital technologies their ability to send a text message (with their thumbs hence the nicknames for millennials) in an instant they have limited ‘faculty of attention’. indeed, through their immersion since birth in mass media and advertising cultures, their attention spans have been ‘meticulously destroyed’ (5). although they ‘can manipulate several forms of information at the same time’, serres’ millennials ‘neither understand it, nor integrate it, nor synthesize it as we do, their ancestors’ (6). yet, as serres contends, thumbelina and tom thumb do not possess the same cognitive habits or capacities as their parents or grandparents because they do not need them: ‘with their cell phone, they have access to all people; with gps, to all places; with the internet, to all knowledge’ (6). just as the advent of previous communications technologies—from the practice of writing, to the printing press, to the telegraph—transformed the workings of human cognition and memory by making the need to mentally store huge amounts of information redundant, with the rise of digital media and smart technologies, ‘this head has now mutated yet again’ (serres 2015: 12). thumbelina does not have to work hard to gain or memorise knowledge, serres argues, because ‘it is already in front of her, objective, collected, collective, connected, accessible at her leisure, already reviewed and edited’ (19-20). as such, serres extends a long genealogy of media theory from marshall mcluhan and friedrich kittler to bruno latour and donna haraway which has explored how various ‘new’ technologies act as ‘extensions[s] of ourselves’; functioning to shape ‘not only habits of life, but patterns of thought and valuation’ (mcluhan [1964]1994: 1, 12). although tertiary memory is vital to social and cultural transformation—as james ash notes, ‘when information is stored outside of human memory it can be reliably recalled into the future’ (2015: 121)—in the context of late capitalism, it is also associated with more disquieting effects. for bernard stiegler, efforts by a range of cultural industries to manipulate the content of digital tertiary memory in the interests of profit generation have led to a ‘fundamental disaffection on the part of people who become oversaturated by the media that swamp their lives’ (2015: 121). this saturation, he suggests, has fundamentally transformed the ‘functioning of the nervous system’, reducing human attention span and hindering ‘critical and creative thought’ (2012: 186). digitally re-programmed to accede to the will of corporate capital, contemporary subjects are increasingly trapped within ‘cycles of mindless consumption’ (ibid) and thus estranged from engagement with the political concerns and complexities of everyday life. these perspectives on human cognition and behaviour in the digital age would seem to paint a rather bleak picture of the future of radical politics and social transformation. if, as the digital media scholar wendy hui kyong chung puts it, ‘through habits users become their machines’ (2016: 1), then it might be argued that our contemporary media habitus is producing an army of automatons: digital humans programmed in what serres (2015) calls an ‘algorithmic mode of thought.’ an algorithm is ‘a finite set of instructive steps that can be followed mechanically, without comprehension, and that is used to organise, calculate, control, shape and sometimes predict outcomes’ (coleman et al 2018: 8). in our current age of media analytics, an everjust as the advent of previous communications technologies—from the practice of writing, to the printing press, to the telegraph—transformed the workings of human cognition and memory by making the need to mentally store huge amounts of information redundant, with the rise of digital media and smart technologies, ‘this head has now mutated yet again’ (serres 2015: 12). global t h e t h i n k e r24 growing swath of ‘our cultural experiences, social interactions, and decision-making are governed by large-scale software systems’ that operate via algorithmic procedures (manovich 2013: online). indeed, whether via the aggregative nature of social media, the filtering of results on search engines, or the dynamics of contextual advertising and automatic news production, algorithms now play an increasingly central role in everyday life. in this context, the term ‘algorithmic thought’ can be employed to refer not only to the ways in which people think about algorithms but also to how our intermeshing with algorithmic technologies may be changing the nature of thought itself. as we become increasingly algorithmically mediated by digital capital at the micro-level of affect, gesture and habit, the above perspectives imply, our embodied capacity for political resistance and solidarity may be progressively diminished or even irreparably destroyed. however, as this essay explores in an analysis that brings together theories of mediation, philosophies of habit and affect and writing on new social movements, these emerging digital forms of personhood are also subject to more hopeful political visions. this occurs in a context in which associations between digital media, capitalist colonization and political disaffection have become automatic and smart phones and social media are widely assumed to be detrimental to young people’s subjectivity. thinking speculatively, i will argue, can open up and complicate these processes of mediation in ways that may help us to imagine and enact other possibilities for technosocial life. habit, intuition and the sensation of change although thumbelina describes millennials as having diminished capacity for sustained attention and conceptual thinking, serres nonetheless proclaims that ‘this newly born individual is good news’ (2015: 5). what their digital re-programming has made possible for thumbelina and tom thumb, he argues, is ‘an innovative and enduring intuition’ (italics mine, 2015: 19). that is, precisely because millennials no longer have to dedicate so much mental energy and neural capacity to gathering, storing and organising information, they may develop greater aptitude for a different, more intuitive, mode of being-in-the-world. in delegating habits of mental synthesizing and processing to digital technologies, thumbelina and her peers are participating in the development of ‘new genius’ and ‘inventive intelligence’ – ‘an authentic cognitive subjectivity’ (19). thumbelina thus compels us to confront how the idea of ‘human-machine hybrids’ has taken on new significance in an age characterised by media analytics and algorithmic technologies. to be sure, serres’ view of the potentialities of such techno-cultural transformations could be described as unrealistic or utopian and certainly in stark contrast to more prevalent reports of the damaging impact of digital culture on young people’s subjectivities and mental health. in her bestselling book igen, for example, the psychologist jean twenge argues that the generation of american youth born in 1995 onwards, who ‘grew up with cell phones, had an instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time before the internet’, are ‘at the forefront of the worst mental health crisis in decades’ (2017: 3)..similarly, a 2017 study by the uk’s royal society for public health (based on a survey of 1,479 14to 24year-olds) reported that social media platforms including instagram, snapchat, facebook and twitter were experienced negatively by many young people who found that they functioned to ‘exacerbate body image concerns’ and ‘worsen bullying, sleep problems and feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness’. at its worst, social media is linked to increased feelings of ‘selfloathing’ and a growing risk of suicide (campbell 2017: online). moreover, given everything we know about the pernicious interaction of networked technologies with global capitalism, international securitisation, racial profiling, political interference in national elections, ‘fake news’, conspiracy theories, echo chambers, trolling, and so forth, such an affirmative engagement might seem in this context, the term ‘algorithmic thought’ can be employed to refer not only to the ways in which people think about algorithms but also to how our intermeshing with algorithmic technologies may be changing the nature of thought itself. global 25v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 wilfully blind to the more disturbing realities of our contemporary digitally-mediated world. my argument, however, is that precisely because accounts of the corrupting influence of digital technologies have become so pervasive, it is increasingly difficult to imagine how humantechnology co-production could be otherwise. to start, i want to return to the term ‘intuition’ that serres associates with the emergent digital subjectivities of millennials. as ‘the ability to understand something immediately, without need for conscious reasoning’ (oed), intuition is often connected with direct sensing, instinctive reactions and ‘gut feelings’. extending these everyday associations, the french philosopher henri bergson famously figured intuition as an experiential mode of engagement with the richness and flux of material life. highlighting the difference between intuition and what might now be referred to as ‘representational thinking’, bergson contrasts the sense of a town one would gain from viewing photographs ‘taken from all possible points of view’ compared to the visceral experience of walking through it. while there is value in both encounters, he suggests, the two can ‘never be equivalent’ because only the latter allows for the ‘unity’ of experience ([1903]1999: 22). unlike ‘analysis’, which reduces objects to ‘elements already known’, intuition is, for bergson, a form of immersive inhabitation which connects one with ‘what is unique’ and ‘consequently inexpressible’ in an object ([1903]1999: 24). it is embodied experience before, or outside of, its translation into the categories of representational and analytical thought. what is also important for bergson is that both we and the objects we encounter are never static but are rather always moving and becoming. intuition thus allows us to appreciate change as it is happening: it is, as sarah kember and joanna zylinska put it, ‘a moment of our own duration that enables us to connect with a wider one’ (2012: 15). bergson’s interest in temporality and mobility, as well as the non-representational thrust of his approach, resonates with more recent work associated with the ‘turn to affect’. this is perhaps most notable in the work of the cultural anthropologist kathleen stewart in her book ordinary affects: through inhabiting the varied sensations of everyday life from the feeling of being part of the mainstream to the lived textures of racism stewart seeks to interrupt the automatic ‘jump to representational thinking and evaluative critique’ (2007: 4). similar to bergson, she is interested not in processes of demystification ‘that support a well-known picture of the world,’ but rather in ‘speculation, curiosity and the concrete’ (1). in socio-political terms, what is vital about stewart’s approach – and intuition as method more generally – is its ability to register that which exceeds weighty terms such as “neoliberalism”, “advanced capitalism”, “liberal democracy” or “populism” and yet nonetheless ‘exert[s] palpable pressures’ (3). that is, intuition as a method’s capacity to viscerally grasp how “the social” and “the political” are actually much more fragile, ambivalent and mobile than is usually conveyed. what, then, might be distinctive about the workings of intuition in the digital age? this is a salient question given that, as rebecca coleman notes, for bergson, ‘true intuition’ was ‘an empiricism’ that implied the need for direct embodied experience rather than technologicallymediated perception (2008: 112). returning to thumbelina, she is, on the one hand, skilled in a mode of algorithmic thought that seems antithetical to the kind of affective inhabitation that bergson and stewart advocate. when asked ‘what beauty is’, for instance, thumbelina responds not with an incisive unpacking of the concept, or a rich description of its felt qualities, but rather in the manner of a search engine: ‘a beautiful woman, a beautiful dance, a beautiful sunset…’ (serres 2015: 42). on the other hand, what thumbelina’s endless list of examples may be seen to express is a resistance to unnecessary or stultifying abstraction. as serres suggests, thumbelina and tom thumb seem to understand intuitively that, while conceptual thinking has its place, ‘we do not have an ineluctable need for concepts’ and that that is, intuition as a method’s capacity to viscerally grasp how “the social” and “the political” are actually much more fragile, ambivalent and mobile than is usually conveyed. what, then, might be distinctive about the workings of intuition in the digital age? global t h e t h i n k e r26 there is value in lingering ‘as long as necessary in narratives, examples, singularities…’ (2015: 42-3). as such, although their experience of the world is continually mediated via networked technologies, these ‘new humans’ would seem to excel at the very kinds of more-thanrepresentational thinking bergson associated with intuition. from this perspective, we can begin to appreciate how, precisely because they are not preoccupied by a particular kind of analytical labour, thumbelina and her millennial peers may hone their capacity to engage those moving forces that escape the analytical purchase of our most prominent socio-political concepts. in doing so, these emergent digital subjects might also helpfully illuminate the ways in which, as stewart suggests, ‘politics starts in the animated inhabitation of things’ (2007: 16). what i am suggesting here, then, is that the ‘authentic cognitive subjectivity’ that serres speculatively attributes to thumbelina and tom thumb is characterised by two key features: first, an emergent capacity for intuition (made possible, in part, through the delegation of human memory functions to digital technologies) which pushes against dominant modes of representational thinking to connect with moving events as they unfold, and, second, an algorithmic mode of thought (conditioned by our growing intertwinement with computational technologies) which is procedural, technical, calculative and data-oriented. while thumbelina’s intuitive orientation attunes her to change as it is happening, and thus the potential inherent in the present for things to be otherwise, her algorithmic aptitude allows for a more precise ‘arraying of possibilities such that they can be acted upon’ in the future (amoore 2013: 23). importantly, these newly ascendant cognitive and affective features continue to work in and through multiple other human modes of sensing, perceiving, thinking and acting – including more conceptual, analytical and representational registers. the rise of algorithmic thought, from this perspective, does not inevitably function to erode young people’s abilities to engage contextually, critically and politically. rather, in its articulation with intuition, speculation and the pre-emergent, it might constitute a vital form of ‘quantum literacy’ which enables millennials to navigate networked relations across (non-linear) time and (non-bounded) space, and to recognise the ‘principle inadequacy of thinking about numbers and letters, mathematics and language, as two separate domains’ (coleman et al 2018: 8). of course, thumbelina and tom thumb are themselves abstractions – in ‘reality’ they exist only in the multiple; at lived intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, ability and nation, and the various material, social and geo-political differences and inequalities such shifting relations entail. to the extent, however, that thumbelina is a useful abstraction to think through, she compels us to deconstruct dualistic figurations of millennials as either apolitical automatons or overly-sensitive ‘snowflakes’. indeed, from serres’ perspective, ‘the new democracy in knowledge’ that digital media and tertiary memory offer and which thumbelina and tom thumb both cultivate and rely on corresponds to a political ‘democracyin-formation’ that will soon ‘become inescapable’ (2015: 55). movement, affect and digital activism there is clearly no necessary link between intuition and socio-political change in the interests of freedom and social justice. as an embodied capacity and form of relationality, intuition is, in principle amenable to mobilisation by ‘progressive’ and ‘regressive’ ideologies alike. for example, as the political geographer louise amoore (2013) explores, a ‘politics of possibility’ premised on intuitive engagement with pre-emergent flows and relations characterises not only certain strands of continental philosophy and cultural theory, but also practices associated with capitalist financialization and international securitization. algorithmic processes, moreover, are increasingly associated with problematic socio-political patterns and prejudices. safiya umoja noble the rise of algorithmic thought, from this perspective, does not inevitably function to erode young people’s abilities to engage contextually, critically and politically. rather, in its articulation with intuition, speculation and the preemergent, it might constitute a vital form of ‘quantum literacy’. global 27v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 argues, in this vein, that algorithms created and employed by global platforms such as google are ‘serving up deleterious information about people, creating and normalizing structural and systematic isolation, or practicing digital redlining, all of which reinforce oppressive social and economic relations’ (2018: 10). as such, i do not wish to downplay the importance of engaging critically with mobilisations of intuition and algorithm that perpetuate dominant relations of power and violence. keeping these political dynamics in mind, however, i also seek to complicate narratives that associate digitally re-mediated forms of personhood predominately with capitalist colonialization and political apathy or interpret engagement with the pre-emergent primarily as a mode of violent capture to explore how these phenomena might be conducive to more affirmative modes of political relationality and solidarity. in particular, there are, i want to suggest, significant resonances between the ‘intuitive digital subject’ that thumbelina represents (or may become) and the logics and sensibilities of contemporary networked movements for social justice – including occupy and black lives matter as well as various feminist, queer, trans and anti-fascist mobilisations gaining momentum in the wake of trumpism. as the ‘movement’ in social movement signifies, these forms of collective action and solidarity are continually in process – evolving and transforming as they attract new members and respond to unfolding events and emerging sociopolitical and environmental conditions. to the extent that ‘being moved’ is a necessary catalyst for participation in, or alignment with, particular political visions, these new forms of activism (like older ones) are also highly affective – they are both fuelled by, and productive of, ‘bodily intensities, emotions, feeling, and passions’ (gould 2009: 3). what is perhaps most distinctive, however, about current forms of ‘progressive’ political mobilisation is their digitally networked nature. extending technological techniques pioneered by the arab spring, the occupy movement, launched in new york city in 2011, used a range of digital platforms both to ‘spread the word’ and to coordinate embodied activity as it unfolded. as paulo guerbado argues in his comparative analysis of the arab spring, occupy wall street and the indignados movement in spain, social media within new protest cultures are not simply means to ‘convey abstract opinions’; they also enable forms of affective choreography that give shape to how people feel, move and act together (2012: 13). across these various networked movements, social media, and particularly facebook and twitter, have been ‘instrumental in instigating an emotional condensation of people’s anger’ and ‘acting as a spring-board for street-level agitation’ (2012: 15). digital applications have also enabled protesters to re-direct crowd activity in real-time to avoid the containment strategies of authorities. during the student protests against the increase in uk university fees in 2011, which was linked in with occupy uk, for example, a new digital app ‘sukey’ enabled activists to avoid police kettleing in london by allowing them to both ‘submit and access information about which road junctions are clear and which are blocked by the authorities’ (geere 2011: online). various digital technologies and forms of techné have also, of course, been vital to the emergence and effectivity of the black lives matter (blm) movement. since its inauguration in 2013, blm has, as barnor hesse and juliet hooker discuss, harnessed social media to ‘organize, heighten immediacy, and widen the scope of the public that acts as witness to the disposability of black lives’ (2017: 451). while repeated exposure to violent images tends to be associated with political desensitization and disaffection (pedwell 2017), blm’s mobilisation of a ‘continuous loop of viral videos showing police killing unarmed blacks’ has made ‘viscerally accessible’ to millions worldwide the habitual violent targeting of black bodies by the carceral state (hooker 2017: 491) in ways that have intensified (rather than dissipated) collective anti-racist affect and activism. moreover, twitter hashtags such as #ferguson, #baltimore and #cleveland (associated with the police killings of michael brown, freddie gray and tamir rice respectively) have functioned not only to expand the movement’s evolving digital network but also to convey instantaneous ‘information about unfolding events’ (bonilla and rosa 2015: 8) thus enabling blm to connect with and respond to that which is in process. the fluid intersection of ‘the moving’, ‘the affective’ and ‘the digital’ characterising these global t h e t h i n k e r28 movements, i want to suggest, is precisely the terrain with which thumbelina’s combination of intuitive sense and algorithmic thought resounds. if intuition is ‘a moment of our own duration that enables us to connect with a wider one’ (kember and zylinska 2012: 15), thumbelina is primed for this union. as serres notes, thumbelina and her millennial peers, via their propensity for movement and action, are ready to connect with moving events – to resonate with the rhythm of bodies coming together to occupy space, to protest the status quo and to engage ‘the modalities of the possible and the contingent’ (43). although, as sara ahmed (2014) underscores, the embodied cadence of social movements is not simply about synchronicity: it may also involve the sensation of being ‘out of time’ with the mainstream. moreover, if thumbelina’s capacity for intuition attunes her to the mobility and affectivity of new social movements, her algorithmic capacities align her with the digital modes of communication and choreography central to these networked activisms. indeed, in serres’ view, ‘the objective, the collective, the technological, the organizational’ now ‘depend far more on this algorithmic or procedural cognition’ than they do on ‘the declarative abstractions’ of ‘philosophy’ (2015: 71-2). this is not to invalidate the ongoing salience of conceptual and analytical thinking but rather to highlight what may be generative about algorithmic thought in a context in which it has been consistently devalued or aligned exclusively with that which is politically and ethically suspect. think, for example, of the powerful (if contentious) political function of algorithmic practices of listing, counting and cataloguing within contemporary digital activisms – whether via the collective naming online of alleged sexual abusers by the #metoo movement, or the real-time tally of unarmed people of colour killed by the police in the united states maintained by buzzfeed and gawker in solidarity with #blacklivesmatter. indeed, the ‘hashtag activisms’ associated with these and other contemporary movements can be considered vital forms of algorithmic politics. as yarimar bonilla and jonathan rosa discuss in their digital ethnography of blm and #ferguson, in the immediate aftermath of michael brown’s death, social media users ‘well aware of the algorithmic nature of twitter’ were ‘purposefully hashtagging to make ferguson “trend”’ (2015: 7). such aggregative practices allowed brown’s murder to be connected to the perceived ‘expendability of black bodies’ underlying a multitude of past killings of people of colour by law enforcement in the united states (2015: 10). they also, however, facilitated connections with wider social and geopolitical struggles through tweets such as ‘#egypt #palestine #ferguson #turkey, u.s. made tear gas, sold on the almighty free market represses democracy’ (2015: 10, 6) –enabling opportunities for transnational collaboration and solidarity (hesse and hooker, 2017). significantly, while such algorithmic dynamics enable the itemising, indexing and interlinking of ‘the quotidian struggles against dehumanization every brown and black person lives simply because of skin color’ (rankine 2015: 14), they also offer potent opportunities for reimagining black materiality beyond mainstream mediations. for example, through memes such as #iftheygunnedmedown in which young people of colour posted two contrasting photographs of themselves along with the text ‘which one would they use’ (referring to which image authorities and mainstream media would print if they were killed by the police) – twitter users were able to ‘contest the racialized devaluation of their person’ and ‘rematerialize their bodies in alternative ways’ (bonilla and rosa 2015: 9). more generally, blm’s intersectional ethos, and its intertextual articulation with other feminist, queer, trans and anti-capitalist movements online, has enabled ‘the complexity of black lives inscribed differently and multiply … to be seen, heard, and encountered politically’ (hesse 2017: 600) – illustrating how algorithmic politics are not simply antithetical to political complexity and expansiveness. moreover, if thumbelina’s capacity for intuition attunes her to the mobility and affectivity of new social movements, her algorithmic capacities align her with the digital modes of communication and choreography central to these networked activisms. global 29v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 political tendencies and pre-figurative politics of course, there is no guarantee that the emergent cognitive and embodied features serres ascribes to thumbelina and tom thumb will orient millennials towards participation in progressive or left-wing movements rather than politically conservative, or even fascist, forms of mobilisation. it is clear that the ‘alt right’ and other forms of fascist politics aligned with trumpism have adopted similar digital techniques and strategies to those employed by progressive movements for social justice. as yochai benkler et al discuss in network propaganda, alt-right memes are amplified by major right-wing outlets such as fox news in the us, which ‘are adept at producing their own conspiracy theories and defamation campaigns’ (2018: 13). consolidating ‘long-term changes in american politics’ and ‘the already present asymmetric architecture of news media’ (2018: 21, 2), such digital dynamics leveraged a media ecosystem ripe for the violent re-emergence of far-right ideologies. however, if regressive politics depend on rigid identity positions and seek a return to exclusionary versions of an imagined ‘the past’ (i.e. ‘make america great again’ and the colonial nostalgia of ‘brexit’), many of the new broadly leftist activisms are characterised precisely by their openness to the future – that is, by a deep commitment to pursuing democracy, freedom and solidarity that does not assume that we can know deterministically in advance what ‘social justice’ might constitute in a given context or indeed how, specifically, it might be delivered. as such, these various, broadly leftist, forms of political mobilisation can be considered part of what the political thinker and activist chris dixon calls ‘another politics’: a shared politics bound together not by political party affiliation or sectarian lines, but rather by a ‘political tendency’ – a tendency aligned with ‘a rich democratic vision of everyone being able to directly participate in the decisions that affect them’ and resistant to ‘all forms of domination, exploitation and oppression’ (italics mine, 2014: 6, 3). from this perspective, if many of the movements which comprise the political tendency dixon describes are not led by a clearly defined set of policies, goals or ‘end-points’ (which was, of course, one of the dominant critiques of occupy), this is, in part, because they appreciate the importance, in a complex and shifting social world, of sensing and responding to change as it is happening. moreover, they understand the political risks, as john dewey puts it, of simply ‘substituting one rigidity for another’ ([1922]2012: 52). as an alternative to more rigid or essentialist modes of political mobilisation, these movements enact a pre-figurative politics which aims to ‘manifest and build, to the greatest extent possible, the egalitarian and deeply democratic world we would like to see through our means of fighting in this one’ (dixon, 2014: 7). as such, they highlight the vital links between social change and the affect, gestures, habits and solidarities of daily life. they pursue a ‘politics of habit’ and ‘politics of feeling’ that are, as ann cvetkovich puts it, ‘manifest not just in overt or visible social movements of conventional politics but [also] in the more literal kinds of movement that make up everyday life’ (2012: 199). consider, for example, not only occupy, but also other anti-capitalist movements including the indignados of spain and the outraged of greece, which have repeatedly assembled to protest neoliberalism and austerity. as judith butler and athena athanasiou discuss, in performing habits and routines of everyday life in the public space of the square sleeping and living there, cooking for one another, working remotely together ‘taking care of the environment and each other’ – such activists are pursuing pre-figurative politics; they are cultivating ‘the relations of equality that are precisely those that are lacking in the economic and political domain’ (2013: 102). while calling attention to the insidious harms of neoliberal governance and induced precarity, they also constitute collective relations and capacities which if regressive politics depend on rigid identity positions and seek a return to exclusionary versions of an imagined ‘the past’ (i.e. ‘make america great again’ and the colonial nostalgia of ‘brexit’), many of the new broadly leftist activisms are characterised precisely by their openness to the future. global t h e t h i n k e r30 might support a range of immanent political possibilities. if pre-figurative politics are unfolding in public squares around the world, they are also ongoing within a multitude of digital spaces and circuits – via practices of tweeting, meme-making, blogging and virtual community-building. bonilla and rosa, for instance, highlight the experience of a 25-year-old american protestor, johnetta elzie, who first encountered other activists online, with whom she ‘live-tweeted, vined and instagrammed’ every blm protest in ferguson during the summer of 2014 (2015: 10). coming to call themselves ‘millennial activists united’, these social media users eventually expanded ‘their role from “documenting” their actions to “generating” new forms of community’ – including the use of the hashtag #ferguson friday to curate a weekly digital space for political reflection and ‘national “fireside” conference calls during which activists based in ferguson could speak directly with those following the events from afar’ (2015: 10). in addition to ‘forging a shared politics through struggle’ transnationally (dixon 2014: 3), these digital practices enable millennials to develop vital political techné the embodied skills, techniques and habits of ‘doing politics’ online (rentschler and thrift, 2015). such ‘learned and socially habituated way[s] of doing things with machines, tools, interfaces, instruments, and media’ (2015: 241) are amenable to mobilisation for multiple, yet to be imagined, political enactments. in practical terms, this intuitive and speculative approach to politics is enabled, in part, by these movements’ networked qualities, including the capacity of digital and algorithmic media to connect members to moving events as they unfold. much has been written about the propensity of social media to produce ‘echo chambers’ that polarize ideological differences rather than exploring what might be generative about their grey areas. through a pre-figurative lens, however, we can alternatively consider how the immanent, ‘real-time’ dynamics of networked media might enable (potential) activists to ‘learn and act in the midst of ongoing, unforeclosed situations’ (anderson 2017: 594). this is significant because, as the philosopher erin manning (2016) argues, it is through inhabiting the gestures, habits and relations of life in process that we can discern and exploit the potential for dominant cultural and socio-political tendencies to become otherwise. of course, we know algorithmic media tend in certain directions and thus the forms of sociopolitical becoming they might support are by no means open or unlimited a reality that makes ongoing work to expose and contest ‘algorithmic oppression’ and the pernicious links between digital media and capitalism increasingly vital (noble 2018; fuchs, 2014). yet, for movements such as occupy and blm, staying ‘in the midst’ of socio-political and material relations in process (manning 2016), also means recognising that there is no politically pure position from which to operate outside the dynamics of neoliberalism or racial capitalism. rather, what is required are a means of working speculatively within existing (infra)structures and relations of power, in order to reorient the tendencies that comprise them. in this vein, one of the strengths of the pragmatic coalitions that algorithmic technologies enable is that they are flexible and responsive, and can form and recalibrate tactics as situations unfold – thus potentially ‘mobilis[ing] a lithe and powerful response able to resist, rework, and undo [hegemonic] social relations and practices’ (katz 2017: 598). what is perhaps most important from a prefigurative perspective is that networked projects of social justice remain ‘in process and unfinished, something that consciously pushes beyond available political categories, and yet something that can be shared, held in common’ (dixon 2014: 6). it is precisely this kind of openness, inclusivity and ‘processuality’, i want to suggest, that constitutes the power of occupy and black lives matter as movements, statements and rallying calls. when those marching, occupying, filming or live-tweeting repeat ‘black lives matter’, the one of the strengths of the pragmatic coalitions that algorithmic technologies enable is that they are flexible and responsive, and can form and recalibrate tactics as situations unfold – thus potentially ‘mobilis[ing] a lithe and powerful response able to resist, rework, and undo [hegemonic] social relations and practices.’ global 31v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 ‘sense of being present in a particular space is evoked and remains open’; the reiteration ‘makes common a way to be in the future’ that is ‘always becoming, always in formation’ (mirzoeff, 2017: 33, 92). the injunction to ‘#occupy’, and the parallel anti-capitalist slogan ‘we are the 99 per cent’, work similarity (fuchs, 2014) – they provide the basis for inclusive modes of collective political action and solidarity that remain open to a host of material and ethical possibilities. millennials have been at the heart of these activisms in part, i have argued, because they practice forms of prefigurative politics that combine ‘the moving’, ‘the affective’ and ‘the digital’. while exploiting the aggregative capacities of algorithmic media to livechronicle everyday inequalities and choreograph collective action and affect, these movements also cultivate transformative relations and capacities with the potential to actualise pre-emergent techno-social futures. as my speculative engagement with serres’ thumbelina has suggested, embodied and socio-political change is continually unfolding through ongoing processes of mediation multiple, overlapping, non-linear processes that work primarily at the level of affect, sensation, gesture, habit and tendency. ‘the digital’ and ‘the algorithmic’ are central to such dynamics; indeed, we are all now ‘digital humans’ – but what this means (or has the potential to mean) materially, politically and ethically is not straightforward or pre-determined. it may, however, be through cultivating a more intuitive mode of engagement with everyday life that we are better able to sense and apprehend these kinds of transformations as they are happening and the potentialities that they entail. ■ acknowledgements a longer version of this piece first appeared as: pedwell, carolyn (2019) ‘digital tendencies: intuition, algorithmic thought and new social movements’, culture, theory and critique 60(2): 123-138. references ahmed, s. 2017. living a feminist life. london and durham: duke university press. amoore, l. 2013. the politics of possibility: risk and security beyond probability. london and durham: duke university press. anderson, b. 2017. ‘hope and micropolitics’. epd: society and space. 35:4: 593–595. ash, j. 2015. ‘sensation, networks, and the gif: toward and allotropic account of affect’. in michael petit et al (eds), networked affect. cambridge ma: mit press, 119-134. benkler, y et al. 2018. network propaganda: manipulation, disinformation, and radicalization in american politics. oxford: oxford up. bergson, h. 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443-456. hooker, j. 2017. ‘black protest / white grievance: on the problem of white political imaginations not shaped by loss’. south atlantic quarterly 116:3, 483-504. katz, c. 2017. ‘revisiting minor theory’, epd: society and space 35:4: 596–599. kember, s. and zylinska, j. 2012. life after new media: mediation as a vital process. cambridge: mit press. manning, e. 2016. the minor gesture. durham and london: duke up. manovich, l. 2013. ‘the algorithms of our lives’, the chronicle of higher education (16th december 2013). online: available at: https://www.chronicle. com/article/the-algorithms-of-our-lives-/143557 [accessed: 1st december 2018]. mcluhan, m. 1994. understanding media: the extensions of man. cambridge: mit press. mirzoeff, n. 2017. the appearance of black lives matter. miami: [name] publications. noble, s. u. 2018. algorithms of oppression: how search engines reinforce racism. new york: new york university press. pedwell, c. 2017. ‘mediated habits: images, networked affect and social change’. subjectivity 10: 147-169. rankine, c. 2015. citizen: an american lyric. new york: penguin. rentschler, c. and thrift, s. 2015. ‘introduction: doing feminism: event, archive techne’. feminist theory 16:3. 239-249. serres, m. 2015. thumbelina: the culture and technology of millennials. trans. daniel w. smith. london and new york: rowman and littlefield. stewart, k. 2007. ordinary affects. durham and london: duke up. stiegler, b. 2012. uncontrollable societies of disaffected individuals. cambridge: policy press. twenge, j. 2017 igen: why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy – and completely unprepared for adulthood. new york: atria. global https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-algorithms-of-our-lives-/143557 https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-algorithms-of-our-lives-/143557 _goback prolegomena there is no doubt that the year 2020 will go down in history as a year of major disruption towards humanity. it is critically important to analyse exactly what this disruption is. such analysis should be rooted in the understanding of the world’s balance of power. indeed, at a national level, the analysis for each country should also be based on the country’s balance of power relations. it is easy to sing a common chorus of despair regarding the massive disruptions that have been occasioned by the covid-19 pandemic. the reality is that society is made up of different social classes that have been affected differently by this pandemic. the global elites, that is, those who command the global economy and their immediate beneficiaries, are undoubtedly feeling the greatest pain from this pandemic. the global economy has been hugely impacted upon by the manner in which nations have had to respond to the pandemic. the closure of trade borders across the world has yielded negative consequences for the global economy as a whole. those who had been at the helm of the global economy, those whom global trade had been exclusively benefitting, have been most affected. new cities new economies: south africa and africa’s grand plan, a pan-african economic revolution by tshilidzi ratshitanga | peer review new cities new economies 6 t h e t h i n k e r massive urbanisation, modernisation and industrialisation, which can emerge through import substitution industrialisation and the expansion of existing industries, can enable the creation of a totally transformed society. the poorest of the world have not had much to lose, as their lives were already a catastrophe of abject poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment. at most, what the poorest have suffered is the loss of loved ones, who have perished as a result of this pandemic. as such, the vehement attack on humanity by covid-19 demands of us to see it as the most profound protest against global inequality. the ‘new normal’, which has been projected post-covid-19, should not merely be a new normal insofar as the nature of work is concerned, it should also be a new normal against inequality, which had unfortunately become a ‘normal’ way of life in many countries prior to the pandemic. the massive shifts that are expected in world power relations post-covid-19 should arguably turn patterns of prosperity in favour of hitherto marginalised groups of people across the world. the economic eco-system should have been disrupted in such a manner that it becomes balanced. this balancing act is what i believe should be the biggest outcome of the pandemic. this cataclysmic event is what will balance the scales of the global war against inequality. however, only those who are able to interpret and interact with the shift will benefit from its expected dividends. it can be argued that every dominant group in society achieved their position by exploiting opportunities that were brought about by shifts in the global balance of power as a result of disruptions from monumental calamities. in the context of south africa, this is equally a moment to capture the opportunities that have arisen as a result of this pandemic. the catch is that only those who correctly interpret the situation and act in ways that ensure a resultant benefit will be favoured by history. this is the moment that south africa can galvanise to address its historical ills, which continue to bedevil the nation. there is a danger if the attitude of the ruling class will be to wait for solutions from elsewhere. another danger is that of committing all available resources to deal only with the immediate challenges posed by the pandemic, instead of making medium to long-term investments that would herald the new economy. the new cities new economies thesis that the book under profile proposes should be seen in light of the above analysis. this period of consternation and calamity should at the same time be seen by the south african government and all other relevant actors as an opportunity to build the united, democratic, and prosperous society of our dreams. massive urbanisation, modernisation and industrialisation, which can emerge through import substitution industrialisation and the expansion of existing industries, can enable the creation of a totally transformed society. south africa is not confronting a huge moment of opportunity for the first time. huge opportunities existed during the toppling of apartheid. however, history now tells us that the very same people who had been toppled are the ones who were ready and who ultimately enjoyed and continue to enjoy the spoils of the post-apartheid era. we must be afraid, very afraid, should history repeat itself like this. the end of apartheid resulted in the dislodgement of the captains of apartheid, but that was not for long, as the prevailing new material conditions soon enabled new cities new economies 7v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 south africa is a country in transition. from its historical past, the country inherited a fragmented urban geography, a racially segregated society, and high levels of poverty, unemployment, and inequality (robinson, 1997). them to become even more privileged and wealthy. based on their continued control of the economy, these very same people stand to gain from the current disruption, as much as many currently stand dislodged. the millions of black people who are suffering from this unfortunate turn of events do not have the means to exploit the existing opportunities; hence we look to the state to salvage the situation. we dare not fail, not again. below is a profile of the book new cities new economies: south africa and africa’s grand plan, a pan-african economic revolution. this book sets forth a proposition that can contribute towards the blueprint that can herald the post-covid-19 new economy, through the creation of new cities that anchor new economies and redefine power relations across our society. hopefully the powers that be will have the temerity to act in such a bold manner. background the political atrocities of apartheid ended in 1994, although their psychological, social, and economic consequences remain embedded within both its victims and the soul of the country at large. racial economic inequality in south africa is the offspring of these atrocities. this has resulted in a racially divided country or, more precisely, a country of white prosperity and endemic black poverty and mayhem, leading to some calling the country’s much-lauded reconciliation a failure. the failure of south africa’s reconciliation stems from the fact that, to begin with, the truth and reconciliation commission (trc) only dealt with apartheid’s political atrocities; it never attended to economic atrocities, which remain a cancer that will continue to consume the very fabric of our democracy. until south africa chooses to confront this ugly truth, it will continue to slide down a slippery slope. there is a relationship between this ugly reality and the country’s pattern of negative economic growth. a country whose majority population is unskilled and unproductive cannot realise sustained levels of high economic growth. as a result of apartheid’s economic injustices, too few people are economically active in south africa today, which has yielded many negative developments in the country. racial economic inequality forms the heart of the current social contradictions that should inform the struggle for justice and total emancipation in south africa. the viruses that have arisen out of this phenomenon include the demons of racism and white supremacy. racial economic inequality is the bedrock of neo-apartheid, which must be totally dismantled in order for the country to move forward toward a prosperous and glorious future. the above notwithstanding, south africa is a better country today than during the days of apartheid. many good things have happened during the african national congress’s 26-year rule as south africa’s democratic government. millions of people have benefitted from the anc government’s housing policies, with over three million rdp houses having been built for the poor. healthcare has been provided to many south african citizens, and, recently, free education has been introduced, even at tertiary level, subject to some conditions. further, road, water, electricity, and sanitation services have all been expanded for the benefit of millions who were previously excluded from these amenities. about 13 million south africans receive social welfare grants, which include child welfare, disability, and pension grants. such a lengthy period of governance has not, however, been without its own problems for the ruling anc, which is currently going through turbulent times. spatial reconstruction south africa is a country in transition. from its historical past, the country inherited a fragmented urban geography, a racially segregated society, and high levels of poverty, unemployment, and inequality (robinson, 1997). an important phenomenon of development is that of the city. urbanisation, and cities in particular, are known to be potent instruments of economic and social development and are catalytic to the prosperity of nations. they are spatial expressions of the health of a country insofar as social, cultural, economic, and 8 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies in the final analysis, unless a new vision for the construction of a new south african society is founded upon the total reversal of the racially fractured apartheid inherited national outlook, such a vision promises no stable future for the country. political phenomena are concerned (hamann et al, 2015). since the inception of its democracy, south africa has been grappling with how to transform its cities into symbols of integration and sustainable development. given the fact that the engineering of apartheid society was highly geographic, any serious attempt at dreaming up a new society has to examine the challenges of urbanisation in south africa. racial spatial geography is the rock upon which apartheid was engraved; hence, regardless of racial laws having been repealed, this rock still holds strong. the spatial settlement is a concrete phenomenon; it is incorrigible and hard to transform, let alone reform. the above leads one to argue that the spatial reconstruction of our country has become exigent. to undo apartheid, we have to dream anew; we have to garner the courage to redefine the form and character of our country’s geography, which is intertwined with the realisation of prosperity for the majority and the attainment of a non-racial and non-sexist society. many people regard spatial planning as merely an urban and rural development endeavour, without realising that it is, in fact, the pulse of shaping a nation’s economy. in the final analysis, unless a new vision for the construction of a new south african society is founded upon the total reversal of the racially fractured apartheid inherited national outlook, such a vision promises no stable future for the country. it is already an established understanding that the world, and africa in particular, is fast urbanising. of the nine billion people projected to exist in the world by 2050, five billion are projected to live in urban areas, with the majority of this growth set to occur in developing nations (united nations human settlement program, 2015) african countries, like other nations in the developing world, need to plan for this massive urbanisation. although this is a huge challenge, it presents opportunities to rectify current and past injustices. how the migration of people is managed in south africa and the continent has significant implications for the unfolding engineering of a new society. the majority of the social, political, and economic ills of urbanity have a greater chance of being addressed through the total spatial re-engineering of society, if such an opportunity exists. unlike developed nations, developing nations have this advantage because their urban development is not saturated. hence, they have the opportunity to build on lessons learnt from the failures of urbanisation trajectories in other nations, as well as the abhorrent effects of colonial ideologies that bequeathed our nations with the fractured environments we now live within. the result will be a significant paradigm shift from current policy endeavours. spatial justice social relations are generally understood to have an impact on power dynamics in society. massey (1999) promotes the relational dynamic to space in order to elucidate the geography of power relations; specifically, in how spatial form is an important element in the constitution of power. which actors stand most to gain or get constrained by spatial structuring is at the heart of the relational conceptualisation of space (massey, 1999). based on the role that space plays in informing power dynamics, soja (2010) contextualises space in terms of its relationship to justice or injustice. according to soja, ‘the “spatiality” of justice is an integral and formative component of justice itself, a vital part of how justice and injustice are socially constructed and evolve over time’ (2010). therefore, seeking justice is a fundamental struggle over geography. like other like-minded scholars, soja believes that critical spatial thinking is pivotal to enhancing our understanding of almost any subject, social justice included. the concept of spatial justice acutely contextualises the south african situation. it provides the justification for why changes to the country’s urban structures 9v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies should be conceived of in ways that impact upon the manifold injustices present in south african society, given the dialectical link between such injustices and the spatial patterns bequeathed by apartheid. the historical philosophy that guided the construction of south african urban spaces was based on exclusionary intentions (lemon, 1991); hence, the book scrutinises south african patterns of urban development from the context of how proposed alternatives can impact socio-economic transformation. spatial consciousness is central to what needs to be done to propel the south african nation forward. the racial-space-inequality nexus is a central theoretical pillar to the understanding of south africa’s spatial dynamics in order to map a way forward. the nexus makes it possible to understand the link between racial exclusion and spatial formation, since this is the major defining characteristic of the legacy of apartheid colonialism in south africa. this dialectic informs the south african urban complex, and is key to any development pattern that seeks to change spatial formation for the better. as turok has observed, the post-apartheid government recognises the problems of a distorted urban form; however, its policies have been too short-term and sector-specific to chaperone significant settlement restructuring. regrettably, some of the pro-poor policies have reinforced people’s exclusions by subsidising the cost of living in the periphery, rather than locating them nearer to jobs and other amenities (turok, 2012). the legacy is so deep, perennial and divisive that, beyond supplanting the old laws, actual change on the ground is hard to come by. unlike south africa’s apartheid forefathers, the current government may not implement draconian laws to force inclusivity and uproot the monolithic legacy of apartheid. what is vividly clear from the account of apartheid’s segregated urbanisation is how it was engineered to crystallise social and economic racism. the legal instrument to foster racial segregation in south africa was spatial separation. this should lead us to conclude that any project to transform society and level the playing fields of economic opportunities has to be intertwined with restructuring the spatial geography of the country. neo-apartheid state before delving into the new cities new economies proposition, the book highlights some critical factors that impact south africa’s post-apartheid cities. one such reflection is with regard to the neo-apartheid state. to understand how south africa has become a neo-apartheid state, we have to briefly examine neo-colonialism. as argued above, apartheid and colonialism are two sides of the same coin. neocolonialism defines the situation whereby a formerly colonised state appears independent, democratic and sovereign on the outside, but, in reality, its former colonisers control its economic system, which also implies its political power. hence, neo-colonialism is exercised through economic means (nkrumah, 1965). the majority of scientific studies carried out on the state of south african society (statistics south africa, 2017), including those on poverty and progress in relation to the transformation of the economy, all report a backward picture of persistent racial inequality akin to the days of apartheid. such a society is indeed experiencing neo-apartheid. white people remain occupants of the highest rungs of economic prosperity and hold senior management positions in the corporate sectors. in addition, they live in the most affluent of suburbs, have access to quality health care and education, and are on the whole generally well-off. many black people, on the other hand, experience abject poverty, play no pivotal role in the economy except as labourers (if they are lucky enough to have a job), live in squalor, scramble for inadequate public healthcare, and generally experience a less than desirable quality of life. thus, neo-apartheid firmly entrenches white supremacy. the proposals in this book put forward a vision that will help to dismantle neo-apartheid and white supremacy. it should be highlighted again that, despite neoapartheid and white supremacy, south africa is a democratic state. however, as nkrumah (1965) asserts: ‘a state in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny.’ neo-apartheid is powered, on the one hand, by a deliberate and conscious disregard of democratic intentions on the side of the former oppressors, who still control the major levers of the economy while, on the other hand, it continues because the state seems defeated and unable to trace these tendencies and crush them, even as they continue to exist under the pretext of free-market independence. 10 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies what is required to move away from this conundrum is a radical shift; an entire reconstruction of society. spatiality should be the core driver of such intent because it was through spatiality that racism became engrained in our society. what is required to move away from this conundrum is a radical shift; an entire reconstruction of society. spatiality should be the core driver of such intent because it was through spatiality that racism became engrained in our society. in a similar manner to how nkrumah encouraged the third world to fight neocolonialism, the masses of our people are well advised, as the true motive forces of change, to wage a war against neo-apartheid because, ultimately, its demise will be for their immediate benefit. land another critical factor that impacts post-apartheid south african society is land. land reform continues to be one of the most contentious issues in the country and has taken centre stage in public discourse over the past few years. the dispossession of land from the native african people is one of the fundamental tools that colonialists used to disempower the development of african people. south africa also suffered this fate when lands were ceased during the settler wars, the anglo-boer wars and, finally, through the apartheid onslaught (magubane, 1996). for far too long, the global elites have orchestrated schemes that render our people useless, hopeless and at war with one another in the scramble for the very few resources left after their dislodgement. at the core of the agenda of the global elites is the dislodgement of mankind and the amassment of wealth. this happens through the displacement of people. the world is filled with people who live in poverty, and, first and foremost, have been displaced from their land. homelessness, poverty, ill-health, illiteracy, unemployment, inequality and conflicts all stem from the dislodgement of people and the theft of their land, which, in turn, prevents them from becoming productive citizens of society. no country can claim that it is poor if it has land. who owns the land, what to do with the land, and how to make people a critical part of such an understanding, defines the difference between the failure and success of nations. according to the state land audit (south african department of land and rural reform, 2013), the south african government owns 14% of the land, while 79% is owned by private individuals, companies, and trusts. seven percent of the land is recorded as ‘unaccounted extent’. the 1913 natives’ land act was the legal instrument that was used to finalise the dispossession of black people from their land, separating them from productive land and confining them to bantustans, the tribal homelands that were created to spatially separate whites from blacks during the apartheid era. n recognition of the full impact of this heinous act by the apartheid regime, when nelson mandela stood trial after being arrested as a ‘terrorist’ who had allegedly conducted a treasonous act, he exclaimed: ‘i am without land because the white minority has taken a lion’s share of my country and forced me to occupy poverty-stricken reserves that are over-populated and over-stocked. we are ravaged by starvation and disease’ (south african department of land and rural reform, 2013: 3). the most recent land audit (south african department of land and rural reform, 2017), which is phase ii of the audit process, reveals the ownership patterns of land by race, gender, and nationality. it reveals that white people own 72% of the land, followed by coloured people at 15%, indians at 5%, africans at 4%, others at 3%, and co-owners at 1%. black people in south africa constitute 79% of the population, while white people constitute only 9%. these statistics depict the debilitating reality of our country’s affairs, especially insofar as land ownership is concerned. the peaceful settlement that led to the democratisation of south africa was facilitated through acquiescence over land and property. this was then engraved in the constitution as the property clause. in effect, this agreement meant that, even if the racial discrimination laws that anchored legislated apartheid could be appealed, that would still not reverse the ownership of land and property away from those who had benefitted from these laws. this is why there will 11v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the amount of land owned by the government, especially in urban areas, is too miniscule to allow for massive state development. this explains why the tone of government development policies and plans, such as the iudf, is slanted to influence those who actually own land and property. always be racial tension in south africa, as the majority of the land remains in the hands of white people, as demonstrated in the statistics above. the amount of land owned by the government, especially in urban areas, is too miniscule to allow for massive state development. this explains why the tone of government development policies and plans, such as the iudf, is slanted to influence those who actually own land and property. the government cannot enforce its vision, as it has no rights over the spaces where such developments ought to take place. the land question has to be addressed in south africa in a way that totally cuts ties with the past. hopefully the amendment of the constitution regarding land and property rights, which is currently underway, may pave way for the restructuring of land ownership patterns in such a way as to boost the establishment of new, liveable, equitable and sustainably prosperous urban and rural spaces for the poor, thus writing an obituary for apartheid and its vestiges. new cities new economies proposition the preceding chapters of the book narrate the spatial quagmire that south africa finds itself in. policy endeavours that have been implemented by the democratic government are not succeeding in obliterating the vestiges of apartheid; instead, in many instances, they are replicating and reinforcing apartheid’s visions. there is a clear need for a paradigm shift in the orientation of south africa’s patterns of urban development. current patterns require a framework that can assist in redirecting them towards the moulding of a totally new society, one that resonates with the aspirations that are echoed in the country’s democratic constitution. the current developmental plans of the south african government do not emphasise spatial reconstruction as the overarching foundation for societal transformation and economic development. this is surprising because their aim is to eliminate the apartheid legacies which were primarily envisioned, propelled, and are currently being sustained by racial spatial engineering. once and for all, the south african government and society as a whole need to elevate the issue of spatial justice as the core of all of south africa’s developmental goals and programmes. this is the only way that these can have an enduring effect which will result in destroying the vestiges of apartheid and thus result in the birthing of a new nation. with the exception of agriculture and a few mining and tourism locations, the centrality of urban economics in the country’s economic sectors has been clearly demonstrated. the majority of economic activity in south africa takes place in urbanised environments. consequently, given the history of apartheid urbanisation, this is also where the greatest concentration of poverty lies. urban poverty is a clear and present social ill, which reinforces high levels of crime in urban areas. the concentration of the country’s population in urban areas has not happened without a negative impact being felt in rural areas, which also require urgent attention in terms of development. this proposed policy framework is aimed at influencing the redirection of patterns of urban development in south africa so that urban development, when partnered with rural development initiatives, can lead the way in guiding the nation towards prosperity and a high quality of life for all south african citizens. this policy framework is anchored in the new cities new economies proposal, which acknowledges the dialectical relationship between urbanisation and the economy. this urban development policy framework is believed to be the most appropriate way in which south africa can totally de-apartheid itself. the new cities new economies thesis sets out a proposal that aims to fuel the long-overdue economic growth and radical transformation of our society. as such, the thesis can be considered as the gestation of an economic revolution, as the plan will not only serve south africa but also has the potential to reverberate 12 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies across the entire african continent. this grand plan is the promise of the south africa we yearn for – the africa we want. new cities herald new economies and, in turn, new economies yield jobs and empowerment, therefore destroying both poverty and apartheid’s economic legacy. the new cities should have a symbiotic relationship with the economy. as new cities herald new economies, new economies will then anchor and sustain new cities. the human migration patterns that have been projected to happen in the next few decades open up a window of opportunity for us. however, like many opportunities, that window will not remain open forever. it is projected that by 2030, 71.3% of south africa’s population will live in urban areas; this will reach 80% by 2050. the entire urban population of africa is expected to reach 60%, or 2.5 billion people, by 2050 (south african department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, 2016). these projections suggest a 30-year or so window of opportunity for african countries to respond with concrete plans to manage such large-scale migration. some critically important questions that african governments need to pose include: where will all these people live? how will they live there? what opportunities does this migration present? what dangers does it pose? current observations demonstrate that we are failing dismally to answer these serious questions. instead, there appears to be an obsession with short-term interests based upon our leaders’ immediate political terms of office. if migration patterns are not properly mediated, more and more people will flock to existing and already overstretched cities, creating an archipelago of slums, which will add to those that are already scattered in and around current urban spaces. after a while, or over the next three decades at least, the destructive consequences of such non-action will become even more difficult to reverse than apartheid and colonial legacies. hence, the result would be a new reality of dehumanisation that arises not out of an abhorrent and deliberately segregationist ideology, but rather out of the lethargic leadership tendencies of democratic governments. this is the context within which the new cities new economies visionary framework is presented; that is, as a developmental paradigm that is meant to contribute towards possible solutions regarding the challenges of human settlement patterns that are already bewildering humanity at this very juncture. broad features of the new cities new economies policy framework as stated earlier, some of the elements of the existing urban development policy, which are geared towards the reform of current cities, should be welcomed into the new cities vision since they align with some of the progressive global trends for sustainable and smart cities. although many of them may prove unworkable for the intended reforms of apartheid-planned cities, they can be incorporated into greenfield developments in the new cities. as such, the new cities framework should embrace the spirit of the integrated urban development framework vision for south african cities, which is: ‘liveable, safe, resourceefficient cities and towns that are socially integrated, economically inclusive and globally competitive, where residents actively participate in urban life’ (south african department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, 2016). human settlement patterns equitable, integrated, compact, connected and high-density human settlements the objective remains to offer people quality of life through the creation of equitable living environments, where people cohabitate in a safe, cohesive and socially-uplifting manner. as stated in the iudf in 2016, the critical features for this include access to transport, safety and security, adequate healthcare, nutrition, housing, water, electricity and sanitation services. the new cities will be compact cities that are anchored by high-density human settlements. such is the antithesis of segregated residential, social and economic settlement patterns of the old apartheid era, which remain stubbornly firm and have even been replicated by some of the contemporary private sectorled developments. the typical south african city has a very low-density ratio and, because of apartheid, the majority of the working people, who are black, live far away from employment centres, in conditions of poverty and 13v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies this situation is unacceptable and must change. taking advantage of mixed land use innovations, new cities should be built in a way that integrates economic activities with residential settlements and social amenities. underdevelopment. this situation is unacceptable and must change. taking advantage of mixed land use innovations, new cities should be built in a way that integrates economic activities with residential settlements and social amenities. transit oriented developments (tod) can enable the linkages between mass transport systems, residential spaces, and workplaces. locating residential settlements along transport corridors will alleviate the current burden of travel times between homes and workplaces, what joel netshitenzhe (2018) refers to as ‘apartheid tax’ on black people. the iudf reports that: ‘south africans spend the longest time in daily commutes to and from work, while more than 50 per cent of poor urban residents spend more than 20 per cent of their declared household income on transport (south african department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, 2016). high-density living, as much as it advantages compact city design, can present social challenges. the creation of new cities demands the inclusion of green and safe communal spaces. there is also the issue of taking account of african cultural practices and the integration of facilities that can accommodate these. this is something that both old and new developers of residential areas do not often consider. from time to time, africans gather and conduct ceremonies as part of their spirituality. there are no facilities for them to do this in urban areas. in some residential estates, such activities are actually banned through residential association rules. new city spaces cannot fully emancipate people if they are designed in ways that still make them feel constrained in terms of their spirituality. it is worth noting that developers of urban spaces are typically willing to accommodate christian and islamic facilities. it is about time that africans also enjoy social spaces that will affirm their spirituality by providing relevant amenities for african spiritual practices. new cities will also need to be connected in two ways: first, in terms of how they link with other new and old cities through transport networks of different kinds – air, rail, and roads – and second, in terms of telecommunications networks that connect people across the entire world (city of johannesburg metropolitan municipality, 2016). in order to become truly functional economic agglomerations, they need this modern connectivity for both institutions and ordinary citizens. the beauty of creating new spaces is that planners have the opportunity to lay out this infrastructure as they build; there will be no need to upset the aesthetics of these cities by having to install these technologies many years after construction has been completed. such infrastructure can be laid out in a way that accommodates room for further improvements as and when technologies develop. economic growth and transformation the earlier sections of the book demonstrate how economically unequal south africa is, as well as how economic empowerment initiatives are not often linked with urban development initiatives in concrete ways. the construction of new cities provides the foundation to reverse the scourge of racial economic inequality. south africa’s current economic empowerment policy – black economic empowerment (bee) – is driven by the philosophy that black people, who were excluded from economic activities during apartheid, should be allowed to buy shares in white companies. these companies then receive bee points that grant them favourable incentives, including tax incentives and the ability to compete for state contracts. in the same breath, it has been reported how poor the average black person is in south africa, which contradicts the possibility of masses of people benefiting from this policy. white companies that do not wish to do business with the state naturally do not feel compelled to abide by this policy; therefore, transformation of the ownership of companies is inconsistent across economic sectors. only a few people have been able to benefit from this policy, while the majority are still 14 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the challenge is that the democratic government has not linked its vision of building an inclusive nation with the expansion of the economy in new spaces that would decentralise economic activity beyond the existing apartheid towns and cities. this path dependency syndrome is taking the country backward rather than forward. economically excluded from the mainstream economy, the platform that guarantees real wealth creation. the economic transformation possibilities that the new cities framework will unlock for south africa will not be based on retribution or the seizure of assets from those who were unfairly advantaged by apartheid. black people will be able to be absorbed in the mainstream economy that will emerge from the new space economy of new cities. they will not unnecessarily have to buy shares from white companies at massive cost in order to participate in the various industries that the construction of the new cities will herald. decentralisation of economic activity opportunities for economic empowerment and transformation will emerge, first and foremost, from a consciousness of the fact that urban development has to be intertwined with economic growth interventions. these interventions will be consciously aligned with the vision for urban development, which should ultimately define the country’s new spatial geography. the book demonstrates how current patterns of urban development are not succeeding in linking human settlement with economic development and, as such, leave people economically vulnerable, even as they appreciate the brand-new houses that the state is building for them. the state must find new ways to approach human settlements in terms of their relationship with economic growth, development, and transformation. modern industrial nations have heavily urbanised spatial forms. rapid urbanisation is projected to take place in developing nations, raising concerns about economic sustainability. in the developed world, economic activity is decentralised. there is a multiplicity of economic activities throughout these countries: some anchored by specific industries, and others following similar patterns across different cities. south africa, like most developing nations, has not yet reached saturated economic growth potential. there is room for the south african economy to grow in different parts of the country; the state needs to plan for this and lay out infrastructure accordingly. the departments responsible for infrastructure development, however, are not necessarily contemplating new spatial forms. instead, they are biased toward the idea of improving infrastructure along the lines of what currently exists, which was laid out to support apartheid’s segregated spatial plans. hence, there is a lack of economic coherence in the overall manner in which the country is investing its resources. in 2014, then president jacob zuma launched the presidential infrastructure coordinating council (picc), which was tasked with implementing strategic infrastructure projects (sips). this was after the government made a commitment to recalibrate the economy through investment in infrastructure. how those projects are chosen and implemented is not necessarily consistent with the visions espoused in the integrated urban development framework, the rural development framework, the spatial planning land use management act (spluma), or the human settlements department’s vision: breaking new ground. all these plans have their own visions; they may sound similar, but are not necessarily aligned. if the budget allocations of these various plans were to be consolidated, based on the vision of radically altering apartheid’s spatial legacy, the vision of building new cities that are economically viable can be successfully realised. the country’s economic activities are currently tied up in the existing cities that were developed during the days of apartheid. if apartheid had survived, its government would undoubtedly have created even more economic nodes to expand their vision. the current cities were not all created in a once-off swoop after the declaration of apartheid; they evolved over time as the architects of apartheid considered them necessary to entrench their economic domination agenda. the challenge is that the democratic government has not linked its vision of building an inclusive nation with the expansion of the economy in new spaces that would decentralise 15v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies economic activity beyond the existing apartheid towns and cities. this path dependency syndrome is taking the country backward rather than forward. some of the new city models that the book explores include: • new capital city • new tourism-based cities • new academic cities (anchored by new universities and colleges) • new spiritually anchored cities (similar to mecca, but anchored in african spirituality, religions and cultures) • new automobile manufacturing city • new innovation cities • new cross border cities • new entertainment cities (similar to las vegastype cities) • new mineral beneficiation cities (gold, diamonds, platinum anchored cities) • new mining cities • new seaport cities africa’s grand plan: a pan-african economic revolution our ultimate objective for africa must be a continent that is united in both sentiment and prosperity. africa should become an oasis of development, innovation, construction, and the attainment of human potential. the new cities new economies vision should boost massive urbanisation, modernisation, and industrialisation across the continent. this will define south africa’s economic vision of a panafrican revolution, transforming this vision into an african grand plan. the united continent of africa (uca) will emerge when the continent’s economy becomes intricately connected. africa’s leaders need to cooperate in terms of economic growth in such a manner that economic borders will vanish, and the african market will benefit all people. many external actors vie for the african market, having realised how lucrative it is. south africa’s declining economy can be rejuvenated by focusing investment in the continent. south africa should study the value chain of goods and products that are consumed by the continent and plan to become the number one provider of such goods and products. this is an audacious undertaking, as there are already significant foreign agents supplying such goods and products to many parts of the continent. south africa has a huge advantage to compete successfully with these external actors, as it is a fellow african country that has an added advantage through the africa free trade agreement. success will require the country to take risks. were south africa to aim to launch one million companies to do business in various sectors in the african continent, it would then be appropriate to claim that its economic strategy is pan-african in character. as an example, quadrupling investments in retail, property, and construction across the continent implies that south african products will have a bigger market than is currently the case. financial services, transportation and telecommunications are ancillary sectors that are required to support the sectors mentioned above; thus, the value chain keeps expanding. south af rica will need to invest its own resources to lay down the inf rastructure needed for such huge economic expansions. this is exactly what china and other countries are doing in af rica; that is, paving the way through the creation of roads, railway lines, air and sea ports, which will also enable south af rica’s manufactured products to move across the continent. this is not an act of charity; it is a partnership that will yield huge returns for south af rica’s manufacturing sectors and employment possibilities. in the process, it stands to transform the economic inf rastructure of the countries that south af rica will target for this economic expansion. the extension of the economic inf rastructure will itself boost south af rican industries so that its raw materials will become hugely sought after for the development of this collective inf rastructure grid. to continue its economic revolution while realising its new cities new economies policies within its shores, south africa should also aim to become a partner for the building of such cities and economies in countries across the continent – in egypt, tanzania, rwanda, morocco, nigeria, and others – some of which are already building their own new cities. south africa should compete heavily in order to deploy its human, capital and productive resources to the rest of the continent in a win-win economic partnership arrangement. it is not an exaggeration to state that as many as 120 000 new cities can be built in africa as part of africa’s 16 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies to continue its economic revolution while realising its new cities new economies policies within its shores, south africa should also aim to become a partner for the building of such cities and economies in countries across the continent – in egypt, tanzania, rwanda, morocco, nigeria, and others – some of which are already building their own new cities. urbanising, modernising, and industrialising intent. once that becomes the plan for the future, it becomes immediately clear why africa can become the next most successful developing continent. whoever leads such a revolution will also instantly become the next economic powerhouse of the world. once one begins to think about new cities from the perspective of pan-african economic growth, fears about economic sustainability should dissipate. based on the earlier motivation of a decentralisation of economic activities, cities can anchor different kinds of industrial activities for the south african and african infrastructure and consumer market. africa has a huge network of human capital that is spread across the entire world. currently, the continent is not doing enough to mobilise this resource for its development. africans who are in the diaspora have amassed skills and experiences in areas that can be beneficial to the implementation of africa’s grand plan. the united continent of africa diaspora (uca-d) is an untapped treasure that the continent could recruit in order to become heavily embedded in the urbanisation, modernisation, and industrialisation programs of the african grand plan. future research there is still a great deal of detail that needs to be carried out before implementing this new policy framework. some future research areas include, but are not limited to, the following: a. expansion on the new city models b. the location of such new cities, which is directly linked to the decentralisation and expansion of economic activities. c. a detailed study of the proposed economic activities that must anchor new cities. d. the financial modelling for the funding of the vision and identification of potential funding sources. e. solutions regarding the impact on old cities and existing townships. f. best design frameworks for different city types in different locations. g. the modalities of carrying out such a huge longterm vision; that is, government configuration arrangements. h. legislative requirements for the promulgation of such a vision or certain aspects of it. i. a full industrial value chain of products that will be required for the new cities has to be produced so that we can understand the full picture of the impact on economic growth and black economic empowerment. j. the exact manner in which this policy framework will impact intergovernmental relations, in other words, the implications for all spheres of government. k. the approach towards the expansion of urbanisation in southern africa and africa as a whole, in terms of how such is interwoven with the south african vision. l. detailed analysis of the post-apartheid emerging city models (e.g. waterfall, midstream, sandton, steyn city, century city and north coast). under the new cities new economies institute, several sectors of society will need to be mobilised behind this vision. hence the following consultative commissions will be created: • new cities new economies black business chamber of commerce • new cities new economies big business commission • new cities new economies small business development commission • new cities new economies funding commission • new cities new economies manufacturing commission • new cities new economies construction commission • new cities new economies energy commission • new cities new commission transport commission • new cities new economies water commission 17v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies • new cities new economies pan-african economic development commission • new cities new economies mining commission • new cities new economies education and skills training commission • new cities new economies health commission • new cities new economies innovation and technology commission • new cities new economies spatial planning, architects and designers commission • new cities new economies engineering commission • new cities new economies inclusive human settlement commission • new cities new economies legal and legislative framework commission • new cities new economies indigenous knowledge, culture and heritage commission • new cities new economies social amenities commission • new cities new economies governance framework commission • new cities new economies industrial development commission • new cities new economies women empowerment commission • new cities new economies youth empowerment commission • new cities new economies civil society commission • new cities new economies labour commission • new cities new economies state owned enterprises commission • new cities new economies government consultative commission • new cities new economies financial sector commission • new cities new economies telecommunications commission • new cities new economies land commission • new cities new economies community mobilisation commission • new cities new economies environmental sustainability commission • new cities new economies international investors commission all these consultative efforts will culminate in the new cities new economies convention which will ultimately become an annual event. the new cities new economies movement advocates for the panafrican economic revolution, which will be executed by the pan-african developmental state and expressed through the africa grand plan, starting in south africa and spreading throughout the african continent. this oath is the promise of prosperity for all our suffering people in south africa and the rest of the continent. mayibuye! iafrica! references city of johannesburg metropolitan municipality. (2016). spatial development framework 2040. johannesburg. goodlad, r. (1996). the housing challenge in south af rica. urban studies, 33(9), pp. 1629–1645. hamann, c. and horn, a.c. (2015). continuity or discontinuity? evaluating the changing socio-spatial structure of the city of tshwane, south af rica. urban forum 26, pp. 39–57. lemon, a. (1991). homes apart: south af rica’s segregated cities. david philip: cape town. magubane, b.m. (1996). the making of a racist state: british imperialism and the union of south af rica, 1875–1910. trenton, nj: af rica world press, inc. massey, d. (1999.) power-geometries and the politics of space time. heidelberg: university of heidelberg press. netshitenzhe, j. (2017). interview conducted with joel netshitenzhe on 8/3/2017, johannesburg. nkrumah, k. (1965). neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism. london: thomas nelson & sons, ltd. robinson, j. (1997). the geopolitics of south af rican cities. political geography, 16 (5), pp. 365–386 rodgers, j. (2004). doreen massey: space, relations, communications. information, communication & society 7 (2), pp. 273–291. south af rican department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs. (2016). integrated urban development framework (iudf). pretoria. south af rican department of land and rural reform. (2013). land audit booklet. pretoria. south af rican department of land and rural reform. (2017). land audit phase ii. [online] available at: http://www.ruraldevelopment. gov.za soja, e.w. (2010). seeking spatial justice. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. statistics south af rica. (2017). poverty trends in south af rica: an examination of absolute poverty between 2006 and 2015. [online] available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10334 turok, k. (2012). urbanisation and development in south af rica: economic imperatives, spatial distortions and strategic responses. human settlement group, iied 8. united nations human settlement program. (2015). sustainable urban development in af rica. nairobi. 18 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies dr bhaso ndzendze gift sonkqayi note from the editor t h e t h i n k e r contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. gift sonkqayi holds a master’s degree in education f rom wits university. his research interests include af rican philosophy of education (i.e. indigenous knowledge systems), sustainable development, race, culture, identity, and class conflicts in education among others. his opinion and analysis have appeared on mail and guardian and the sunday independent among others. bhaso ndzendze is a senior lecturer  and head of department at the university of johannesburg department of politics and international relations. he is also a digital policy fellow at the berlinbased af rica policy research institute. his most recent publications include ai and emerging technologies in international relations  by the world scientific press and the brics order: assertive or complementing the west?  published by palgrave macmillan. his opinion on technology and policy has appeared in  daily maverick, the independent and the mail & guardian. he holds a phd in international relations f rom wits university and has completed certificates on artificial intelligence and blockchain technology at mit. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel candice chirwa candice chirwa holds a master’s degree in international relations with her research having focused on menstrual health management and gender studies at the university of witwatersrand. candice has worked for the united nations population fund as a junior consultant. candice is the founder and director of an ngo called qrate that focuses on creating publications for young children on social issues. candice has been on several media platforms as a gender activist and commentator. in addition to academics and social activism candice serves her community as a dramatic arts mentor and coach. her books include perils of patriarchy (2019) and flow: the book of menstruation (2021). miguel dos santos miguel dos santos is a master’s candidate in politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg with research interests in borders and resource based conflicts. nadine hakizimana nadine hakizimana completed her master’s degree in international relations at the university of the witwatersrand. her research areas include gender, migration and comparative intellectual property protection in af rica vis-à-vis the rest of the world. she is currently a program off icer at the world intellectual property organization. marcus hollington marcus hollington is an international relations master’s graduate f rom the university of the witwatersrand, independent researcher and consultant. he has worked for numerous domestic and international f irms with interests in af rica as well as non-governmental organizations of note. his main areas of expertise are international trade with a bias towards macroeconomic analysis and eco-environmentally f riendly energies in south af rica’s logistics sector among others. he has published numerous articles within the aforementioned areas. zimkhitha manyana zimkhitha manyana is a professional writing consultant at the university of johannesburg. he is also a f reelance monitor for the parliamentary monitoring group (pmg). manyana is an oppenheimer trust fund holder towards his master’s degree in political science obtained in 2021. he is currently pursuing a phd in politics with the university of johannesburg focused on problematising the theory and practice of democracy in af rica. lesogo masenya lesego masenya is an economics phd candidate at the university of the witwatersrand. her areas of research include employment, economic development across urban and rural settings in south af rica. she has previously worked as an economist for eskom and postgraduate researcher at acacia economics. candice chirwa candice chirwa holds a master’s degree in international relations with her research having focused on menstrual health management and gender studies at the university of witwatersrand. candice has worked for the united nations population fund as a junior consultant. candice is the founder and director of an ngo called qrate that focuses on creating publications for young children on social issues. candice has been on several media platforms as a gender activist and commentator. in addition to academics and social activism candice serves her community as a dramatic arts mentor and coach. her books include perils of patriarchy (2019) and flow: the book of menstruation (2021). miguel dos santos miguel dos santos is a master’s candidate in politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg with research interests in borders and resource based conflicts. nadine hakizimana nadine hakizimana completed her master’s degree in international relations at the university of the v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 contributors to this edition witwatersrand. her research areas include gender, migration and comparative intellectual property protection in af rica vis-à-vis the rest of the world. she is currently a program officer at the world intellectual property organization. marcus hollington marcus hollington is an international relations master’s graduate f rom the university of the witwatersrand, independent researcher and consultant. he has worked for numerous domestic and international firms with interests in af rica as well as non-governmental organizations of note. his main areas of expertise are international trade with a bias towards macroeconomic analysis and ecoenvironmentally f riendly energies in south af rica’s logistics sector among others. he has published numerous articles within the aforementioned areas. zimkhitha manyana zimkhitha manyana is a professional writing consultant at the university of johannesburg. he is also a f reelance monitor for the parliamentary monitoring group (pmg). manyana is an oppenheimer trust fund holder towards his master’s degree in political science obtained in 2021. he is currently pursuing a phd in politics with the university of johannesburg focused on problematising the theory and practice of democracy in af rica. lesogo masenya lesego masenya is an economics phd candidate at the university of the witwatersrand. her areas of research include employment, economic development across urban and rural settings in south af rica. she has previously worked as an economist for eskom and postgraduate researcher at acacia economics. emmanuel matambo emmanuel matambo holds a phd in political science at the university of kwazulu-natal with a focus on the theory of constructivism. he is currently the research director at the centre for af rica-china studies at the university of johannesburg. he has published in numerous journals, book chapters as well as coedited a volume on identity and xenophobia in contemporary af rica. charles matseke charles matseke studied his master’s in international relations and foreign policy at the sarchi: chair for af rican diplomacy and foreign policy at the university of johannesburg and is a phd candidate at the china central normal university. he is currently program manager for af rica-china in international forums. his main areas of focus are developmental policy and developmental foreign policy. he has published on these areas in various platforms. anelisa mzungulu anelisa mzungulu is an independent economist, with a bachelor of economics (honours) f rom the university of the witwatersrand. his research interests include development economics and the causes of prosperity in late developer states. v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 contributors to this edition the journal for progressive thought www.thethinker.co.za publisher english department university of johannesburg kingsway campus, auckland park, johannesburg tel:+27 11 559 2553 editor prof ronit frenkel thethinker@uj.ac.za design & art direction on the loose matt@ontheloose.co.za tel:+27 83 302 8969 www.ontheloose.co.za advisory council dr ademola araoye (nigeria), professor puleng lenka bula (south africa), dr faisal devji (tanzania), professor chris landsberg (south africa), professor tshilidzi marwala (south af rica), professor sabelo j ndlovu-gatsheni (zimbabwe), dr morley nkosi (south africa), dr francis onditi (kenya) professor eghosa e osaghae (nigeria), dr mzulcisi qobo (south af rica), dr garth le pere (south africa), professor alioune sall (senegal), addai sebo (ghana), dr mongane serote (south af rica), professor mammo muchie (ethiopia). material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without proper citation. views and opinions expressed in the thinker are not necessarily those of university of johannesburg. they can accept no liability of whatsoever nature arising out of or in connection with the contents of the publication. © 2020 university of johannesburg www.thethinker.co.za t h e t h i n k e r thethinker@uj.ac.za contributors to this edition guest editor dr bhaso ndzendze guest editor gift sonkqayi south af rica had one of the strictest covid lockdowns in the world starting on the 26th of march and lasting for 35 days. with five weeks of quarantine where only essential services were open, all educational institutions, places of worship and workplaces were shut down and people had to shelter in place. walking on the streets was even prohibited except to buy food. the country was slowly moved through varying restrictions over the next 5 months as the health risks decreased as the virus was slowed down effectively. the articles in this timecapsule represent the analysis f rom scholars at the university of johannesburg of the 5 week lockdown period and appeared on various open access platforms. they are collected here as a small historical archive of that time. covid-19 lockdown time capsule of south africa, april 2020 83v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive the black death is the plague that infected people in europe and asia in the mid-1300s. it killed more than 20 million european people in five years, which was more than a third of europe’s population then. it is estimated that between 75 and 200 million people died in eurasia. it took europe 200 years to recover its population size.  many, including the king of france, blamed the heavens, but that was irrelevant because the bacteria was transmitted through rats and fleas. some, in cities such as barcelona, strasbourg and in flanders, accused and massacred the jewish people “for poisoning the wells”, but it turned out that the relatively low mortality in that community was due to the jewish religion’s promotion of cleanliness. the culture of cleanliness was not widespread in europe at the time. the absence of science in any society is dangerous, and it can lead to superstition and murder. the spanish influenza of 1918 infected 500 million people in the world and killed between 50 and 100 million. these are scary numbers.   today we have another pandemic – the coronavirus (covid-19). the novel coronavirus first manifested in the city of wuhan in china in december 2019. the disease has subsequently spread around the world, leading to the world health organisation (who) declaring it a pandemic on 11 march. in south africa, by sunday 29 march, it was reported that the coronavirus had infected 1,280 and killed two people. the growth trajectory of this virus is less than exponential, which means it is significantly slower than the regular ‘flu. what is emerging is that modern pandemics are killing fewer people than previous ones. however, it is still too early to tell” how this pandemic will evolve and what havoc it will heave in society. states around the world have embarked on numerous strict measures to lock down their countries to “flatten” the curve of covid-19 cases. governments around are now scrambling to ready their healthcare for surges in systems capacity as the pandemic reaches its peak. however, for governments to plan appropriately, they have to answer some of the following questions: how much of the population will be affected? how many will require hospitalisation? when will the country hit the peak infection level? is the current lockdown effective? the susceptible-infectious-recovered model  answers to these questions lie in projections of each country’s infection trajectory. there are various techniques that epidemiologists, actuaries and data scientists use to generate such predictions. one well established epidemiological model for the projection of infectious diseases is the susceptibleinfectious-recovered (sir) model. the sir models the transition of individuals between three stages of a condition: 1) being susceptible to the condition, 2) coronavirus: the answers lie in the numbers by rendani mbuvha and tshilidzi marwala | archive *this article first appeared in the daily maverick on 1 april 2020* 84 t h e t h i n k e r archive having the condition and being infectious to others 3), and having recovered and built immunity for the disease. in its simplest form, it uses two variables, and these are the basic reproductive number and the infectious period. the infectious number is the number of individuals that a person on average may infect, whereas the infectious period is the time f rame in which an individual is contagious.  the sir model utilises a branch of mathematics called differential equations to simulate transitions of individuals between various stages of a disease over time. differential equations is a type of mathematics that falls under the field called calculus. sir isaac newton and gottf ried leibnitz independently invented calculus. ironically the seeds for the invention of calculus were germinated when newton left cambridge university in 1665 to escape the plague (not too dissimilar to the coronavirus) that was affecting the town. specifically, the differential equations in the sir model govern the rate at which susceptible individuals become infected, how the infected transmit the virus to the susceptibles and finally the rate at which the infected recover. the sir model is a very influential method, in epidemiology, and in the last two months alone there have been over 20 articles (without peer review) published by researchers in online repositories using the sir to forecast covid-19 related infection trajectories.  many projections reported in the media are actually based on outputs of sir modelling reports such as the now popular oxford study suggesting that 60% of the uk population will be or have been infected by covid-19.   we have similarly calibrated the sir model on the current south african data with similar findings to the oxford study, assuming no state intervention. considering recent state interventions, our sir model infection estimates could be lower than 20% at its peak. proceed with caution as models are mere simplified abstractions of reality, the sir model does have its pitfalls. first, the sir model assumes random mixing of individuals – this fundamentally starts to deviate from reality as more and more countries adopt lockdown and gathering restrictions. one aspect that is proving difficult to model is how the socioeconomic differentials will impact the already nonlinear epidemiological models. furthermore, how does one tune the model, especially to account for townships where community sharing facilities is widespread? the model also requires the distinction between infected individuals and “confirmed infected cases”.  thus a percentage of infections like the currently popular 60% includes a large number of latent cases who will not even know that they have been infected by the disease and will exhibit either no or mild symptoms. this distinction becomes critical in healthcare resource planning as the infected population estimates, which includes the latent cases, tend to overestimate the expected healthcare utilisation. in wuhan, it was found that the actual confirmed cases were only 0.5% of the prediction of the sir model. evidence such as this from wuhan assists greatly in contextualising results that might seem alarming such as the popular 60% estimate. in reality, only around 2% will translate to the utilisation of healthcare facilities – at least based on what we have seen from sir models around the world. while there are numerous estimates for the covid-19 infection trajectory, it is crucial to discern the foundational assumptions of the models used clearly. importantly, caution must be exercised given the limited data available to establish clear trends of the pandemic and the many dynamics at play from state interventions. now that president cyril ramaphosa has declared a national lockdown, to defeat the coronavirus let us stay in our homes during this time and follow basic hygiene as recommended by the ministry of health.  mbuvha is a lecturer in actuarial science at the university of the witwatersrand and a phd student in artificial intelligence at the university of johannesburg. marwala is a professor and the vice-chancellor of the university of johannesburg. he deputises president cyril ramaphosa on the south af rican presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution. 85v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive the rapid increase in the spread and transmission rate of the virus sars-cov-2 (covid-19), has led to a f renzied upsurge in general and social media coverage. this, in turn, has led to many conflicting reports related to the spread and transmission of covid-19 within various environments. hourly, we are bombarded with newspaper articles and social media stories, which relay “factual” information f rom “reliable” sources. the public is confused! while we are cautioned to only rely on information provided by the centre for disease control and prevention (cdc) and the world health organisation (who), there have also been many reputable research papers that have recently been published, related to the transmission and spread of the virus.  furthermore, infectious disease experts working on the f rontline of covid-19 control have released videos and reports. peer-reviewed journal articles and expert information f rom infectious disease specialists are thus important resources, which must be considered in our quest to learn as much as we can about this virus currently ravaging our globe. let us thus attempt to simplify and collate the recent information related to the transmission and longevity of covid-19.   to date, covid-19 is known to spread by short-range respiratory droplets and is hypothesised to spread by longer-range aerosol transmission. when we consider the nature of aerosols versus droplets, we must understand that size and behaviour matter. the virus particle size is approximately 50 to 200 nanometres (nm) in diameter. to put this into perspective, one nm is one-billionth of a metre. the human eye (regular vision), without any assistance (magnifying glasses or microscopes etc.), can see objects of approximately 20 micrometres (µm) in size.  nanometre-sized objects, like the coronavirus, are thus a thousand times smaller. droplets are normally larger than 20 micrometres (µm) in diameter and are usually produced when coughing or sneezing. they are heavy enough to succumb to gravity and usually travel no more than one to two metres. when an infected person releases these droplets, each droplet may contain many virus particles. to complicate matters, droplets may travel further distances depending on wind conditions. airflow thus influences the travel distance of droplets.  covid-19: a multipronged approach to protect ourselves and others. by sehaam khan and saurabh sinha | archive *this article first appeared in the daily maverick on 6 april 2020 as “covid-19: droplets and aerosol transmission: how do we protect others and ourselves?” 86 t h e t h i n k e r archive however, irrespective of the distance, when these droplets fall onto various surfaces, inanimate objects that now “carry” the infectious virus particles, are called fomites. the infection is then indirectly spread when an uninfected person touches these fomites and proceeds to touch their face (mucous membranes of the eyes, nose and mouth).  we therefore must stress the importance of handwashing and hand hygiene. however, we do not advocate irresponsible wearing of gloves. just before the nationwide lockdown commenced, i (sehaam khan) was at the airport travelling f rom johannesburg to cape town. almost every person i encountered, whether airport staff or traveller, was wearing a pair of latex gloves. now, i have been in the laboratory environment long enough to recognise a pair of gloves that have been worn for an extended period – the glove sticks to your skin because your hands are perspiring. this to me indicated that people were not regularly changing their gloves.  i watched in awe and horror as one young woman put her gloved hand to her mouth to blow a kiss at a colleague. in her mind, i am sure, the gloves were offering a form of protection. i am willing to bet that wearing those gloves may even have been considered as a replacement for hand washing. it does not. you need to change your gloves numerous times a day. in fact, it should be noted that almost every time you touch an object, you need to dispose of the worn gloves. this is similar to what one observes when visiting a doctor! for many, this is not possible. soap, water and proper hand hygiene works.  direct infection (person to person) may also occur by droplet infection, if we stand within range (one to two metres), f rom the respiratory tract of an infected individual (cough or sneeze), to the mucous membranes of the uninfected person. moreover, aerosol particles, which are normally smaller than 10 µm in diameter, can travel for many metres (greater than two meters) in the air before they fall to the ground or onto a surface, and may be inhaled.   as a countermeasure, many asian countries have strongly advocated for the wearing of facemasks. in contrast, the who has indicated that wearing a facemask is not advisable. we encourage wearing a facemask when in public spaces for the following reasons: a) even with proper and f requent hand hygiene, unless you are washing your hands after touching every single object, there may be a time when you (an uninfected person) could come into contact with a fomite and inadvertently touch your face; b) by wearing a facemask, direct infection can also be curtailed; c) comparing the transmissibility rate of the usa and some european countries (e.g. italy) to south korea, japan and taiwan, it is evident that wearing a mask in public areas (together with many other factors) has positively contributed to controlling the virus spread; d) a facemask decreases the spread of the virus by an infected person; and e) if it is in fact true that non-symptomatic infected people may transmit the virus, it is definitely advantageous to encourage the public to wear facemasks, to curtail spread and infection.  recently, the czech republic took the radical step of mandating the wearing of nose and mouth coverings in public spaces. in contrast, the us surgeon general and who have stated that wearing a mask is not effective in preventing the public f rom being infected, yet state that they require these masks for their health professionals.  ultimately, we are of the opinion that a protective measure like a surgical facemask, in conjunction with social distancing and good hand hygiene, will lower the virus infection rate. we do, however, support the sentiment that should there be a shortage of facemasks, health professionals should take priority.  the university of johannesburg plays an important role in the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). in my (saurabh sinha) contact with our campus clinics, we have directly faced the shortage of masks. one of our chinese partner institutions, shandong university, has donated 2,000 facemasks for campus clinics and security staff. supported by an  open-source design, we have 3d-printed face shields. in a university environment, one can occasionally find overhead projector transparencies and these have been used for the shield cover. a number of innovations have come about as a result of covid-19. like many other measures, post the control of a pandemic, our hope is that innovative thinking will remain and also assist with economic rebound.  we further understand that health professionals are trained in wearing professional protective equipment 87v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive like facemasks, thus the likelihood of them constantly fiddling with their masks, and in so doing touching their faces, is substantially lower. can we thus not teach the public proper “facemask etiquette”, in the same way that we have educated the public on how to wash their hands correctly?  there is a lot to still learn about covid-19. one peerreviewed article talks about the spread of covid-19 at patient lavatories and change-rooms in hospitals. this is due to contamination in change-rooms and through fomites in lavatories. shared spaces, like lavatories are, however, common given the socioeconomic conditions of informal settlements in south af rica. focusing on healthcare professionals, a recent peerreviewed study conducted in wuhan province, china, investigated for the presence of covid-19 within various areas in two hospitals, during the outbreak.  the authors divided the sampling locations into patient areas (where the covid-19 patients had a physical presence), and medical staff areas (workplaces in the two hospitals exclusively accessed by the medical staff who had direct contact with the patients). their results showed that the covid-19 concentrations were high inside the patient mobile bathroom (aerosol; one hospital), excessively high in the rooms where protective apparel of healthcare professionals were removed (aerosol; seven locations – one hospital) and high on the floor of the intensive care units (deposits; two locations – one hospital).  researchers in singapore, who also detected high levels of the virus in bathrooms, confirmed this study.  in both studies, rigorous sanitation processes (when implemented) and the surface sanitation of protective apparel drastically reduced the virus numbers to undetectable levels.   we think it is evident that in order to slow down the virus transmission rate, a multipronged approach is required. it is also evident that we must be willing to constantly consider new information, and if necessary, adjust our recommendations based on evidence and global successes, that use best practice. humility to listen and be adaptable is now more important than ever. cover your nose and mouth, wash your hands regularly, practice physical distancing, implement rigorous sanitation processes in hospitals (where infected numbers may be higher), or shared lavatory spaces, and surface sanitise personal protective clothing. sehaam khan is professor (microbiology & molecular virology) and executive dean: faculty of health sciences, university of johannesburg. saurabh sinha is professor (electronic engineering) and deputy vice-chancellor: research and internationalisation, university of johannesburg. 88 t h e t h i n k e r archive now more than ever, south af ricans are painfully aware of the inequalities that continue to play out in the country. in people’s pre-covid-19 lives, the realities of living in a country that is among the most unequal in the world were easily overlooked. the pandemic shines a very bright light on this reality. it asks us to fundamentally address them – not just at this time of the pandemic, but as a social justice imperative. as messaging about preventing the coronavirus ramped up, the consequences of inequalities in the provision of basic service provision in the country have become clear. these disparities between rich and poor are reflected across a range of interventions that have been put in place to manage the pandemic and its social and economic consequences. these include access to water, housing circumstances, as well as people’s  very high dependence on social grants  and the informal sector for income. five areas where inequality is starkest living circumstances: the preventive measures have highlighted inequalities in living circumstances. take the case of hand washing. the 1.1 to 1.4 million people who live in informal settlements in south af rica don’t have access to water in their homes or in their yards. an estimated 19% of the nearly 19 million people living in rural areas  lack access to reliable supply of clean water; 33%  do not have basic sanitation. this makes regular hand washing difficult. and social distancing or quarantining is near impossible when water access and ablutions are communal, and where settlements are overcrowded. livelihoods:  for many people at the upper end of the wage spectrum, working remotely has been relatively easy, with limited impact on their ability to earn a living. such workers are in the formal labour market. they are protected by both a legal and social contract  as well as a safety net of  unemployment benefits. small business owners will be under significant pressure in the coming weeks and months. but they will be partially cushioned by the  business support measures announced by the government. in contrast, the most vulnerable workers will struggle without support at this time. casual workers (like many domestic workers), those who are self-employed (such as uber drivers), and those working in the informal pandemic underscores gross inequalities in south africa, and the need to fix them by lauren graham | archive *this article first appeared in the conversation africa on 5 april 2020* 89v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive economy are not protected by legal contracts. in general these workers,  who make up over 20% of south af rica’s workforce, cannot access unemployment benef its. they will be under enormous pressure f inancially, potentially unable to feed themselves and their families. president cyril ramaphosa has made it clear that the government is aware of these challenges  and will move to ensure support. but it remains to be seen what that entails. education:  inequalities in education were also immediately evident when school were closed. while private schools and many suburban public schools were able to switch to technologysupported learning relatively easily, most public schools were not. the directive by the department of basic education was to ensure that learning continued by  providing workbooks and worksheets online. but, many parents will be facing the very real struggle of supporting their families in a locked down economy. this, and other problems, including limited access to technology and data, means that many parents will struggle to supervise their children’s learning. equally concerning is how this will affect education outcomes in the longer term. analysis already shows how learning backlogs in the early years, forged in an unequal education system, are compounded over time. further backlogs under the current situation are likely to have long-term effects. access to the internet:  manuel castells, a sociologist concerned with the internet age and inequality, notes in his book the internet galaxy: the fundamental digital divide is not measured by the number of connections to the internet, but by the consequences of both connection and lack of connection. at universities and other higher education institutions, wealthier students have been able to switch to online learning quickly, while poorer students battle with high data costs. inequalities in access to data further entrench existing inequalities in education and livelihoods during the covid-19 crisis. food security:  the effects of panic buying on the food security of people with  limited income has received attention. but a less well-known impact of the measures is that over 9 million children will not receive a daily, nutritious meal while schools remain closed. the national school nutrition programme potentially has positive effects on reducing stunting and obesity. in the face of prolonged school closures, these children face increased food insecurity, with potential long-term consequences for their health. there have been  heartwarming responses  f rom the public to ensure that food packs are provided to children. but it is simply not possible to reach the over 9 million children who depend on this meal. what can be done? the measures  announced  by president ramaphosa to mitigate the problem reflect an understanding of how existing inequalities will affect especially the most vulnerable people, and a willingness to address the problem. social protection measures that can quickly provide a  safety net  are crucial at this time. but, the current social protection system provides a safety net only to those outside of the labour market – children, older people, and people with disabilities. unemployment benefits accrue to those in formal employment who contribute to the unemployment insurance fund. this leaves the vast majority of working-age adults without a safety net at this time. while there have been relatively quick changes to existing mechanisms to provide  support to small, medium and micro enterprises  there are, as yet, no measures to protect informal and casual workers and ensure cash injections into vulnerable households. the country needs to devise a social contract to better address the vulnerabilities that low-wage, casual and informal workers face daily. the country must also move towards having low-cost, reliable internet access that can open up opportunities for learning and work for its most vulnerable citizens. basic services – such as clean water, electricity and sanitation – must also be of a quality that not only 90 t h e t h i n k e r archive promotes people’s right to dignity, but also help protect people f rom the effects of such a pandemic as covid-19. this pandemic highlights how crucial it is to fundamentally address the inequalities that exist in south af rican society. if a social justice imperative does not push us to do so, perhaps the realisation of mutual connections, borne of a pandemic that knows no class or race lines, will. prof. lauren graham is an associate professor and the director of the centre for social development in af rica. she has a doctorate in sociology f rom uj. her research interests are in the application and testing of social and development theories in practice with a focus on youth transitions to adulthood and specifically to the labour market. she is an nrf y-rated scholar and a previous newton advanced fellow. 91v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive with the covid-19 pandemic sweeping across the globe, the bedfordview and edenvale news  spoke with prof. suzy graham, associate professor and head of politics and international relations at the university of johannesburg (uj). graham spoke about the south af rican government’s reaction and the impact the virus will have on international relations, trade and travel. she said the measures taken by the south af rican government were appropriate to try and reduce the spread of the virus: “i think the government took action when the virus started to spread already in the country.” graham said in hindsight, measures such as the closure of borders and returning citizens to south af rica, could have already been put in place when the virus broke out in the northern hemisphere. however, if this had been done, she said the economy and other aspects of society would have been impacted earlier too. while comparing sa’s response to covid-19 to that of other countries, graham believes the south af rican government responded fairly quickly to the pandemic as cases rose in the country: “in my opinion, our government instituted measures earlier in the crisis than other governments did in their countries.” graham said although the measures put in place will have an impact on the economy, tourism, education and other sectors, the health of citizens must take precedence. speaking on the international community, graham said many countries are still cooperating instead of seeking total isolation: “there is regional protection and individual country protection. countries recognise how globally connected the world is; there are so many intricate networks and multiple layers of interaction. countries are taking advice f rom the world health organisation (who), among other scientific advice.” one example of countries cooperating is the european union (eu). graham said the eu is acting to protect all eu citizens. prof. suzy graham speaks on covid-19 and its impact on international relations, trade and travel by stephan lehman | archive *this article first appeared in the bedfordview and edenvale news on april 5 2020* 92 t h e t h i n k e r archive despite the cooperation, leaders of countries needed to implement measures like the closure of borders as the number of cases increased: “this ‘enemy’ is not another country, it [the virus] is attacking any humans regardless of culture, race, creed, class, station in life.” graham believes if states do isolate themselves completely, they would have to reassess their global supply chains and production industries. with regards to international trade, graham described the impact as significant and added that the international community has not seen the full impact on trade yet. graham said although she could not predict if the virus would bring a change in the economic superpowers of the world, she highlighted that global events like world wars can dramatically shift economic positions worldwide. “this is different though as who has indicated that this virus could reach every country in the world and therefore all states are likely to suffer losses of many kinds.” on the topic of travel and the ease of migration in regions such as the eu, graham said new regulations may be put in place to better control travel. however, in the same breath, graham said things may just return to the way they were before the crisis: “as this is linked to health, new health regulations might be enforced.” in graham’s opinion, the ease of travel in areas like europe contributed to the spread of the virus: “despite this, the rapidity of spread and impact on communities of the novel coronavirus could not have been anticipated in my view.” dr. suzanne graham is associate professor  of international relations at the department of politics and international relations at uj and hod of the department (2018-2020). 93v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive ever since the lockdown began in south af rica, i have been tracking the government’s evolving positions on using cellphone tracking in the fight against covid-19. it hasn’t been easy obtaining information about exactly what their intentions are. initially, it seemed as if the government was intending to use aggregate location data to map trends in the spread of the virus. the minister of communications announced this intention at a  security cluster briefing  on 25 march. in it, she said that the cellphone industry has agreed to provide data analytics to track how many people are affected in a particular area.  however, her statement didn’t provide much clarity on exactly what they would be providing. since then, the government has elaborated on their intentions, notably through  revised regulations  published by the ministry of cooperative governance on 2 april.  so how has the government’s position on cellphone tracking evolved, what do the regulations say, how do government’s plans measure up to international best and worst practices, and what do these intentions tell us about how democratic or autocratic government’s response is to the pandemic?  the spectrum of uses for location data in the fight against covid-19 there is a spectrum of uses for location data in the fight against the virus, ranging f rom non-intrusive to highly intrusive.  the least non-intrusive is to use aggregated and anonymised location data to model population density in the spread of the covid-19 virus. for instance, belgium is tracking the mobility of peoples’ movements at a broader level to see if confinement measures are working or not. this data can then be fed into government decisions about whether to relax or tighten measures.  there is always the  danger  of this data being deanonymised and people being re-identified. but these dangers  recede  when densely populated areas are being surveilled, which is most likely where the data will be of most use, and mitigation measures are used.  covid-19, cellphone location tracking and sa’s contradictory security response by jane duncan | archive *this article first appeared in the daily maverick on 6 april 2020* 94 t h e t h i n k e r archive on the more intrusive end of the scale, governments can obtain location data to track the movements of people infected with covid-19, to establish who they have been in proximity to, and to isolate those people. people who violate lockdowns can also be traced and people graded according to the public health risks they pose. south korea, china, and israel have been using location data in such ways.  location data can speed up the hugely laborious task of contact-tracing by interviewing covid-19 carriers in countries that are failing to flatten the curve. people who have been in contact with someone diagnosed with the virus can be informed immediately, without having to wait for contact tracers to get to them.  in these cases, location data can literally save lives. it even be used as an alternative to an economicallydamaging lockdown, as economic activities among uninfected individuals could continue. however, there are unanswered questions about the effectiveness of location data for these more granular uses. according to the digital rights group, the electronic frontier foundation, location data may not be sufficiently precise to allow people who have been in close proximity to a covid-19 carrier to be identified with accuracy.  a more democratic option to involuntary contact tracing involves self-monitoring  tracking apps  that encourage cellphone users to provide to health authorities their location information and information about symptoms voluntarily. they offer an attempt to  strike a balance  between public health concerns, on the one hand, and privacy on the other.  this option will be difficult to implement in south af rica, though, where large numbers of south af ricans still lack access to data, some don’t even carry cellphones and, of those who do, many carry feature phones. furthermore, these apps are only effective if large numbers of people use them. zero-rating the apps could be one solution.  south africa’s evolving position on location data government’s evolving position on this is clear f rom the changes between an initial set of directions issued on 26 march and new regulations issued on 2 april. on 26 march, the department of telecommunications and postal services released a direction in terms of the disaster management act, covering communications and media-related issues.  under the heading “individual track and trace”, the cellphone operators, and in fact “the digital sector in general”, are required to provide location-based services “to support government departments to assist and combat the spread of covid-19”.  the regulation provided important clues to the government’s intentions, in that they appeared to extend beyond obtaining aggregate information and into using location data to track those infected with covid-19 to see who they had been in the vicinity of.  this intention was  confirmed  to my colleague, researcher and information rights activist, murray hunter, by the department of communications. yet, at that stage, there was no indication of them intending to apply for warrants to obtain this information. when approached for comment, the largest cellphone operator in south af rica, vodacom, told me this: “current laws in south af rica serve to protect customer information and do not allow us to share any customer information without a court order or without the consent of the customer. in the event that vodacom is served with a section 205 subpoena f rom the court, vodacom will then be obliged to act accordingly and will abide by applicable south af rican laws. having said that, our understanding of the data information request outlined recently by minister stella ndabeni-abrahams is for high-level aggregated data on how people are moving, to help curb the spread of covid-19. this does not include personal information or information that identifies a specific individual.” this statement suggested that vodacom and the government were not of one mind about how location data would be used. i was unable to obtain a comment f rom the second biggest cellphone operator, mtn.  revised covid-19 regulations and the new route then, on 2 april, the government released  revised 95v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive regulations, with much more elaborate procedures for location tracking. in important respects, they even exceed the privacy protections for metadata provided in rica and the criminal procedures act.  according to the regulations, the department of health will maintain a covid-19 database of those infected or reasonably suspected of being infected. the department can direct the cellphone companies to provide location data for the database about the covid-19 carriers or people who have been in close proximity to them.  furthermore, the department can only request data between 5 march (when the pandemic really picked up) and when the state of disaster finally lapses, and they can only use the data strictly for the purpose of countering the virus. they and others are not allowed to intercept any other communication content.  the regulations envisage the appointment of a special covid-19 judge, appointed by the minister of justice. the department of health, on a weekly basis, needs to provide the judge with a list of people whose details were obtained through the regulation, and these people need to be informed six weeks after the state of disaster has lapsed that their details were intercepted.  the covid-19 judge can also make recommendations to the relevant cabinet members regarding the amendment or enforcement of the regulations in order to safeguard privacy, while not compromising the fight against the virus.  there are positives and negatives to these regulations. one huge positive is that these regulations recognise the principle of user notification.  in its  constitutional challenge  to rica, the amabhungane centre for investigative journalism has argued that rica is incorrect in not allowing people whose communications have been intercepted to be notified after investigations have reached a nonsensitive stage. this secrecy prevents interception subjects from contesting abusive government interceptions.  the regulations also incorporate basic data protection principles, such as purpose specification and time limit principles. they require that within six weeks after the lapsing of the state of disaster, all information in the covid-19 database should be de-identified, and retained and used for research purposes. the designated judge can give directions if s/he isn’t satisfied about these new storage arrangements.  however, i am less convinced about the role of the special judge, as the regulations do not envisage judicial authorisation.  if the judge has any reservations about decisions taken, then s/he only has the powers to recommend remedial action, not review the decisions. this part of the regulations should be reconsidered, as it turns the judge into a rubber stamp for the executive.  rica does contain similar emergency procedures where the authorities can notify the judge after the fact if they have intercepted communications when life and limb is threatened. while not the subject of the constitutional challenge, that procedure is unsatisfactory, too, as it doesn’t spell out what happens if the judge disagrees with the authorities’ decisions.  this loophole has seen the intelligence agencies using emergency powers thousands of times, simply because it is easier to use than the conventional procedure involving prior judicial authorisation.  now, it could be argued that locating people infected and affected by covid-19 requires urgency, but courts deal with urgent matters all the time. nothing stops the judge, or a panel of judges, from dealing with applications and making decisions on an urgent basis.  the reporting requirements in the regulations mitigate the potential for abuse, but the absolute baseline for individual cellphone tracking is that the authorities must apply for a warrant, which a judge must issue. securocratic or democratic? untangling the government response when it comes to government’s intentions to use cellphone tracking in the fight against covid-19, the bottom line is it could be worse. the government has clearly made an effort to come up with a much less autocratic system than countries like china, israel and south korea. the fact that the regulations are driven by public health officials and not the police or the spy 96 t h e t h i n k e r archive agencies is a significant strength. but, it’s impossible not to contrast this (largely) positive development with the conduct of some police and military officers on the streets. already,  violent military and police actions have become a blight on the lockdown, with police officers under investigation for the deaths of three civilians.  police minister bheki cele’s  threatening tone  in announcing lockdown measures is a stark reminder that the militarised conditions that gave rise to the 2012 marikana massacre remain deeply embedded in the police.  in other countries, the lockdowns have revealed alreadyexisting problems  in policing, and south africa is no exception to that general rule. however, the government has had a large window of opportunity in the wake of the massacre to deal with these problems, and it hasn’t. yet, it has moved with much more speed on the jacob zumaera abuses in the state security agency, give or take a speed bump here and there.  why this contradictory picture? most likely, because largely policing abuses don’t touch the political elite. they touch the working class: the families crowded into oneroomed houses, shack dwellers, refugees.  the elites, on the other hand, are touched by unaccountable state spying. as is public knowledge, politicians in the highest levels of the state have been targets. clearly, the amabhungane challenge to rica has been a wake-up call for them, to the point where they are even willing to concede the very accountability measures they opposed in the case, such as user notification.  state violence erodes trust in the state’s ability to protect people during this crisis, and is likely to inflame an already tough situation at the worst possible moment. the last thing the government needs to deal with is spontaneous protests of angry people raging against state violence and unbearable conditions. unless the government is consistent in its commitment to rein in the securocrats during “normal” times – and not just cherry-pick those powers that affect politicians directly – then we are likely to see uneven, classist and selectively violent responses continuing in times of crisis. jane duncan is a professor and head of department of journalism, film and television. she is author of ‘stopping the spies: constructing and resisting the surveillance state in south africa’ (wits university press, 2018). 97v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive in a rare encouragement for public oversight, south africa has indicated to use location data responsibly in the fight against covid-19. in light of south africa’s history and its weak metadata controls, concerns were strong that the government’s intention to use location data in the fight against covid-19 would lean authoritarian. yet, the fairly comprehensive regulations added to the disaster management act on april 2 have been seen as a welcome change and glimmer of hope. arguably, this is due to the pressure civil society had put on the country’s surveillance regime before the crisis. (tweet: @duncanjane (@go2uj): south africa has issued surprisingly strong regulations for the use of location data against #covid19, incl. purpose specification, user notification & a sunset clause. this speaks to the unrecognised power of public oversight.) last month, the south af rican government announced its intention to follow other governments around the world and use mobile phone location data in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic. at the time of writing, south af rica had recorded 1462 cases of covid-19 and 5 deaths: thankfully, below what the government had projected for this stage of the pandemic. yet, the country is the most affected by the pandemic in af rica. there is the real possibility that infections may rise massively if the virus sets into the country’s densely-populated low-income or noincome areas. instead of wasting crucial time by fumbling its response, the government moved quickly and decisively to counter the pandemic. south af rica has been in a policeand military-enforced lockdown for a week, and faces at least another two weeks before the lockdown is lifted. it is in these conditions that south af rica announced its intention to use location data: a move that has triggered privacy concerns. however, significantly, the government has declared a national state of disaster, rather than a national state of emergency. so, rights such as privacy have not been suspended. how does the government intend to use location data, and what do these intentions tell us about staring down the securocrats by jane duncan | archive *this article first appeared in about:intel on 7 april 2020* 98 t h e t h i n k e r archive how autocratic or democratic its response is to the pandemic? this question matters because emergency powers have a nasty tendency of sticking around long after the emergency that necessitated them has passed. in the case of south af rica, in the wake of the september 11, 2001, attacks and as part of its contribution to the ‘war on terror’, parliament passed a basket of anti-terror laws, including the regulation of interception of communication and provision of communication-related information act (rica), that has remained largely unrevised in spite of the overbroad powers it gave to the country’s security services. south af rica has a terrible history of a securocracy, in which members of the military and the police helped to govern the country and invoked emergency powers to crush mass opposition to apartheid. more recently, the country has emerged f rom a decade where the security and intelligence apparatuses of the state were misused to benefit a corrupt political elite. if south af rica is to put this history behind it once and for all, then the government needs to ensure that any emergency measures lapse after the pandemic has abated. thus, the declaration of the state of disaster must lapse as soon as possible after the pandemic subsides, as the declaration of a lockdown allows the security services to wield extraordinary powers such as prohibiting gatherings. intelligence uses and abuses of metadata there is a spectrum of uses for location data in the fight against the virus, ranging f rom non-intrusive to highly-intrusive. the least intrusive way is to use aggregated and anonymised location data to model population density in the spread of the covid-19 virus. governments intent on more intrusive measures can obtain location data to track the movements of people infected with covid-19, to establish who they have been in proximity to, and to isolate those people. people who violate lockdowns can also be traced and graded according to the public health risks they pose. south korea, china, and israel have been using location data in such ways. even before the pandemic began, south af rica had a cavalier approach towards using metadata in intelligence operations, with the number of requests into the thousands. a new research report by information rights researcher and activist murray hunter shows how useful metadata (and especially location data) is to the police for investigating and solving crimes, but how they also prefer to use the least transparent route for obtaining it. there are two main routes that state intelligence agencies can use to access metadata: a more stringent procedure set down in rica and the criminal procedures act. rica is used mainly by the crime intelligence division of the south af rican police service. the state security agency (the civilian intelligence agency), the defence intelligence division of the south af rican defence force, and the financial intelligence centre are less f requent users. while rica is used mainly for accessing communication content, the state agencies can also use it to access metadata in real-time. both, however, require authorisation by a special judge. the applicants must show that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a serious crime has been, is being, or will probably be committed. rica requires that the cell phone companies store metadata for between three to five years. the act also sets out procedures for the intelligence agencies to access archived metadata, but these are less stringent than for content or realtime metadata. however, the intelligence agencies prefer to use the criminal procedures act, which merely requires that a judge needs to be satisfied that the metadata is relevant to a case. its usage is not restricted to serious crimes. furthermore, even a magistrate can issue a subpoena in terms of the act; it does not have to be a high court judge. while rica is slightly stronger than the criminal procedures act on controls and oversight, neither act provides sufficient protections for metadata. these weaknesses are premised on the outdated view that communication metadata is less privacy-sensitive than communication content. currently, the south af rican constitutional court is considering whether rica is even constitutional. an investigative journalism organisation, the amabhungane centre for investigative journalism, challenged the constitutionality of rica on several grounds, including privacy. the case followed a 99v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive revelation that amabhungane’s managing partner, sam sole, was spied on by the state, presumably to uncover his sources in a state institution. the constitutional court heard the case in february and judgement is reserved. some of the key problems that amabhungane is challenging are the lack of post-surveillance user notification, the lack of independence of the special judge, the lack of procedures for the processing of personal information, and the fact that the state security agency’s bulk signals intelligence agency, the national communications centre, has no founding statute and is, therefore, in its entirety a rogue entity. while the amicus curiae applicants in the case raised the lack of controls over metadata usage, the issue was not central to the case and is unlikely to be ruled on. so in other words, south af rica announced its intention to use location data in the fight against covid-19 in a context where metadata oversight and controls were already weak. therefore, it was widely expected (and understandably so) that the government’s plans would lean towards the authoritarian end of the spectrum. south africa’s approach to using location data the government’s evolving position on this is clear f rom the changes between an initial set of directions issued on 26 march and new regulations issued on 2 april. on 26 march, the department of telecommunications and postal services released a direction in terms of the disaster management act, covering communications and media-related issues. under the heading ‘individual track and trace’, the cell phone operators, and in fact ‘the digital sector in general’, are required to provide location-based services ‘to support government departments to assist and combat the spread of covid-19’. the regulation provided important clues to the government’s intentions, in that they appeared to extend beyond obtaining aggregate information and into using location data to track those infected with covid-19, to see who they had been in the vicinity of. this was in spite of the fact that according to south af rica’s largest mobile operator, vodacom, their understanding was that the government was only after aggregate data. then, on 2 april, the government released revised regulations, with much more elaborate procedures for location tracking. in important respects, they even exceed the privacy protections for metadata provided in rica and the criminal procedures act. according to the regulations, the department of health will maintain a covid-19 database of those infected or reasonably suspected of being infected. the department can direct the cellphone companies to provide location data for the database about the covid-19 carriers or people who have been in close proximity to them. furthermore, the department can only request data between 5 march (when the pandemic really picked up) and when the state of disaster finally lapses through a declaration by the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, and they can only use the data strictly for the purpose of countering the virus. they, and anyone else for that matter, are not allowed to use these procedures to intercept any other communication content, allaying fears that the state of disaster would be used to spy on what people are saying. the regulations envisage the appointment of a special covid-19 judge, appointed by the minister of justice. the department of health, on a weekly basis, needs to provide the judge with a list of people whose details were obtained, and these people need to be informed six weeks after the state of disaster has lapsed that their location data was obtained. the covid-19 judge can also make recommendations to the relevant cabinet members regarding the amendment or enforcement of the regulations in order to safeguard privacy, while not compromising the fight against the virus. the regulations also incorporate basic data protection principles, such as purpose specification and time limit principles. they require that within six weeks after the lapsing of the state of disaster, all information in the covid-19 database should be de-identified, retained and used for research purposes. the designated judge can give directions if s/he isn’t satisfied about these new storage arrangements. most surprisingly, the regulations recognise the principle of user notification: surprisingly because the government had opposed user notification in the amabhungane case. in its constitutional challenge to rica, amabhungane argued that rica is incorrect in not allowing people whose communications have 100 t h e t h i n k e r archive been intercepted to be notified after investigations have reached a non-sensitive stage. this secrecy prevents interception subjects f rom contesting abusive government interceptions. one disappointing aspect of the regulations is that they do not envisage judicial authorisation. if the judge has any reservations about decisions taken, then s/he only has the powers to recommend remedial action, not review the decisions. this part of the regulations should be reconsidered, as it turns the judge into a rubber stamp for the executive. rica does contain similar emergency procedures where the authorities can notify the judge after the fact if they have intercepted communications when life and limb is threatened. while not the subject of the constitutional challenge, that procedure is unsatisfactory, too, as it doesn’t spell out what happens if the judge disagrees with the authorities’ decisions. the intelligence agencies have used this emergency power thousands of times, simply because it was easier than the conventional procedure involving prior judicial authorisation. the reporting requirements in the regulations mitigate the potential for abuse, but the absolute baseline for individual cell phone tracking should be that the authorities must apply for a warrant, which a judge must issue. making the securocrats blink people around the world are scared of the pandemic and the uncertainty it has created. these are times when people are least likely to resist the removal of democratic rights and f reedoms. after all, what is the point of having rights when the most important right of all, namely life, is at risk. autocrats could quickly take advantage of the fact that protests have been shut down and popular counter-power is weak. the south af rican government’s enforcement of the lockdown has been highly uneven, and has revealed existing cracks in policing. members of the public have laid scores of complaints against the police and military for violent enforcement of the lockdown, including three deaths, allegedly as a result of police action. the situation is precarious and may lead to reactive protests: the very thing the country can do without at the moment. therefore, it is of the utmost importance that the lockdown be enforced using the least intrusive and coercive means possible. it is commendable that the government moved with great speed on clarifying their intentions with location tracking, put their powers in writing, limited their scope (although there is room for improvement), and subjected themselves to a sunset clause restricting the department of health to use these powers until the state of disaster has lapsed or has been terminated through a gazetted official notice. the fact that the regulations are driven by public health officials and not the police or the spy agencies is a significant strength. they imply that the government has actually conceded deficiencies in its metadata interception practices. it is doubtful that they would have done so had the amabhungane case not happened. this case demonstrates the power of one of the most unrecognised forms of intelligence oversight, namely public oversight. but, at least it is clear now that it is possible to stare down the securocrats and make them blink. jane duncan is a professor and head of department of journalism, film and television. she is author of ‘stopping the spies: constructing and resisting the surveillance state in south af rica’ (wits university press, 2018). 101v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive earlier this month, south af rica’s parastatal arms manufacturer, denel,  announced  that it would begin to manufacture ventilators in partnership with other entities, to assist in the fight against covid-19. countries are battling with major shortages of medical equipment, and south af rica has the additional challenge of a declining rand.  so it stands to reason that domestic manufacturing capacity should be put to use in the fight. the parastatal has also floated the idea of turning casspirs into ambulances and producing sanitisers.  crises have a remarkable way of focussing the collective mind on what really matters. denel should have branched out into socially useful work a long time ago. markets for conventional arms are shrinking around the world, leading to more arms manufacturers focussing on the same market: the middle east.  denel has set its sights on  marketing  its wares to corrupt and repressive gulf states as its target market, with saudi arabia at the helm. it should not be allowed to continue with its plans, as it will be feeding the disastrous instability in the region and beyond.  as its finances flounder and job losses loom, it has become clear that denel has reached its sell-by date. but what happens to denel beyond the manufacture of war toys? its current  turnaround strategy  is underwhelming.  major arms manufacturers such as the us and the uk are also facing shrinking markets for conventional arms. yet, they continue to cling obstinately to old growth paths of militarism, financialisation and automation. they have even been willing to resort to military action if their global supremacy is threatened, irrespective of how unsustainable these measures are.  many countries have severe shortages of the kinds of scientists and engineers involved in defence manufacturing, south af rica included. companies in the thrall of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ are automating more productive functions, leading to the massive destruction of jobs. at the same time, the globe is experiencing an unprecedented ecological crisis.  yet, economic production remains doggedly skewed towards market demands rather than broader social needs. if there is one positive thing to come out of from weapons to ventilators: time for denel to do some socially useful work by jane duncan | archive *this article first appeared in the daily maverick on 21 april 2020* 102 t h e t h i n k e r archive the covid-19 pandemic, it is that countries are being forced to rethink what forms of production are really needed to sustain life.  denel’s ideas are not new. in fact, for many decades, the anti-war and trade union movements have called for the transformation of arms manufacturing into socially responsible, useful and necessary work.  one of the most inspiring legacies of the labour movement was a plan developed by a group of workers in the uk company lucas aerospace, who were facing imminent retrenchment in the 1970s. the company produced technical products for the civilian market, as well as weapons for the defence industry.  as highly skilled scientists and engineers, they used this threat to their livelihoods to reimagine their work and their contributions to society more generally. the workers  lamented  what they referred to as the ‘dehumanisation of science and technology’, not necessarily because of the misbehaviour of scientists and technologists, but because society misused their skills.  the lucas workers also expressed concern about the de-skilling of their jobs, as the increasingly popular principles of scientific management atomised them into separate production units, overseen by managers who left little room for discretion, much less creative problem-solving. as more workers felt completely oppressed by their working environment, they lost interest and disengaged f rom the world of work.  they also recognised that the shift f rom human intelligence to machine intelligence was exacerbating the problem. they  argued  that society has the capacity, and in fact the duty, to shape the trajectory of technological innovation, and governments should not allow people to be lulled into believing that these innovations occurred autonomously of society.  according to the workers: there is something seriously wrong about a society which can produce a level of technology to design and build [the] concorde, but cannot provide enough simple urban heating systems to protect the old age pensioners who are dying each year f rom hypothermia. …[further] it is clear that there is now deep rooted cynicism amongst wide sections of the public about the idea, carefully nurtured by the media, that advanced science and technology will solve all our material problems. so, the workers began a shopfloor-led discussion to transform their work f rom military/industrial production into socially useful work. however, they recognised the dangers of planning for their shop floor only, as the hostile environment would most likely impinge on them and scupper their plans. so, they felt it necessary to link their plans to a wider industrial strategy that promoted economic diversification of areas dependent on arms manufacturers. the workers were decades ahead of their time, and perhaps even foresaw the current ecological crisis, by arguing for the need for a just transition f rom arms manufacturing into socially useful work, especially renewable energy. in other words, they argued for the need to move f rom destructive to constructive work. the lucas workers assessed their existing product range and workplace skills and drafted an alternative corporate plan, dubbed the lucas plan. they did so by collecting ideas f rom the shopfloor, and came up with 150 alternative products.  these products included scaling back on military submarine production and focussing on producing submersible vehicles for marine agriculture, and braking systems linked to velocity sensing devices to address the inadequacies in braking systems in widespread use in public transportation. in the medical sector, they proposed producing kidney dialysis machines. in the energy sector, they intended to make heat pumps and wind turbines. they even grappled with alternative energy storage solutions, recognising that batteries of the time placed limits on any ambitions to transition to green energy. they proposed using lessons learnt in building batteries for defence ground support to offer hybrid alternatives to conventional battery production, which could be used in combined rail/ road vehicles. although the lucas plan was never implemented, it has continued to inspire activists to this day. the ukbased campaign against the arms trade (caat) has used the plan as a touchstone to develop detailed 103v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 archive proposals for shifting defence manufacturing to green products. according to caat, it is entirely feasible to shift employment in large scale arms manufacturing to the renewable energy sector, and would go some way to f reeing up scarce skills in the science, technology, maths and engineering fields. focussing specifically on offshore wind energy, they have argued that the uk government could contribute to global security by demilitarising its foreign policy and promoting sustainable, low carbon and planetsaving energy sources. these proposals could well have application beyond the uk, including in southern af rica, where south af rica dominates the local defence industry. denel is beset with financial problems. while some problems relate to the parastatal becoming embroiled in state capture, some are more deep-rooted and include unprofitable sales and loss-making contracts, and rising costs coupled with declining revenues. their turnaround strategy for the strategy includes plans to strengthen corporate governance, reduce internal costs, unbundle non-core functions and focus on core functions. it also intends to explore diversification into related areas, find new markets for its niche products, and possibly take on a private equity partner. however, the parastatal’s reported diversification plans appear to be limited to security, cybertechnology and advanced software solutions, and providing more services to the police, suggesting that it was also considering the markets for dual-use technologies. many conventional arms manufacturers are, in fact, moving into dual-use production, including spyware, as it allows them to sell not only to defence departments, but to police and intelligence agencies also. this is something that south af rica does not want to do, as it will contribute to a globally destabilising cyber-arms race, and existing export controls remain inadequate. weapons-grade spyware can be (and has been) abused to target dissidents and others who are considered politically inconvenient. so serious is the problem that the un special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, david kaye, called for an immediate moratorium on the global sale and transfer of the tools of the private surveillance industry until rigorous human rights safeguards are put in place. as the parastatal dispenses with what it has identified as non-core parts of the business, job losses remain a looming threat, particularly in aerostructures manufacturing. all of these factors mean that the parastatal is ripe for conversion to a company that provides socially useful goods. it is necessary and important or an arms manufacturer to repurpose itself to produce socially useful goods during a national crisis. but this commitment to thinking outside the bomb mustn’t be abandoned once the crisis subsides. jane duncan is a professor and head of department of journalism, film and television. she is author of ‘stopping the spies: constructing and resisting the surveillance state in south af rica’ (wits university press, 2018). 104 t h e t h i n k e r archive abstract black-youth-owned enterprises are essential to sustainable development and wealth creation for rural-based municipalities like the vhembe district municipality, where they can play a pivotal role in economic growth. this paper aims to explore the socio-economic determinates of entrepreneurship trends among black youths in the vhembe district municipality. the investigation focused on youths living in the vhembe district municipality in limpopo province, south africa. the study used judgmental nonprobability sampling to sample the participants. the study used qualitative research to collect and analyse data. the unstructured interview was used to gather data from the participants. thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected. the study findings revealed that black youths in the vhembe district decided to be entrepreneurs to empower their communities, escape underemployment and scarcity of jobs, create jobs, and stimulate economic growth. the paper recommends that the department of women, youth and persons with disabilities in the presidency, in collaboration with the department of small business enterprise development and the national youth development agency, should provide a two-year internship for young black entrepreneurs in foreign companies that specialize in mining, technology, creative industries, and agriculture. when these black youth return home, the government should set aside a presidential youth fund to assist them to start their own businesses in the same industry by thulani andrew chauke | peer review 22t h e t h i n k e r peer review entrepreneurship development among black youths in south africa: a choice or necessity? 23 t h e t h i n k e r introduction the national youth policy 2015–2020 and integrated youth development strategy 2018 emphasise the need for youth inclusion in an economy through youth entrepreneurship in south af rica. over the years, there has been a gradual increase in government policy about the vital role that entrepreneurship can play to create jobs among young persons. one of the functions of the national youth development agency (nyda) act 54 of 2008 is to mainstream youth in economic participation through a grant programme, which assists young people between the ages of 18–35 years old who aspire to be entrepreneurs. the definition of youth in south af rica emanates f rom the country’s political landscape, given the fact that young persons, especially black youth during the apartheid era, were denied the opportunity to participate in socio-economic activities. therefore, the definition seeks to address the injustices of the past. nyda (2015) attempts to conceptualise and define youths as a group of young people who fall between the ages of 14–35. sharma (2013) defines a youth entrepreneurship venture as a structured business run and owned by a young person, individual or collective (statistics south af rica, 2019). the alarming rate of unemployment amongst young people in south af rica is a serious concern to the government and is seen as a cause of unrest in the country. study contribution the government can channel a large amount of money to help black youth start their own businesses, but if the youth themselves do not see entrepreneurship as the best strategy to eradicate unemployment and poverty in south af rica, these efforts will be in vain. therefore, it is important for youth development researchers in south af rica to explore this area to determine if black youths venture to do business because they have no choice or because they believe that starting their own business would enable them to create jobs to involve other black youths to contribute to economic growth. in addition, we need to get a better understanding of black youth’s perspectives and their reasons for starting their own businesses. therefore, this study sought to fill that gap by producing new knowledge that will contribute to youth and entrepreneurship development research in south af rica. this paper explores this area of study with the aim of providing appropriate policy responses to youth entrepreneurship development in south af rica to foster economic growth and job creation among young people. literature review the united nations (2013) states that it is of greater significance for young people to venture to support opportunity entrepreneurship because it has a positive effect on the economic development of any country. necessity entrepreneurship was proven to be the opposite of opportunity entrepreneurship. this simply means that young people should start businesses where there are opportunities in the market rather than being forced by the country’s fiscal crisis. furthermore, mixed feelings were reported among youth driven to venture to develop their own businesses. older black youth aged 30–33 years old were more likely to pursue entrepreneurship with the mindset of making more money, and were found to contribute to the national development agenda through job creation (schillo, persaud and jin, 2016). on the other hand, younger youth in their early 20s start their own businesses because of the fiscal crisis, which makes it difficult for them to secure employment. black youth attitudes towards entrepreneurship were found to be different in most reviewed literature. mixed feelings were commonly reported, since 69.5% of black youth who had been involved in a business at a younger age were found to be inclined to start a business again. fear of failure in business was revealed to be the main factor that prevented youth f rom becoming engaged in business again. on the other hand, 30.5% of black youth who had experience in running a business showed an interest in starting a business again despite the hardships endured in the process of establishing and running a business (sharma and madan, 2014). the same authors further elaborate by demonstrating that level and types of qualification play a significant role in young people’s entrepreneurial mindset. in addition, black youth who have an educational background in a business-related field such as master of business administration were more likely to start their own businesses. king’ori (2012), chiloane-tsoko and peer review 24v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 botha (2015) support this statement by underscoring that youth with formal education are more likely to successfully establish their businesses. furthermore, young people who had working experience were more likely to venture to become engaged in business, as opposed to those who had no working experience. entrepreneurship education surfaced as an important decisive factor for youth to develop the habit of starting their own businesses, especially in terms of career guidance (dzomondo and fatoki, 2019). the effort that higher education institutions (heis) put in place to provide youth with career guidance towards entrepreneurship careers cannot be taken for granted. however, these institutions are not doing very well in terms of providing young people with the practical experience of running a successful business (osoro and areba, 2013). this simply means theoretical aspects alone will not play a bigger role in encouraging youth to start their own businesses. youth participation in an economy is of paramount importance to the sustainable development and wealth creation of any developing country (osoro and areba, 2013). the youth symbolises energy, innovation, creativity, and the know-how stage. therefore, youth in this stage should channel their energy in initiating projects that will contribute to the growth of their country. these claims are supported by ngorora and mago (2018) who indicate that the entrenchment of new ideas in a young person’s mind drives them to start their own businesses, particularly amongst black youth who reside in rural areas. over the years, the world has witnessed the rapid increase of youth engagement in businesses of their own, increasingly adding pressure on governments who find it difficult to create jobs for young people (lau, dimitrova, shaffer, davidkov, yordanova, 2012). in addition, unemployment among youth often leads to deviant behaviour for survival, such as crime and becoming sex workers. there is a correlation between unemployment pathology and entrepreneurship as a driving force among the youth. nassium et al. (2017) attest to this argument by emphasising that young people venture to join youth enterprises because they are unable to find employment. a young person’s desire to venture into entrepreneurship can be disrupted by several factors, especially for youth residing in rural areas and townships. these claims are supported by the work of herrington et al. (2010) who attest that young people in south af rica who have an interest in being entrepreneurs find it very difficult to realise this dream due to a lack of mentors. mentorship linkage is essential to young inspiring entrepreneurs. therefore, agencies tasked with addressing youth unemployment should have good policies in place that seek to address mentorship and linkage matters. youth entrepreneurship scholars argue that entrepreneurship education can play a pivotal role to cultivate young people’s desire to start their own businesses (2011). these remarks call upon transformation of the south af rican education system where entrepreneurship should be compulsory f rom primary schools to honours level. this will change the old tradition of being job seekers to becoming job creators. starting a business requires some financial muscles in order for young people to be equipped for the challenges they may encounter. murimi (2014) alludes to the fact that black youth who had access to funding were much more likely to venture to youth enterprises compared to those who had no access to resources. this finding reveals that black youths who received funding f rom government agencies or family financial support are much more likely to start and run a successful business. entrepreneurial studies demonstrated that young people who had any form of training in business gained the necessary skills to drive them to start their own business (olugbala, 2017). in addition, these youths are more likely to run a successful business and hire unemployed youth. furthermore, some of the youths who grow up in an entrepreneurship environment were more likely to start their own businesses. youth unemployment has been noted as the number one factor to influence youth enterprises globally. a study that focuses solely on the correlation between underemployment and youth enterprise is not well documented. a study conducted by fritsch (2012) was relatively close to filling that gap by demonstrating that young people in a modern society where everything is changing dramatically find no pleasure in doing traditional jobs. therefore, entrepreneurship is the only solution that young people have. women venture to become entrepreneurs because they want security and to be financially independent and achieve work-life balance (justo et al., 2015). according to chauke and obadire (2020), talents and creativity in the 21st century are among other peer review 25 t h e t h i n k e r reasons that give rise to black-youth-run businesses. youth fanaticism is a new subject in entrepreneurship development research and plays a significant role in influencing a young person to embark on entrepreneurship. the rise of technology encourages young people to explore a new area. in addition, the old traditional boss may be an impediment for a young person to innovate. kaur (2012) supports this statement in his work by emphasising that young people start their own business because they do not want to report to anyone and follow the old protocol. therefore, doing their own thing is the only option that brings excitement to their lives. despite the inner drive for youth to start a business, proper training is needed for youth to understand the importance of running a successful business (ellis and williams, 2011; ekpe, razak, ismali and abdullah, 2015). moreover, a young emerging entrepreneur needs some skills such as soft skills, communication skills, time management skills, and leadership skills (kline, 2015). in the context of south af rican youth enterprise development, the national youth development agency has been doing a wonderful job by providing young emerging entrepreneurs with a life skills programme for the past ten years that helped the youth to know who they are before they venture into business. theoretical framework this study employed a social learning theory that is founded by bandura. according to bandura (1976), social learning theory is based on the assumption that a person’s behaviour, attitude, and drive to do something is shaped by the surrounding environment. moreover, this theory attribution is based on rewards and punishment. the individual will observe someone else’s behaviour to see if the behaviour is rewarding or punishable. thereafter, if the behaviour is perceived to be rewarding the individual is more likely to produce the same behaviour. in the context of this paper, the researcher argues that black youth’s drive to start their businesses emanates f rom seeing other successful black persons who were once unemployed and decided to venture to initiate an enterprise and began to make an honest living by becoming successful. in addition, social learning theory is the best theory to be used in entrepreneurship education in south af rica f rom primary to tertiary level where the youth will be exposed to a practical entrepreneurship system and will be coached by successful young businessmen and women. purpose of the study the study’s purpose is to shine a new light on youth entrepreneurship by investigating socio-economic determinates of entrepreneurship trends among black youth in the vhembe district municipality. methodology the research methodology used in this study was a qualitative approach. the research approach aims to understand the world through people’s perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and motives (hossain, 2011; mertler and charles, 2011; neuman, 2011). chauke and malatji (2018) note that the qualitative approach helps the researcher to save time since it involves a small group of people to participate in the study. chauke and mudua (2019) allude to the fact that a qualitative approach is human-oriented because it drives the researcher to interact with the participants in a face-to-face discussion to understand the study investigated. a qualitative approach was useful in this study, because a small group of black youth were interviewed and their attempts to start businesses were explored through face-to-face discussions. this study was conducted in a natural setting, and the black youth were given the opportunity to answer questions regarding what drives them to venture into enterprises. this study comprises a case study approach, because of its usefulness in qualitative research. as is common in case studies (kumar, 2011), observations and interviews formed a crucial part of the research. this paper made use of purposive sampling by selecting black youths who share the common experience of being entrepreneurs. purposive sampling is defined as a sub-type of non-probability sampling that seeks to sample participants who share the same characteristics (de vos et al., 2011). bryman (2012) and creswell (2007) assert that population is a group of people who are sampled by the researcher to act as participants in the study with the aim of understanding the world through their experience. this study’s target population consisted of 10 young people aged 18–35 years old who own businesses. peer review 26v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 the participants in the study were sampled in the vhembe district municipality, south af rica. gender was taken into consideration in this study, with five young men and five young women selected to participate. all the participants had tertiary qualifications. seven were living with their parents and siblings, while two had families of their own. the dominant languages spoken by the participants are xitsonga and tshivenda. the participants reported that their families were able to afford their basic needs. this study was carried out in the historically rural area of vhembe district municipality, limpopo province, south africa. the district is estimated to have 1.1 million inhabitants (statistics south africa, 2011). it shares borders with botswana, mozambique, and zimbabwe. the district is composed of four local municipalities, namely: collins chabane, thulamela, makhado, and musina. the area is predominantly rural and has a number of foreigners, mainly from african countries such as zimbabwe and mozambique, some of whom own small businesses. it is composed of diverse groups such as black africans and indians. according to vhembe district municipality (2018), 4.4% of south africa’s total agricultural output, 8.4% of its sub-tropical fruit, and 6.3% of its citrus are produced in the vhembe district. the district is one of the most impoverished areas in limpopo province, with a high rate of youth unemployment. cadre deployment and tribalism were indicated as some of the factors that fuel youth unemployment. this district was selected because of its high number of unemployed graduates as an appropriate location to find out why black youth venture into entrepreneurship, from the perspective of black youth. the researcher used unstructured individual interviews to gather data; this was done in a conversational manner between the researcher and the young people. the unstructured individual interview was very useful in this study, because it helped the researcher to gather in-depth information. collins (2010) and de vos (2013) assert that unstructured individual interviews are also known as conversations which allow for individuals’ points of view and perceptions to be explored in detail. the researcher arranged a convenient time and place where he met the participants with prepared questions. the research used thematic data analysis; thematic coding enabled the researcher to gather in-depth information f rom the responses given by the participants. davidson’s (1997) data analysis in qualitative research involves making sense of the data collected to understand the social phenomena investigated. in the case of this study, the researcher carefully interpreted the data through the themes and sub-themes that emerged in the study. informed consent, conf identiality, privacy, and voluntary participation were practiced in this study. the participants were informed about the study and its intentions, and were assured that their names would not be shared with the public. babbie (2006) highlights the importance of ethical considerations and of providing participants with accurate information about the study to allow them to make informed decisions about their participation. trustworthiness was taken into consideration in this study and credibility was achieved by making sure that the report was prepared for the participants to check. results and discussion the aim of the study was to investigate socioeconomic determinates of entrepreneurship trends among black youth in the vhembe district municipality. the f indings revealed that black youth venture into entrepreneurship for the following f ive major reasons: because of underemployment; for the empowerment of their community; in order to stimulate economic growth; because of a scarcity of jobs; and in order to pursue self-fulf ilment. the issues raised by the participants in relation to each of these reasons are discussed in detail below. peer review the aim of the study was to investigate socio-economic determinates of entrepreneurship trends among black youth in the vhembe district municipality. the findings revealed that black youth venture into entrepreneurship for the following five major reasons: because of underemployment; for the empowerment of their community; in order to stimulate economic growth; because of a scarcity of jobs; and in order to pursue self-fulfilment. 27 t h e t h i n k e r peer review themes description underemployment community empowerment stimulate economic growth scarcity of jobs self-fulfilment black youths venture to become engaged in entrepreneurship in order to improve their monthly income, as most of these black youths were once underemployed. black youths venture into entrepreneurship in order to empower their community. black youths venture into business so that they can create jobs for others and contribute to economic growth in south af rica. black youths venture to join youth enterprises because they are unable to find employment. therefore, self-employment is the only available option they have. black youths start their own businesses for self-fulfilment where they find joy in running their own businesses underemployment the study findings revealed that there was a common understanding among nine participants that the main aim of venturing to join youth enterprises is to improve one’s monthly income, as most of these black youths were once underemployed. underemployment in this study refers to black youths who are highly qualified, were employed in a lower position, and were paid a salary that did not meet their level of qualification. thus, the black youths deemed it essential to start their own businesses to meet their basic needs, rather than being underemployed and generating a lower income. justo et al. (2015) attest that women start their own business in order to achieve economic f reedom, to be financially independent, and to achieve a work-life balance. one participant stated: p1: ‘i hold an honours degree; i have been working as an administrator for years. my contributions were taken for granted at all the companies i worked for. i was best known for making copies, printing, and nothing else. so, exploring entrepreneurship was the only option left for me to escape this unbearable situation.’ contrary to p1’s view, p2 asserted that being underemployed was not a problem at all. in fact, this experience enabled her to discover her own passion to help people who are in need and to begin to be creative. ngorora and mago (2018) argue that young people start their own business because they have ideas to implement. another participant said: p3: ‘i desire to make a meaningful impact in this world before i leave for good, and starting my own business will help me to leave a legacy to my children. unlike if am hired by a government when i die, someone will replace me, but in business, my children will take over.’ this indicates that black youth in the vhembe district municipality understand the importance of leaving something behind for the next generation. black youth feel that becoming involved in entrepreneurship will enable them to leave a legacy behind, and to counter the commonly held false impression that black youth are lazy. 28t h e t h i n k e r peer review community empowerment with the number of socio-economic challenges that south af rica is conf ronted with, it is very important for new ideas to be generated that can solve challenges that communities face, especially in townships and villages. there is a dire need for creative and innovative solutions in our communities. p5 mentioned that people residing in villages struggle a lot to travel to town to buy necessities such as vegetables. she therefore desired to open a community vegetable garden where she could sell products to the community at a cheap price, which would help customers to not have to travel to town to buy these products. this remark reflects that black youth sometimes venture into entrepreneurship with the aim of solving existing problems within their communities. others venture into enterprise in order to make money (olugbola, 2017). one participant commented: p4: ‘there is a higher rate of crime committed by young people in my village so i want to start my own businesses so i can empower youth in my community by hiring them.’ based on the above quotation, it is clear that some youth begin their own business in order to help reduce anti-social behaviour such as crime and to bring positive reinforcement into young people’s lives by improving their economical background. young black entrepreneurs aspire to empower youth within their community by hiring them and contributing to job creation. this is consistent with the work of ngorora and mago (2018) who argue that young entrepreneurs use their ideas to solve problems within their communities. black youths also venture into entrepreneurship because they have identified a gap in the market and intend to fill that gap. for instance, one participant explained that they had set up a business to assist university students in their community: p8: ‘i have seen a need for a photocopying and printing machine within the university of venda then i have decided to venture to that business to ensure students do not go off campus to look for this product and service while we are here. the business is not formally registered but i am planning to expand it one day.’ stimulation of economic growth the south af rican economic growth rate is slow in comparison with other countries on the continent, such as ghana and rwanda. ghana’s economy was able to grow fast in comparison with south af rica’s, because it focused on small, medium, and micro enterprises (smmes). south af rica’s slow economic growth rate can be linked to poverty and a high rate of unemployment, especially among black youth. against this backdrop, all 10 participants indicated that they are venturing into their own businesses in order to contribute to south af rica’s economic growth and to assist with job creation. according to osoro and areba (2013) entrepreneurship enables young people to be economically active and to contribute to a country’s wealth and job creation. as one participant stated: p5: ‘south af rica’s future, economically speaking, depends on entrepreneurship, particularly on small businesses. there is evidence backed by numerous research that shows that small businesses create more jobs and stimulate economic growth compared to big players in the market and more funding is needed. so, i want to be part of the people who will contribute to economic growth. in addition, the coronavirus exposed problems. as a country we need to rethink informal trading based on research where the market is much more competitive.’ the above quote clearly demonstrates that youth are keen to contribute to south af rica’s economic development by starting their own businesses. furthermore, black youths recognise that informal trading suffered severely during covid-19, and that the government needs to channel more funding into supporting black youth enterprises. scarcity of jobs findings in this theme revealed that scarcity of jobs was a major reason for black youth to start their own businesses in the vhembe district municipality. the study further revealed that the majority of young people go to a higher education institute with the hope 29 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review of being able to secure better employment after the completion of their studies, only to find that jobs are still scarce. therefore, the only way to escape this sad reality of youth unemployment is to start a business. nassim et al. (2017) support this finding by indicating that young people venture to join youth enterprises because they are unable to find employment. this finding is supported by the below responses: p6: ‘i went to university with the hope that one day i will get a good job but, it turns out to be impossible, so i left and decided to open my own business.’ p7: ‘i was unemployed for three years after attaining my qualification; then i started to approach nyda for funding so i can start my own business. i realised, here in the vhembe district municipality, if you are not connected to the ruling party or belong to certain tribes you will not get a job. so, starting my own business was the best solution. even though nyda did not fund my business, i will not lose hope.’ the above quotation indicates that scarcity of jobs can in part be explained by ethnicity discrimination and cadre deployment in the vhembe district municipality, making it very difficult for young graduates to secure employment. therefore, venturing to engage in a youth enterprise is the best alternative for black youths to create jobs for themselves. moreover, chauke and obadire (2020) maintain that lack of job opportunities for youths in south af rica remain a challenge. the youths venture to commence with entrepreneurship to create jobs for themselves. the national youth development agency, despite the disappointment that some of the young emerging entrepreneurs have faced, is still seen as the best option for black youth to secure funding. one participant said: p10: ‘there is no better gift that a person can give others than helping them to put food on the table. i have a business administration qualification. so, i have skills on how to run a business. therefore, i have started a business to employ others so i can change their lives.’ reflecting on the above responses f rom the 10 participants, the study findings revealed that young people venture to become entrepreneurs with the aim of improving the lives of other people economically by creating jobs for them. more so, having a qualification in business administration is the most empowering qualification for black youths to start their own businesses in the vhembe district municipality. this finding is in relationship with the work of king’ori (2012), chiloane-tsoko and botha (2015) who attest that youth who have formal education especially in business-related studies are much more likely to start their own business. self-fulfilment success in humankind is deeply rooted in selffulfilment. in this theme, the study findings revealed that black youths start their own business for selffulfilment where they find joy in running their own businesses. more so, self-fulfilment emanates f rom the desire to be in charge. this confirms the observation of sharu (2013) that young people easily generate new ideas to start their own businesses, as opposed to working in the corporate world where everything is already in place. kaur (2012) argues that young people venture into enterprises in order to be their own boss. this finding is supported by the below: p9: ‘i have worked for a corporate company for a few years; i used to get bored as there was no creativity. i then decided to start my own business so i can come up with something new that can address today’s challenges.’ reflecting on the above statement, one can conclude that black youths venture to begin new enterprises with the aim of discovering their true potential that the corporate world fails to acknowledge. therefore, embarking on entrepreneurship is both financially rewarding and provides a space for creativity. conclusion this study indicated that there are multiple socio-economic factors in the vhembe district municipality that are associated with black-youthowned enterprises. black youth venture to become entrepreneurs because of underemployment, job scarcity, and out of a desire to stimulate economic growth. black youths of the 21st century find no pleasure in being underemployed or working in the 30t h e t h i n k e r peer review corporate world where there is no room for creativity and innovation. they often start their own businesses in order to pursue this creativity and innovation: skills that are needed in the 21st century for young people to succeed. this study concludes that black youth pursue entrepreneurship for different reasons: some do it out of necessity, whereas others do it out of choice. the limitation of this paper is that only a few black youth f rom the vhembe district municipality participated in the study, and the results therefore cannot be generalised to the entire population in south af rica. recommendations and suggestions for future research the following are some of the recommendations f rom the study: • the department of women, youth and persons with disabilities in the presidency, in collaboration with the department of small business enterprise development and the national youth development agency, should provide a two-year internship for young black entrepreneurs in foreign companies that specialize in mining, technology, creative industries, and agriculture. when these black youth return home, the government should set aside a presidential youth fund to assist them to start their own businesses in the same industry. • the national youth development agency, in collaboration with the small enterprise development agency, should strengthen mentorship and a linkage programme to ensure that all funded youth entrepreneurs have a mentor who specialises in their business to coach them and link their products and services with the international market. • professional youth workers are trained to fully take responsibility to influence the mind of the young generation to improve their lives through youth development principles and practices. therefore, south af rica should professionalise youth work and task youths with the coordination, management, and implementation of outreach programmes that will positively change the mind of black youth to venture to become entrepreneurs. • the private sector in south af rica should set up a coordinated youth enterprise fund that will assist small businesses and informal trading without any political interference per province. • an exploratory study on challenges faced by youthowned businesses in south af rica using gender analysis should be conducted. acknowledgements i would like to thank all the young people who participated in this study. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. funding information this research received no specific grant f rom any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-forprofit sectors. references babbie, e. 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[online] available at: https://municipalities.co.za/ overview/129/vhembe-district-municipality [accessed 12 april 20 abstract the implication of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development is that af rica’s structural transformation must be anchored by the principles of sustainable development. it is noted that agenda 2030 does not provide political economy approach to understanding the genesis and cycles of poverty and inequality. the article further noted that af rica lags most significantly behind in its achievement of the sdgs, with a lower percent of countries achieving target by 2030 than any other region. only limited progress towards achieving human development related sdgs is likely. however, due to their strong inclusivity focus, the sdgs present a better opportunity to involve more effectively different stakeholders. achieving 2030 agenda and agenda 2063 calls for the af rican union to focus more on implementation and follow up mechanisms, using monitoring f rameworks that are robust enough to translate strategies into concrete development outcomes. the article argues that neoliberalism undermines the ability of developing countries in achieving sustainable development because of its emphasis in promoting the interest of the market at the expense of social and environment development. the article proposes the sustainable development model, which integrates economic, environmental and social objectives, to fully replace current growth-led models. to achieve pro-poor growth, countries must develop policies that have the potential of increasing growth and reducing poverty simultaneously. the article concludes that it is impossible to eradicate poverty without radically changing the system of global industrial capitalist production. in addition, af rica must develop holistic and all-encompassing approach with a view to achieving of sdgs while reformulating the short-term and mid-term policies during and the post-covid period. achieving the objective of eradicating extreme poverty and leaving no one behind by 2030 will be difficult if corruption and other development challenges are not seriously tackled. achieving sustainable development goals (sdgs) in africa challenges and prospects by kennedy mahlatsi | opinion 61 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion 62t h e t h i n k e r opinion introduction in this article, an evaluation is made of the experiences gained f rom the millennium development goals (mdgs) with a view to building upon their successes and learning f rom their failures. the mdgs were mainly for developing countries and were povertycentric development goals, while the sustainable development goals (sdgs) emerged as universally applicable for all countries and accounted for all aspects of development – social, economic, and environmental. a critical review reveals that the prescription of liberal policies by developed nations as the most appropriate path of development for af rica has in most cases clashed with the developmental objectives and vision of the continent. the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and af rica’s agenda 2063 include several goals, targets and indicators that capture the three dimensions of sustainable development into national planning f rameworks. this article illustrates that there were instances where af rican countries reported high levels of growth and gdp per capita, and yet demonstrated an inability to tackle problems such as women empowerment and quality education. growth in gdp has limited impact on the economic and social development of af rican countries. poverty has increased in a number of countries, despite growth in the long run. neoliberalism undermines the ability of developing countries to achieve sustainable development because of its emphasis on promoting the interest of the market at the expense of social and environmental development. it is impossible to achieve the sdgs without fixing or radically changing the system of global industrial capitalist mode of production. the af rican continent is still battling with developmental issues such as poor governance, corruption, unemployment, mismanagement of funds, insurgencies, terrorism, political upheavals, insecurity, population influx, and a depleting economy. these problems faced by af rican countries are not specifically addressed in the sdgs, and until these issues are dealt with within an af rican context, achieving these developmental goals in af rica will remain a challenge. covid-19 will create additional pressure and add to the existing financing gap as countries face a financial crunch in the post covid-19 period. the article supports a developmental model that is aimed at benefiting the poor and the environment. what are sustainable development goals (sdgs)? the sdgs were first formally discussed at the united nations conference on sustainable development held in rio de janeiro in june 2012 (rio+20). the intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda began in january 2015 and ended in august 2015. following the negotiations, transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted at the un sustainable development summit in september 2015 in new york. the 17 sdgs include 169 targets to meet these goals and 304 proposed indicators to show compliance (sparks, 2016: 49). according to armah and baek (2015: 2), the implication of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development is that af rica’s structural transformation must be anchored by the principles of sustainable development. all 193 countries have unanimously committed to adhere to and implement the sdgs throughout their 15-year lifespan, up to 2030. to what extent the sdgs will be able to catalyse meaningful change depends on a range of factors at the national and local levels, including leadership, participation, shifts in mindsets, and abilities to create synergies through cross-sectorial planning. it also depends on the abilities of different stakeholders to recognise that achieving their goals will increasingly depend on their willingness to cooperate with each other (shivakoti et al., 2015: 11). according to moyer and hedden (2020: 2), af rica lags most significantly behind in its achievement of the sdgs, with a lower percentage of countries achieving targets by 2030 than any other region. these authors note that only limited progress towards achieving human development-related sdgs is likely. however, the agenda’s approach has been criticised for a lack of analysis, since it does not look into the underlying causes of the state of the world. there is no political economy approach to understanding the genesis and cycles of poverty and inequities. the agenda is oblivious to power relations, both in the sense of the monopolistic economic predominance 63 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion of large firms and large nations, and in the societal sense of the power hierarchy between the poor and the rich, women and men, children and adults, dominant communities and those who are politically, socially, culturally, and economically excluded. it is not clear f rom the 2030 agenda how poverty is to be eradicated, how inequities are to be redressed, or how sustainability is to be achieved. for example, there are recommendations for social protection measures, but there are no policies that would encourage decent work or income redistribution (koehler, 2016: 152). the 17 sdgs set out until 2030 are: sdg 1 sdg 6 sdg 2 sdg 7 sdg 11 sdg 15 sdg 3 sdg 8 sdg 12 sdg 16 sdg 4 sdg 9 sdg 13 sdg 17 sdg 5 sdg 10 sdg 14 eradicate poverty in all its forms everywhere. ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. eradicate hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all. promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. build resilient inf rastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation. take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. reduce inequalities within and among countries. conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development 64t h e t h i n k e r opinion lessons learnt from the millennium development goals (mdgs) there are a number of issues distinguishing sdgs f rom mdgs. mdgs helped elevate the status of water and sanitation to a basic human right, while the sdgs offer scope for a more practical understanding of its application. sdgs aimed at combating poverty, for the period of 2000–2015. while mdgs were mainly for developing countries and were poverty-centric development goals, the sdgs emerged as universally applicable for all countries and accounted for all aspects or pillars of development – social, economic, and environmental. although the sdgs are often considered successors of the mdgs, they differ fundamentally in the sense that they are considerably more robust, interlinked, and based on a f ramework of three pillars of sustainability. this incorporates ending poverty as a core objective, but the 17 goals and 169 targets set out a broader agenda that includes environmental, social, and economic sustainability (mukarram, 2020: 3; fukuda-parr, 2016: 3). the sdgs are meant to achieve some of the objectives that the mdgs failed to address (chitonge et al., 2020: 216; munang and andrews, 2014: 3). the prescription of liberal policies by developed nations as the right and most appropriate path of development for af rica has in most cases clashed with the developmental objectives and vision of the continent. the design of the targets and indicators of the mdgs can be deemed as being unfair to developing countries, particularly af rican countries, because the basis of their measurement made it difficult for these countries to progress. another lesson f rom the mdgs is that a comparison of countries’ performances is made possible by the existence of a harmonised metric. mdgs were denounced on the ground that they were unfair to sub-saharan af rican countries precisely because ranking countries became an immediate by-product of the mdg targets matrix (chantel et al., 2017: 5; (durokifa and ijeoma, 2018: 360). fukuda-parr (2016: 2) emphasises that the mdgs were a north–south aid agenda. the goals and targets – such as universal primary education – were mostly relevant for developing countries only. the simplicity of the targets that set absolute goals served as a strong conduit for state action and guided international funding organisations. the mdgs created a simple narrative, triggering self-fulfilling prophecies: they imagined a future of ‘zero hunger’, ‘half the number of people in extreme poverty’, and in doing so shifted expectations and spread the idea that achieving the goals was not only necessary, but – more importantly – possible (chantel et al., 2017: 5). fukudaparr (2016: 6) observes that the sdgs also include ‘means of implementation’ as a goal of its own (goal 17) and as targets for each goal, recognising the need to change policies and institutions if transformative change is to take place. inequality has a goal of its own (goal 10), and emphasis is placed on the inclusion of marginalised social groups through the other goals, which include goals for governance (goal 16). the sdgs also incorporate economic dimensions, on which the mdgs were silent; they include a goal for growth that is sustainable and inclusive (goal 8). the adoption of a stand-alone goal on inequality (goal 10) that addresses disparities within and between countries is a significant departure f rom the mdgs; they explicitly excluded this politically sensitive issue. having the benefit of progress made by the mdgs, albeit unsatisfactorily in af rica, the greater emphasis on economic inclusivity under the sdgs is easier to prioritise in policy formulation and to be put into effective operation in af rican economies than it was over a decade ago. due to their strong inclusivity focus, the sdgs present a better opportunity to more effectively involve different stakeholders such as policymakers, civil society, donors, politicians, etc. they differ f rom the mdgs in their wider focus on interpreting sustainability – economic and environmental – which can involve a wider variety of contributors. in the af rican context, this is exceedingly valuable, but it will require visionary leadership which can build cohesion between, and identify clear outcomes for, potential role-players (van niekerk, 2018: 9). african union’s agenda 2063 and sdgs two contemporary macro development f rameworks finalised in 2015 – the united nations (un) 2030 agenda for sustainable development, containing the sdgs, and the af rican union’s (au) agenda 2063: the af rica we want – are important instruments to guide af rica in pursuing its developmental agenda. the two instruments complement each other on socio-economic and environmental issues. while the 2030 agenda is global in scope and has a 15-year 65 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion timef rame, agenda 2063 is af rica-specific and has a time horizon of 50 years. af rican influence in the process of negotiating the sdgs was supported by the au coordinating the development and promotion of the common af rican position (cap) on the post-2015 development agenda. the cap, mandated in july 2012, included the creation of a high-level committee (hlc) to lead the regional process (mickler and wachira, 2020: 52). agenda 2030, more than agenda 2063, problematises how the social, environmental, and economic aspects of development go together, acknowledging usually ignored fissures in the discourse of growth (halvorsen and higgins, 2020: 15). the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, as well as af rica’s agenda 2063, include several goals, targets, and indicators that capture the three dimensions of sustainability – economic, social, and environmental – into national planning f rameworks. unlike the mdgs, the sdgs, as well as the au’s agenda 2063, were drafted in a collaborative manner, f rom the ground up, not f rom the top down (sparks, 2016: 48; armah and baek, 2015: 2). however, durokifa and ijeoma (2018: 363) disagree and stress that the premise underlying development is unchanged. they argue that it is still a top-down approach, just like the mdgs, although there were participatory platforms like regional consultations and websites through which people/civil societies could send in their opinions. according to deghetto et al (2016: 96), the agenda 2063 vision is comprehensive, covering issues of identity, self-determination, political independence, and socio-economic development in the context of globalization. odusola (2017: 5) writes that achieving the 2030 agenda and agenda 2063 calls for the af rican union to focus more on implementation and follow-up mechanisms, using monitoring f rameworks that are robust enough to translate strategies into concrete development outcomes. based on af rica’s efforts in economic integration, sparks (2016: 54) argues that af rica’s regional economic integration efforts, and particularly the regional economic communities and the continental free trade agreement, generally are in harmony with the sdgs and agenda 2063. deghetto et al (2016: 94) posit that agenda 2063 aims to position af rica for growth over the next 50 years, incorporating lessons and experiences f rom the past. the ultimate goal is to secure three ideals – unity, prosperity, and peace – for all its citizens. they emphasise that critical success factors for agenda 2063 include the participation of multiple stakeholder groups at all stages, a results-based approach with measurable objectives, and inculcating the right set of af rican values in line with the af rican renaissance, which suggests the transformation of attitudes, values, and mindsets. they opine (ibid., 101) that af rica and the au member states need to leverage their existing resources and exploit their current cost advantages. the region has valuable resources at its disposal; leaders in the public and private sector need to focus on strengthening how these resources are organized and utilized within and across national borders. neoliberal growth path paradigm: a critical analysis the theory of the relationship between sustainable development and transformation can be gleaned f rom the work of simon kuznets who hypothesized that the relationship between inequality and transformation is u-shaped, with inequality increasing in the early stages of development as capital holders become relatively more wealthy due to new opportunities to invest, and subsequently decreasing as the benefits of transformation trickle down to the population, allowing an average level of income to be achieved through notably better wages. the kuznets theory is in line with the ‘grow first and redistribute later’ school of thought and is at odds with the current thinking on sustainable development, which requires countries to integrate or decouple greenhouse gas emissions f rom their growth process even in the initial stages of development. in line with the sustainable development paradigm, there is a growing body of research that suggests that relative to other continents, the potential for economic greening is higher in af rica (armah and baek, 2015: 3). halvorsen and higgins (2020: 16) observe that combating climate change and environmental destruction caused by unsustainable patterns of consumption and production will require multiple innovations at the conceptual, policy, institutional, social, and technological levels. the sustainable development model, which integrates economic, environmental, and social objectives, needs to fully replace current growth-led models where the 66t h e t h i n k e r opinion social and ecological dimensions are mere add-ons. ogujuiba and jumare (2012: 54) insist that af rican countries report high levels of growth and gdp per capita and yet possess the inability to tackle problems such as women empowerment and quality education. growth in gdp, which is supposed to be the centrepiece of development, has limited impact on the economic and social development of af rican countries. they conclude (ibid., 59) that sustained poverty reduction cannot be guaranteed by increase in economic growth, thus raising concerns about the possibility of the poor benefiting f rom long run growth. in order to achieve pro-poor growth, countries must develop policies that have the potential of increasing growth and reducing poverty simultaneously. neoliberalism undermines the ability of developing countries to achieve sustainable development, because of its emphasis on promoting the interest of the market, at the expense of social and environmental development. a pro-poor growth approach should be adopted. it will be essential for national governments to divert f rom the conventional approach of achieving development where the focus is on economic growth indicators such as low inflation, fiscal sustainability, and the balance of payments towards a paradigm where sustainable development does not lead to unemployment, removal, or cuts of social support schemes, deterioration of environment and natural resources – and one that strongly protects the interests of the poor. the specific interventions to achieve these objectives should be designed with adequate consideration to national circumstances. the principal objective of neoliberal policy has been to enhance economic growth and productivity based on the principles of market competition. this belief often tends to overemphasise economic values above social justice goals and environmental concerns. growth in gdp per capita is largely used as the overriding determinant of poverty reduction and general progress of development (kumi et al., 2013). inclusive economics is a way of empowerment for the whole of humanity to participate in a robust and allinclusive economic process. pro-poor growth, as part of inclusive growth, focuses on the effect of growth on poor people’s incomes in the context of either relative poverty or absolute poverty. another component of inclusive growth is broad-based growth. it involves more disadvantaged people in the growth process through employment. shared growth emphasises that the f ruits of growth be shared in a way that eliminates poverty and reduces income inequality. therefore, the growth process must be expressly non-discriminatory and disadvantage-reducing (van nierkerk, 2018: 4). one of the reasons why neoliberal policies have failed in addressing sustainable development ideals relates to the excessive focus on economic growth as the overriding focus for achieving sustainable development and in particular poverty reduction. many of the approaches and interventions underpinning neoliberalism tend to focus on increasing the rate of growth, with the hope of addressing patterns and the distribution of benefits later. but, the trickle-down logic has failed largely to address the underlying needs of the poor. it only enriches a few and contributes largely to the deterioration of the natural environment. kopnina (2015: 5) cogently observed that poverty is the symptom of economic growth imperative and high population growth. having all people lifted out of poverty without fixing or radically changing the system of global industrial capitalist production will mean more consumption and a greater crisis of resources. karl marx’s entire intellectual corpus ought to be interpreted as a critique of the political economy of unsustainable development and its human and natural consequences. the marxist perspective is that the problem threatening the global environment is the accumulation of capital under the present phase of monopoly-finance capital, and not just economic growth in the abstract. that is, issues of the qualitative nature of development as well as many of the approaches and interventions underpinning neoliberalism tend to focus on increasing the rate of growth, with the hope of addressing patterns and the distribution of benefits later. but, the trickle-down logic has failed largely to address the underlying needs of the poor. it only enriches a few and contributes largely to the deterioration of the natural environment. kopnina (2015: 5) cogently observed that poverty is the symptom of economic growth imperative and high population growth. 67 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion quantitative development are involved. this raises the question of the ecological value form associated with capitalism in its monopoly-finance phase, geared to the promotion of economic and ecological waste as a stimulus to accumulation. in reality, capitalism can be defined as a system of unsustainable development (foster, 2010; foster, 2015). the appropriation of surplus value by the owners of capital deliberately leads to the pauperisation of the working class. capitalism with its requirement to systematically extract natural resources inherently leads to planetary destruction (koehler, 2016: 152). challenges in implementing the sdgs in africa the implementation of both agenda 2063 and sdg 16 face significant challenges considering the disparity between norm setting and norm implementation by af rican governments (mickler and wachira, 2020: 55). odusola (2017: 10) maintains that corruption is very high and endemic in af rica and that it has been linked to dramatic economic haemorrhages. he warns that achieving the objective of eradicating extreme poverty and leaving no one behind by 2030 will be difficult if corruption is not seriously tackled. chitonge et al. (2020: 212) identified disparities between countries—for example, although south af rica and uganda achieved their mdgs for water in 2010, zambia failed to achieve this goal by 2015. other challenges include inadequate inf rastructure and funding levels, growing populations (especially in informal settlements where people often live under sub-human conditions), and the effects of climate change which impinge on f reshwater availability. they stress that the lack of commitment f rom politicians and policymakers has contributed to the failure to realise mdgs. lack of commitment in the context of the sdgs is reflected in the low budgetary allocation given to water services, for instance. durolifa and ijeoma (2018: 363) observe that the af rican continent is still battling with developmental issues such as poor governance, corruption, unemployment, mismanagement of funds, insurgencies, terrorism, political upheavals, insecurity, population influx, and a depleting economy. these problems faced by af rican countries are not specifically addressed in the sdgs, and until these issues are dealt with within an af rican context, achieving these developmental goals in af rica will remain a challenge. the impact of covid-19 on the sdgs mukarram (2020: 2) argues that the pandemic is very much poised to impact the sdgs in various degrees in different parts of the world, which in turn will have bigger ramifications on the economy, society, and the environment. he calls for a holistic and all-encompassing approach, with an eye to the overall achievement of sdgs, while reformulating the short-term and mid-term policies during and post-covid-19. he observes that financing always remains a prime concern for the implementation of any development agenda, and that the sdgs are no exception. an estimate says that even before the current global pandemic started, the financing gap to achieve the sdgs by 2030 was usd 2.5 trillion per year. undoubtedly, covid-19 will create additional pressure and add to existing financing gaps as countries face a financial crunch in the post-covid-19 period. again, priority sectors like health and agriculture would need increased allocation, which would mean that other sectors which are equally important would lag behind. van zanten and van tulder (2020) postulate that covid-19 increases the complexity of sustainable development governance, as policymakers have to create policies that simultaneously tackle interrelated health, economic, environmental, and social crises. timely and intelligent policies are needed to steer through these crises and towards long-term sustainability and resilience. overcoming this hurdle requires governments to integrate longterm policy objectives – like the sdgs – with the short-term interventions required to fight covid-19 and its socio-economic consequences. covid-19 led to many governments adopting more active and interventionist roles than they could have ever imagined (on the basis of neoliberal policies, for instance). conclusion this article has contextualised the factors that are impacting on af rican countries’ ability to achieve the sdgs. af rica lags most significantly behind in its achievement of the sdgs, with a lower percentage of countries achieving target by 2030 than any other region. although af rica may not achieve the sdgs in the next nine years, the agenda 2030 provides an 68t h e t h i n k e r opinion impetus and springboard for af rica to be on the right track for the progressive realisation of agenda 2063. it is clear that political commitment in af rica is a crucial factor to achieve the sdgs. neoliberalism has proven that it undermines the ability of developing countries to achieve sustainable development because of its emphasis on promoting the interest of the market at the expense of social and environmental development. a more developmental non-capitalist path is envisaged to address the developmental agenda in af rica. a growth model should be aimed at benefiting the poor and the environment. in order to achieve pro-poor growth, countries must develop policies that have the potential of increasing growth and reducing poverty simultaneously. the failure of neoliberal policies to address sustainable development ideals relates to the prioritisation of economic growth as the overriding focus for achieving sustainable development and in particular poverty reduction. a policy shift f rom the crisis-ridden capitalist mode of production is required to tackle socio-economic and environmental problems in af rica. covid-19 poses challenges for af rica and the world, but it also brings about opportunities as many governments resorted to more active and interventionist roles in tackling the pandemic than they could have ever imagined. achieving the objective of eradicating extreme poverty and leaving no one behind by 2030 will be difficult if corruption is not seriously tackled. covid-19 is creating additional pressure and adding to the existing financing gap as countries face a financial crunch in the postcovid-19 period. combating climate change and environmental destruction caused by unsustainable patterns of consumption and production will require multiple innovations at the conceptual, policy, institutional, social, and technological levels. governments should integrate long-term policy objectives – like the sdgs – with the short-term interventions required to fight covid-19 and its socioeconomic consequences. the continent is facing a number of challenges which need to be addressed if the sdgs are to be achieved. in line with the sustainable development paradigm, there is a growing body of research that suggests that relative to other continents, the potential for economic greening is higher in af rica. the sustainable development model, which integrates economic, environmental and social objectives, needs to fully replace current growth-led models. references armah, b. and baek, s.j. (2015). can the sdgs provide structural transformation in af rica? an empirical analysis. development, 58(4): 473–491 chantel, l., hough, a. and voituriez, t. (2017). reducing inequalities within countries: assessing the potential of the sustainable development goals. global policy, university of durham and john willey and sons. ltd chitonge, h., mokoena, a. and kongo, m. (2020). water and sanitation inequality in af rica: challenges for sdg 6. in: ramatsindela, m. and mickler, d. (eds), af rica and the sustainable development goals. new york: springer deghetto, k., gray, j.r. and kiggundu, m. (2016). the af rican union’s agenda 2063: aspirations, challenges, and opportunities for management research. af rica journal of management, routledge durokifa, a.a. and ijeoma, e.c. (2018). neo-colonialism and millennium development goals (mdgs) in af rica: a blend of an old wine in a new bottle. af rican journal of science, technology, innovation and development, routledge fakuda-parr, s. (2016). from the millennium development goals to the sustainable development goals: shift in purpose, concept, and politics of global goal setting for development. gender and development, 24(1): 43–52. foster, j.b. (2010). why ecological revolution? monthly review, 61(8): 1 foster j.b. (2015). the great capitalist climacteric: marxism and ‘system change not climate change’, monthly review, 67(6): 1 halvorsen, t. and higgins, j. (2020). growth or solidarity? the discourse of the sdgs. in: ramatsindela, m. and mickler, d. (eds), af rica and the sustainable development goals. new york: springer kopnina, h. (2015). the victim of sustainability: a challenge to sustainable development goals. international journal of sustainable development and world ecology, 23(2) koehler, g. (2016). assessing the sdgs f rom the standpoint of ecosocial policy: using the sdgs subversively. journal of international and comparative social policy, 32(2) kumi, e., arhin, a.a. and yeboah, t. (2013). can post-2015 sustainable development goals survive neoliberalism? a critical examination of the sustainable development-neoliberalism nexus in developing countries? environment, development and sustainability: a multidisciplinary approach to the theory and practice of sustainable development, 16(3): 539–554 mickler, d. and wachira, g.m. (2020). the au’s af rican governance architecture and sdg 16: examining intersections. in: ramatsindela, m. and mickler, d. (eds), af rica and the sustainable development goals. new york: springer moyer, j.d. and hedden, s. (2020). are we on the right path to achieve the sustainable development goals? world development, 127: 104749 69 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion mukarram, m. (2020). impact of covid-19 on the sustainable development goals (sdgs), strategic analysis, routledge munang, r. and andrews, j. (2014). the next steps: af rica’s sustainable development goals and their implications, environment: science and policy for sustainable development, 56(5): 4–11 odusola, a. (2017). achieving the sustainable development goals in af rica in the context of complex global development cooperation. 8th annual ibadan sustainable development summit. ibadan, nigeria, 22–24 august 2017 ogujiuba, k. and jumare (2012). challenges of economic growth, poverty and development: why are the millennium development goals (mdgs) not fair to af rica? journal of sustainable development, 5(2) shivakoti, b.r., zusman, e., bengtsson, m., and alexksiunaite, i. (2015). placing water at the core of the sustainable development goals (sdgs): why an integrated perspective is needed. policy brief no. 3, institute for global environmental strategies sparks, d.l. (2016). the sustainable development goals and agenda 2063: implication for economic integration in af rica. macrothink institute, 8(4) van niekerk, a.j. (2018). economic inclusivity: af rica’s mdgs and lessons for sdgs, af rican journal of economic and management studies, 9(314) van zanten, j. and van tulder, r. (2020). beyond covid-19: applying ‘sdg logics’ for resilient transformations, journal of international business policy, 3: 451–464 ideas and actionable steps for scaling africa’s blue economy strategy by francis onditi, douglas yates, and narnia bohler-muller | books 76v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 illusions of location theory: consequences for blue economy in af rica, a new book edited by dr. francis onditi and prof. douglas yates, with a foreword by prof. narnia bohler-muller, is finally published and can now be ordered f rom global leading platforms, including amazon. books introducing the new book new book 77 t h e t h i n k e r books the subject of the blue economy is fast emerging both as a concept and practice. within the af rican union development envisioning, the blue economy ecosystem is considered as a strategy towards revamping the agenda 2063. due to its expansion in the policy realm and the academy, the scope and debate have considerably widened. this evolution has triggered fundamental questions: what does it mean for environmental sustainability? what does it mean for inclusivity in the exploitation of the blue economy ecosystem? these are some of the questions the current blue economy f ramework and the united nations convention on the law of the sea (unclos) (established in 1982) seek to address (bueger, 2017). however, there is more to the shareability and exploitation of the blue economy than these policy and legal f rameworks, an extra dimension that can be housed in the geopolitical and diplomatic works that showcase the experiences of landlocked states and how states are/or aren’t resolving disputes emerging f rom the changing boundaries and resource locations triggered by natural forces and environmental change. though some anecdotes and books on the blue economy have already been published, we felt we needed a book which could provide a comprehensive f ramework on the blue economy regarding territorial contestations, maritime disputes, vulnerabilities of landlocked states, and expansionist policies, as displayed through spatial organisational regimes. the current blue economy f ramework is overly environmental and economic resource focused (attri, 2016), unduly focusing on comparative advantages of distance. however, to cope with the widening nature of debate and demand f rom the academic community and the demands f rom the implementation of the 2019 af rica blue economy strategy, it became necessary to expand the f ramework of debate by introducing new dimensions and enlarging existing ones. some new ideas building into the f ramework included: smart technologies, the power of mental mapping in spatial decision making, diplomatic approaches, and portal hegemony. thus, the book puts forward an argument: ‘the harmonious relationship between states, and efficient exploitation of the blue economy ecosystem in ways that promote peace between states lies not only in the structural transformation of markets, but also, in bridging the spatial and social divide between the coastal and hinterland societies.’ thus, this work proffers possibilities for a holistic regime for managing af rica’s coastalhinterland continuum through the aforementioned innovative strategies within the broader f ramework of what we coin as the maritime, security, and blue economy continuum (masebec). many important model f rameworks such as iora (indian ocean rim association) (doyle, 2018), as well as lessons for the af rican regional integration story have also been included in the new book. we are confident that the combination of theoretical and empirical analysis, buttressed by in-depth case studies of what works and what does not in the management of the blue economy ecosystem, makes this volume ideal for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in af rican regional studies, af rican political economy, political geography, international relations, strategic military studies, the governance of seas and oceans, and maritime science/diplomacy. thus, this book shifts the debate f rom the question of sustainability and inclusivity to geopolitics and diplomacy. 7816489 890215 isbn 1-64889-021-0 illusions of location theory: consequences for blue economy in africa questions the relevance of ‘location theory’ in explaining the coastal-hinterland continuum and the implications for the utilization of blue economy ecosystem in such a contested space in africa. it pays more attention to territorial contestations, maritime disputes, vulnerabilities of landlocked states, and expansionist policies as displayed through spatial organizational regimes. these areas of investigation have previously been largely studied from the narrow perspective of ‘location’, unduly focusing on comparative advantages of ‘distance’, while neglecting the influence of ‘forces’ such as technology, ideology, and the power of mental mapping in spatial decision making. this volume puts forward the argument that the harmonious relationship between states, and efficient exploitation of the blue economy ecosystem in ways that promote peace between states, lies not only in the structural transformation of markets, but also in bridging the spatial and social divide between the coastal and hinterland societies. thus, this work proffers possibilities for a holistic regime for managing africa’s coastal-hinterland continuum through innovative strategies such as smart blue economies and the infusion of the geopolitical dimension into the management of maritime and territorial diplomacy. the combination of theoretical and empirical analysis, buttressed by in-depth case studies of what works in the management of blue economy ecosystem and what does not work, make this volume ideal for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in african regional studies, african political economy, political geography, strategic military studies, governance of seas and oceans, and maritime science/diplomacy. dr francis onditi is the 2019 recipient of the aisa fellowship awarded by the human sciences research council (hsrc), south africa, for his tenacious research and scholarly work on africa and global world order. he heads the school of international relations and diplomacy, riara university (kenya). dr onditi is a widely published pan-african researcher; he has published over 55 research papers in peer reviewed journals, contributed more than 10 chapters in edited books and authored/co-edited 2 books in his area of specialization: geography of african conflict and institutional evolution theory. dr onditi’s current pre-professorial research focuses on “exploring the analytical conception of the closeness centrality and its implications for a theory of interactivities for enhancing understanding of the process of conflict excavators and extractives with the aim of providing thereby an explanation of the intrinsic character of interaction among human beings, communities and states as a process of diffusion of power, conflict reversals, and peace interlocutors.” douglas yates is professor of political science at the american graduate school in paris (france). he has recently published the fourth edition of the historical dictionary of gabon (rowman & littlefield, 2018), which brings the political affairs of this french-speaking, oilrich, equatorial african country up to date since the accession to power of ali bongo, eldest son of omar bongo, who died in 2009 after the publication of the third edition. dr yates is an established country expert who has been researching and writing about gabon since 1993 with his doctoral dissertation at boston university, later published as the rentier state in africa: oil-rent dependency and neocolonialism in the republic of gabon (africa world press, 1996). since then, he has taught and directed graduate research on african politics at the american graduate school in paris and has consulted for the state department and defense department of the united states government as well as non-governmental organizations, private international investment firms, african studies centres, and european development agencies. yates is the co-author (with marquette university’s david gardinier) of the previous edition of the historical dictionary of gabon (2006) and has also authored the annual chapter on “gabon” for brill’s africa yearbook since its creation in 2004. “this book is extremely timely and an invaluable contribution to blue economy policy and scholarship, especially to the african coastal geo-economic landscape. the book is a confirmation that the global transition to resource-efficient blue economy will not be possible unless the seas, oceans and small states are a key part of this urgently needed transformation.” abdelkader allali, nobel peace prize cowinner & former ipcc wg ii vice chair ar4 www.vernonpress.com series in politics series in politics illusions of location theory consequences for blue econom y in africa edited by francis o nditi, douglas yates consequences for blue economy in africa edited by francis onditi douglas yates illusions of location theory foreword by narnia bohler-muller, hsrc 78t h e t h i n k e r books the exploitation of the blue economy ecosystem and relations between states when we look at the af rican blue economy with our eyes on the future, that is, on the entire duration of the 21st century, f rom a vantage point of remote sensing imagery f rom outer space – the inf rastructural gutters that drain af rican resources to the ports, the foreign fleets that destroy fisheries, drill and spill oil, attract pirates, marginalise local communities, exhaust beach sands, the bleached reefs, the hurricanes and typhoons – the need for international cooperation may look, f rom that airy vantage point, like something of an afterthought. if we leave this to the great powers, we have the lessons of history to teach us what to expect. neither the chinese nor the americans will come to the assistance of the continent, although they will f rame their pursuit of their national interests in the old language of development assistance and aid. but everything that has ever happened that was good in af rica was created by af ricans. the solution to these largely foreign brought problems will surely come f rom below. therefore, a local explanation is required to explain how a ‘global opportunism’ works and not necessarily cause-effect explanations. in explaining the validity of such an explanation to the discipline of international relations, it is important to consider how much each state and community occupying the coastal and hinterlands can benefit, and not how much global explanations exclude local explanations or typologies that could also provide an alternative explanation of how human behaviour is altered by changes in location or distance f rom global opportunities or lack thereof. in any case, such a perspective may provide useful explanations for the undisclosed aspects of international relations and political geography. before we outline the various themes discussed in this book, we shall briefly revisit the characteristics of the emerging af rican coastalhinterland continuum, and take note of their linkages to various geopolitical processes: maritime disputes, access to port facilities, landlockedness, as well as the utilisation of the blue economy ecosystem. in this volume, we interrogate continuities and change within the coastal-hinterland spaces of af rica and neighbouring geographies. we observe that the risks of increasing the exploitation of planetary resources is not limited to economics and sustainability. the transnational nature of development continues to create inter-state tensions and contestations over unclear boundaries and the responsibility to protect the environment (r2pe). the ongoing kenya-somalia diplomatic spat over the 42,000-square km piece of maritime space within the exclusive economic zone (eez) continues to elicit controversy between the two states. moreover, the lack of mechanisms in burden sharing of liabilities incurred during exploitation of marine resources increases the likelihood of interstate tensions and risks of what we f rame as the ‘blue economy wars.’ but also, the notion of hinterland has become a contested space among states, with some scholars predicting uncertainties in the future relationship between land-locked and portal states (lahiri and masjidi, 2012). in spite of the interconnectedness of coastal areas to global opportunities through ports and other modern facilities, the spatial and social inequalities continue to deepen (boone and simson, 2019). the persistent economic disparities between the coastal regions and hinterlands of af rican countries raises pertinent questions as to whether the visualisation of global opportunities is an observed reality or simply a theoretical construct? to a large extent, this work aims at addressing this conceptual question by drawing mental maps of the communities inhabiting af rican coastal and hinterland spaces to evaluate the locational significance of the region versus perceptive images of opportunities. mental maps are important in visualising geographies and social settings, including attempts to have efficient utilisation of spaces based on their cultural branding. in some cases, mental mapping may create spaces with limited statehood. the ‘expansionist’ policies and the politics of ‘containment’ are important considerations if af rica were to develop a comprehensive f ramework of maritime diplomacy (wilson, 2009), blue economy, and geopolitics. from this standpoint, geopolitics is therefore the means for states to enhance diplomatic cooperation within the broader regional and international economic f ramework. as such, the blue economy cannot continue to be defined and f ramed in the narrow margin of economics, but should encompass geopolitical dimensions – power, control, environment, and military strategy – in a network of relationships. as aforementioned, militarism is at the core of the relationship between blue economy and maritime surveillance and enforcement requirements 79 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion (bueger and stockbruegger, 2016). a befitting f ramework will therefore have both the military and civilians addressing multiple threats. it is therefore inadequate for states to establish economic links through the blue economy model without considering protection of such wealth through various means: military and other diplomatic cooperation strands. hence, ignoring the political power of geography in the future of af rica’s international relations debate is like a farmer who drives his livestock into a hyena-infested area without any guard (rimmer and ward, 2016). in other words, the blue economy model was designed to complement the ‘green economy’ movement. however, as this volume has demonstrated, this approach is a minimalist token to handle the contemporary global politics around seas and oceans. to address these concerns, the editors of this volume decided to assemble a group of scholars who approached the issues f rom interdisciplinary perspectives including international relations, strategic studies, military science, policy, law, history, political geography, spatial geography, anthropology, sociology, as well as political science. contributors’ ideas and actionable steps the introductory chapter provides a critique of the classical locational theoretical f ramework, and links this to an analysis of the three key ingredients that define af rican coastal-hinterland space. the central dilemma is the peril of envisaging the future of af rica on a narrow conception of the blue economy, without consideration of the geopolitical contours shaping this relationship. instead, a number of principles are proposed that seek to challenge the notion that the exploitation of resources or access to such resources is largely determined by locational factors. potential channels of reconfiguring the coastal-hinterland relationship proposes an integrated approach: linking together maritime diplomacy, geopolitics, and the blue economy. this renewed configuration is the conceptual f ramework guiding contributors to this volume. in chapter 1, francis onditi proposes the central plank of the reconfiguration discourse as the need to relook into the conceptual f ramework of the blue economy. in practice, this configuration is dependent on a radical shift in the structure of the blue economy as key to the evolution of the coastal-hinterland space. in other words, the blue economy cannot thrive in the absence of geopolitical and diplomatic considerations. the link between political geography and international relations is further explored in chapter 2 by christiane rafidinarivo, who utilises the principles of territoriality to understand why and how people do not benefit f rom contested territories and their resources. however, as valensisi and munisso in chapter 3 note, despite the technological advancements witnessed in the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), landlocked and island economies are disadvantaged, and international patterns of trade squeeze them further into vulnerabilities. in chapter 4, vuyo mjimba identifies multiple barriers to the transformation of the blue economy in the developing world, including complexities associated with global production networks, the exclusive economic zone (eez), and supply chains. the rationale for the development of the geoeconomic assets analysed by raymond fonseca in chapter 5 lies in the reality that critical geopolitics and maritime space are conceived by states according to a logic of territoriality. the dilemma of the coastalhinterland divide, reinforced by spatial inequality and obstructed by f rozen mindsets, is also well illustrated by attitudes of resource (mis)management on the kenyan coast, as demonstrated by james moronge in chapter 6. a common response to this sort of ‘resource curse’ and ‘spatial inequalities’ is reconfiguring the structure of the blue economy to include mechanisms for interactions with the global system. mental maps are crucial tools for insights into the ability of ordinary people to make sense of the world. this visualisation is directly linked to the efficient utilisation of spaces in other words, the blue economy model was designed to complement the ‘green economy’ movement. however, as this volume has demonstrated, this approach is a minimalist token to handle the contemporary global politics around seas and oceans. to address these concerns, the editors of this volume decided to assemble a group of scholars who approached the issues from interdisciplinary perspectives 80t h e t h i n k e r books based on their cultural branding and perceptive factors. in chapter 7, onditi illustrates how the mental and physical struggle for space is part and parcel of the global social organism, where species and human activities compete for space. in chapter 8, edmond were introduces the concept of ‘contested portal hegemony’, to illustrate how the competition over the perceived and projected dominance of sea ports in the provision of maritime services has expanded in the advent of the hinterland, becoming less captive to the dominant mombasa port. the economic structure of the hinterland is drastically changing due to the increase in foreign direct investment flows and the discovery of high impact natural resources. despite these inf rastructural transformations and the renewed development initiatives on the continent, the coastalhinterland divide continues to widen, as revealed by shadrack kithiia’s discussion in chapter 9. an analysis of location choices as it relates to economic integration is also key in understanding why some countries experience skewed concentration of industrial production, regardless of whether or not they have rights of access to the sea or ocean; chapter 10 addresses this issue through the lens of the unclos. ken walibora, in chapter 11, grapples with the question of space contestation, and unravels the various excitements, resistances, and identity issues along the kenyan coast. yet again, for states to harness the assets of the continental waters, they must have a maritime security strategy (larsen, 2015). however, as demonstrated by atisa in chapter 12, although coastal spaces are endowed with rich natural resources, communities on the kenyan coast continue to languish in abject poverty due to poor planning and the (mis)management of resources. today, many industries produce products whose raw materials are not necessarily extracted in the vicinity. in other words, weber’s model did not consider other variables, such as the influence of technology in bridging the gap between time of production and distribution. on this account, smith-godf rey in chapter 13 argues that deploying appropriate technologies, coupled with effective marine spatial planning, can revolutionise the entity of the blue economy. in chapter 14, douglas yates underlines that the strong and complex connections at the intersections of energy-led development, urban growth, and energy are particularly useful in moving beyond resource-dependency. kuwali, in chapter 15, takes a legal perspective to understand the malawi-tanzania border dispute, linking it to customary international law and noting that, by engaging instruments of maritime diplomacy, this dispute could be resolved through a peaceful and pragmatic resolution mechanism for the benefit of communities f rom both sides of lake nyasa. the analysis of ecumene and the emptiness of space goes beyond af rica, as exemplified by china’s awakened interest in af rica. in chapter 16, onditi and nyadera coin the term geostrategic axis to image the future relationship between china, af rica, and the gcc. this conceptualisation of future global relations challenges the theory of location by suggesting that the future of international relations does not necessarily depend on geographical proximity as much as on the ideological orientation of states. conclusion: thinking through the new masebec framework a holistic maritime, security, and blue economy continuum (masebec) f ramework will require international cooperation, which is one of the hardest things to do in a world of sovereign states who accept no common power. international law has been the main instrument for large scale multinational cooperation in maritime matters, f rom the earliest days of serious writings on the ‘f reedom of the seas’ by hugo grotious, to the unclos convention in force today (gordon, 2008). however, geopolitical considerations clearly still take precedence over international agreements, as the world system turns in the widening gyre of american imperial decline and the peaceful rise of china. the marine space is punctuated with illegal activities of pirates and dominant multinational corporations (mncs), threatening elusively mapped national maritime boundaries, poorly regulated fish-factory fleets, and global armadas of merchant marines. in the case of sub-saharan af rica, the thinly dispersed blue water navies are incapable of effectively protecting the sea, either due to a lack of legal instruments or to capacity issues. these kinds of systemic challenges have been the subject of indigestion for decades. at the beginning of the millennium, helen thornton (2004) posits an interesting question: ‘how does the nation’s sovereignty over the sea affect the f reedom 81 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion of navigation, trade and fishing for other nations?’ therefore, a mix of idealism and realism in mitigating the effects of geography (location) on the exploitation of blue economy assets is surely in order. the most realistic idealist, to use an oxymoronic expression, might propose the creation of some regional treaties incorporating the coastal states of the gulf of guinea on the atlantic, and their counterparts on the indian ocean and the red sea, with their coastal-hinterland spaces integrated as signatory partners, establishing a new type of global naval force, perhaps an international coast guard, legitimised by the un, au, ecowas, sadc, and eac, providing collective security with blue water naval forces that, realistically, would have to be provided by the world’s great powers who are, after all, the main beneficiaries of af rica’s new blue economy. for this, the great powers would have to do some mental mapping of their own, and not the pin-on-the-map kind that the european colonial imperialists imposed when they laid down the f ractured foundations of the ‘curse of berlin’ (adebajo, 2010). references adebajo, a. (2010). the curse of berlin: af rica after the cold war. durban: university of kwazulu-natal press. attri, v.n. (2016). an emerging new development paradigm of the blue economy in indian ocean rim association (iora): a policy framework for the future. [online] indian ocean rim association. available at: https://www.iora.int/media/23838/the-blue-economyand-iora-2016.pdf boone, c. and simson, r. (2019). regional inequalities in af rican political economy: theory, conceptualization and measurement, and political effects. department of international development: london school of economics and political science. working paper series no. 19–194. london. bueger, c. (2017). concepts in practice: the case of the ‘blue economy’. cardiff university. bueger, c. and stockbruegger, j. (2016). pirates, drugs and navies. the rusi journal, 161(5): 46–52. doyle, t. (2018). blue economy and the indian ocean rim. journal of the indian ocean region, 14(1): 1–6. gordon, e. (2008). grotius and the freedom of the seas in the seventeenth century. williamette journal of international law and dispute resolution, 16(2): 252–269. lahiri, b. and masjidi, f.k. (2012). landlocked countries: a way to integrate with coastal economies. journal of economic integration, 27(4): 505–519. larsen, j. (2015). towards maritime security in the indian ocean: the case of seychelles. island studies: indian ocean, 3: 50–57. rimmer, j. p. and ward, g. (2016). geography, power, strategy and defence policy: essays in honour of paul dibb. edited by desmond ball and sheryn lee. anu press, the australian national university, canberra, australia. thornton, h. (2004). hugo grotius and the freedom of the seas. international journal of maritime history, 16(2): 17–38. wilson, b. (2009). naval diplomacy and maritime security in the western indian ocean. strategic analysis, 33(4): 488–497. t h e t h i n k e r56 pan-african the changing world of work and imperatives of internationalisation in higher education the fourth industrial revolution, by ylva rodny-gumede © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m 57v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african w e are seeing major disruptions to higher education, and the education system as a whole, not only at home but globally. one of the major contributors to such disruptions is the paradigmatic shift brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), with massive implications for the world of work, and by extension in higher education through the learner of the future. on an overall level and aligned to paradigmatic shifts established through the third industrial revolution (or the digital revolution as it has become known) is the shift away from an economy premised on labour and resource intensive industries towards a knowledge based economy. the skill sets and capabilities needed have shifted from being role or industry specific to transferable skills and capabilities centred on the four c’s: critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity (harari, 2018). these can be further broken down so as to encapsulate a range of capabilities such as problem solving skills, financial literacy, digital literacy, teamwork, marketing and presentation skills, and a range of other skills and capabilities that all talk to the importance of adaptability. if we look at the south african economy, it has been premised on a very different labour market. this is not only reflected in low-skilled sectors of the job market, but due to the history and politics of isolation and exclusion in south africa, diversity, flexibility and creativity in the job market, workforce, business or education has not been a feature of economic or societal organisation. more flexible research and development based economies have a huge advantage and so often their education systems are already attuned to such an economy and the societal changes that drives it. thus an essential part of changing the south african economy relies on fostering new skills and capabilities. here, the higher education system has a massive role to play in particular how quickly it can respond to the changes needed. in this regard, internationalisation (in its widest meaning possible) has a huge role to play. what then is meant by internationalisation in higher education? knight (2003: 2) has defined internationalisation as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education”. there are numerous variants to this definition and it is safe to say is that it means different things to different people in different contexts1. however, the definition set out by knight (ibid) has the advantage of being general enough to capture the essence of what internationalisation means within the context of higher education. the specific tasks of the internationalisation project then can be aligned to this primary definition, provided it is grounded in the realities of the context it is supposed to serve. research into the internationalization of higher education needs to be regarded as a relatively new field of study, and one that has only really emerged as a field in its own right in the last two decades (kehm & teichler, 2007: 269). it is largely eurocentric and focused on intra-european internationalisation and mobility. with regards to published research in the field, african research is virtually non-existent and the major research journals in the field are dominated by research from, as well as centred on, the global north (cf. bedenlier & kondakci & zawacki-richter, 2018). in the context of south africa, research into the internationalisation of higher education and its benefits and impact on students, staff, curricula, institutions of higher education as well as broader societal developments is still in its infancy. however, with the continuous growth in the number of international students seeking access to south african higher education institutions in the past two decades and the concomitant need for management of the internationalisation process at higher education institutions in the country (cf. rouhani, 2007), internationalisation has become a priority of government, as well as many institutions of higher education in south africa. this has occurred within a context in which south africa is thought of, and touted as, the leader of internationalisation projects in the region (south the skill sets and capabilities needed have shifted from being role or industry specific to transferable skills and capabilities centred on the four c’s: critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity (harari, 2018) t h e t h i n k e r58 african department of higher education, 2017). recognising that the end of apartheid, coupled with the reacceptance and return of south africa to the international community, has triggered a growth in internationalisation projects at south african institutions of higher education, internationalisation has been made a priority area by the department of higher education (department of higher education, 2017: 16-17). equally, the national development plan (2012) sets out a number of goals and targets for the internationalisation of higher education, including the encouragement and development of international exchange partnerships; increase support for postgraduate study at overseas universities; increased opportunities for researcher collaboration and for international partnerships between universities and industry (ibid: 16). while the draft policy does not explicitly comment on 4ir or link internationalisation to the broader global shift created by 4ir, it is clear that many of the recommendations need to be interpreted and seen in this light. among other things, the draft policy framework explicitly calls for internationalisation strategies to: improve international communication, cross-cultural learning and global citizenship; improve peace and cooperation, and finding solutions to global challenges such as sustainable development, security, renewable energy and hiv/aids; and contribute to an increase in knowledge production, intellectual property and innovation in south africa (department of higher education, 2017: 16-17). it is difficult to see how such recommendations could be fulfilled if not aligned to broader societal and technological shifts triggered by 4ir. hence, it falls upon higher education institutions in south africa to make sure that their strategic planning around 4ir is aligned to their internationalisation strategies as they are dependent on each other. in particular, and this is also emphasised by the draft policy, internationalisation provides opportunities to take local and indigenous knowledges to the international community (department of higher education, 2017: 16-17). thus, mutuality and complementarity in knowledge transfer is encouraged (ibid: 21). this is where south africa and the global south have the chance to be innovative and truly influence discussions around knowledge hierarchies, and continuous legacies of western hegemonic knowledge systems and the transfer of knowledge. it is not only international mobility and the exchange of students and faculty that is encouraged, but also the incorporation of international and intercultural knowledges and abilities that prepare students professionally, socially and emotionally in an international and multicultural context (ibid: 18). the idea of preparing students for a world of work that is international and multicultural directly links to 4ir, through ideas of flexibility and the ability to work collaboratively. multiculturalism and multicultural environments and contexts are also linked to increased creativity (cf. tadmor et. al., 2012; steven et. al., 2008), including increased creativity among students exposed to studying abroad programmes (cf. lee et. al., 2012). how then can ir4 and internationalisation be linked and concretised within higher education? 4ir and internationalisation as interlinked processes fostering creative talent higher education within 4ir is dependent on, as xing and marwala (2017: 13) point out, the ability to cultivate innovative talent. in this regard and as emphasised earlier, south africa has not had an education system that has fostered innovative and creative thinkers. as xing and marwala (ibid) argue “most developing or under-developed countries lack innovative talent” and as such higher education “…should not only focus on training knowledge-based skilled person, but have a good look at cultivating innovative talent, especially high-level scientists and technologists. these scientists must be trained in an interdisciplinary environment where technologists should understand humanities this is where south africa and the global south have the chance to be innovative and truly influence discussions around knowledge hierarchies, and continuous legacies of western hegemonic knowledge systems and the transfer of knowledge. pan-african 59v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 pan-african and social science and vice versa.” this is highly dependent on the creation of flexibility in degree structures and offerings within higher education. while processes are in motion, at least at some institutions such as my own at the university of johannesburg, to address this and to develop more flexibility in offerings (including breaking down some of the boundaries between disciplines), this is far from the case at many educational institutions in south africa. to achieve this, it will be important to forge partnerships and linkages both domestically and internationally to offer more flexible and versatile degree programmes and professional qualifications (xing and marwala 2017: 15). these can come in a range of forms, and can entail anything from student exchanges and the completion of degrees abroad to the sharing of degree offerings where student become graduates of a joint institution (ibid). whatever the arrangements going forward, much of our university teaching will rely on the usage of technology to deliver high quality education and, as xing and marwala (ibid) propose, there is also scope for blended degree offerings where local and foreign education providers deliver programmes through e-learning, online learning and/or on-site learning. creativity in the disciplines and degrees in addition we need to look at international degrees and how overseas institutions have developed degrees better suited to meet the demands of 4ir and the changing world of work. the question we need to ask ourselves in relation to higher education, and maybe more specifically in relation to academic disciplines, is: ‘how creative is my discipline?’, ‘what is the scope for innovation?’ and ‘does it open up for, and is it open to, interdisciplinary discussions, collaborations and epistemologies?’. equally, flexibility in degree structures and opportunities for breaking with, as well as expanding disciplinary boundaries that have for long divided the supposed ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences, need to be encouraged. xing and marwala (2017:10) argue that the convergence between person and machine “…will reduce the subject distance between humanities and social sciences as well as science and technology. this will necessarily require much more interdisciplinary teaching, research and innovation” and “scientists must be trained in an inter-disciplinary environment where technologists should understand humanities and social science and vice versa” (ibid: 13). invest in research and development encouraging innovation and fostering innovative talent is directly linked to research and development. xing and marwala (2017: 14) emphasise that investments in new technological advancements are often ranked as the most important driving force. this will require resources and to achieve this, international business collaborations and partnerships will play a crucial role. while much of the focus of internationalisation projects has been centred on research collaboratons between academic institutions across the globe, this will need to be expanded into the private sector. universities, with regards to 4ir, will need to undertake projects aimed at international collaboration between higher education institutions and the private sector, through shared research and development, projects aimed at fostering and developing innovation and entrepreneurship, and the hosting of student projects and internships for example in the private sector. international cooperation around harnessing the potential and opportunities that 4ir opens up for innovative and collaborative research are endless and necessary in terms of addressing the problems of our times and to work towards finding common solutions. global problems around poverty, health and the environment can be researched in the context of internationalisation and 4ir. internationalisation here therefore means equality in partnerships and in the ways in which solutions are sought that are of true mutuality and global relevance. equally, flexibility in degree structures and opportunities for breaking with, as well as expanding disciplinary boundaries that have for long divided the supposed ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences, need to be encouraged. xing and marwala (2017:10) argue that the convergence between person and machine “…will reduce the subject distance between humanities and social sciences as well as science and technology. t h e t h i n k e r60 guard against overreliance of technology in such efforts we must also, however, as yang and cheng (2018: 58) argue, guard against an overreliance on strong technocratic or technophilic discourses emanating from elite industrial and academic voices, being directed primarily at the policymakers and the elites. instead we must centre “the ‘on the ground’ experiences and subjectivities of the more disadvantaged and marginalized”. if we take internationalisation to mean the advancement and fostering of diversity, multiculturalism and global citizenship, diversity in the broadest sense must be our focus. in the context of south africa, we must be mindful of working in the interest of human development and to ensure ethics and accountability. ensure local and regional beneficiary outcomes equally, we must not forget the regional dimensions to the internationalization of higher education. imperatives that strengthen african scholarship and the need to counter “euro– american economic and epistemic hegemonies” (zeleza, 2012:20) are crucial. as zeleza (ibid) reminds us: “the position of africa as an object of study and as a centre of knowledge production remains precarious in the international division of intellectual labour”. and with research expenditures and productivity across africa below world standards (bar centres such as egypt, south africa and nigeria who together are responsible for about 80% of all african research outputs) internationalisation must also mean regionalisation or making sure that our internationalisation efforts truly benefit our own society and that of sub-saharan africa in the first place (see dzvimbo and moloi, 2013). in this regard, collaborations and partnership with institutions and organisations such as the eu, au, brics and sadc are going to be crucial, along with private partnerships. in conclusion, as much as the university of the future relies on a higher degree of internationalisation in higher education, the opposite also applies and 4ir opens up for increased opportunities for international collaboration. in light of south africa’s history of exclusionary and isolationist politics, the imperatives of restructuring higher education to meet the demands of 4ir are closely linked to the internationalisation project, where both are central to broader transformation agendas within higher education and useful for addressing inequities. ■ this is an edited version of an address given to the stellenbosch university institutional planning forum on the world of work and the 4th  industrial revolution, stellenbosch university 19 february, 2019  references bedenlier, s & kondakci, y & zawacki-richter, o. 2018. two decades of research into the internationalization of higher education: major themes in the journal of studies in international education (1997-2016). journal of studies in international education, 22(2) 108–135. department of higher education. 2017. draft policy framework for the internationalisation of higher education in south africa. dzvimbo,, k p and moloi, k c. 2013. globalisation and the internationalisation of higher education in sub-saharan africa. south af rican journal of education, 33(3): 1-16. available from: http://www. sajournalofeducation.co.za/index.php/saje/article/view/703/372. harari, y n. 2018. 21 lessons for the 21st century. london: vintage. kehm, b. m & teichler, u. 2007. research on internationalisation in higher education. journal of studies in international education, 11(3-4): 260-273. knight, j. 2013. the changing landscape of higher education internationalisation for better or worse? perspectives: policy and practice in higher education, 17(3):84-90. knight, j. 2004. internationalization remodelled: definition, approaches, and rationales. journal of studies in international education, 8(5): 5-31. lee, c s and therriault, d j and linderholm, t. 2012. on the cognitive benefits of cultural experience: exploring the relationship between studying abroad and creative thinking. applied cognitive psychology, 26(5): 768-778. marwala, t & xing, b. 2017. implications of the fourth industrial age on higher education. the thinker, 73: 10-15. rouhani, s. 2007. internationalisation of south african higher education in the postapartheid era. journal of studies in international education, 11(3-4): 470-485. steven, f g and plaut, v c and sanchez-burks, j. 2008. unlocking the benefits of diversity: all-inclusive multiculturalism and positive organizational change. journal of applied behavioral science, 44(1): 116-133. tadmor, c t and satterstrom, p and jang, s and polzer, j t. 2012. beyond individual creativity: the superadditive benefits of multicultural experience for collective creativity in culturally diverse teams. journal of cross cultural psychology, 43(3): 384-392. yang, p and cheng, y. 2018. educational mobility and transnationalization. in: gleason n. (eds) higher education in the era of the fourth industrial revolution. palgrave macmillan: singapore, pp. 39-63. zeleza, p t. 2012. internationalisation in higher education: opportunities and challenges for the knowledge project in the global south. southern african regional universities association (sarua ) leadership dialogue series, 43(21):4-26. available from https://www.sarua.org/?q=publications/ vol-4-no-2-internationalisation-higher-education-perspectives-globalsouth 1 for a good outline of differing meanings and efforts related to the internationalisation project in higher education see knight (2004). pan-african global problems around poverty, health and the environment can be researched in the context of internationalisation and 4ir. internationalisation here therefore means equality in partnerships and in the ways in which solutions are sought that are of true mutuality and global relevance. _goback this study reviews housing policy f ramework development research published mainly in the scopus database f rom 1994 – 2020 using a combination of bibliometric analysis and critical review. this study adopted a text mining tool, namely vosviewer, to examine the bibliometric association in housing policy f ramework development research in a number of academic disciplines. bibliometric analysis (publications per year, publications per country, coauthor, co-citation, co-occurrence and their clusters) quantitatively visualized and critically reviewed housing policy research status quo and development. there is a wide range of housing policy f ramework development to solve the complex problem of housing in all developmental states. however, no studies exist that have scientometrically analysed and visualised the developments of housing policy specifically. while the phenomenon of urban and rural spatial divide is strongly pronounced in the developing economies in respect of access to socio-economic goods and services, the trend of the inadequately housed urban poor is increasing, with many citizens found in urban spaces as rough sleepers and mostly homeless (tissington, 2010 & 2011). for instance, rectifying the inherited inequality legacies of the apartheid state has posed a complex and challenging context for the delivery of daily by clinton aigbavboa and wellington thwala | peer review a bibliometric analysis and visual review of housing policy framework development research 51v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the policies have generally been described by some as an extension of world bank neo-liberalistic frameworks, whilst others have termed these policies as economically conservative, according to pottie (2004). basic needs in south af rica. considering the physical, economic, social, and political segregation of the apartheid agenda, meeting the demand for housing post the apartheid dark days has been a central developmental challenge since 1994 (pottie, 2004; aigbavboa, 2014). however, apartheid alone cannot be held responsible for the housing conditions in south af rica. nevertheless, no account of housing policy and conditions can be credible if there is no reference to the apartheid legacy of south af rica and the colonial legacy of the af rican continent (goodlad, 1996). nevertheless, wilkinson (1998) informed that the key dimensions of the current policy f ramework cannot be fully understood in isolation f rom an understanding of the legacy bequeathed by south af rica’s peculiar history. in other words, the problems of the past have profoundly shaped the situation to which the present policy seeks to respond. housing policy is a guideline comprised of systems of courses of action, regulatory measures, laws and funding priorities provided by government through the negotiation of various bodies in a country as put together by the government. it is intended to meet the housing needs and demands of its citizens through a set of suitable approaches, including fiscal, institutional, legal and regulatory f rameworks (agbola, 1998). housing policies provide a guide which defines action and sets goals and, in most cases, specifies strategies for achieving the goal (jiboye, 2011). they further institute guidelines and limits for discretionary actions by individuals liable for implementing the overall plans of action (olatubara, 2002). according to duruzoechi (1999), some housing policy decisions (written or implied) prompt the activities of governments, whilst others are goal statements or prescriptions of elemental rules for the conduct of personal or organisational affairs. housing policies are fundamentally necessary in any country as a guide for or the control of the various actors in the housing sector. the centrality of debate in respect of the housing policy in south af rica has been hinged on the politicoeconomic background of the policies developed over time to support adequate housing. the policies have generally been described by some as an extension of world bank neo-liberalistic f rameworks, whilst others have termed these policies as economically conservative, according to pottie (2004). however, the south af rican housing policy mix is rather the result of assorted f rameworks of international influences, as well as local and confined ingenuity. this is largely owing to the policy of spatial segregation in the apartheid state, which contributed to a policy which gilbert (2004) defined as ‘scan globally, reinvent locally’ principles. it is evident that various world bank policy elements comprise an integral part of the south af rican policy, such as the emphasis on incremental housing, economic conservatism, the once-off subsidy scheme, and the instrumental development of formal ownership (marais and botes, 2007). however, it should also be acknowledged that two important differences are discernible in the south af rican policy. firstly, the south af rican policy suggests that only housing structures should be subsidised, whilst the world bank policy suggests that only site and services should be subsidised. secondly, as the south af rican policy has developed, an increasing emphasis has been placed on housing size – a factor which is considered as part of the world bank policy (marais and botes, 2007). it has been contended that the current south af rican housing policy is founded on the reconstruction and development programme’s basic-needs approach, which accentuates a limited offering to the disadvantaged of basic shelter and public services in addressing the socially unequal nature of the apartheid state. it should be noted that the overarching south af rican housing agenda has objectives that supersede this notion of conservativism that has impacted service adequate housing delivery. for example, the policy is strongly in support of housing stocks’ contributing to the development of the national economy – this is a contested space as the availability of land is scarce in most cases. in line with the world bank’s 52 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the bibliometric analysis was used to map the housing policy knowledge areas, while the critical review, using the framework of aresearch themes of the keywords clusters. f ramework of the 1990s, the south af rican housing policy is disposed to enable the housing markets to work; while the housing policy instruments were expected to contribute to the development of urban citizenship with the creation of new cities of home owners who would further develop a democratic and integrated society. it is imperative to note at this point that the details of the current housing policy in south af rica remain somewhat fluid as the overall policy f ramework has yet to be cast in its final statutory form. considering the events of the past years and the high level of deprivation, unemployment, and inequality in the country, this on-going fluidity is for the most part indisputably due to the significant political changes that the country has undergone in the past few years, and the initial adoption of developmental policies that were confused with apartheid legacies. research methodology this study adopts the post-constructivist philosophical ideology, using an inductive approach. text mining was used to construct meaning and understanding of the research productivity and the footprint of housing policy frameworks from 1994 to 2020. this study reviewed housing policy framework development research through the bibliometric analysis with the critical review of co-occurring keywords. the bibliometric analysis was used to map the housing policy knowledge areas, while the critical review, using the framework of zhong et al. (2019), was used to categorize the research themes of the keywords clusters. for this study, publications under the subject areas were selected via a rigorous process using the scopus database. scopus, an elsevier database, is one of the largest wide-ranging databases which comprehensively records abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources covering a different scientific domain (guz and rushchitsky, 2009; hong et al., 2012). the database summarises the world’s research outputs in multidisciplinary fields with built-in intelligent tools to track, analyse and visualise research. figure 1: outline of research f ramework. using the scopus database, the following retrieval schema were entered into the scopus catalogue: (title-abs-key) (housing policy) or (‘housing f ramework’). the ‘title-abs-key’ indicates either a journal or conference article title, abstract, and keywords. the associated papers were extracted through the specified words in the title, abstracts, and keywords for a complete retrieval of the data. the use of the schema increases the collection of comprehensive data f rom the database (zhong et al., 2019). the search was limited to published journal articles and conference proceedings, while articles f rom books and chapters, including reviews and editorials, were excluded. figure 1 shows the f ramework adopted for the study. the choice for journal and conference proceedings selection was premised on the scholarly views that journals usually provide in-depth and highly quality information (zheng et al., 2016; aghimien et al., 2019), while the choice of conference proceedings is based on the view that conference proceedings in the human settlement and policy debate are a valuable source of materials, judging f rom the robustness of discussion and interest in the subject at conferences. however, other multidisciplinary researchers hold the same view of the importance of conference proceedings in their disciplines (webster and watson, 53v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies 2002; vuksic et al., 2018; aghimien et al., 2019). the time span was limited to 1994 to 2020, considering the significant shift in housing policy in south af rica, as this period marked the beginning of a reconstruction process that defined the policy f ramework for all citizens. the initial search on the scopus database produced 6 089 publications with the defined search schema. thereafter, a thorough filtering process was conducted by excluding subject areas, source titles and source types that were not related to the search schema. the language of publication was limited to only english. a total of 1497 articles were finally extracted as a cvs file and used for the analysis. to explore the trends in housing policy and f ramework research, this study adopted the vosviewer text mining tool (li et al., 2020), to analyse the bibliometric connections in housing policy and f ramework development, including co-authorship, co-occurring keywords and countries’ activeness analysis. vosviewer, according to van eck and waltman (2014, 2020), is a software tool for creating maps based on network data and is particularly useful for visualising larger bibliometric networks and exploring the maps (li et al., 2020). any type of bibliometric network can be visualized using vosviewer. bibliometric analysis and discussion publication per year from the extracted 1497 articles, 1479 were journal publications, while 18 were conference proceedings. figure 2 shows the distribution of the 1497 retrievals f rom 1994 to 2020. there are multiple peaks in the figure, with the notable period of reference being 2000 (52 publications), the year the millennium development goals (mdgs) were announced, following the millennium summit of the united nations in 2000, shortly after the adoption of the united nations millennium declaration. the other points of references are 2004 (39 publications) when the global cities alliance network was created; 2014 (89 publications); and 2015 (84 publications). 2014 was a year before the expiration of the mdgs, while 2015 was the year in which the mdgs were replaced with the sustainable development goals (sdgs). the sdgs were set in 2015 by the united nations general assembly with the aim of achieving a better and more sustainable future for all by the year 2030. in 2019 (89 publications), five years after the sdgs, there was a rise in the number of publications, with the lowest period of publication being 1995 (24 publications). the network of publication per country the analysis of the network of publications per country, set with a minimum of three publications and two citations per country, highlighted 46 countries as meeting the threshold. figure 2: publication per year, 1994–2020 54 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the set criteria of three publications and two citations per country prevented the possibility of overlap where articles have more than one country affiliation. the analysis of the network is shown in figure 3. the top twenty-five leading countries for housing policy and f ramework research are listed in table 1. the four leading countries on housing policy f ramework research are the usa (354 papers, 4906 citations), the uk (295 papers, 4178 citations), australia (120 papers, 1423 citations) and the netherlands (102 papers, 1803 citations). these figures reveal that these countries have made considerable impacts to housing policy development and housing delivery to their citizens. they are followed by canada (74 papers, 1045 citations), hong kong (64 papers, 1179 citations), china (50 papers, 936 citations), south af rica (49 papers, 680 citations), sweden (46 papers, 855 citations) and germany (27 papers, 305 citations). the sizeable amount of the connected articles in these countries shows that the study and conceptualisation of housing policy for the development and delivery of sustainable human settlement spaces and housing in these countries are advanced. country of publication number of articles average citation united states 354 4906 united kingdom 295 4178 australia 120 1423 netherlands 102 1803 canada 74 1045 hong kong 64 1179 china 50 936 south af rica 49 680 sweden 46 855 germany 27 305 south korea 23 175 france 22 117 italy 21 113 belgium 17 307 malaysia 17 214 singapore 17 272 ireland 14 99 norway 14 242 spain 13 114 brazil 12 309 nigeria 12 211 taiwan 12 55 new zealand 11 95 finland 10 84 israel 10 132 turkey 10 70 table 1: number of publications per country the sizeable amount of the connected articles in these countries shows that the study and conceptualisation of housing policy for the development and delivery of sustainable human settlement spaces and housing in these countries are advanced. also, concerning international collaborations, researchers from south africa in particular have widely collaborated with researchers from more than 39 of the 46 listed countries in table 1. notable countries of south african research collaboration are the usa, the netherlands, brazil, zimbabwe, kenya and australia, amongst others. figure 3: a network visualisation of number of publications per country 55v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the publication per document source table 2 shows the top twenty-five source journals for housing policy and f ramework research with at least one article. the journal of housing and the built environment published 152 articles (1890 citations) and has therefore published more housing policy papers than any other journal. this reveals that the journal has more authority and more popularity in this domain and is recognised by researchers, considering the open access opportunity for the publication of housing policy research. this is followed by habitat international with 141 publications (3372 citations), housing, theory and society (101 papers; 1925 citations) and the international journal of urban and regional research with 48 articles and 1629 citations. no south af rican journals featured on the journal list. the disparity between the total number of articles published and the citation numbers can be attributed to the impact factor measures of the journals, while some of the journals are published via the subscription model with the leverage for the researchers to explore the open access option where possible. publication source title document records – 1994 to 2020 citation – 1994 to 2020 journal impact factor journal of housing and the built environment 152 1890 1.481 habitat international 141 3372 3.846 housing, theory and society 101 1925 1.478 international journal of urban and regional research 48 1629 2.768 journal of urban affairs 38 567 1.234 journal of urban history 26 231 0.416 ahuri final report 25 117 0.167 journal of the american planning association 25 659 2.719 urban policy and research 24 417 1.667 critical housing analysis 23 58 0.337 critical social policy 22 393 2.185 urban affairs review 21 693 2.081 international development planning review 20 136 1.738 planning perspectives 16 90 0.356 urban geography 15 357 3.567 built environment 14 118 1.060 geoforum 14 129 2.926 urban research and practice 14 91 2.100 town planning review 13 107 0.760 european planning studies 12 120 2.690 international planning studies 12 152 2.690 journal of planning education and research 12 195 2.328 netherlands journal of housing and the built environment 12 50 1.481 planning practice and research 12 136 1.500 third world planning review 12 115 1.738 table 2: number of publications per source 56 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies analysis of co-authorship per country for scientists working in the housing policy and f ramework space, collaborations with other researchers provide opportunities to strengthen their science by collectively conducting peer-reviewed publications with a greater chance of success with varied perspectives, thus leading to a better problem-solving approach in society. when researchers publish findings of their research projects in peer-reviewed journals and in conference proceedings, the scientific community and society at large is given the opportunity to assess the findings of housing policy thinkers. likewise, other housing policy scholars are provided with theoretical foundations to repeat the research, build on the findings, and verify the published results. also, skills, knowledge and techniques are shared, which mutually benefits all collaborators to become better housing policy thinkers. using the text mining tool (vosviewer), the co-authorship of housing policy and f ramework scholars per country was assessed. the minimum number of publications per country was set at a minimum of two publications per country and 10 citations, highlighting five countries who meet the threshold and who are actively collaborating. figures 4 and 5 show that the countries with the highest number of collaborations and research productions are the usa, the uk, canada, australia and the netherlands. however, the figures further show that south af rica is actively collaborating with these high productivity countries, with a significant collaboration footprint as well as publishing with brazil, china, greece and norway. figure 4: a network visualisation of co-authorship per country 57v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies analysis of co-occurrence of keywords research keywords in housing policy research represent the emphasis and direction of the domain and likewise assist in tagging vital themes in housing policy thinkers and scholars. the analysis of keyword occurrence in housing policy f ramework research revealed the hot topics in the knowledge field over a specific timespan. the minimum number of keywords to be extracted was set at five (5), this being the default considering the large data used for the study and in line with previous students (aghimien et al., 2019). from the 4 000 keywords represented in the data set, 447 met the threshold for further analysis. further in the analysis, some generic terms and names of countries and geographical regions were removed. subsequently, 334 keywords were used for the final analysis and grouped into eight clusters. according to van eck and waltman (2014), the closer the keywords are to each other, the higher their occurrence. also, the large node size in figure 6 (the network visualisation map for the keywords) indicates a high concentration of the keywords, while a thick association link represents a tight association between two or more keywords (li et al., 2020). figure 5: a density visualisation of co-authorship per country 58 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies figure 6 reveals that the most f requent keywords are ‘housing policy’, occurring 1048 times; ‘housing’, occurring 229 times; ‘social housing’, occurring 211 times; ‘urban housing’, occurring 183 times; ‘housing market’, occurring 170 times; ‘affordable housing’, occurring 154 times; ‘housing provision’, occurring 135 times; and ‘homeownership’, occurring 92 times. these keywords and others are grouped into clusters. the findings of the critical review of the network and density visualisation maps were used to categorise the semantic themes hidden in the textual (chen and morris, 2003; zhong et al., 2019) data set of the keywords. according to olawumi and chan (2018), the critical review of cluster analysis of keywords enables researchers to categorise a sizeable amount of research data into unique groups for ease of discovery of research themes, trends and their associations. eight themes were originally discovered f rom the analysis of the data f rom the cluster analysis. however, only seven of the clusters were strongly connected to the intellectual structure (chen, ibekwe-sanjuan and hou, 2010) of housing policy f ramework research after a critical review. one cluster contained co-occurring keywords in other clusters and was dropped f rom further analysis. cluster 1 social cohesion and equity: the first cluster contained 62 keywords that have an occurrence of five keywords and above. the keywords in this cluster were found to have a significant link to the main word of housing policy as shown in figure 6. the most notable keywords in this cluster are ‘policy’, ‘political systems’, ‘public policy’, ‘socioeconomic characteristics’, ‘demography’, ‘social class’, ‘social justices’, ‘social policy’ and ‘social support’. the cluster keywords further support the idea that the primary purpose of housing policy is the provision of access to figure 6: a network visualisation of keyword occurrence 59v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the cities. housing policies must be inclusive to cater for the needs of the urban poor, the youth, the ageing population as well as the creation of inclusive cities where all can live in harmony and with equal rights. cluster 2 urban housing development: this cluster contained 59 co-occurring keywords that were also strongly linked to the main keywords in figure 6. some of the keywords in this cluster are ‘urban planning’, ‘urban history’, ‘urban policy’, ‘urban regeneration’, ‘zoning policy’, ‘zoning systems’, ‘inclusionary housing’, ‘colonialism’, ‘gentrification’, ‘reform process’, ‘displacement’, and ‘equity’, amongst others. this cluster shows that every housing policy should have concrete rules and legislations for the development of the state. moreover, the defined national urban housing policies should support urban governances, capacity and institutional development to enable equitable reforms in any national state. cluster 3 homeownership: this cluster contained 52 co-occurring keywords supporting the housing policy keyword. some of the co-occurring keywords are ‘housing association’, ‘housing subsidy’, ‘institutional reforms’, ‘liberalisation’, ‘neoliberalism’, ‘policy reforms’, ‘welfare’, ‘welfare economies’, ‘welfare provision’, and ‘political economy’, amongst others. there is a strong correlation between homeownership ideology and political attitude (ronald, 2008) as no meaningful discussion on homeownership will be complete without a thorough understanding of state power and social change. there is considerable evidence in literature suggesting that the states and all ethnic and political groups recognise the importance of promoting homeownership as ownership diminishes autonomy in the political (ronald, 2008). hence, housing policies must promote homeownership as it is the dream of citizens to own homes and it is often desirable. cluster 4 housing right: this cluster contains 51 co-occurring keywords also linked to the housing policy and f ramework. some of the keywords are ‘urban areas’, ‘urban housing’, ‘urban poor’, ‘urban society’, ‘urbanization’, ‘housing conditions’, ‘housing projects’, ‘human rights’, ‘informal settlement’, ‘local participation’, ‘post-apartheid’, ‘right to the city’, ‘low-income population’, amongst others. the right to housing is a basic human right contained in the constitution and international human rights instruments (un-habitat, 2014). the right to housing ensures that citizens are f ree f rom inclement weather and they have a ‘roof over their heads’. the right to housing also ensures that citizens have an adequate measure of quality of life and that they live in a safe place in peace and dignity without the fear of eviction. the right to housing is also connected to the broader discussion of economic empowerment. when the right to housing is not realised, citizens’ fundamental human rights are violated. globally, the right to housing is enshrined in article 25 of the universal declaration of human rights, as well as in article 11 of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. likewise, the af rica charter on human and people’s rights recognises the dignity of all, noting that everyone is equal before the law and has an equal right to the protection of the law. notable amongst the keywords is ‘post-apartheid’, a period that marks the transition of the south af rican state to a redefinition of its approach to housing provision for all its citizens. the post-apartheid state revised the constitution to enshrine the right to housing. for instance, section 26(1) of the constitution of the republic of south af rica, act 108 of 1996, guarantees everyone’s right of access to adequate housing, while section 26(2) informs that the south af rican state must take reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources to progressively realise this right (dugard et al., 2016). connected to the housing right is section 26(3) which prohibits all indiscriminate evictions and proclaims that no citizen of the new south af rican state may be ‘evicted f rom their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances’ (dugard et al., 2016). cluster 5 housing policy reforms: this cluster contained 33 co-occurring keywords. the associated keywords are ‘governance approach’, ‘planning practice’, ‘policy change’, ‘policy implementation’, ‘decision making’, ‘devolution’, ‘disability’, ‘policy making’, ‘public service’, ‘rural area’ and ‘rural planning’, amongst others. by its nature, a housing policy must be progressive with the fundamental tenet and ability being to guide and 60 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies in most nations, housing policies are becoming increasingly integrated with a wide range of social and economic objectives, which means that housing policy is reaching further down than was the case in past decades. direct housing delivery reforms in a state. significant progress has been made in most national states; however, much is left to be desired as the state of global slum dwelling and homelessness continues to increase. housing policy must not simply be about the provision of shelter but should be reformed to serve as a tool for the upliftment of citizens and an integrated approach to build human capital and stimulate economic access for the owners (schill and wachter, 2001). cluster 6 housing tenure systems: this cluster has 33 co-occurring keywords. the occurring keywords are ‘legislation’, ‘migrants’, ‘private renting’, ‘privatization’, ‘property market’, ‘property right’, ‘rental housing’, ‘renter housing’, ‘renter sector’, ‘social exclusion’, ‘social security’, ‘tenure system’, and ‘state role’, amongst others. housing tenure includes all approaches used in a state for use by the citizens to access housing. a housing policy f ramework must address the issue of tenure to enable various accesses to housing in an incremental manner. the improvement of tenure security is vital as tenure has been linked to community satisfaction and participation (archer et al., 2012). cluster 7 public housing/ residential segregation: this cluster has 30 co-occurring keywords that include ‘ethnicity’, ‘ethnic minority’, ‘housing vouchers’, ‘immigrants’, ‘immigrant population’, ‘public sector’, ‘civil rights’, ‘race’, ‘racism’, ‘racial segregation’, ‘social segregation’, ‘segregation’ and ‘residential segregation’. housing segregation has been used over time by white ethnic groups in almost every state as a tool of supremacy, thus posing a threat to racial equality in the new world. there is no policy that limits a minority group in terms of housing segregation, which is also the major driver of racial disparity in wealth. while the ownership of a home and the right to housing are not a panacea for eliminating systemic racial inequality, housing policy-makers and researchers must use policy reforms to amend for past and presents harms by proposing and promulgating new housing policies to expand access to housing for all (danyelle & maxwell, 2019). for instance, in may 2018, the world bank informed that south af rica remains the most economically unequal country in the world, due to high poverty levels amongst the black population, owing to the persistence of spatial segregation. conclusion in most nations, housing policies are becoming increasingly integrated with a wide range of social and economic objectives, which means that housing policy is reaching further down than was the case in past decades. also, the literature informs that a housing policy that has broad goals is much more multifaceted than one that solely emphasises housing for a certain sector of the economy. this study conducted a bibliometric review of housing policy research to visualise and analyse the link in housing policy f ramework development research in a number of academic disciplines. a total of 1 497 articles published f rom 1994–2020 were extracted f rom the scopus database. on the basis of the mined scopus database, articles, co-authorship, cooccurrence/co-occurrent keywords, the number of publications and documents per country, and the number of publications per sources were analysed using vosviewer, to categorise the association in housing policy f ramework development research. cluster analyses of the co-occurrence keywords were critically reviewed to define the research themes. the analysis presented in this study can provide housing studies and policy scholars and practitioners with a robust insight of housing policy research trends between 1994–2020, as the study identified the key areas of focus in the housing policy f ramework development domain. the scope of the study is limited owing to the use of only the scopus database. however, scopus is a database f rom elsevier, and is one of the largest wide-ranging databases which 61v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies comprehensively records abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources covering various scientific domains. overall, the collected articles reflect the journals of housing policy research f ramework development since 1994. references agbola, t. (1998). the housing of nigerians: a review of policy development and implementation. ibadan, nigeria: development policy centre aghimien, d.o., aigbavboa, c.o., oke, a.e. and thwala, w.d. (2019). mapping out research focus for robotics and automation research in construction-related studies: a bibliometric approach. journal of engineering, design and technology, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print. [online] available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/ jedt-09-2019-0237 aigbavboa, c. (2015). an assessment of the evolution of housing policy framework. implementing innovative ideas in structural engineering and project management. edited by saha, s., zhang, y., yazdani, s., and singh, a. isec press archer, d., luansang, c. and boonmahathanakorn, s. (2012). community mapping and planning for citywide upgrading: the role of community architects. environment and urbanization, 24 (1): pp. 115–129 chen, c., ibekwe-sanjuan, f and hou, j (2010). the structure and dynamics of cocitation clusters: a multiple-perspective cocitation analysis. journal of the american society for information science and technology. 61 (7): pp. 1386–1409 chen, c. and morris, s. (2003). visualizing evolving networks: minimum spanning trees versus pathfinder networks, information visualization, 2003, ieee symposium on infovis 2003, ieee, 2003, pp. 67–74. danyelle, s and connor, m. (2019). systemic inequality: displacement, exclusion, and segregation. how america’s housing system undermines wealth building in communities of color. [online] available at: https://www.americanprogress. org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472617/systemic-inequality-displacementexclusion-segregation/ dugard, j., clark, m., tissington, k and wilson, s. (2016). the right to housing in south af rica. foundation for human rights. [online] available at: https://www.fhr. org.za/files/8515/1247/1750/housing.pdf duruzoechi, n.f. (1999) housing development and public policy. owerri, nigeria: alphabet nigeria publishers. goodlad, r. (1996). the housing challenge in south af rica. urban studies journal limited, 33(9): pp. 1629–1646. gilbert, a. (2004). helping the poor through housing subsidies: lessons f rom chile, colombia and south af rica. habitat international, 28(1): pp. 13–40. guz, a.n. and rushchitsky, j.j. (2009). scopus: a system for the evaluation of scientific journals. international applied mechanics, 45(4): pp. 351–362. hong, y., chan, d.w.m., chan, a.p.c. and yeung, j.f.y. (2012). critical analysis of partnering research trend in construction journals. journal of management in engineering, 28(2): pp. 82–95. jiboye, a.d. (2011). achieving sustainable housing development in nigeria: a critical challenge to governance. international journal of humanities and social science, 1(9): pp. 1–7. li, c.z., zhao, y., xiao, b., yu, b., tam, v.w.y., chen, z. & ya, y. (2020). research trend of the application of information technologies in construction and demolition waste management. journal of cleaner production, 263 (1). malala, j. (2019). why are south af rican cities still so segregated 25 years after apartheid? the guardian [online]. available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ cities/2019/oct/21/why-are-south-af rican-cities-still-segregated-after-apartheid marais, l. and botes, l. (2007). income generation, local economic development and community development: paying the price for lacking business skills. journal for community development. 42(3): pp. 379–395. michael h. schill and susan m. wachter (2001). principles to guide housing policy at the beginning of the millennium. cityscape: a journal of policy development and research. 5(2): pp. 5–19. olatubara, c.o. (2002). housing policy and its impact on the populace: the elusive solution to housing problem. continuing professional development workshop on housing policy and its impact on the populace. ogun state, nigeria, nigeria institution of estate surveyors and valuers, ogun state branch. olawumi, t.o. and chan, d.w.m. (2018). a scientometric review of global research on sustainability and sustainable development. journal of cleaner production, 183: pp. 231–250 pottie, d. (2004). local government and housing in south af rica: managing demand and enabling markets. development in practice, 14(5): pp. 606–618 prottoy a. akbar, sijie li, allison shertzer, and randall p. walsh. (2019). racial segregation in housing markets and the erosion of black wealth. nber working paper no. 25805. revised january 2020. [online] available at: https://www.nber. org/papers/w25805.pdf ronald r. (2008) unravelling home ownership ideology. in: the ideology of home ownership. palgrave macmillan: london tissington, k. (2010). a review of housing policy and development in south af rica since 1994. socio-economic rights institute of south af rica (seri): johannesburg. tissington, k. (2011). a resource guide to housing in south af rica 1994–2010 legislation, policy, programmes and practice. socio-economic rights institute of south af rica (seri): johannesburg. un-habitat (2014). the right to adequate housing. united nations fact sheet no. 21 (rev. 1). office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights. [online] available at: https://docplayer.net/18071267-the-right-to-adequatehousing.html van eck, n.j. and waltman, l. (2014). visualizing bibliometric networks. in ding, y., rousseau, r. and wolf ram, d. (eds). measuring scholarly impact: methods and practice, pp. 285–320. vuksic, v.b., invansic, l. and vugec, d.s. (2018). a preliminary literature review on digital transformation case studies. conference proceedings, rome, italy. sep 17–18, 2018, 20 (9) part viii, pp. 952–957. webster, j. and watson, r. (2002). the past to prepare for the future: writing a literature. mis quarterly, 26(2): pp. 13–23. wilkinson, p. (1998). housing policy in south af rica. habitat international, 22(3): pp. 215–229. zheng, x., le, y., chan, a.p.c., hu, y. and li, y. (2016). review of the application of social network analysis (sna) in construction project management research. international journal of project management, 34(7): pp. 1214–1225. zhong, b., wu, h., li, h., sepasgozar, s., luo, h. & he, l. (2019). a scientometric analysis and critical review of construction related ontology research. automation in construction, 101, pp. 17–31. 62 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies by john boulard forkuor, charles selorm deku, and eric agyemang | opinion 43 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion the dilemma of vulnerable groups during lockdown: implications for social work education and practice in ghana abstract the covid-19 pandemic has created socio-economic challenges for countries globally and has touched lives in some of the world’s most remote areas. while other countries have been proactive in addressing these challenges, i fear that ghana, and to an extent most of sub-saharan africa, have failed to adequately prepare for and anticipate these challenges. this reflective essay discusses the paradoxes that the pandemic and the measures used to curb it have created for two vulnerable groups: informal economy workers and women and children in abusive relationships. i introduce the essay with a reflective account of the relevance and practicality of social work education and practice in ghana in light of the ongoing pandemic. subsequently, i focus on the two aforementioned vulnerable groups. i present a reflective account of how the challenges that emerged from this pandemic create new opportunities for my work as a social work educator and also for practice with these groups in ghana. opinion 44t h e t h i n k e r introduction trained in social work and teaching social work at the tertiary level, i have always had pride in the profession’s ability to promote the wellbeing of the vulnerable in society. every september, i have the opportunity to meet first year undergraduate social work students. i relish these opportunities because i get to share with these students the successes of the profession in ghana and to whip up their interest in social work and broader social welfare efforts. since the onset of covid-19, however, i have had to question my beliefs, especially how we, as social workers in ghana, have had to observe the intervention efforts f rom the sidelines. i cannot help but feel that as academics and professionals, we have not made ourselves relevant to our communities and the country as a whole. we have, as a result, failed to influence national policies on social welfare delivery. we have focused on remedial practice and provided reactive services to vulnerable groups. by so doing, we have not properly engaged the public, city authorities, and other professionals in promoting and advocating for preventive public welfare approaches. in hindsight, it comes as little surprise, perhaps as a rude awakening, that in the fight against covid-19, ghanaian social workers have not been engaged in the national discourse. even the ministry in charge of all social welfare efforts in the country failed to call upon the knowledge of social workers in their attempt to identify and support vulnerable groups in the country. this demonstrates the disconnect between governance, practice and education of social work in ghana. this pandemic has made me aware of the limitations of my teaching and research approaches; i believe i will be a better educator of future social work practitioners in ghana and in af rica as whole. in the following paragraphs, i focus on two vulnerable groups, the insights gained during this pandemic, and the implications of these on social work education and practice in ghana. urban informal economic workers and covid-19 i sat through a student’s thesis presentation about a year ago; the student, a sociology major, presented on retirement planning for informal economy workers. at the time, i listened out of intellectual curiosity and never thought of its professional relevance to social work practice in ghana. how mistaken i was! today, looking at how this pandemic has affected the livelihoods of workers in the informal economy, i realise that there was a lot of professional relevance to this presentation. on 19 april 2020, as the president of ghana lifted the lockdown, there were mixed feelings. most of the population working in the informal economy were jubilating because they could go back to work again and feed their families and dependants. for most of the formally employed, lifting the lockdown would make the virus spread rapidly and create a greater public health problem. as a social work lecturer, i felt conflicted because i could empathise with both the jubilating group and the lamenting group. for those who are informally employed, available evidence reveals that the public health measures aimed at controlling the pandemic leads to a loss of income (wiego, 2020a). for the informally employed, the paradox is that ‘they cannot stay home without starving and they cannot work without being exposed to the virus’ (wiego, 2020d). this paradox has real implications for the ability of nations to effectively deal with this pandemic. the academic, political, and industrial neglect of informal economy workers is having a negative effect on society’s efforts at dealing with this pandemic (harvey, 2020). years of neglect mean that governments currently have to focus on both a public health and economic crisis. working f rom home, schooling f rom home, relying on savings, and social distancing (all recommended strategies for curbing the pandemic) are not realistic options for many of the workers in the informal economy (harvey, 2020). in other words, the lack of job security, health insurance, financial investments and savings, and adequate housing for informal economic workers is negatively affecting the ability of states to deal with the pandemic. one of the realities that this pandemic has laid bare is that a resilient informal economic workforce is not only good for the economy, but may also have important implications for future public health efforts and responses. thus, if we continue to ignore this workforce in policy development and implementation processes, their condition will have a negative impact on society’s ability to fight pandemics effectively. consequently, we cannot, as social workers and educators, afford to ignore the workers in the 45 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion informal economy any longer. our focus as social workers operating within the urban sphere in ghana has been significantly on the vulnerable aged, street children, street beggars, and other urban actors. our social intervention and empowerment programs have not paid adequate attention to workers in the informal economy. the calls for developmental social work to inform social work practice in af rica (gray and coates, 2010; mwansa, 2011) are becoming increasingly obvious and relevant as this pandemic unfolds and affect millions of people in af rica’s informal economy. the informal economy and its workers therefore present specific challenges to social work efforts in ghana and in af rica f rom here on. it is important, given the challenges that workers in this sector have faced during this pandemic (wiego, 2020a, 2020c, and 2020d), that we assist in creating more resilient homes and households for informal economy workers. this, i believe, should be one of the priority areas for social workers in urban af rica and the rest of the developing world. for me, as a social work lecturer, a clear path ahead is apparent. no longer will i passively listen to discussions about informal economic workers, their access to social protection, social security, and retirement plans. as a lecturer and researcher, the urban informal economy should be a necessary part of my lessons. social work students within af rican and other developing contexts should graduate with a clear understanding of the challenges that informal workers face and the strategies that could be used to build the economic and social resilience of this group. it is relevant that the student who sits in my class understands how important workers in the informal economy are, and the best way of improving their wellbeing. this will help the profession make meaningful contributions towards promoting the wellbeing of informal economy workers. through this, we not only make a relevant contribution towards the wellbeing of ghanaians, but also enhance the practical and contextual relevance of the profession in ghana. from my lecture halls, i will be the change that i expect to see in social work education and practice in ghana. i will endeavour to train students in ways that will make them relevant practitioners and prepare them to contribute meaningfully to emerging public health concerns in ghana. abuse and violence during covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, i have read of several instances of increase in abuse (physical, emotional, financial, and psychological) during this period as countries implement lockdown measures. in some cases, the abuse has led to the death of spouses, mostly women (addadzi-koom, 2020; higgins, 2020; kelly and morgan, 2020). lockdown measures instituted globally have created a conducive avenue for abusers (by isolating their victims f rom family and f riends), while limiting escape options for the abused (kelly and morgan, 2020). children confined to their homes are exposed to violence and the psychological distress that comes with it. as higgins puts it, for the victim of abuse, there is the ‘fear of the aggressor indoors and the virus outside’ (2020: 1). this is much like the paradox faced by informal economy workers: the choice between starvation indoors and the virus outdoors. prior to this pandemic, i – as a researcher and academic – did not critically examine the existing measures we have in ghana for dealing with domestic violence. however, the emergence of this pandemic and the strategies put in place by other countries have made me question our own commitment and the effectiveness of our approach towards protecting victims of domestic violence. like some welfare officers and practitioners in ghana, i have often assumed that the department of social welfare and the domestic violence and victims support unit of the ghana police service are an adequate avenue for addressing abuse. however, what i have learnt f rom the actions of other global actors is that the mere existence of these institutions is of little comfort to women and children trapped in abusive relationships. in addition, most of children confined to their homes are exposed to violence and the psychological distress that comes with it. as higgins puts it, for the victim of abuse, there is the ‘fear of the aggressor indoors and the virus outside’ (2020: 1). this is much like the paradox faced by informal economy workers: the choice between starvation indoors and the virus outdoors. prior to this pandemic, i – as a researcher and academic – did not critically examine the existing measures we have in ghana for dealing with domestic violence. 46v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion our focus in ghana has been on women walking in or calling to report abuse. while these strategies may work under certain circumstances, they are highly inadequate during this pandemic, considering the close control that abusers exert on the abused. such strategies also do not consider the challenges faced by victims of domestic violence who have hearing impairments. during this period of global suffering, i have read with optimism about the innovative strategies that other countries have adopted to assist persons living with abusive partners. collaborations with community pharmacies in establishing codenames (such as ‘mask19’) where women can safely indicate the existence of abuse and the need for assistance is just one of the approaches (higgins, 2020). as a ghanaian social work academic, this pandemic and the emerging stories and strategies has lit a bulb of awareness in my head. i feel that i have been dormant and too comfortable in my role as an academic, without critically analysing and trying to improve existing strategies in ghana for the vulnerable. while i do not suggest an adoption of the strategies that are being used elsewhere, i do believe that it is high time for the profession in ghana to find context-relevant strategies that will enhance the safety and protection of women and children in abusive relationships, measures that go beyond walk-in reports and phone calls. the pandemic and lockdown measures have taught us that this approach is not sufficient in addressing the challenges that victims of abuse face. furthermore, the potential increase in domestic violence cases has implications for our teaching and practice. perhaps anger management and stress management techniques should be taught not only in classrooms, but also to the public. as a matter of urgency, we must promote the public education of such approaches, in addition to non-violent conflict resolution techniques. we, as a profession, must go beyond setting up helplines and help agencies, most of which are reactive institutions. rather, we must put in place preventive measures that can help reduce aggression, especially among people who must, of necessity, share a limited space with other abusers. concluding comments as af rica urbanises, the informal economy will play a significant role in enhancing the socio-economic wellbeing of urban residents. in addition, the breakdown of the extended family as a social control and safety mechanism, and increasing anonymity and individuality in urban areas, will have serious implications for abused persons. social workers, with the aim of promoting the wellbeing of people within sustainable environments, can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines. the ongoing pandemic and the challenges that informally employed actors and persons in abusive relationships have faced must make us take an active interest in promoting the wellbeing of these urban actors. as social work academics and practitioners in ghana, we must strive to develop preventive measures rather than react to emerging social problems. we must anticipate and train our students to contribute meaningfully to society’s efforts at improving the quality of life for vulnerable populations in all times and under all circumstances. we have to remember our public advocacy roots and play a leading role in preventive healthcare provision for vulnerable groups in urban areas. we have to go beyond writing about developmental social work to actually implementing developmental social work approaches in our country. for me, this is an important time for self-assessment and insight, and the need for a different and more context-relevant approach to social work education and practice in ghana has never been clearer. references addadzi-koom, m.e. 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https://www.wiego.org/covid19platform [accessed 25 may 2020] t h e t h i n k e r66 1: blue aloe i t was a brisk afternoon in a valley in yorkshire in the north of england when my art teacher, mr waddington, standing beside me seated at my easel, first introduced me to charles darwin’s phrase, ‘cryptic colouration’ – an organism’s ability to blend into its surroundings. the phrase has stuck with me, spurring a long-standing interest in mimicry – the relationship between survival and calculated obscurity. the national geographic channel provides countless examples of this ability to blend in and dissimulate a given context. human beings are no different. we devote the bulk of our lives to disappearing acts. however, ‘cryptic’ is a curious word to attach to this disposition, for it suggests something mysterious and elusive, and an essay first given as a public lecture at the university college of london’s institute of advanced studies as part of a series of talks on lies. by ashraf jamal art six asides on art &lies © s h u tt e rs to c k .c o m 67v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 not an act of survival, or one of damnation, which, after all, is what it also means to dis-appear. against the endless disappearing acts we consciously or unconsciously perform, it is surely startling to encounter a creature who refuses to do so. joseph conrad’s bling harlequin-figure in heart of darkness springs to mind, but so does a rather strange looking african aloe, created by rowan smith, which i encountered in an art gallery in cape town with the alluring moniker, whatiftheworld. while a compelling facsimile, smith’s aloe was painted a jarring and unearthly swimming pool blue. fixed to a stainless steel stem and bolted to an achingly white, fluorescent-lit, wall, this pale blue plant stood anomalous. part of an austere installation which centred on mimicrydissimulation-camouflage – and the impertinence of this orientation – this chlorinated blue aloe suggested an africa sterile and antiseptic. for there was doubtless something unhealthily pallid in the artist’s colour scheme. in 2015, wired magazine introduced me to another term – ‘plastiglomerate’ – the aggregation of starkly dissimilar yet integrally related synthetic and organic matter, which more compellingly reminded me of the unnatural conditions in which we live. smith’s blue aloe epitomised this unnatural state. for ours, today, is no longer darwin’s cryptically coloured world. ours is a world which has shifted from acts of imposture to acts that are aberrant. and it is in this particular regard that rowan smith’s blue aloe proves an apt prelude to our conversation – art and lies. 2: witches’ oracle as a verb the word – lie – intrigues me most. in its past tense we know it as lay, or lain, as some condition, some thing, which, according to the oed, assumes ‘a horizontal position on a supporting surface … undisturbed or undiscussed’. it is this sense which prompted virginia woolf, in the waves, to ask: ‘what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing’? the supposition, here, the query, is often asked, for we commonly suppose that meaning, or truth, is something concealed, hidden from view, difficult to ascertain. truth is supposed to exist beneath the lie, and it is truth – said to exist ‘beneath the semblance of the thing’ – which we hanker for and enshrine. it is truth’s remoteness that compels us, its rarity, its preciousness, which we believe best informs and defines us – all the more so in this post-religious and morally bankrupted moment in which we find ourselves. for no one can fail to recognise – in this era dubbed ‘post-truth’ – that which keenly concerns us most is truth’s absence. ours is a realm of veils in which truth possesses no traction and no worth. in our world – a world of copies – we no longer possess the capacity to issue forth truth. a lie has become our staple. it defines our culture. it is the ‘new normal’. the very condition for life itself. it is therefore not the scarcity of truth that matters, but the ubiquity of lies. we live because we lie, we exist the way we do because we cannot imagine a world which is not infused and shaped by deception. lies, therefore, are constitutive. they are the ground – now groundless – which makes it possible to wake up and complete the tasks – riddled with ‘little lies’ – which, we pretend, enable us to continue. lies are the acts and conditions which we must learn to accept, for not to do so would make living unbearable. and yet we gnash and groan in the face of lies. when someone blithely demurs that there are all kinds of truth – ‘alternative facts’ – we protest in the name of some inviolable essence which we insist in believing exists beneath the surface of this post-essential and post-religious moment. however, if there remains a justice in demanding the existence of a condition pure and inviolable, this is not because it is the purity of truth that we seek, but the purity of a better, if contaminated, lie. dissimulation is inescapable. the inauthentic defines who and what we are, especially those who traffic in the arts, in fiction, which plato sought to rout out and condemn as liars. lies – the staple of fiction, of art – are integral to the creation of imagined worlds. lies are wagers, for no one can fail to recognise – in this era dubbed ‘post-truth’ – that which keenly concerns us most is truth’s absence. ours is a realm of veils in which truth possesses no traction and no worth. in our world – a world of copies – we no longer possess the capacity to issue forth truth. a lie has become our staple. art t h e t h i n k e r68 ventures, leaps of faith, willed conditions. they are not intrinsically or essentially bad for us. however, because they are deceptive, they can also be treacherous. we know this well. act 1, scene 1 of shakespeare’s macbeth sets the stage for this treachery. that it stems from the mouths of three witches – and women we are reminded, again and again, are the ciphers of treachery, as is the black man – should alert us to the fact that the ‘lies’ they supposedly tell are not lies at all, but veiled truths. shot through ‘fog and filthy air’, through a veil contaminated, unclear, in which ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair’, the witches present to us their oracular insight which macbeth chooses to read to his own advantage. the moral of the drama is that we cannot presume to know, in absolute truth, the meaning of a statement, we can only infer, at our own peril, its true import. for what the witches’ oracle reminds of is that we can never fully disinter truth from falsity. this difficulty stems not merely from the failure of morality, or the collapse of our cognitive faculties, it stems from a fair deeper problem which friedrich nietzsche in particular has scrupulously tackled. in his essay ‘on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense’, nietzsche reminds us that ‘the art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendour, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself – in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity – is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them’. the barb is lethal. we cannot ignore nietzsche’s assertion that it is truth that is rare, dissimulation – the culture and rule of lies – which is normative. the witches in macbeth understood this founding condition, for it is not only macbeth’s craven ambition which they ensnare, but his vanity. nietzsche returns, repeatedly, to this ‘pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous’ indifferent and ignorant desire for the realm of lies. ‘the liar’, he says, ‘is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real’. for nietzsche, this dissimulation is not intrinsically wrong, it is inevitable. what concerns him far more is the consequence of this sleight of hand – ‘being harmed by means of fraud’. what troubles us, he says, is ‘not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception’. it is this incarnation of lies – as something profoundly harmful and destructive in its fraudulence – which troubles us most. tautology – fair foul, foul fair – is not a falsity but a complexity wired into a linguistically driven cognitive faculty. words are forked, meaning volatile. this is because ‘we possess nothing but metaphors for things – metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities’. and concepts – which are the ideational means through which we make sense of things – arise, always, from the equating of the unequal, through acts of transference. macbeth imputes his triumphal fate. it is not that the witches deliberately seek to lead him astray. rather, the act of straying, intrinsic to the confection of meaning, is tragically amplified and guided by macbeth’s overweening vanity and hunger for power. he will find the meaning which he chooses to find in the witches’ oracle. for it is not that they are lying – they speak the truth – but not necessarily the truth macbeth seeks. by placing himself centre-stage, as the rightful ruler, which he is not, macbeth, after nietzsche, mistakenly misreads the witches’ oracle as the particular sum of a ‘regulative an imperative world’. however, this imperative is one of many, for words designate multiple outcomes. what something appears to be is not necessarily what it is. the very essence of a thing can only be understood as a complex of possibilities. what words provide is the appearance of meaning, not meaning in-and-for itself. for as nietzsche reminds us, ‘it is not true that the essence of things “appears” in the empirical world’. truth is mediated at every turn, holographic at best. in the secular realm – a realm relative, truth is mediated at every turn, holographic at best. in the secular realm – a realm relative, speculative – it cannot be satisfactorily regulative. which is why nietzsche reminds us that it is not the fraudulence of meaning-making which is the problem, but its damaging consequence when it is abused. art 69v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 speculative – it cannot be satisfactorily regulative. which is why nietzsche reminds us that it is not the fraudulence of meaning-making which is the problem, but its damaging consequence when it is abused. echoing macbeth, the philosopher reminds us that ‘man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theatre acts more royally than any real king. so long as it is able to deceive without injuring, the master of deception, the intellect, is free’. deception, therefore, is inescapable, even bountiful. but it is also potentially lethal. and one would do well to keep this in mind as we venture into the realm of lies, our natural but also our debased habitat. as for truth? for nietzsche the desire for it remains a mystery. at best, ‘truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions’. however, it is not this paradox which exercises me most, but the far more pervasive, necessary, and dangerous realm of lies with which we cloak our lives. more particularly, it is this realm of lies and its operation within a specific world – the world of contemporary south african art – which compels me the more. how do lies work effectively in art? when does the lie become dangerous and damaging? 3: pathological attachments in ‘the jerusalem prize acceptance speech’ – an essay to which i’ve returned more persistently than any other – j.m. coetzee considers the difficulty of telling the truth. penned in 1987, in the very heart of a cruelly divisive time in south africa’s history, coetzee notes that therein ‘there is … too much truth for art to hold, truth by the bucketful, truth that overwhelms and swamps every act of the imagination’. by ‘truth’, here, the nobel laureate is speaking of ‘the crudity of life in south africa, the naked force of its appeals, not only at the physical level but at the moral level too, its callousness and its brutalities, its hungers and its rages, its greed and its lies’, which, in hindsight, have never been resolved. and if this crudity persists – a crudity which makes it impossible to imagine my beleaguered country differently – it is because we have been unable to, or have refused ‘to quit a world of pathological attachments and abstract forces, of anger and violence’, and, subsequently, remain unable to ‘take up residence in a world where a living play of feelings and ideas is possible, a world where we truly have an occupation’. our very idea of the world and what it must become is defined by a pathological morality – a need both just and obsessive which has made it impossible to shirk a constitutive abomination – racial inequality, poverty, the psychic horror of centuries of abuse. as a consequence, our art cannot be sustained through enabling appearances – a ‘living play of feelings and ideas’ – and, therefore, finds itself mired in nakedly cruel and violent forces. and yet, if we hold fast to nietzsche’s conclusion that truth is chimerical, then what are we to make of coetzee’s yearning to be rid of ‘pathological attachments’? surely, if art is to ‘truly have an occupation’ it cannot ignore the inescapability of an abusive and cruel world? surely what matters is not art’s capacity to overcome this horror, but its capacity to think and feel through it which remains sustainable? this i think has been coetzee’s project all along – he does not seek some vainglorious and beneficent world, he seeks, rather, to engage with the very gravity of the world in which we exist, a world ground down by naked appeals, hunger, rage, greed and lies – a world intestate and unresolved. this world – shaped and honed through pain – is not one which we must refuse to imagine, but which we must learn to imagine differently. in so doing, we must not only recognise the difficulty of expressing it truthfully – whether this is possible is disputable – we must also reconsider the unscrupulousness of the fictions we live by – the fiction of liberty, self-possession, and selfdetermination. the lie of greatest concern is one in which we accept that we have been defrauded, a lie that champions salvation when there is none, that imagines a world in which, finally, we are one. in south africa no such parity exists. ours remains a society mutilated and ugly, founded on the illusion of supremacy and the shackles of bondage. ubuntu, the southern african credo in which we are whom we are because of others, has withered. it is a sentiment, a ‘truth’, which has been replaced by a pathological culture shaped by hate, fear, confusion, greed, desperation, violence, which, if nietzsche is correct, must be endured. art t h e t h i n k e r70 reflecting on the ‘rawness’ of life in south africa, ‘the evils that were practiced here’, the novelist and essayist, mike nicol, in the waiting country, goes on to examine the inevitability of dissimulation – ‘how we lie to one another’. ‘we lie to accommodate’, he says. ‘we lie because we believe it does not matter. we lie because we think that in the face of so many years of misery, a lie that is for the good is not a lie at all. and we lie because we have no self-respect. we lie because we are victims. we lie because we cannot imagine ourselves in any other way’. but it is not only the instrumentality of lying which is the problem here, but the extent of the fraud perpetrated because it – the psychic cost of lies. for coetzee the root of the problem stems from the falsity of ‘fraternity’, ‘the vain and essentially sentimental yearning that expresses itself in the reform movement’ which he sees as disingenuous and corrupt in its ‘yearning to have fraternity without paying for it’. the destructive consequence of this illusion – the illusion of fraternity – remains with us today. but the problem goes deeper, for what concerns me is not the confection of equality, but the root problem which founds its impossibility. what we are dealing with, when seeking to right a wrong, is not so much truth’s impossibility, but its metaphoricity – for truths, says nietzsche, are illusions both necessary and duplicitous. they come in the way of the greater problem presented to us in-and-through the culture of lies. to better understand just how the south african art world operates, therefore, requires not merely the quest for a truth, but the greater quest to understand just how lies have operated, how they sustain us, and how, at their best, they can begin to help us reconfigure our condition and position in this world. this is because we need lies that operate as enabling metaphors. 4: age of anger an artist who compellingly engages with the duplicitousness of the south african experience is ed young. in his word-works, in particular, one confronts the delusory nature of fraternity and the psychic discordance which wracks the country’s body politic. black in five minutes is but one of many ironic barbs directed at the canned notion of transformation and the ruse of some instantaneous shift. young understands the desire for change, but far more critically he asks us to reflect upon the conditions which makes this change seemingly possible – south africa’s phantom democracy. his aim is not merely to spoof hope, but to understand the yearning which triggers it – a yearning for a different world in a fundamentally indifferent time. because of course at the very moment – historic and global – in which we hunger for connectedness, we also find ourselves confronted with what pankaj mishra terms the ‘widening abyss of race, class and education’. this abyss is by no means peculiar to south africa. what mishra addresses is a global ‘age of anger’, an age crude, barbarous, divisive, which no moral logic can countenance, and in which ‘well-worn pairs of opposites, often corresponding to the bitter divisions in our societies, have once again been put to work: progressive vs. reactionary, open vs. closed, liberalism vs. fascism, rational vs. irrational’. however, while this antithetical realm assumes dominance, it also refuses any reconciliation. indeed, says mishra, ‘our search for rational political explanations for the current disorder is doomed’. this stark conclusion, made in 2017, is chastening. for today one cannot, rationally, resolve an escalating conflict. indeed, the parsing of categories – open/closed, true/false – has become all the more difficult. this is because we can no longer suppose it possible to make distinctions. instead we find ourselves caught in what frantz fanon and achille mbembe have termed a ‘zone of indistinction’ – foggy, filthy – in which it is difficult to disinter being from non-being. fanon’s and mbembe’s insight deserve greater attention on our part, for what concerns the martiniquan psychoanalyst and cameroonian philosopher is the notion that blackness – the black body and psyche – has been so thoroughly obliterated, so wholly denied its self-presence, that it cannot return itself to itself. objectified, to better understand just how the south african art world operates, therefore, requires not merely the quest for a truth, but the greater quest to understand just how lies have operated, how they sustain us, and how, at their best, they can begin to help us reconfigure our condition and position in this world. art 71v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 humiliated, rendered in-existent, it is a body, an agency, which, even today, remains at the margin of being. it is not surprising, therefore, that it is the clamour for being, for breath, for life, which has driven a humancentric will for selfhood. this drive, this yearning, is agonistically evident in a protest placard which reads – i am somebody. for it is the very denial of the human that lies at the heart on an on-going struggle for dignity. my point. however, is not to champion this justifiable right. what interests me, rather, is the voided being, the in-existent limit, the abyssal horror which we choose to flee from, or like macbeth, tragically misconstrue. for as we are inescapably caught up in lies, if deception is the very ground upon which we live, then, surely, the recovery of some solvent agency, some beneficent model for a better life, comes at quite another cost. for one cannot only replace absence with presence, nothingness with something substantive, one must also reflect upon that which is worthwhile which lies within the void – the ability to exploit the veils that cloud us, the mystery that subsists in an afflicted and recessive condition. for to merely rename the black oppressed body positively, to bequeath it with a reason which, for centuries, it was denied, is to merely invert a pathology, replace a lack with a seeming clarity. in so doing, we come to foster a vision of black experience and black art as merely a reactive decree, and, thereby, deny it its richer complexity. for surely the black body and experience, and its artistic expression, should also be allowed its incommensurability, its perversity? if, for mishra, reason is doomed and no longer a useful tool, if reason is on the verge of bankruptcy as a mechanism for mediation, then why should it now assume a dominant role in black expression? as edmund burke, the eighteenth century english theorist of the sublime and compatriot of schiller reminded us, ‘the nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs’. reason, as a mechanism in-and-through which to attain a human right, is broken. which is precisely why we find ourselves caught up in an era of hyperbolic excess, hysteria, and, along with it, a mounting violence. it is because ‘reason has been reduced to a bloodlessly instrumental mode of rationality, which does no more than calculate its own advantage’, that we must now reconsider not only its uses but its abuses. for as the marxist cultural analyst, terry eagleton, resumes, ‘nature has been drained of its inner vitality and reduced to so much dead matter for human manipulation. what holds sway over human lives is utility, for which nothing can be precious in itself’. the art world – indeed, the world at large – has fallen victim to this cynically energised and limited application. reactive rather than active, declamatory rather than invocatory, this disposition, while necessary, is also enfeebled, for it blunts and contains a given struggle in scare quotes. divisive, oppositional, monomaniacal, and hysterical, it is a mechanism which cannot save us. hovering as we do in fog and filthy air, it is understandable that we might seek some clarity, but that clarity, as eagleton rightly notes, comes at the expense of complexity. if reason is doomed, if we find ourselves today in a realm in which distinctions are collapsing all about us, in a state increasingly liquid – ‘fluid’ – this state, the state of our time, need not be lamentable. truth after all was never the other of falsity. as nietzsche argues, ours has always been a culture informed in-and-through dissimulation. it is the ideal of truth, an imposition upon an inherently unscrupulous world, which is the strange attractor – a quality and a category which remains inherently remote. which is why i’ve chosen to emphasise the importance of lying as a generative rather than a degenerative agency. what makes ed young’s word-works compelling is not that they seek to speak truth to power, but that they implicate us in a founding hypocrisy. all so fucking african – displayed at frieze-new york in 2016 – is precisely that, a word-work which challenges the fetishization of africa as a continent, an idea, a principle. the tone of young’s work is exasperated, exhausted, numbed not only by the hype but the banalisation of a continent which for the past 500 years has operated as europe’s inverted and perverted other. that there has been a concerted attempt to rewire this prevailing prejudicial perception has in no way stifled its prevalence. instead, what we get is a disjunctive state in which a constitutive pathology is transmogrified. and yet, if we concur with coetzee’s view, then it is those very pathological attachments which, despite all attempts to the art t h e t h i n k e r72 contrary, will prevail. for coetzee it is this very pathological attachment to a dark truth which cannot be vaulted which makes south africa ‘as irresistible as it is unlovable’. while i share coetzee’s conviction, indeed his morbid neurosis, i nevertheless have also asked that we flip the prognosis and, thereby, resist this reading and learn to love the aggrieved and brutalised body of a country and a continent, and its people. for it is only through resistance and love – a resistance and a love which is not prescriptive – that we will begin to understand the complexity of the problem. art’s job, if it can be said to possess one, is not to solve a problem but to inhabit it in an engaging way. and i think that young does just this – he occupies a dilemma and makes it his vocation. in this regard, however, he also goes against the grain – the grain of resistance art which, dominant in the 70s and 80s, muted in the 90s, has resurfaced. for today, we find ourselves thoroughly caught up in mishra’s polarised and doomed logic, precisely because we mistakenly believe that we can think and paint ourselves out of a corner. paradox, however, cannot be so easily overcome, which is precisely why young has chosen to operate inside a contradiction, and, in so doing, foreground the lies which willingly, or unwillingly, we choose to spin. i see black people – a word-work exhibited at the johannesburg art fair in 2015 – expresses an observation. one might assume the first person pronoun – i – to be the subjective perspective of a white male artist. this could be true, but it is also not. the statement does not read, i, ed young, a white south african born in welkom in the free state, see black people. but because we know the artist to be white, male, and notorious, we tend to fix upon what could be a supremacist and racist abstraction of others. the generic conflation – ‘black people’ – is now not read as an objective sighting of a cluster, but a derogatory diminishing of a corpus of singularities into a blurred group. and yet, given the context for the exhibition of this statement, a forum whose very culture is exclusionary and predominantly frequented by a white middle class elite, surely this sighting is inaccurate? surely what young is telling us is that he does not see black people? that black people are markedly absent from a forum – the johannesburg art fair, one of africa’s leading trading centres – and, therefore, that it is their absence which is all the more palpable? 5: the sleep of reason the black body in pain is not the oracle of truth, and yet it is precisely the fixation on abjection which, with a morbid excrescence, has assumed dominance. it is against this impassioned but also pragmatic deployment of the black body – of blackness – which achille mbembe has chosen to think. his critique of black reason, typically dismissed by those who use blackness as a categorical imperative, is an inspiring attempt to think inside the difficulty of a contentious category. ‘though some names can flatter, the name “black” was from the beginning a mechanism for objectification and degradation’, mbembe notes. ‘it drew its strength from its capacity to suffocate and strangle, to amputate and emasculate. the name was like death’. to be black, he more starkly adds, is ‘the prototype of a poisoned, burnt subject … a being whose life is made of ashes’. departing from this most defiled of categories, mbembe seeks to explore just how a category like blackness – typically perceived as debased or threatening and violent – could operate both as ‘the clinical manifestation of a “sickness” of a political nature as it was a practice of the transformation of symbols’. it is only in this doubled sense – as a category pathological and transfiguring – that we can begin to grasp the complexity of the being it frames. the relevance of this approach is that it defies easy polarisation and allows one to inhabit a realm that is indistinct, in which one is no longer captive to the rights of an oppressed body or glibly insouciant in relation to its messianic destiny. it is in this regard that lungiswa gqunta emerges as a particularly canny young artist, for she not only recognises a history of pain and injustice but seeks, through a series of visceral and conceptual installations, to foreground the complexity of the oppressed being. clinical, exacting, daring in its execution, gqunta’s works point to the zone of indistinction, the constitutive void, which defines black experience in contemporary south africa. one work in particular stands out as an instance of this complexity. we see a bedframe, shaped in a precise square, the bed coils starkly a-glimmer, the bed’s frame tracked all about by a cold white light. above the coiled square the artist has fixed a clear art 73v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 it is in this regard that lungiswa gqunta emerges as a particularly canny young artist, for she not only recognises a history of pain and injustice but seeks, through a series of visceral and conceptual installations, to foreground the complexity of the oppressed being. sheet of perspex. this is the structure’s surface – transparent, vertiginous, devoid of any consoling support, for there is no mattress. there is only the frame that we see, the idea of a bed, shorn of any comfort, any fabric which one would reasonably suppose necessary for rest, for sleep. for in this lean sculptural work, spot-lit, stark, it is precisely rest, sleep, which is denied. in the place of a mattress, we find a thin bilious film of petrol. greenly iridescent, it is beautiful and it is chilling, for what lungiswa gqunta is telling us is that this is not a time of sleep but one of violent discord. francisco goya’s etching, as ruthlessly precise as lungiswa gqunta’s skeletal stage, is called ‘the sleep of reason produces monsters’, and it returns us to the implacability of this unrest. for ours is a time in which reason has failed us, in which we have become traumatised, besieged, and panic-stricken. and if we cannot escape the monstrousness of ours blasted lives, it is because we are ruinously inconsolable. the brilliance of gqunta’s installation – the bed is accompanied by a video work in which we see the artist’s calves and feet swaying backwards and forwards, clasped in makeshift sandals made of scrubbing brushes, the bristles replaced with matchsticks – lies in its latent force. for the installation is incendiary. it speaks to a burning world – ‘a being whose life is made of ashes’ – in which there is no privacy, no peace, in which the home is a battleground. as the matchstick points of the brushes sweep across a bed of coals, we imagine that all, in an instant, could be engulfed in flames – a sensation which all the more forcefully ignites itself within us as we see the shimmer of petrol and the delicate impress it has made on the perspex sheet. here we return to my initial reflection on the lie as something shallow, undisturbed and undiscussed, assuming a horizontal position on a supporting surface. but i am also reminded of k sello duiker’s superb novel, the quiet violence of dreams, published in 2001, in which the wracked state of the black imagination assumes its stark presence. for duiker, like gqunta, well knew that reason, dispensed as an antidote to horror, is not only generic but a venomous fake. ‘we’re not all god’s children’, duiker writes. ‘in here god doesn’t exist. i am the forgotten who lies rotting in a barrel of fermenting apples. god never heard my cries. i never saw the light or touched on something sacred in myself. we’re not all mystics who can extract beauty from our pain. some of us are just born with too much corruption to ever survive it’. that duiker’s novel proved the inspiration for a group show jointly curated by blank projects and the stevenson gallery in 2016, should further impress upon us the crippling extent of south africa’s damaged psyche. today we are very far removed indeed from ed young’s only optimistic work, a sculpture of desmond tutu in flight, holding fast to a lurching candelabra. made in 2010, it is a sculpture to which i repeatedly returned with my daughters’. the words which accompanied the grinning airborne desmond tutu, now, in hindsight, are an arid mockery – be patient – the declaration reads – we only have a few things to fix. at the exhausted limit of reason, in the midst of an agonistic and inconsolable fact of abuse, disregard, debasement, duiker, like gqunta and young, seek to create art that infects us with its ruinous difficulty. duiker would kill himself in 2004, but not before he bequeathed us a bare-boned body of work which defied the hypocrisy that still seeks to contain and nullify black experience. ‘i don’t care for people who want to prescribe what it means and doesn’t mean to be african’, he writes. ‘people say things just for the hell of it, to hear their own voices blowing out vacuous breath. i know who i am’. it is this vacuity which we find spoken all about, a vacuity which shapes and informs so much talk of african art today. it is a vacuity that subsists in a dangerous and fraudulent lie. at the root of the problem is perception: what we choose to see and why? given that lies are built into perception, the problem is not that we lie – this is unavoidable – rather, what should be concerning are the lies which come in the way of a deeper understanding. if ed young’s provocation or luniswa gqunta’s insinuation are compelling, it is art t h e t h i n k e r74 because they appeal to this greater understanding – they understand and manipulate the illusory power of art, and, in so doing, tap into the structures of feeling – a structure of anger and dissent – in which it subsists. neither artist is reactive – though young’s art appears to be so – rather, both actively engage with the difficulty of perception, the one by challenging the complacent exploitation of entitlement, the other, more demandingly, by foregrounding a besieged psyche and body. i have written on these matters at great length, and in variant and conflicting iterations, in my book in the world. for the purposes of this conversation, however, i seek only to address the ubiquitous nature of the misperception of african art. there is, for example, the gauche view that the spiking interest in african art signals a ‘second scramble’, yet another occupation and deterritorialization of africa’s agency and value. to bluntly state, as does matthew partridge, that ‘in south africa the art world is a white world, trading in blacks’, is a view that is as convincing as it is offensive and disturbing. but my point, here, is not to bemoan this state of affairs, let alone right it. rather, what interests me far more is the value of a calculated dissonance and an enabling lie. for just as i cannot stomach the exploitation of the black body and its expressions, neither can i wholly endorse the jingoistic assumption that it is an invariable force for good. piety in the understanding of black experience must be routed out. as steve bantu biko noted in i write what i like, ‘the first step … is to make the black man come to himself, to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. this is what we mean by an inward-looking process. this is the definition of “black consciousness”’. the ‘black man’, therefore, is complicit in the engineering of his own dissolution and co-optation in an enterprise which, fundamentally, refuses him a greater probity. and if the art world has allowed this to happen it is precisely because it has favoured the iconic and spectacular at the expense of what edmund burke termed ‘the greatest possible complexity’. tragically still perceived as a curiosity, the black being and its works have rarely been permitted to move beyond an assigned representational economy. there is, of course, an urgent move to override this tendency, the decision by an institution – which will not be named – to exchange its white male blue chip art with works by women and blacks being a typical and rather sinister instance of this new-fangled political correctness. ironically, it is the overweening desire to ‘do good’ and right an imbalance which further compromises an already compromised art world. after nietzsche, it is this political correctness which has emerged as a symptom which has forgotten it is a dangerous illusion. we see this misstep in operation in curatorial projects and tertiary curricula everywhere. the widely touted tragically still perceived as a curiosity, the black being and its works have rarely been permitted to move beyond an assigned representational economy. there is, of course, an urgent move to override this tendency. sleeping pools – lungiswa gqunta art 75v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 decolonising project is a glaring instance of this misstep. as a rational project – a project driven by a good reason – it fails to address the more complex matter of human complexity, a matter, a factor, refused at its outset by colonialism, which, as terry eagleton has rightly pointed out, is ‘at root a political and economic reality, not (as some postcolonial theory imagines) a cultural one’. the greater appeal – expressed by achille mbembe, and which has been troublingly disregarded and disabused today – is to engage in ‘the project of a world that is coming, a world before us, one whose destination is universal, a world freed from the burden of race, from resentment, and from the desire for vengeance that all racism calls into being’. consigned to the dumpster for being utopian, it is a view which nevertheless connects rather than divides us. it is, in other words, a better and more engendering lie, precisely because it holds fast to a beneficent will in a time which is fast becoming irredeemably balkanised. for as james baldwin has reminded us – a reminder which the ideologues amongst us wilfully suppress – ‘the rage of the disesteemed’, while ‘absolutely inevitable’ is also ‘personally fruitless’. art cannot construct solutions to our ills, it can only implicate us in the difficulty of addressing them. as jeannette winterson notes in art objects: essays on ecstasy and eff rontery, ‘the true artist is interested in the art object as an art process, the thing in being, the being of the thing, the struggle, the excitement, the energy, that have found expression in a particular way. the true artist is after the problem. the false artist wants it solved (by somebody else)’. while i do not support winterson’s distinction between the ‘true artist’ and the ‘false artist’, claiming rather that we lie for better or for worse, i nevertheless cannot shirk her conclusion that prescriptive art is also unduly conscriptive – it asks us to complete its meaning, to be its foil. that this incorporating and inclusive view has become increasingly commonplace – the viewer democratically championed as art’s extension and arbiter – reveals the degree to which populism has infected the art world, indeed, the world at large. in this troubling regard, however, we should remember biko’s caution and be wary of being complicit in the ‘crime’ of allowing ourselves to be so ‘misused’. this caution – qualified variously by mbembe, biko, and winterson – is brilliantly heeded and overridden by daniel stompie selibe, who, to my mind, best exemplifies an art in which blackness – as a trope for subjection or victimhood – is exhausted and reconceptualised. in his works – part collage, part febrile mark-making – it is ‘the being of the thing, the struggle, the excitement, the energy’ which compels us. simon schama’s description of the paintings by soutine as ‘observed phenomena’ that ‘dissolve completely in a pottage of paint – the paint flung on with abandon, wet into wet, forming ropes, snakes, flat ribbons of sharp colour, while the whole surging surface is sometimes slashed over with welt-raising strokes of black’, cannily mirrors the abyssal vortex which distinguishes selibe’s world. his is an art refined by oblivion, which stands as a remarkable testimony to the enraging hopelessness which consumes us. for as james baldwin reminded us, ‘people are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them’. the prevailing lie – mired in political correctness, candice – daniel stompie selibe art t h e t h i n k e r76 and thus, after winterson, a lie that generates a ‘false’ art – is that this oblivion must, perforce, be overcome. daniel stompie selibe, i’d wager, has refused this stifling and crippling imperative. rather, his is an art – closest in spirit to k sello duiker’s quiet violence of dreams – which has chosen to inhabit an enraging hopelessness. it is an art poised at the tipping point in the experience of being human at this moment in the twentyfirst century. for it is not only the art of a black south african consciousness but a consciousness that is engulfing the entirety of the world; a consciousness distressed, panic-stricken, fearful, which, nevertheless, must forge a path, no matter how inarticulate and graspingly futile. 6: a different political potential if ‘[t]ruths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions’, if they are but ‘metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins’, it is because they have lost or mistaken their currency. this, however, has not stopped a failed currency from being minted anew. in south africa, i have witnessed this counterfeit played out in the quest for free education in which neither freedom nor education has been fundamentally addressed. but it is not this acutely complex matter with which i wish to conclude this conversation, but its antidote, for above and beneath this rhetoric for change there exists an art which can overcome it – an art which refuses to sustain the fictions which we inevitably embrace, but which, despite this refusal, can nevertheless help us to live better, if difficult, lives. one such fiction, one such lie, for jm coetzee, is that ‘after we die we wake up in another, better world’. another is achille mbembe’s, ‘of a world that is coming … a world freed from … resentment.’ if damned for being fraudulent, they nevertheless hold fast to their currency. and what connects these beliefs, these fantasies, is their fortitude and their fundamental inconclusiveness. for while we cannot shirk the indisputable fact of ‘a widening abyss of race, class, and education’, while our ‘intellectual industry’ has become increasingly polarised, what persists and cannot be overridden, despite innumerable efforts to do so, is our capacity for some starkly austere critical wonder. in the midst of our flawed and aggrieved state, we have the ability to access our better selves. and it is in this particular regard, finally, that i want to share with you the work of a remarkable young artist – alana blignaut. a master’s graduate from the university of witswaterand in johannesburg – i was her external examiner in 2018 – blignaut introduced me to a room blackened, but for one light projection which revealed a series of looped portraits. my first impression was that i was looking at fine pencil drawings, or drawings scored with acute delicacy in some grey ink. photographs were not what i thought i was seeing. this incorrect, yet reasonable impression, made sense when i realised that what blignaut was in fact doing was not taking photographs but digitally morphing a grouping of photographs of men and women respectively, and reconstructing them according to received ideas of caste-phenotype-race. the images were taken from an apartheid prison archive, the subjects deemed a threat to the state. through a digital process – too complex for me to grasp and explain here – the artist had reconfigured the idea of objecthood and personhood. she was asking us to rethink how we see people – the ideological-political-cultural-faux scientific methods we use to appropriate others and consign them to a preordained and imposed set of categories. the reasoning behind it all was especially compelling, for what i thought primarily interested blignaut was not only the system of closed meanings which confined the subject-as-object according to gender and race, but the slippage that occurred in the attempt to do so. the categories were intrinsically aberrant, it seemed, for they also inadvertently announced the a-categorical. this insight i thought then, as i do now, is critical, particularly today, in a culture both local and through a digital process – too complex for me to grasp and explain here – the artist had reconfigured the idea of objecthood and personhood. she was asking us to rethink how we see people – the ideological-politicalcultural-faux scientific methods we use to appropriate others and consign them to a preordained and imposed set of categories. art 77v o l u m e 8 2 / 2 0 1 9 global which seeks to imprison and herd human beings. that blignaut chose the faces of purported ‘criminals’ or perceived ‘threats’ to the apartheid system as her focus and terrain, in no way belied the fact that she was also addressing the darkly current reinvestment in the objectification of human beings according to race and gender. however, her critique was even more far reaching, for what interested the artist was the impertinence and obscenity which undergirds the naming and framing of people. what spurred her on was the vexed impossibility of any strategy of containment. in short, the artist had deftly drawn my attention to the visceral and cognitive fact that no human being can, finally, be reduced to a type. blignaut’s endeavour was not only a brilliant deconstruction of types, but also a deconstruction of the imagined essence mistakenly believed to subsist in types. for through an exploration of ‘facial averaging’, in which a cluster of men and women were morphed to create a single image, we learnt not only of the universality of faces – that we belong to one species – but, far more importantly, that no face can truly contain its singularity, and that faces – the aggregation thereof – resulted in two impossibilities – the impossibility of the singular and the impossibility of the universal. what, one wonders, is achieved in renouncing or suspending these absolutes? for blignaut, i think it opened up a far more fluid comprehension of the viscosity, rather than the density, of being. that the artist is currently undergoing an alteration in gender – thereby challenging the imperative of polarity and the ruse of essences – has surely informed this astoundingly potent work. for as blignaut’s co-supervisor and long-standing collaborator, kathryn smith, more pointedly noted, the artist’s innovation displayed ‘an active perversion of a historically discriminatory and repressive technology and method’, and, in so doing, invoked ‘something both beautiful and unsettling, that asserts a different political potential’. i have chosen to conclude this conversation with blignaut because she has reminded us that the lie that is art, the lie that is perception, is one that harbours great riches – a different political potential. in foregoing certainty, in embracing the infinity that is difference, we arrive at the enabling lie which makes life and art conditions in which we can survive. after all, a ’regulative and imperative world’ is one that kills, no matter how necessary that regulation and imperative may seem to be. ■ this essay was first delivered as a public lecture at the university college of london’s institute of advanced studies on october 3rd 2018, as part of a series of talks on lies. an abridged version – 2000 words – was published by the ias in the spring 2019 issue of think pieces. ‘six asides on art & lies’, since revised, appears in full for the first time in the thinker. selected bibliography james baldwin, ‘stranger in the village’, notes of a native son, boston ma: beacon press, 1955. steve bantu biko, i write what i like, johannesburg: picador africa, 2004. edmund burke, reflections on the revolution in france, new haven: yale university press, 2003 j.m. coetzee, doubling the point: essays and interviews, cambridge ma: harvard university press, 1992. k. sello duiker, the quiet violence of dreams, johannesburg: kwela books, 2001. terry eagleton, culture, new haven and london: yale university press, 2016. ashraf jamal, in the world: essays on contemporary south af rican art, milan: skira, 2017. achille mbembe, the critique of black reason, johannesburg: wits university press, 2018. pankaj mishra, age of anger: a history of the present, london: allen lane, 2017 mike nicol, the waiting country: a south af rican witness, london: victor gollancz, 1995. friedrich nietzsche, ‘on truth and lies in the nonmoral sense’, http:// www.e.scoala.ro/biblioteca/friedrich_nietzsche.html simon schama, hang-ups: essays on painting (mostly), london: bbc books, 2004. susan sontag, regarding the pain of others, london: penguin books, 2004. jeanette winterson: art objects: essays on ecstasy and eff rontery, toronto: alfred a. knopf, 1995 female average male average – alana blignaut art _goback by charles matseke | peer review 40 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 land reform in south africa abstract for the past two to three decades, since the transition to democracy, policy orientation in south af rica has predominantly been centred on redressing the inequalities and legacies of the apartheid regime. this was broadly defined as social justice, with the land question often treated as a highly state-centric matter reserved for government, until julius malema became president of the af rican national congress youth league (ancyl) and then leader of the economic freedom fighters (eff). this article explores some of the dominant narratives around the land question in post-apartheid south af rica and presents some recommendations on how the issue of land should be dealt with in the immediate future. peer reviewpeer review 41t h e t h i n k e r introduction when the af rican national congress (anc) came into power in 1994, one of its immediate undertakings was to resolve the disparities which the black masses were subjected to. however, to this day, the spotty efficacy of the anc’s land redistribution efforts have seen barely a quarter of the land in question restored to black farmers, according to agrisa. during the 2019 general elections, the debate around the redistribution of land became more pronounced. fast forward to the 2021 upcoming municipal elections: the renewed promise of meaningful and long-overdue land redistribution is at the top of the anc’s to-do list and represents a significant political juncture. the country’s failure to address the land question reflects not only on the various disparities black south af ricans are facing, f rom poor economic growth to spiralling unemployment, but also on the broader inability to introduce practical solutions that would create a just society in which the backdrop of apartheid’s legacy is addressed. the question of land reform, particularly the taking of land f rom white farmers, has become widespread not only in south af rica but has also reached the shores of canada, britain, and the united states. unfortunately for the majority of south af rica, the question of land redistribution is a complex one, characterised by a long history of failed state policies such as the rdp, gear, and asgisa. this is also coupled with rampant corruption and a lack of political will that spans successive cabinets. in the debate’s most recent incarnation, the anc proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow government to seize unused private land without compensation – a process popularly known as the expropriation of land without compensation – widely echoed by eff commander in chief, julius malema. through this popular agenda, the anc continues to convey vague promises that this would have far reaching economic benefits. yet, it still remains unclear how the anc’s proposed policies would be implemented. moreover, its draft legislation also provides no clear guidance for dealing with customary and communal forms of land ownership. this chapter explores some of the dominant narratives around the land question in post-apartheid south af rica. for decades, many south af ricans have continued to live in poverty and have hoped that things would turn one day through their democratic right to vote. the first section of this paper will provide an overview and background of the land question. the next section will subsequently follow some of the new debates around the land question and, finally, some recommendations will be provided on how the question of land should be dealt with in the immediate future. background and contextualisation post-colonial societies must immediately address the question of redress because the dis-location and dis-ownership of land f rom a conquered people is a key feature of any colonial conquest. the indigenous people of south af rica are no exception to this historical injustice. one of the core functions of the colonial project is the justification of the interests of the occupying force. in south af rica particularly, the british utilised race, lineage, and development to fully implement the colonial project. however, the official use of race for discriminatory purposes has become obsolete. race on its own is no longer the primary, definable, and explicit instrument that it was during the 19th century. yet, its footprints – racism and racial discrimination – still stand. access to property is significantly determined by culture and structural racism. one of the founding constitutional mandates of post-apartheid south af rica is redress. the redress of property relations, the land in particular, was a key issue during the transitional negotiations into a postapartheid and democratic society. in this setting, the entrenchment of property rights as an unqualified right is reaffirmed. the constitution thus provides for the creation of property rights to be underpinned by a need to transform the relations of the indigenous people to their ancestral land. a number of elements in the constitution’s property clause, which legislate for these intentions, include the explicit power of the state to expropriate land without compensation in the interest of public benefit, the right to land restitution for the victims of forced removals, and the right to equitably access land. given that the art of politics, war, and economic power has been used to decide the fate of the native people, new laws can be introduced and enacted under the constitutional democracy. in this regard, the first item was land, the formalisation of conquest. at the time, it was unlawful for native people to register land in their own names. peer review 42 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 with the enactment of the native land act of 1913, native people were formally restricted into small and overcrowded native reserves. apartheid as a state policy was implemented in 1948. those supporting this policy referred to it as the diplomacy of separate developments. this policy perpetrated racial segregation and the balkanization of the country into various homelands f rom 1963 onwards, with the transkei being the first ever bantustan created. the struggle for f reedom was thus a struggle for land to be returned to its rightful owners. during the 1980s, the apartheid regime started to be unpopular and thus felt pressure, both internally and externally, which ultimately led to its collapse. a new promise for the land to be returned thus emanated. however, it came with different conditions, as opposed to those that underpinned the struggle for f reedom. a new kind of struggle erupted: one that would be led by the principles of constitutional supremacy. for example, land was one of the most contested issues at the lancaster house when zimbabwe negotiated for its independence in 1979. the questions under discussion included: should the land taken f rom the native people during colonisation be returned? if so, on what conditions should this land be returned? this happened because the constitution’s property clause protected the white population of zimbabwe, allowing them to retain all the land stolen during the colonial era. nevertheless, the democratic state could forcibly take the land it needed for public benefit, which included the resettlement of persons without land. twenty years later, after some trials and error, the model collapsed, with the failure of the central government to utilise the legal instruments available to them constitutionally. ironically, when the late robert mugabe’s administration established a draft property clause in 2000, it failed to overrule the lancaster house agreement, meaning that the country’s land reform would largely follow a market fundamentalist approach. since then, the return of land to the native people remains a shattered dream. a new struggle awaits, not controlled f rom the centre but arising f rom the ground itself, posing some difficult questions regarding the unfinished business of the liberation struggle. until and unless there is a conf rontation with the negotiated settlement of the transitional period, it is impossible to speak of f reedom, equality, and dignity, the most cherished of values, during the negotiations. property relations were at the centre of the transition talks. nonetheless, in retrospect, it can be deducted that neither zimbabwe’s nor namibia’s governments’ constitution schemes allowed for land reform rights. the return of ancestral land has since been watered down into a farfetched dream. a new quest, accompanied by quibbles about the definitions of who is entitled to the land, seems to dominate the debate about land reform and land expropriation without compensation. commercial and agricultural land remains in the hands of the white minority group in south af rica. the road to 2021 on the road to the 2021 municipal elections, both the eff and the anc have the f ront seat in leading the debate around the implementation of the expropriation without compensation bill. subsequently, the anc adopted the policy of expropriation without compensation, together with parliament contemplating the amendment of section 25 of the constitution in order to expropriate without compensation. as one can imagine and understand, property rights are indeed one of the pillars of our developing economy. south af rica finds herself in a peculiar and self-perpetuated status quo, with the highest rates of service delivery protests (predominantly related to housing), a widely vast gap between the rich and the poor, and staggeringly high rates of youth unemployment which escalated to 26.7% during the first quarter of 2018 (stats sa, 2018). the expropriation of land without compensation for the poor majority seems like a tailor-made answer for the masses. the recent illegal land grabs around south af rica can perhaps resemble the thorn of desperation that people have to bear, at least in their own sense. there are a number of possible consequences that the expropriation of land without compensation bill could bring, including but not limited to: food insecurity, job loss, communal violence (potentially along ethnic lines), and an economic meltdown. meanwhile, the land summit that took place in boksburg in may 2018 and the subsequent parliamentary hearings on how to go about crafting the bill, as well as discussions around whether the constitution needs to be amended, did very little to map out what the implications could be for a democratic developmental state within a market system and for a globally traded currency and an import-oriented consumer base such as south af rica. peer reviewpeer review 43v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 in july 2018, after the intentions to expropriate without compensation made their rounds in the media and parliament, property24 listed about 4,840 farms for sale in gauteng, 998 in kwa-zulu natal, and about 1,544 in the free state. one may question if the leadership could have a legitimate justification for putting an already f ragile economy at considerable risk in pursuit of political mileage and populism? it could perhaps be blamed on the momentum gained f rom the socio-political system, which has once again brought identity politics to the fore. as president, cyril ramaphosa is faced with an array of complex issues, ranging f rom effectively curbing the spread of covid-19, to redressing the government’s failures in dealing with institutional corruption and nepotism. on the other hand, attracting investor confidence and growing the economy is particularly challenging under the dark cloud of a party divided by factionalism, populism, and a winners-take-all attitude. the lineage of these painstaking issues can be found in the zuma rogue administration, with their populist mantras such as targeting ‘white monopoly capital,’ and enacting ‘radical economic transformation’ under the pursuit of ‘inclusive growth’. with the 2021 municipal elections only a few months away, both the eff and the anc have seen the land question as a benchmark of transformation and political discourse. the eff has mounted pressure that will either force the anc to amend section 25 of the constitution, or be exposed as disingenuous and grandstanding and even in cahoots with the minority. generally, the land question has invoked identity politics, which in turn has seen the rise of hostility between black af ricans and minority white and af rikaner communities (riaan, 2018: 42). this has at times resulted in racially sparked tensions, going so far as to reach the farmers, as well as civil unrest, particularly in the north west province and the free state, mainly due to land issues and equal access to service delivery. therefore, the real question is: how seriously do the anc and the eff take the land question as a policy issue? and how can its intended and unintended consequences be mitigated? for a moment’s pause, we may try to envisage a scenario entertained by an ordinary south af rican living below the poverty line. how are they to comprehend and interpret statements made by prominent figures such as julius malema, encouraging the illegal occupation of land? could such a person be expected to realise that they are being used as bait to pursue electioneering and political grandstanding? these critiques are still making their rounds even within the divided anc itself. while the masses, or at least those who claim to be the voice of the poor, support land expropriation without compensation, the elites still believe in moderating the current systems without any detriment to the stability of the economy. to take a short detour on the two-fold nature of the anc: the south af rican media seems to be overwhelmingly conveying the narrative that figures such as jacob zuma are designed to divide the anc by introducing factions and using populist ideals to set the course for today’s political climate. the present analysis argues otherwise, however. these figures are given too much credit. a history often shied away f rom is the fact that in 1912, when the anc was launched, the likes of alf red mangena, pixley ka isaka seme, and george montsioa fought for the accommodation of ‘black intellectuals’ into the newly created union of south af rica. these were mostly cambridgeand oxford-trained lawyers. we can thank henry sylvester williams for his influence and rigour in founding pan-af ricanism. towards the mid 1900s, the mass character of the anc arose, especially after 1948 with south af rica adopting apartheid as a state ideology and policy. well, growth is not always good, is it? throughout history, we have seen companies and organisations that have collapsed after merging with others and thus expanding. for some, like the anc, it took almost a century to fully realise the two-fold character deeply embedded in the face of the movement. the mass character, plus the structures and systems of the electoral systems and party structures, have naturally given the masses an upper hand over the elites. even amongst black south af ricans themselves, the poor and destitute outnumber the few black middle class and elites. therefore, the evidence seems to point overwhelmingly to the fact that the anc has always been divided and that factionalism is just a side effect of this origins story of the liberationmovementturned-government. as one would imagine, if the land expropriation without compensation is translated into policy action, the government will have to revive the department of peer review 44 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 rural development and land reform and substantially increase the budget and invest in research and policy development to improve the land bank and their long-failed ineffective systems. this is the type of rhetoric and process that the government of the day and their consultants grapple with, but history always has more to say. take the land expropriation without compensation programs in namibia. when this tune was being sung at the height of electioneering in 1989, the people resonated with it; it was the right thing to talk about and believe in. but years later, the masses are conf ronted with a harsh reality. government has finally introduced the criteria for how it will distribute the land it expropriated and, unfortunately, the poor do not make the cut (eyewitness news, 2018). the beneficiaries of the land until the present day remain those in the black elite and upper-middle classes; the same happened in zimbabwe (clara, 2018: 37). south af rica has also flexed with her abilities to follow namibia and zimbabwe. remember the dairy farm in the free state that was lawfully expropriated for the so-called common good? well, that land landed in the hands of the controversial gupta-zuma axis. for those who live in faith, land expropriation in south af rica will mean two things: economic f reedom and the end of poverty, even though the people of namibia and zimbabwe would beg to differ. for the pragmatists and the level-minded, this may also mean two things: economic suicide and civil unrest. needless to say, perhaps for the politicians the land question is just the right dosage of euphoria to gain popularity and relevance in contemporary political discourse. the future of land reform in south africa this section zooms into the future of land reform in south af rica and considers how best the state can move forward. the lineages, cultures, traditions, and racial complexions of the people f rom which the land was taken have changed over time. with regard to the structural transformation of the economy, it is not clear if the significance of land has remained constant. in the case of south af rica, the constitution serves as the catalyst for change in land relations. the first step in understanding its role would be to examine how best the land can be returned to the hands of the rightful beneficiaries. the notion of expropriation of land without compensation has gained momentum in the public imagination recently. at its 54th national conference in december 2017, the anc adopted the idea of expropriation without compensation as amongst the key tools for land redress and redistribution. this prompted a parliamentary committee which held public hearings on the possibility of amending the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation. the focus is on how to handle any expropriation proportionally and without imposing any undue hardships. those who are against this constitutional amendment have thus far relied on a combination of the slow pace of land reform, high prices of land, entrenched and racialised poverty, and historical land dispossession. also under consideration is the text of the constitution that refers to the amount of compensation in the current quest for expropriation. however, to begin with this process, a distinction must be drawn between expropriation and the deprivation of rights over land. a deprivation of rights is defined by two elements: a substantial interference in or limitation of the rights of a person to access or exploit their property and for that limitation to exceed the standard regulations of property use and enjoyment of f reedom in a democratic society. expropriation, on the other hand, is a subset of deprivation, although different in scope and magnitude. in the case of expropriated land, the owner loses the right of ownership completely to the state. common law provides for the deprivation of property without compensation only for the benefit of the people. during the 1915 appellate division, the then-high court of appeal granted that parliament could pass laws to restrict any persons of their property without compensation, even though it ruled that there was a presumption against it. the former chief justice ismail mahomed once wrote that a constitution reflects the shared aspirations of a nation and the values that bind its people (see ngcukaitobi, 2021: 3–7). he went on to say that in the case of south af rica, the constitution is a rejection of the past that arbitrarily denied citizens, on the grounds of race and colour, the right to access and acquire land. the future should be founded by the values of democracy, universalism, care, and aspiration towards an egalitarian society. under normal circumstances, the primary focus of a constitutional change is the courts, as they develop the law to reflect the nuances of the needs of a society. peer reviewpeer review 45v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 while the text of the constitution serves as a departure point for interpreting the law, it is never an end point on its own. the end point is primarily indeterminable; interpreting a statute is never truly the dogmatic approach of precedent, but rather an exercise in imagination. legal experts often argue that the constitution, like any other law, is not beyond change. of the 17 constitutional amendments that took place in the past 25 years, no proposed amendment stood out more than the inaptly named property clause in section 25 of the constitution of south af rica 1996. this was largely because the dispossession of land f rom af ricans by westerners was a key feature of the colonial quest. the struggle for f reedom was underpinned by a quest to alter the inherent unequal access to property relations. as the constitution was being negotiated during the transition into postapartheid south af rica, the key focus of the previously dispossessed people was changes to the unequal access to landholding. when looking at the state of politics and transition in south af rica, one should keep in mind that the present format of the constitution was not the result of a consensus: it was in fact heavily contested, even when it was adopted in 1996. the position of the anc during the negotiations, as reflected in its 1991 draft bill of rights, was rigid on the right to own property (ngcukaitobi, 2021: 21). the draft bill reads as follows: ‘all men and women, lawfully constituted bodies, are entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions, including the right to acquire, own or dispose of property in any part of the country without distinction based on colour, language, lineage or creed’. the bill also provides for the payment of compensation in the cases of rights to property, including land that has been deprived. compensation should be just, taking into account the need to establish a balance between the public interest and the interests of those affected. disputes over compensation should be resolved independently by tribunals or courts. furthermore, going ahead, the purpose of land reform should be to reconcile three main issues: addressing the injustices of history, conf ronting the continued inequalities to land access, and securing an equity based future for all those who live in south af rica. the programme for land restitution by the state has been in disarray since its introduction. instead of providing a rational anchor around which previous land dispossessions could be excused, the cut-off date of 19 june 1913 has aggravated the prevailing dispossession. the inefficiencies of the law to address the land question is thus exposed by the continued struggle for access to landholding. those who believe in the historical legitimacy of their claims were disappointed to find out that their claims, according to law, are not valid because their forefathers lost their land before 19 june 1913. furthermore, applicants believe that they were a community at the time of their dispossession, in which ‘community’ was defined differently. despite the public’s dissatisfaction about government’s inability to reform land, a directionless situation arises within the bureaucracy. the overlapping and concurrent mandates, inefficient institutions, and a lack of community support organisations have exacerbated the decline in implementing the law (ngcukaitobi, 2021: 77). conclusion the 2019 general elections have added value to the land debate thus far, and it is likely that it will be yet again a major issue in the local government elections of 2021. the eff appears to be in full gear, particularly in terms of its firm stance on the land question. on the other hand, the anc is at war with itself: the toxic environment that jacob zuma left for cyril ramaphosa still has a long way to go towards the elections, and to rub salt into the wounds is the court battles by the anc provincial electoral commissions and, most notably, the political killings in the embattled eastern cape and kwa-zulu natal provinces. one would assume that south af rica is yet to face the worst political violence since the 2019 general elections on a the former chief justice ismail mahomed once wrote that a constitution reflects the shared aspirations of a nation and the values that bind its people (see ngcukaitobi, 2021: 3–7). he went on to say that in the case of south africa, the constitution is a rejection of the past that arbitrarily denied citizens, on the grounds of race and colour, the right to access and acquire land. peer review 46 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 nation-wide scale. the south af rican government will thus be tasked with the major duty of first reviving the ministry of rural development and land reform, should this debate be transformed into policy action. the history of tribalism as a troublesome factor is unfortunately deeply rooted within the anc itself and will thus not come as a surprise should there be any transfer of land after the 2019 general elections. the people of south af rica have not only lost hope in government itself, but also in the institutions that are supposed to mirror a commitment and a peoplecentred user service delivery network. this is to say that there is a lot that must be done to government institutions and processes by government before a challenge as major as land transfer can be trialled and tested. references eyewitness news, (2018). ‘namibian president urges peaceful land reform debate’. eyewitness news [online]. available at: https://ewn. co.za/2018/08/27/namibian-president-urges-peaceful-land-reformdebate herman, p. (2017). ‘radical economic transformation arose f rom the anc – zuma’. news24 [online]. available at: https://www.news24.com/ southaf rica/news/radical-economic-transformation-arose-f romthe-anc-zuma-20171109 ngcukaitobi, t. (2021). land matters: south af rica’s failed land reforms and the road ahead. cape town: penguin random house south af rica. property24, (2018). ‘land reform and expropriation: what it actually means for sa’. property24 [online]. available at: https://www. property24.com/articles/land-reform-and-expropriation-what-itactually-means-for-sa/27561 statistics south af rica, (2018). ‘youth unemployment still high in q1: 2018’. statssa [online]. available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11129 visagie, r. (2018). struggle(s) for self-determination: af rikaner aspirations in the twenty-first century. phd thesis: stellenbosch university. [online] available at: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/ b i t s t r e a m / h a n d l e / 1 0 0 1 9 . 1 / 1 0 3 3 4 4 / v i s a g i e _ s t r u g g l e _ 2 0 1 8 . pdf?sequence=2&isallowed=y walther, t.c. (2017) ‘land reform: will zimbabwe’s economic downfall be repeated in south af rica?’. dw [online]. available at: https://www. dw.com/en/land-reform-will-zimbabwes-economic-downfall-berepeated-in-south-af rica/a-41972001 peer reviewpeer review abstract scholarly research has shown that the role of media and information (a crucial variable in the success of democracy) has been eroded by misinformation, propaganda, and controversy. this paper observes that social media platforms such as facebook and twitter are critical agents for disseminating news f rom various news outlets, including the spreading of popular opinion on political discourse. in hindsight, these platforms inform the basis of true f reedom of speech, f reedom of information, and political participation. however, influential political leaders, such as former united states president donald trump, have abused this privilege by pronouncing unfiltered ‘fake news’ that have led to topical incidences such as the invasion of the capitol. terrorist groups have turned what could have been an activist and liberation platform (considering the online arab spring revolution) into a mechanism to conduct propaganda and recruitment campaigns. this article aims to explain ‘fake news’ and the effects it can have on democratic society post-covid-19. the research was conducted by gathering data f rom popular press outlets such as the new york times, the washington post, bbc news, cnn, and buzzfeed. it considers some solutions to mitigate fake news: critical to these is the need for a well-informed society to distinguish facts f rom falsities and ambiguities. this paper also argues for improving fact-check initiatives in global social networks and for a change in social media value systems f rom being contentto quality-based. 59v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 by candice chirwa and zimkhitha manyana | peer review peer review the rise of fake news: surveying the effects of social media on informed democracy 60 t h e t h i n k e r introduction democracy is widely and correctly understood as a political system that stipulates that the levers of power should rest with the demos and that government ought to be of the people, for the people, and by the people (britannica, 2021). in this manner, functional democracies depend to a large extent on an attentive and active civil society and ‘the last decade or so has seen an explosion of interest in the question of civil society and the role of media and information in democratic politics’ (jacobs, 2011: 1; graham, 2015: 83). the question is how far this goal is f rom being achieved through social media; implied in this is the sub-question of whether facebook and twitter provide reliable platforms to convey accurate information to their users. social media has become a dominant source for both spreading information and shaping opinions worldwide. in our fast-paced world, where information is received by the mere tap of a button, there has been a rise of content that intends to distort information or opinion for partisan or financial gains. this phenomenon is termed ‘fake news’. despite the lack of extensive academic research on the phenomenon in its present form, fake news is a real and present threat to democracies worldwide because of its impact on political discourse. the problem arises when massive newsworthy stories like the 6 january 2021 united states (us) capitol invasion, which stands alongside 9/11 (both wars act against american democracy), are widely covered by numerous news outlets. these stories are either overcovered before unveiling the facts around the story or under-covered when those facts are revealed (the independent, 2021). debatably, the us media reports on the invasion might have heightened the actual event and contributed to the spread of ‘fake news’, sparking animosity and distress. however, this does not ignore the main instigator – former president donald trump, who falsely claimed an early election victory to a crowd who was already convinced that his defeat was unfair. this statement fuelled a day of chaos, violence, and an unprecedented loss of lives. in protest mode, pro-trump supporters unlawfully invaded the capitol, hallmarking the seemingly wild accusation of an american ‘democratic malaise’ and luring threats of backsliding into an autocracy (the washington post, 2020; ap news, 2021). therefore, this paper aims to explain the features of fake news and the fake implications news can have on society. subsequently, it will consider some solutions to mitigate fake news. researching fake news while fake news has been prevalent for several years before the 2016 us presidential election, the topic only recently became interesting to broader scholarly research because it was not pervasive in the political and print news realm before the election. research into fake news at the academic level is quickly rising and deepening in the wake of the successive elections in the us. even though the research is expanding and will reach a substantial level in the coming years, this article has in some sense been completed at only the infancy of the new research. the research was gathered f rom popular press such as the new york times, the washington post, and buzzfeed. press sites such as buzzfeed news, which were often considered clickbait websites, have been an invaluable source of statistics on fake news, its propagation, and identifying how it functions. defining fake news ‘your organisation is terrible,’ said president-elect donald j. trump, addressing jim acosta of cnn. ‘you,’ the president-elect said, as mr acosta and other stunned journalists looked on, ‘are fake news’ (grynbaum, 2017). fake news is a complicated term. since former us president donald trump utilised the term, society has agreed that he used this term for his personal use to malign reputable news organisations that he did not agree with. in a matter of weeks, the term ‘fake news’ went f rom an ill-defined term to one with two opposite meanings in the media landscape: pro-trump and anti-trump. a writer for the columbia journal review in february 2017 declared the term dead. he wrote: ‘fake news, a term for a specific brand of media fabrication…died on monday. it was less than a year old’ (uberti, 2017). this statement came days after trump called leaks about his campaign’s contact with russia ‘fake news’. gladstone and garfield (2017) suggest that the term is still in play. however, scholars and journalists seem to struggle to find a concrete definition for the term. the earliest scholarly definition of fake news post-2016 came f rom two economics professors at stanford university for peer reviewpeer review 61v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 their work on its effect on the election. hunt allcott and matthew gentzkow define fake news as ‘stories that have no factual basis but are presented as facts’ (allcott and gentzkow, 2017). politifact defined fake news as ‘made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word’ (holan, 2016). finally, the new york times ‘narrowly defined’ fake news as ‘a made-up story to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks’ (tavernise, 2016). all these definitions have several differences. all agree on a basic definition that conceives fake news as including made-up content. allcott and gentzkow (2017), additionally, make the definition include deception or manipulation instead of only lies presented as facts. additionally, politifact and the new york times limit fake news to online settings when it clearly can exist in other mediums. a feature of fake news not included in any of these definitions is fake news in hyperpartisan publications. fake news has been dominant on facebook pages that are incredibly biased towards one political ideology and pass off opinion pieces and fake news as real news. the goal of these pages is to play one side of the spectrum and enrage followers enough to share their content. their secondary goal is to provoke a reader to click on the link, and their primary goal is to grow their audience and dominate newsfeeds with purely ideological headlines often based on little fact (herrman, 2016). it is important to note that fake news is not new. it has existed at least since before the middle ages. utilised in the 13th century, the donation of constantine is a wellknown ruse of the middle ages that included a forged declaration f rom the roman emperor constantine giving pope sylvester i spiritual power over all the churches, control of their property, and control of the western roman empire (encyclopaedia britannica, 2009). in the 21st century, the life of fake news is tied closely with the media standard of objectivity and fact-based reporting. before objectivity and factual reporting, fake news was commonly spread in partisan publications. the internet has significantly lowered the resources a person needs to create a news outlet. newspapers and magazines need expensive printing presses and delivery methods. radio needs the broadcasting rights to one of a limited number of stations, and television needs cameras, the technology to broadcast, and a channel. however, on the internet, potential news outlets need very few resources. if the outlet uses a pre-existing web publishing platform like wordpress, the only cost is the labour necessary to write and post pieces and a cheap custom domain. with virtually non-existent financial barriers to entry, any outlet can publish content on the internet where readers can consume it within minutes. fake news directly affects political discourse because it expands the debate by demanding responses to rumours, conspiracies, and lies. fake news can easily affect anyone. after the arab spring of 2011, social media was perceived as a valuable and powerful device for mass activism and liberation movements (vaidhyanathan, 2018). however, this enthusiasm took a left turn five years later when donald trump became president of the us (vaidhyanathan, 2018). the challenge here was with his obsession with publicising baseless or wildly exaggerated numbers on twitter. the former president publicly claimed that 700 000 manufacturing jobs had been created during his term, whereas a politifact fact-check found that the number was instead closer to 450 00 before the pandemic and a net loss of 237 00 owing to the pandemic-generated recession (cnn, 2020). furthermore, trump spread an erroneous and risky claim that 99% of covid-19 cases are ‘totally harmless’. he topped this with an unsubstantiated tweet on mail-in voting, falsely claiming that foreign countries would print these ballots (the mit press reader, 2020). during his term, trump openly unleashed a torrent of misinformation, and dismally his supporters undoubtedly believed in his lies. it is important to note that fake news is not new. it has existed at least since before the middle ages. utilised in the 13th century, the donation of constantine is a wellknown ruse of the middle ages that included a forged declaration from the roman emperor constantine giving pope sylvester i spiritual power over all the churches, control of their property, and control of the western roman empire. peer review fake news in democratic society post-covid-19 it has been argued, then, that social media and mainstream media post-covid-19 can be politically biased, distort facts, and misinform the public to tap into the public mood at that time. this is especially true when influential leaders use this space to inform on pertinent state issues. deliberative democracies require informed citizens who can distinguish between facts and falsehoods. friedman (2010: 117) maintains that: [t]he quality of democracy is, therefore, closely bound up with civil society’s prospects. the more citizens are able, through organisations that are independent of government, to voice their needs and beliefs to other citizens and public decisionmakers, the more public decisions are likely to become a consequence of a process in which the outcome reflects the voice of the majority that flows f rom that contest. otherwise, it becomes difficult to hold political leaders accountable for their actions and decision-making processes. social media has possibly compromised actual reporting on real issues by publicising snippets of news f rom several accredited sources, interpreted and portrayed inaccurately (wilding, molitorisz, and mckewon, 2018). since vast numbers of individuals in modern society have easy access to the internet, social media has become a platform for many people to get updated with current news across the globe. in a survey conducted in canada, twofifths of respondents received their news f rom social media, specifically facebook, whilst one-fifth of them collected their daily news f rom other non-traditional sources (shearer and matsa, 2018). the pew research center (2021) reported that facebook stands out as the number one news source for about a third of americans. furthermore, about half of the us adults f rom this survey said they got news f rom other social media outlets. this has proven problematic, considering the misleading information on these platforms about the recent 2020 election and the covid-19 pandemic. what is more worrisome is that many americans continue to rely on these sites for news (shearer and mitchell, 2021). false news campaigns on social media are visible in the us, but they are on the rise in europe and across the developing world (vaidyanathan, 2018). in the af rican context, these spaces have been criticised for undermining democracy during the two dozen national elections held in 2019 in the region. in nigeria, candidate atiku abubakar was reported by lauretta onochie, an aide to president buhari, for allegedly handing out cash and food boxes at a political rally – ‘keep them in poverty, then give them handouts,’ she wrote (bbc af rica, 2019). the photo was found to be two years old and was taken at an event organised by the kokun foundation. facebook has arguably been a catalyst for coordinated misinformation campaigns. however, facebook itself called out rival disinformation campaigns by the french and russians to mislead and influence users in the central af rican republic ahead of the 2020–21 election (the guardian, 2020). facebook subsequently suspended several networks connected to organised fake misconduct. in south af rica, ‘fake news’ has disturbed vaccination rollout: for example, minister blade nzimande said, ‘what complicates the fight against covid-19 is that while people are facing the real threat of losing lives, fake news and misinformation are causing them to be paranoid, and to doubt the usefulness of vaccines and other public health interventions’ (sa news, 2021). he urged south af ricans to educate themselves more about the virus and avoid tagging along with 5g myths that have led to the destruction of cell phone towers in other parts of the country. as a result of these trends, nanjira sambuli, f rom the world wide web foundation, argued that ‘democracies are at risk on this continent, and unfortunately, social media platforms are fast becoming the sites of aggravation’ (madawo, 2019: 1; bbc news, 2019: 1). on the one hand, the introduction of social media in af rica has brought many economic and political benefits. on the other, it has equipped terrorist groups with an instrument for recruitment and propaganda (menkhaus, 2013; cox, marcellino, bellasio, ward, galai, meranto, paoli, 2018). this is a challenge found hard to untangle because the opportunities brought by the digital age are commendable, particularly when it comes to intensifying citizen engagement in the political arena. the question is: how can these positives be reconciled with the unavoidable concept of ‘digital authoritarianism’? for instance, uganda was suddenly put under a complete internet shutdown ahead of the east af rican nation’s election in january 62 t h e t h i n k e r peer reviewpeer review 63v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 2021, chad was restricted to a sixteen-month social media ban f rom march 2018 (global risk insight, 2021), and only 11 of af rica’s 54 states were classified as ‘f ree’ by freedom house in 2018. the conceivable argument for such harsh regulations is to prevent the spread of ‘fake news’ and misinformation ahead of an election. yet, f reedom of speech, media and information is compromised. af rican governments have often prohibited the media f rom reporting on the mismanagement of crises in the region. it is widely known that several af rican states have been struggling to handle the covid-19 pandemic. the reasons stem f rom a lack of adequate medical equipment, under-developed healthcare facilities, and other financial strains. similarly, it can be argued that the media and civil society have been silenced f rom reporting on the spread of the virus and governments’ capacities to deal with it. in some governments’ defence, it is possible to deliberately label legitimate news coverage on the coronavirus as ‘fake news’. the alarming fact is that criminal charges have been laid against reporters asking critical questions about governments’ handling of covid-19 in some of these countries (democracy works foundation, 2020). fake news, propaganda, and disinformation go against the true nature of civic popular participation and journalism in a democracy. the role of media and information contributes significantly to the sustainability of a good quality democracy, a political system that ‘presents a stable institutional structure that realises the liberty and equality of citizens and that strives to satisfy citizen expectations through the legitimate and correct functioning of its institutions and mechanisms’ (morlino, 2004: 12; 2011: 195; graham, 2015: 62). fundamentally to the latter is an ‘independent and pluralistic media of communication, and a vigorous network of voluntary associations of all kinds, through which citizens can act to manage their affairs and influence public policy’ (beetham, carvalho, landman, and weir, 2008). these act as crucial agents to ensure the responsiveness of government policy and public oversight on service delivery, particularly in the peripheral areas of society. since its origin, journalism was created to serve people, to be a tool through which the populace could be aware of facts and be informed participants in the political process. according to the american press institute, the purpose of journalism is to ‘provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments’ (dean, 2013). the academic and activism spaces advocate for news literacy and generally go against sources outside the main networks (cnn, skynews, news24, enca, bbc, al-jazeera), prominent newspapers, and a few websites. however, former president trump once posted a tweet exclaiming: ‘i have asked secretary of state @secpompeo to closely study the south af rica land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. ‘south af rican government is now seizing land f rom white farmers.’’ (abc news, 2018: 1) reading this tweet astounded most south af ricans whilst thousands of users agreed that white farmers were indeed under attack. less than 150 characters posted on social media coming f rom the president of the us account gave ‘truth’ to the lie that south af rica’s white farmers have been facing genocide at the hands of south af rica’s black government: a lie that has become a rallying cry for the far-right, racists, and white nationalists worldwide. however, this is a debate for future research. the fact of the matter is that fake news is incredibly easy to spread on social media. the discussion on land expropriation is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. to be sure, fake news is not only present in america and south af rica; it exists around the world. in 2017, french voters were deluged with fake news stories on their social media feed just ahead of their presidential election. interestingly enough, studies show that fake news in france came f rom sources exposed to russian influences (farand, 2017). likewise, the german government was concerned that the then-upcoming elections were under threat due to the presence of fake news by ‘a man who lives in crimea’ (beuth, brost, dausend, dobbert and hamann, 2017). fake news is a real threat to democracies, and it seems that it could potentially be used as a political weapon. however, measures have been put in place to counter misinformation in various countries. in asian states, spreading false news, especially false news related to peer review the covid-19 pandemic, has been criminalised. the world health organisation enforced the epin-win fact-checking service and a health alert on whatsapp and a chatbot on facebook messenger. the united nations (un) is also quite adamant about cutting down on ‘fake news’, and the union’s development plan supports the #coronavirusfacts alliance, which consists of 100 fact-checkers f rom over 45 countries in the international fact-checking network (the conversation, 2020). some suggested solutions there are several ways to mitigate fake news. initially, mark zuckerberg, founder and ceo of facebook, asserted that fake news on facebook did not affect the 2016 us presidential election (zuckerberg, 2016). however, facebook subsequently began tackling the problem. facebook started asking users to rate the truthfulness of content (robertson, 2016). google has also taken similar steps to label search results and provides details on the fact check, unlike facebook (mantzarlis, 2017). both implementations seem to be successful since they put the onus for fact-checking on other sources and do not remove fake news stories. the news media can also take steps to mitigate fake news. an easy step for the media to implement would be to run a side-by-side news analysis. adding another analysis with a different (and perhaps opposing) viewpoint could make sceptical consumers trust reputable news sources more as they could find something they agreed with. a significant obstacle to tackle is that even though google and facebook can block fake news websites, and the news media can run side-by-side analysis, neither can definitively reduce fake news. most people do not have the training to be sceptical of fake news. education has to teach students news literacy as well as critical thinking skills. it is essential that consumers of media can recognise the difference between journalism and other kinds of information and between journalists and other information purveyors. consumers must scrutinise the news that they consume on social media. younger generations especially, considered digital natives, should be experts in using the internet and social media. if we do not educate students on news literacy, the fake news problem will only get worse: digital natives will, in the coming decades, make up a majority of the voting population. social media platforms (news corporations, opinion leaders, influencers) should revise their systems approach, and instead of promoting the viral effect of unworthy content (to create monetised traffic) through social sharing and click-through rate, these platforms should promote content quality. the quality of content shared and engaged on should be incentivised more than viral and often untrue content. if this space follows this route, it could quickly spread the awareness of ‘fake news’ and share devices on how to spot misleading information. this same space can also gather independent professional reviewers who can make up a global digital fact-check network which can assist with labelling and sharing identified ‘fake news’ (alerting users to avoid content of a specific nature) and mainly focusing on breaking news on a global scale. conclusion democracy not only requires but demands informed voters. without literate news consumers, informed voters would not exist. fake news went viral during the 2016 us presidential election because of social media and the internet’s lack of gatekeeping measures. these factors have made fake news a real danger to democracies because of its ability to impact debate. more research is needed to tie these specific theories and effects to fake news, but the connections are clear. despite that, there are some early and asymmetrical but practical solutions; the most crucial of them is educating students in news literacy to help the future voting generation fight fake news. this will win the real oncoming battle before it begins. references abrams, d. (2016). ‘now even google search aiding in scourge of fake, inaccurate news about election 2016.’ [online] mediaite. available at: http://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/now-even-google-searchaiding-in-scourge-of-fake-inaccurate-news-about-election-2016/ allcott, h., and gentzkow, m. (2017). ‘social media and fake news in the 2016 election.’ working paper no. 23089. national bureau of economic research. associated press news. (2021). ‘ap fact check: trump’s false claims, fuel on a day of chaos.’ [online] associated press. available at: https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-donald-trumpa98d72c0ccde16fa900e6053a4599cab associated press. (2017). ‘can “only education” solve the fake news problem?’ [online] associated press. available at: http://www. usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/02/13/fake-news-101/97846922/ bbc news af rica. 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(2018). ‘the impact of digital platforms on news and journalistic content.’  university of technology sydney, nsw. zuckerberg, m. (2016). ‘i want to share some thoughts on facebook and the election,’ [online] facebook. available at: https://www. facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103253901916271 peer review https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103253901916271 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103253901916271 83v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w abstract since the democratisation of south af rica in the mid-90s, south af rica and the nordic countries have cooperated multilaterally as well as in bilateral settings in areas such as education and research, business and trade, and peace and security. by exploring the research question ‘what are the prospects for a strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordic region?’, this article provides insights into the nature of south af ricanordic contemporary relations and advances our theoretical understanding of what factors influence the formation of strategic partnerships. the analysis is informed by thomas wilkins’ strategic partnership model, which sets forth that the formation of strategic partnerships hinges on three core factors: environmental uncertainty, strategic fit, and a system principle. it is argued herein that a fourth factor, international and domestic political context, also plays a role in the formation phase of a strategic partnership; an argument which is supported empirically by the south af rica-nordic case. data for the analysis is mainly collected f rom south af rican and nordic government documents, while occasionally also drawing upon party documents, academic publications, and news articles. the paper concludes that the plurality of common national interests and shared values make fertile ground for a comprehensive and mutually beneficial strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordics. nevertheless, current political contextual factors diminish the likelihood that such a strategic partnership will emerge in the immediate future. by nora hattar and kine m. bækkevold south africa-nordic relations: exploring the prospects for a strategic partnership 84 introduction during the 1960s to 1990s, the relations between south af rica and the nordic countries were overshadowed by the south af rican anti-apartheid struggle (akamo et al., 2022: 16).1 in post-apartheid times, relations between south af rica and the nordics have continued to evolve; south af rica and individual nordic states have cooperated bilaterally, as well as in multilateral settings in areas such as education and research, peace and security, and business and trade.2 while relatively uncommon, there are also examples of some or all of the nordic countries entering jointly into agreements with south af rica (dirco, 2008; dirco, 2001). both south af rica and the nordics have expressed a desire to mobilise new partnerships in the international arena for the advancement of national interests (dirco, 2022a: 14; denmark government, 2022: 31; denmark mfa, 2021: 39; iceland mfa, 2018a: 6,12; the finnish government, 2020: 32; norway mfa, 2018: 79; sweden government, 2017: 4).3 elevating state relations to the strategic partnership level has several advantages. firstly, it provides a f ramework for regular high-level dialogues that may facilitate an exchange of perspectives on matters of common interest. additionally, it signifies mutual trust and commitment, which can foster deeper relations and cooperation in various domains. furthermore, it creates opportunities for joint initiatives and projects that leverage the strengths and resources of both parties (wilkins, 2008: 364). denmark, which has made strategic partnerships central to its foreign policy, maintains that strategic partnerships contribute to building political and commercial relations with partner countries on several levels and thereby to creating opportunities to promote denmark’s foreign policy interests and priorities, including spreading danish solutions and expertise (denmark mfa, 2022). this article assumes that elevating the current south af rica-nordic relations to the strategic partnership level could yield benefits including those mentioned above, and it is therefore considered pertinent to explore the prospects for such a partnership to emerge. it is worth noting that the article does not attempt to provide policy recommendations nor advocate for or against the establishment of a strategic partnership; its sole purpose is to evaluate the potential for a south af rica-nordic strategic partnership to develop.4 by conducting a qualitative content analysis of south af rican and nordic government documents, as well as drawing on insights f rom party documents, academic publications, and news articles, this paper explores the prospects for a strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordic region. it does so by turning to thomas wilkins’ strategic partnership model, which sets forth that the formation of strategic partnerships hinges on three core factors: environmental uncertainty, strategic fit, and a system principle. it will be argued that a fourth factor also plays a role in the formation phase, namely international and domestic political context, defined as the broader societal and historical circumstances in which political events and phenomena occur. the research is novel in multiple senses. firstly, it employs the formation variable of the strategic partnership model to analyse the prospects for the emergence of a strategic partnership that does not yet exist. secondly, it considers a strategic partnership in the case of south af rica and the nordics. thirdly, it aids in the development of the f ramework outlining strategic partnership formations by adding a fourth factor, international and domestic context, to the formation phase of the strategic partnership model. notably, this article assumes that interests and values set down in government documents f rom individual nordic countries can represent interests and values in the nordic region as a whole, as the below paragraph will explain in further detail. justifying the grouping of the nordic countries the nordic region is comprised of the sovereign states of denmark, norway, sweden, finland, and iceland as well as the autonomous territories of the faroe islands, greenland, and åland.5 the region is united by a proximate geographical location, intertwined historical relations, and several social, political, and economic similarities (akamo et al., 2022: 14). more specifically, the region adheres to the nordic model, which consists of social-democratic systems characterised by capitalism, welfare, and social inclusion (hammerstad, 2012: 3). institutions for nordic cooperation include the nordic development fund (ndf), the nordic defence cooperation (nordefco), the nordic women mediators, and the nordic council, the latter being the region’s official body for inter-governmental cooperation (ndf, 2022; nordefco, 2022; prio, 2015; nordic council, 2022; norden, 2022). tellingly, the nordic council envisions p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 85v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w that by 2023, the nordic region will become the most integrated region in the world (nordic council, 2020). the nordic countries also cooperate within the european union (eu)/european economic area (eea) institutions.6 furthermore, as sweden and finland applied to become members of the north atlantic treaty organization (nato) in 2022, and the latter officially becoming a nato member in april 2023, all the nordic countries are likely to soon be part of the alliance (akamo et al., 2022: 6–7; nato, 2023). furtermore, the nordics have a similar approach to foreign policy, entailing ‘an activist but consensusseeking multilateralism; a strong ethical dimension reflecting the urge to spread the ideals of the ‘nordic model’ of equality, redistribution, and peaceful resolution of conflicts to the rest of the world; support for the united nations (un) and its agencies; and generous aid and assistance to the developing world’ (hammerstad, 2012: 3). as the nordic states share fundamental values, interests, and worldviews, interests and values expressed in government documents f rom individual nordic states will in this article be considered to represent the entire region. while the nordics do not have a joint af rica strategy, several agenda-setting arenas exist. this includes the nordic-af rica institute, the nordic-af rican business summit, and the annual af rican–nordic foreign ministers’ meeting (nai, n.d; naba, 2022; akamo et al., 2022: 9). according to akamo et al. (2022: 6), the foreign ministers’ meeting has broadened ‘af rican–nordic relations beyond development cooperation and towards a more politically-oriented and interest-based strategic partnership.’ the authors recognise that the nordic countries have not previously jointly entered into a strategic partnership with another state. however, due to the high degree of interconnectedness, shared foreign policy agenda, and similar interests amongst the nordic countries, it is pertinent to consider the entire nordic region, rather than individual nordic countries, when exploring the prospects for a strategic partnership with south af rica. strategic partnerships in the international relations literature there is currently no consensus in the literature on a definition of the term strategic partnership (tyushka and czechowska, 2019: 8–10). since the world became increasingly interconnected and new forms of partnerships were needed to achieve policy goals during the ’90s, the term has been f requently used by both academics and governments, albeit often without defining its meaning, to describe relationships between states and other actors in the international arena. sean kay (2000: 15) documented the us’s use of the term during the 90s and set out to conceptualise it, stating that ‘a strategic partnership enhances or justifies a close relationship between two states that seek mutual gains but whose interests may be competitive rather than shared.’ a year later, commenting on russia’s strategic partnerships, andrew c. kuchins (2001: 260) argued that ‘the russian leadership has elevated some bilateral relationships to the level of “strategic partnership” because of perceived long-term and important shared interests; they are not necessarily directed against a third party.’ in 2003, in a book chapter on chinese relations, avery goldstein (2003: 75) holds that core elements of strategic partnerships include ‘a commitment to promoting stable relationships and extensive economic intercourse, muting disagreements about domestic politics in the interest of working together on matters of shared concern in international diplomacy, and routinising the f requent exchange of official visits, especially those by representatives of each country’s military and regular summit meetings between top government leaders.’ in yet another effort to delineate the concept, surjit mansingh writes as the nordic states share fundamental values, interests, and worldviews, interests and values expressed in government documents from individual nordic states will in this article be considered to represent the entire region. while the nordics do not have a joint africa strategy, several agenda-setting arenas exist. 86 in his 2005 paper on the us-india partnership that a strategic partnership occurs when: …two governments agree to raise the level of their regular interactions to embrace levels f rom the lowest to the highest, to deal with the great variety of issues that concern each of them in a cordial and holistic manner seeking cooperation or understanding, and to make long-term commitments for mutual benefit and furthering their respective goals but do not enter into an alliance. (mansingh, 2005: 2221). drawing on previous definitions, thomas wilkins (2008: 363) defines a strategic partnership as a ‘collaboration between states (or other actors) to take joint advantage of economic opportunities or to respond to security challenges more effectively than could be achieved in isolation.’ he argues that strategic partnerships are: 1) organised around a common goal that reflects the general purpose of the partnership (a system principle); 2) are primarily goal-driven rather than threat-driven; 3) tend to be informal and entail low commitment costs; and 4) that economic exchange is one of the key drivers of the partnership, alongside security concerns (wilkins, 2008: 360–361). drawing on literature f rom business and organisation studies, wilkins proposes the strategic partnership model, an analytical f ramework for analysing strategic partnerships f rom an international relations perspective. the model considers three phases of strategic partnerships: formation, implementation, and evaluation. the f ramework has so far been applied to analyse the strategic partnerships between russia and china (wilkins, 2008), japan and australia (wilkins, 2011), eu and south af rica (adelle and kotsopoulos, 2017),7 south af rica and russia (geldenhuys, 2020), and china and the united arab emirates (bin huwaidin, 2022). differing f rom previous analyses, this article employs solely the formation phase of the strategic partnership model to explore the prospects for the emergence of a currently non-existing strategic partnership. wilkins’ strategic partnership model: the formation phase according to wilkins’ strategic partnership model, the formation of a strategic partnership is shaped by three main factors: environmental uncertainty, strategic fit, and a system principle (wilkins, 2008: 363–364). environmental uncertainty refers to uncertainties in the external (international) environment. by joining forces in strategic partnerships, actors seek to mitigate competitive elements and threats in the international security order by increasing their flexibility and capabilities to respond to these uncertainties. potential collaborators are assessed based on an overall strategic fit elicited f rom mutual interests and shared ideologies and values. potential partners must also bring some worthwhile capability or benefit, and preferably complementary resources. once a suitable partner has been identified, the partnership’s purpose becomes solidified into a core f ramework based on mutual agreements and understandings. the overarching purpose or goal of the strategic partnership is known as the system principle, which is grounded in mutual interests and values that make up a joint worldview. importantly, strategic partnership-building is a top-down process that requires support and involvement f rom top leaders in the respective countries or institutions. south africa and the nordics: environmental uncertainty environmental uncertainty is defined as uncertainties in the external (international) environment (wilkins, 2008: 364). shared environmental uncertainties that have been identified in the south af rican and nordic governments’ foreign-policy documents include climate change and environmental degradation; conflict and instability on the af rican continent; and threats to the rules-based international order (dircoa, 2022; denmark government, 2022; norway mfa, 2008; sweden government, 2022b; ulkoministeriö, 2021; the finnish government, 2020; norway government, 2021; norway mfa, 2021; iceland government, 2019).8 9 the subsequent section will elaborate on these points. climate change and environmental degradation according to a report titled framework document on south af rica’s national interest and its advancement in a global environment (hereafter: south af rica’s national interest document) produced by the south af rican department of international relations and cooperation (dirco), ‘climate change, natural disasters, environmental challenges, and infectious p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 87v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w diseases’ is considered to be one among the 15 identified risks that can prevent the achievement of south af rica’s national interests (dirco, 2022a: 30). climate change and environmental degradation is also identified as a global and national threat in south af rica’s national development plan 2030, the south af rican climate change bill, and a white paper on south af rica’s foreign policy (national planning commission, 2017: 33, 75; south af rica government, 2022: 2; south af rica government, 2011: 15). the nordic region is just as clear in its concerns regarding climate change and environmental degradation and its potential impacts on national interests and security (norway mfa, 2008: 11; denmark government, 2022: 31, 32; sweden government, 2022b: 3; iceland government, 2019: 26; ulkoministeriö, 2021: 2). for example, in a parliamentary statement on government policy, the former swedish foreign minister ann linde stated that the ‘climate is of critical importance to our security’ (sweden government, 2022b: 3). moreover, the nordic council recognises climate change as ‘one of humanity’s biggest challenges’ (nordic council, 2020: 7). conflict and instability in af rica in the south af rican national interest document, dirco (2022a: 14, 30) considers ‘regional instability, terrorism, and extremism’ to be another of the 15 risks to the achievement of national interests, recognising that security and stability in af rica is ‘an indispensable requirement for the security and stability of south af rica.’ similarly, the nordic countries connect security in af rica to their national security, linking af rican instability to increased irregular migration and the spread of terrorism in europe (ulkoministeriö, 2021: 7; denmark government, 2022: 24; norway mfa, 2008: 12). for instance, a government report on finnish foreign and security policy states that ‘the recent years have shown increasingly clearly that instability in af rica and the middle east is having more direct impacts on the security of europe and finland than before. the finnish participation in crisis management, therefore, also enhances the security of finnish people’ (the finnish government, 2020: 48). in a similar vein, a government report on norway’s strategy in the sahel states that ‘norway has a clear interest in promoting improvement in the security situation in the sahel and stabilisation of the region as a whole. poverty, climate change, health crises, international terror, organised crime, human trafficking, and irregular migration have direct consequences for norway and all of europe’ (norway mfa, 2021: 3). threats to the rules-based international order a third shared environmental uncertainty central to south af rican and nordic national interests is threats to the rules-based international order. as can be read in south af rica’s national interest document: ‘a rulesbased international system favours smaller to middlepower states for the simple reason that it attempts to curtail the excesses of realpolitik underpinning major powers’ foreign policies…’ (dircoa, 2022: 20). the document stipulates that south af rica should defend multilateralism and the rules-based international system, while also opposing the unfairness in the current system by promoting reform of global political and economic governance to become fairer (dirco, 2022a: 14). the nordics too highlight the importance of a rules-based international order to seek solutions to common challenges and that deterioration of this system would be a threat to their security (norway government, 2019: para. 1; the finnish government, 2020: 11; sweden government, 2022c). in a report on nordic foreign and security policy requested by the nordic foreign ministers, it is stated that the nordics are heavily reliant on a functioning rulesbased international system and that a disruption of this system would undermine core principles of the nordic countries such as democracy, human rights, and the rule of law (bjarnason, 2020: 20). south africa and the nordics: strategic fit this chapter will discuss south af rica and the nordics’ mutual interests as identified in: increased trade and business relations, including the promotion of the green and blue economy; cooperation and exchange of expertise on mediation and peacebuilding; and the promotion of democracy, human rights, a rulesbased international system, and reform of the united nations security council (unsc). trade and business relations currently, the trade between the nordics and south af rica is not very extensive. the top commodities that south af rica exports to the nordic countries include f ruit and vegetables, wine, vehicles, and minerals 88 (trading economics, 2021a; 2021b; 2021c; 2021d; 2021e) at a total sum of approximately 470 million us dollars in 2021 (un comtrade, n.d.). top commodities exported f rom the nordics to south af rica vary between the different nordic countries and include machinery, electronics and technology, paper and paperboard, and different types of chemicals (trading economics, 2021f; 2021g; 2021h; 2021i; 2021j), at a total sum of approximately 1,75 billion us dollars in 2021 (un comtrade, n.d.).10 south af rica has highlighted the importance of positioning itself to become an integral player in the global economy and strives to attract sustainable investments to grow its economy (dirco, 2022a: 20). simultaneously, the nordic countries are expressing interest in further developing and strengthening trade around af rica (finland mfa, 2021: 3, sweden government, 2022: 4, norway mfa, 2008: 4, denmark mfa, 2020: 1). for example, finland states that ‘f rom the perspective of finland’s interests, it is important for finland to contribute to positive development in af rica and to build new political and economic cooperation with its af rican partners that benefits both parties’ (finland mfa, 2021: 3). moreover, the annual nordic-af rica business summit can be understood as a manifestation of nordic and af rican interest in stronger trade and business cooperation. many promising trading sectors between the nordics and south af rica could be explored. the blue economy, referring to economic activity in and around lakes, rivers, oceans, and bodies of water, has been called the ‘new f rontier of af rican renaissance’ by the af rican union (au, 2022). as well as being important for business, sustainable fishing, which is a part of the blue economy, could help prevent food security threats that the world is facing (akinmade, 2019: para. 4). the necessity to accelerate growth in both the blue and green economies has been highlighted in south af rica’s national interest document (dirco, 2022a: 13). given the centrality of oceans in the nordic economies, particularly norway and iceland, there is potential to explore these markets further (akinmade, 2019: para. 5). moreover, the nordics have over several decades accumulated expertise on over-exploitation, water resource management challenges, and pollution risks that could benefit south af rica (ibid.). both iceland and norway state that they are seeking to offer expertise in areas such as sustainable fishing (iceland mfa, 2018b: 10; norway mfa, 2008: 22). furthermore, another underexplored arena for collaboration is technology start-ups, a sector in which both south af rica and the nordics ecompass different types of expertise and knowledge that can be exchanged (akinmade, 2019: para 11). the start-up ecosystem in south af rica is increasingly gaining global attention and south af rica is the only af rican country represented in the start-up blink top 50 rankings, identified as a country with accelerating entrepreneurial innovation. the nordic countries are also represented in the top 50 rankings, with sweden ranking the highest (startupblink, 2022: 31). in 2022, sweden hosted a business delegation f rom sweden to south af rica for companies to explore opportunities for building relationships with new stakeholders and to get first-hand insight into the local tech-start-up scene in south af rica (business sweden, 2022). exploring the potential of the blue and green economy, technology start-ups, and other promising trading sectors between the nordics and south af rica could not only benefit both economies but also contribute to the green shift and sustainable solutions. renewable energy cooperation and trade in renewable energy have been highlighted as lucrative opportunities for south af rican and nordic companies (akinmade, 2019: para. 8). the nordics have over the past decades developed innovative and viable energy systems with a focus on sustainability, system integration, and grid stability p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 many promising trading sectors between the nordics and south africa could be explored. the blue economy, referring to economic activity in and around lakes, rivers, oceans, and bodies of water, has been called the ‘new frontier of african renaissance’ by the african union (au, 2022). 89v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w (nordic energy research, 2021). during the nordic energy days conference held in pretoria in 2017, norway’s former state secretary at the ministry of petroleum and energy, ingvil smines, said that there are many opportunities for southern af rican countries to strengthen their partnerships with the nordic countries regarding renewable energy (odendaal, 2017). during the same conference, south af rica’s former presidential special energy adviser, silas zimu, stated that it is time that south af rica learns f rom what the nordics have done (ibid). south af rica and the nordics already cooperate on projects related to sustainability and green energy. for example, the swedish environmental protection agency and the south af rican department of environmental affairs are cooperating on a project which focuses on waste management (naturvårdsverket, n.d). also, as part of an initiative targeting support for renewable energy in countries relying on coal power, norway has provided funding to solar energy projects in south af rica (akamo et al., 2022: 56). moreover, cooperation on green energy between the danish energy agency, the department of mineral resources and energy, the independent power producers, and eskom11 has been established to provide better opportunities for south af rica to achieve their climate objectives (center for global cooperation, 2021).12 peacebuilding and mediation south af rica and the nordics also have mutual interests related to peace mediation and peacebuilding, particularly on the af rican continent. south af rica is involved in continental peace-making, un-mandated peacekeeping operations, and peacebuilding. indeed, it has become somewhat expected of south af rica to play a large role on the continent in this respect (van nieuwkerk, 2014: 6). the motives as to why south af rica is concerned with peace and security in af rica include that south af rica sees it as a responsibility to reciprocate the support it received f rom other af rican countries during the liberation struggle; the idea that the specific south af rican liberation experience of internal negotiation and agreement could serve as an example for other conflicts; and the recognition that own political and economic achievements will depend on the condition of the rest of the continent (sidiropoulos, 2007: 2). south af rica’s national interest document highlights that ‘south af rica’s af rican agenda is based on the understanding that there can be no development without peace and no peace without development’ and that the security and stability of the continent is a requirement for south af rica’s own security and stability (dirco, 2022a: 14). like south af rica, the nordic identity is connected to the promotion of peace. for instance, in 2017, the nordic council launched the idea that ‘peace should be made the trademark of the nordics’ (norden, 2017). particularly concerning norway, studies have described the country’s ‘peace brand’ as a selfenforcing identity, but also as a means to achieve national interests in terms of gaining influence on the international arena (leira, 2013; stokke, 2012). in addition to promoting their peace identity, the nordics are interested in peace advancement and stability of the af rican continent because this could reduce threats of migration and terrorism as well as improve conditions for trade and business, as discussed previously in the article. interestingly, civilian and humanitarian support to south af rica’s anti-apartheid movement was among the nordics’ first peace engagements abroad and played a central role in shaping the peacebuilding element in nordic foreign and development policy (hagemann and bramsen, 2019: 15). there are also several examples of modern south af rica-nordic cooperation initiatives related to peace and security in af rica. training for peace (tfp) is an ongoing collaborative initiative established by norway in 1995 to support the southern af rican development community (sadc), which later expanded to the rest of af rica (nantulya, 2017: para 9–10). the tfp programme is funded by the norwegian government and has two south af rican partner institutions (nupi, 2022). additionally, south af rica and the nordics collaborate within the un on the women, peace, and security (wps) agenda to promote capacity building on the af rican continent. peacemaking and peacebuilding are areas that hold great potential for cooperation, expertise-sharing, and mutual inspiration. for example, the nordic women mediators (nwm) network was inspired by a similar initiative in southern af rica (prio, 2015). joining forces in the area of peace and security promotion can help achieve mutual interests related to south af rica and the nordics’ peace identity as well as peace and stability on the af rican continent. democracy and human rights 90 another area of mutual interest is the promotion of democracy and human rights. the nordic countries are often seen as being at the foref ront of promoting democracy and are all considered to be highly democratic and with low levels of corruption (the economist intelligence unit, 2020: 4; transparency international, 2021).13 the nordic countries' constitutions put a strong emphasis on democracy, human rights, and equality among all, and on the importance of spreading these values (norway moj, 2022; denmark parliament, 2019; iceland moj, 2018; the swedish parliament, 2021; iceland parliament, 2004). their strong pro-democracy stand was once again proven when the foreign ministers of the nordic countries gathered at a meeting in september 2022 to discuss the promotion and protection of democracy (sagheer, 2022). additionally, sweden explicitly states that ‘ensuring support for, defending and promoting democracy is a priority for the swedish government’ (sweden government, 2021: para. 7). like the nordics, south af rica’s constitution puts prominence on democracy and human rights. the constitution has been celebrated globally for its inclusiveness and does not only serve as a legal f ramework but importantly also as a statement of socio-economic transformational goals (south af rica government; n.d.). in south af rica’s national interest document, it is stated that south af rica’s normative posture is mainly seen to be characterised by principles such as democracy and human rights outlined in the constitution (dirco, 2022a: 15). however, it is worth noting that south af rica has been ranked as a ‘flawed democracy’ (the economist intelligence unit, 2020: 48) and is currently faced with issues such as corruption and human rights abuses (freedom house, 2022a; amnesty international, 2021). south af rica’s national interest document states that the vision for the country is to establish a society based on fundamental human rights, social justice, and democratic values (dirco, 2022a: 11). it also states that the country supports and leads global trends that are in favour of human rights, peaceful settlements of disputes, as well as respect for international law and collective action through multilateralism (dirco, 2022a: 17). additionally, south af rica aspires for a global world order that is rooted in equality, solidarity, and unity of purpose (dirco, 2022a: 27). an initiative for promoting democracy that south af rica could benefit f rom could, for instance, be related to sharing nordic expertise on coalition governments. research suggests that coalition governments are the most likely alternative to foster an inclusive democracy, nation-building, and development for a politically, ideologically, and racially diverse south af rica (gumede, 2016). nordic expertise in coalition governments could therefore serve as an example of south af rica-nordic cooperation to strengthen democracy. considering that authoritarian regimes are gaining increasingly more power in the international system and that the world is experiencing a shrinking of democracy globally, coordinated action to promote democracy internationally is of importance to states who support the democratic model (freedom house, 2022b: 2). increased af rican representation in the unsc both the nordics and south af rica are in favour of increased af rican representation in the unsc. this has been an outspoken foreign policy point for south af rica for a long time (venter, 2003: 29). a statement f rom ambassador mathu joyini, permanent representative of south af rica to the un, clarifies the country’s position: ‘af rica calls for not less than two permanent seats with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership including the rights of veto’ (dirco, 2021: 7). furthermore, ambassador joyini stated that af rica demands five non-permanent seats (dirco, 2021). likewise, a recent statement to the un on behalf of all the nordic countries reads: ‘the nordic countries support a balanced expansion of the security council f rom all regions to better reflect current global political and economic realities, and to ensure increased representation of developing countries… particularly both permanent and non-permanent seats for af rica in order to redress the historical injustice against af rica’ (denmark mfa, 2023: para. 3). both norway and finland mention their support for af rica’s demands for increased representation in the unsc in their foreign policy documents, with norway noting that a ‘strengthened and reformed un is in the interests of both norway and af rican countries’ (norway mfa, 2008: 19; ulkoministeriö, 2021: 6). furthermore, at a seminar held on the sidelines of the 2022 af rican-nordic foreign ministers’ meeting in helsinki, norway’s foreign minister anniken huitfeldt reaffirmed norway’s commitment to securing a permanent seat on the security council p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 91v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w and to expanding the number of elected seats for af rican countries (nai, 2022). south africa and the nordics: the system principle the system principle is the reason that a strategic partnership exists and tends to be grounded in common interests and values that inspires what becomes the common goal of the partnership (wilkins, 2008: 364). as a strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordics does not yet exist, such a system principle naturally has not been created. however, the common interests and values that were mentioned in the above paragraphs would make a good foundation for a system principle to be discussed and implemented if the two actors were to establish a strategic partnership. referring to the analysis above, the overarching goal of a potential strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordics would likely be anchored in their mutual interests in sustainability efforts, promotion of democracy and human rights, peace and security initiatives in af rica, enhancement of both regions’ economies, and protecting the rules-based international order. south africa and the nordics: international and domestic political context this article argues that wilkins’ strategic partnership f ramework would benefit f rom adding international and domestic political context, defined as broader societal and historical circumstances in which political events and phenomena occur, as a key factor within the formation phase. this includes factors such as the domestic political system, social and cultural norms, developments in the global economy, and international relations. wilkins’ f ramework does to some extent capture elements of this point by briefly mentioning that support f rom leaders is central to the formation of a strategic partnership (wilkins, 2008: 364).14 the following section will illustrate how factors related to international and domestic political context reduce the likelihood of a south af rica-nordic strategic partnership taking form in the immediate future, even though shared environmental uncertainties and a strategic fit have been identified. south af rica has experienced a shift in its foreign policy orientation since it transitioned to a democracy in 1994. whereas mandela’s anc led the country into a new democratic era with a focus on the multilateral and a promise that human rights would ‘be the light that guides our foreign affairs’ (mandela, 1993: 88), a decade later zuma’s anc increasingly turned towards russia and china (matthee, 2016: 14). indeed, zuma’s foreign-policy strategy deliberately altered economic and diplomatic links away f rom the us and europe, and voices within the anc became increasingly critical to the west (alden, sidiropoulos, 2019: 30). stronger cooperation between emerging economies, including though foras such as the brics,15 creates arenas for consolidating south af rica’s ties to these countries, including authoritarian regimes. a recent anc policy document emphasises the importance of forming closer relations with ‘f raternal parties’ and expanding the brics (anc, 2023: 10–11). this view was underscored at the anc’s 55th national conference in january 2023, where the party stated that south af rica should use its 2023 brics chairmanship to push for the admission new members to the group (anc, 2023: 11). several states have expressed interest in joining the brics, including countries with poor human rights and democracy records such as iran, saudi arabia, and algeria (human rights watch, 2022; global state of democracy initiative, 2022; devonshire-ellis, 2022). a core element of the anc’s foreign policy is solidarity with countries that supported the liberation struggle against apartheid (sidiropoulos, 2022: para. 13). while the nordic support was limited to peaceful aid only, the soviet union provided weapons and other military this ar ticle argues that wilkins’ strategic par tnership framework would benefit from adding international and domestic political context, defined as broader societal and historical circumstances in which political events and phenomena occur, as a key factor within the formation phase. 92 aid as well as military training to the anc (gottschalk, 2022: para. 7-9; sidiropoulos, 2022: para. 13). these historical links, coupled with what parts of the south af rican political left considers to be western double standards in multilateralism, the use of force, the rule of law and democracy, make the anc and the south af rican political left inclined towards russia (sidiropoulos, 2022: para. 15). quoting f rom the anc document ‘a better af rica in a better and just world’ (anc, 2015), which set parameters for foreign-policy discussions at the anc’s national general council in 2015, mills and james (2016: 8) display these sentiments: as a revolutionary national liberation movement which is an integral part of the international revolutionary movement to liberate humanity f rom the bondage of imperialism and neocolonialism, the document declares the anc’s staunch support for china and russia and its opposition to the ‘imperialist’ and ‘aggressive’ us… from the anc’s vantage, ‘the sudden collapse of socialism in the world altered completely the balance of forces in favour of imperialism. it ushered in a new world hegemonic era of global socio economic agenda of capitalism and f ree market imperatives’... according to the anc, ‘they have vowed in washington that there will be russia or china to challenge the us hegemony’ since ‘the us does not appreciate the resurgence of china and russia as dominant factors in the arena of international power relations. it has instead declared a cold war against these two emerging world powers’. importantly, in a more recent anc policy document, the party is not as explicit in its scepticism towards the western and us hegemony (anc, 2023). however, a significant part of the south af rican political left still sees russia as a country that opposes us hegemony and respects national sovereignty and the rule of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs (alden and sidiropoulos, 2019: 31). as a political party stemming f rom south af rica’s liberation movement, opposing imperialism is a central part of anc’s history and legacy. the party often criticises or opposes what it understands as the west’s arrogance and imperialist behavior, whether it concerns iraq, afghanistan, or libya, or ignoring development countries’ voices (sidiropoulos, 2022: para. 14). as such, the nordics’ close association with the us and the west might lessen south af rica’s interest in entering into a strategic partnership. in the case of the nordic states, due to their geographic proximity to russia, their current international and domestic political context is notably affected by russia’s efforts to expand its power. this became even more evident with the russian war on ukraine that started in february 2022. commenting on russia’s invasion of ukraine, the swedish ambassador and sweden’s defence attaché to south af rica condemned russia for its actions and put a strong emphasis on the importance of supporting fellow democratic states (sabc news, 2022). while the nordics strongly condemned russia’s invasion of ukraine (norway government, 2022), south af rica abstained f rom the un resolution condemning russia’s actions (dirco, 2022b). however, south af rica maintained that the russian military intervention in ukraine has violated international law and holds that they are pursuing a non-aligned path in their foreign policy (dirco, 2022c). due to the current political context experienced by the nordics; the closer south af rica gets to authoritarian regimes with poor human-rights records, the less eager the nordics will be to enter into a comprehensive strategic partnership with south af rica. conclusion although wilkins’ f ramework is traditionally used to evaluate whether a strategic partnership will endure or not, the ambition of this paper has been to apply the f ramework to a non-existing strategic partnership to comment on the prospects for such a partnership to emerge. the article has exemplified how wilkins’ strategic partnership model can be applied to analyse not only already existing strategic partnerships, but also which strategic partnerships could exist, why they could exist, as well as the benefits that would follow if they existed. the plurality of identified common environmental uncertainties (climate change and environmental degradation, conflict, and instability in af rica, and threats to the rulesbased international order) and shared values and interests related to economy and security (increased trade and investment, promotion of the blue and green economy, peace mediation and peacebuilding, promotion of democracy and human rights, and p e e r r e v i e w t h e t h i n k e r | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 93v o l u m e 9 5 / 2 0 2 3 | j o u r n a l i s s n : 2 0 7 5 2 4 5 8 p e e r r e v i e w increased af rican representation in the unsc) makes for a fertile ground for a strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordics. elevating south af ricanordic relations to a strategic partnership would lead to increased interactions on all levels of government which could increase both regions’ capacity and ability to find joint solutions to promote national interests and tackle environmental uncertainties. however, the current international and domestic political context experienced by south af rica and the nordics, an element this article has added to the formation phase of the strategic partnership model, diminishes the likelihood of such a partnership emerging in the immediate future. this article represents an initial analysis of the prospects of a strategic partnership between south af rica and the nordics, creating a foundation for further analysis. more research is needed on south af rica-nordic relations, including the potential for cooperation in areas such as global health and cybersecurity. additionally, academic investigation on how political context can affect the formation of new partnerships in various cases is needed, as implications of political context will play out differently f rom case to case. moreover, further research on strategic partnerships between regional blocks and bodies, such as sadc and the nordic council, could yield interesting results. notes 1. the af rican national congress (anc) was a central actor in the liberation movement and received civilian and humanitarian support f rom some of the nordic countries (akamo et al., 2022: 16). when south af rica transitioned to a democracy in 1994, the anc’s nelson mandela became president and the anc has remained the country’s ruling party since then (anc, n.d). 2. indeed, the action plan for a so-called ‘green’ strategic partnership, focusing on green energy and green growth, between denmark and south af rica is currently being developed (denmark mfa, 2022). 3. existing strategic partnerships of south af rica or the nordic countries include south af rica-european union (european union, n.d), south af rica-russia (geldenhuys, 2020; lessa, 2010), south af rica-china (alden and wu, 2014), denmark-china, denmark-south korea, denmark-japan, denmark-mexico, denmark-india (denmark mfa, 2022), norwaybrazil (norway government, 2011), norway-au (norway government, 2018), norway-germany (norway government, 2023), sweden-the gulf countries (sweden government, 2022a), swedenpoland (embassy of sweden, 2022), swedenfrance (sweden government, 2019), swedenbrazil (sweden government, 2015). strategic partnerships with the states of finland or iceland as members were not identified. a strategic partnership involving the nordics as a common actor was also not identified. please note that this list cannot be understood as a complete overview. also note that these arrangements are identified as strategic partnerships by their members, while not necessarily fitting into wilkins’ definition of a strategic partnership. 4. a discussion arguing in favour of or against the establishment of a south af rica-nordic strategic partnership would require a deeper analysis of geopolitical developments, which this article does not provide. 5. in this article, only the relationship between the nordic sovereign states and south africa is considered. 6. although south af rica already has a strategic partnership with the eu, the authors consider that it is relevant to discuss the prospects for a separate south af rica-nordic strategic partnership. a potential south af rica-nordic strategic partnership would likely differ greatly f rom the south af rica-eu strategic partnership, as the former would be specifically shaped by the shared values and strategic fit between the nordics and south af rica. 7. adelle and kotsopoulos (2017) concentrate particularly on the climate-change relations under the eu–south af rica strategic partnership. 8. in the icelandic government documents, only the threat of climate change was identified. 9. in addition to the three mentioned environmental uncertainties, both south af rica and the nordics also identify threats related to global health and cybersecurity as important risks to national interests. however, these will not be discussed further in this article. 10. in recent years, there has been an overall decreasing trend in exports between south af rica and the nordics, with a few exceptions of increased exports f rom south af rica to denmark and iceland, and f rom finland to south af rica (trading economics, 2021a; 2021b; 2021c; 2021d; 2021e, 2021f; 2021g; 2021h; 2021i; 2021j). 11. eskom is south af rica’s primary electricity supplier. 12. the cooperation is based primarily on three areas focusing on capacity development in energy planning and wind resource mapping, development of a liberalised energy market with grid planning and higher rates of renewable energy sources, and integration of renewable energy sources and grid codes. 13. as of 2022, all nordic countries ranked highly on various peace, democracy, and human development indexes (undp, 2022; world population review, 2022). 14. wilkins also recognises that a range of factors, including external pressure and changes in partner status, can affect the prospects of a strategic partnership. however, this is only mentioned in the evaluation phase of the f ramework (wilkins, 2008: 366–367). 15. the brics is a group bringing together major economies. current members are china, russia, brazil, india and south af rica (brics, n.d: para. 3). references adelle, c. and kotsopoulos, j. 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https://comtradeplus.un.org/ https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-2021-22?gclid=cj0kcqiapb2bbhdyarisachhc9t_j8kojkyzd36eaq3chc7-gobveckvtjgep9ltvcnngqffjgqylfqaahwzealw_wcb https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-2021-22?gclid=cj0kcqiapb2bbhdyarisachhc9t_j8kojkyzd36eaq3chc7-gobveckvtjgep9ltvcnngqffjgqylfqaahwzealw_wcb https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-2021-22?gclid=cj0kcqiapb2bbhdyarisachhc9t_j8kojkyzd36eaq3chc7-gobveckvtjgep9ltvcnngqffjgqylfqaahwzealw_wcb https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/179642/8e49f907f05d51bc0a848dcf3745a11c.pdf https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-peaceful-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-peaceful-countries abstract this article reviews the trajectory of employment in south af rica before and during the covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. thereafter, we propose measures for the alleviation of unemployment through the development of a comparative advantage in services as a response to the environment created by existing policies and multiple crises. the policy is the best response to the consequences of existing measures in place. threats – in the form of the pandemic, advances in four th industrial revolution (4ir) technologies , online retail, and the july 2021 lootings – present the need for strategic investment and fur ther protections for this sector. by anelisa mzungulu and bhaso ndzendze | peer review 18 t h e t h i n k e r alleviating unemployment in south africa: harnessing comparative advantage in the ser vices sector peer review 19t h e t h i n k e r introduction in 1994, the newly democratically elected government of south africa received an economy that had been systematically geared towards the marginalisation of the majority of the population. that is to say that for nearly half a century, the african population had been deliberately subjected to second-class education, labour laws that stifled their economic and political advancement, a business regulatory framework that criminalised forms of firm ownership, and zoning restrictions that kept the black majority outside the metropolitan that served as the focal point of commerce (levinsohn, 2007). however, the supply of labour grew virtually exponentially in the aftermath of apartheid. in particular, the post-apartheid economy of south africa witnessed an unprecedented influx of african women into its labour market. on the whole, due to previous marginalisation, the new entrants were relatively unskilled. simultaneously, while witnessing new entrants, the south african labour market experienced a negative shock in overall labour demand. in particular, the demand for unskilled labour in the mining and agricultural sectors declined. additionally, the inclination of the economy towards skilled labour contributed as a technical change towards the decline in demand for unskilled labour (banerjee et al., 2008). years later in post-apartheid south africa, with virtually all restrictions of the apartheid system lifted and erased from the law, unemployment over the same period has about doubled, and the same group that bore the brunt of apartheid now disproportionately bears the brunt of unemployment. there are various reasons for the increase in unemployment in post-apartheid south africa. the growth of the labour force is highly concentrated in the african population. in an eight-year period, after the fall of apartheid, the african women labour force participation rate rose by 15% and the african men labour force participation rose by 5%. the increases were partly due to the removal of apartheid restrictions that prevented movements into urban areas, signalling new possibilities of employment within these areas for the african population. these perceived employment opportunities and expected returns to employment were held superior in contrast to what was previously opened to non-white groups. educational levels are relatively higher and participation rates traditionally increase with the improvement in educational levels, particularly for women. the much larger increase in the african women labour force participation rate, relative to the african men labour force participation rate, is as a result of the decline in the access of african women to african men’s income, who had traditionally served as breadwinners. hiv/aids has had enormous impact in creating single parent households and increasing incidences of female headship. additionally, the south african labour market has suffered as a result of not being spared, like other countries, of skill-biased technological change. the consequence of all these factors is increased labour supply and declining labour demand that has led to a decline in wage rates. these wage rates have been found unacceptable by society and, as a result, there has been substantial unemployment. the socio-economic costs of high unemployment in south africa present a three-pronged threat. firstly, unemployed south africans of working age represent potential output that could be earning, if the majority of the working age population was put to use. secondly, south africa’s high unemployment captures the dynamism of unemployment. those who are not acquiring the experience and skills are necessarily unemployed and will be incapable of contributing to their own productivity in the future. thus, the costs of unemployment are amplified over time. a chief consequence of this is the foregone future growth. furthermore, the dynamics involved, as will be shown by the data available for unemployment, is such that unemployment is not self-correcting as a problem. lastly, and hard to measure but very important, is that unemployment accelerates the social ills that engender a sense of hopelessness. on top of the list is crime, disengagement with the political process, and a lack of interest in one’s future wellbeing. because unemployment is prevalent amongst the youth, their disillusionment with post-apartheid south africa has implications for the country’s future (levinsohn, 2007). for all the reasons above and more, unemployment is clamouring for attention as a challenge facing south africa. this article proposes the alleviation of unemployment through the development of a comparative advantage in the services sector as a response to the environment created by existing policies. the policy is the best response to the consequences of existing policies in place. peer review table 1: participation, employment, and unemployment rates by year and gender (%) the south african labour market table 1 reflects the labour force participation rate and the unemployment rate over time. here, and in subsequent tables, the ‘narrow’ definition of unemployment is utilised to define the participation rate and the unemployment rate, but one could have easily used the ‘broad’ definition. the unemployment rate in the south af rican labour market is high regardless of whether the ‘broad’ or ‘narrow’ definition is used (quotable). the dichotomy between the ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ definitions of unemployment is that the former does not factor in individuals who have not actively searched for work in the past four weeks, while the latter factors in those who have simply stated that they are available for work, notwithstanding whether or not search activity has been conducted in the past four weeks. in dealing with table 1, some definitions are useful. defining those who are employed with n, those who are unemployed with u and those who are economically inactive as ne, the labour force participation rate is given by n + u n + ne + u the employment rate is given by n n + ne + u and the unemployment rate is given by u n + ne + u table 1 depicts three key points. firstly, and relative to international standards, the labour force participation rates are low; however, the labour force participation rates have sustained growth over the past six years f rom 2012 to 2017 (before declining for women in 2018 (53.17%) and rebounding to 59.57% in 2019). the labour force participation rate for women has risen f rom 48.3% in 2012 to 53.6% in 2017, a positive change of 5.3% in the six years between 2012 and 2017. the labour force participation rate for men has risen f rom 61.68% in 2012 to 66.13% in 2017, a positive change of 4.45%. this was reversed to 65.62% in 2018 and a slight rebound in 2019 (still below 2017 levels) at 65.8%. although the increase in the labour force participation rate for women was larger than the labour force participation rate for men over the same period, there are signs that the increases in the labour force participation rate for women are smaller relative to the increases in the labour force participation rate for women experienced after the lifting of apartheid restrictions in the early 90s. the lifting of apartheid restrictions, creating perceived employment opportunities, resulted in an unprecedented influx of relatively unskilled women into the labour market (banerjee et al., 2008). in the period between 1997 and 2005, the labour force participation rate increased by a larger change of 15% (levinsohn, 2007). 20 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 survey year survey year women men unemployment rate unemployment rate participation rate participation rate employment rate employment rate 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 48.3 49.58 50.68 52.1 52.25 53.6 61.68 62.18 63.8 65.1 65.35 66.13 34.83 36.13 36.65 37.68 36.98 37.73 47.55 47.85 48.85 49.88 49.2 49.15 27.88 27.2 27.2 27.7 29.15 29.6 22.9 23.08 23.33 23.38 24.73 25.7 (source: quarterly labour force survey (2012–2017)) peer review table 2 shows unemployment rates for the youth (ages 15–34 years old) and adults (ages 35–64 years old) according to levels of education. evidently, adults performed relatively better than the youth at 17.9% unemployment rate compared to the youth’s unemployment rate of 38.8%. most notably, the unemployment rate for the youth is higher relatively to that of adults, notwithstanding the level of educational attainment. nevertheless, the unemployment rate is mitigated as the level of education increases. for example, during the covid-19 pandemic, statssa (2020: 10) observes that: [o]f those who continued to receive pay during the lockdown, some had a reduction in their pay/salary during the lockdown. there seems to be some relationship between the level of education and reduction in pay/salary. those with higher levels of education had higher chances of receiving a full salary than those with lower levels of education in both q3: 2020 and q4: 2020. about 9 in every 10 employed graduates (90,2%) continued to receive full salaries, compared to 81,2% of those with less than matric as their highest level of education in q4: 2020. table 2 divides the aggregate figures in table 1 into policy relevant slices, by dividing them into educational level and age cohort. what we can decipher f rom the two is that unemployment is concentrated in individuals with matric or less. for the youth between ages 15 and 34, the unemployment rate for those with matric is 39.1% and 44.1% for those with less than a matric. for adults between the ages of 35 and 64, the unemployment rate for those with matriculation is 16.1% and even higher for those without a matric at 23.4%. evidently, the completion of school is not sufficient to guarantee entry into the labour market. however, as stated previously, the rate of unemployment is mitigated by educational attainment: unemployment rates decline with a post-matric qualification to 28.8% for the youth and 8.2% for adults and even further for graduates to 11.9% for the youth and 4.4% for adults – a relatively minimal unemployment rate compared to those with matric or less. secondly, employment rates are quite low, with only 48.02% of men having been employed in the last quarter of 2020 (statssa , 2020: 25). only close to a half of the male labour force is employed and only 37.73% of women work by 2017. according to the narrow definition, the women labour force is still far out from 50% of its labour force being utilised. thirdly, before the covid-19 pandemic, unemployment rates continued to rise for both men and women over time, as the figures in table 2 stress. unemployment had stubbornly increased and will likely not retreat on its own. in light of this, the requirement is that it should be addressed by government policy. 21t h e t h i n k e r totalless than matricmatricgraduate other tertiary youth (15-34) adult (35-64) 39.1 16.1 11.9 4.4 28.8 8.2 44.1 23.4 38.8 17.9 table 2: unemployment rate (%) by age and educational level in 2018. (source: quarterly labour force survey q2, 2018) evidently, adults performed relatively better than the youth at 17.9% unemployment rate compared to the youth’s unemployment rate of 38.8%. most notably, the unemployment rate for the youth is higher relatively to that of adults, notwithstanding the level of educational attainment. nevertheless, the unemployment rate is mitigated as the level of education increases. peer review total agriculture mining manufacturing utilities construction trade transport finance and other business services community and social services private households 16 100 835 434 1799 148 1395 3265 954 2395 3560 1311 16 288 843 435 1744 161 1476 3219 1014 2399 3692 1296 16 313 842 381 1789 151 1363 3429 983 2495 3622 1251 14 148 799 373 1456 113 1066 2946 885 2234 3244 1005 22 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 industry q2 2017 q2 2018 q2 2019 q2 2020 table 3: participation, employment, and unemployment rates by age group (%). table 3 captures the trajectory of employment and labour force participation. there is a large jump (48.2%) in the labour force rate f rom ages 15–24 (25.60%) to ages 25–34 (73.80%). this captures the results of the 15–24 age cohort leaving school and entering the labour force market. at a staggering 52.4% rate of unemployment, the age cohort between 15–24 years experiences the highest concentration of unemployment. relative to this age cohort, the unemployment rate declines to 32% for the age cohort of 25–34 years, declines further to 20.9% for the age cohort of 35–44 years, and ultimately experiences modest figures of 16.1% for the age cohort of 45–54 years and 8.9% for the age cohort of 55–64 years respectively. age group unemployment rate participation rate employment rate 15–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 25.60 73.80 80.90 74.00 45.80 12.20 49.40 64.00 62.10 41.80 52.40 33.00 20.90 16.10 8.90 (source: quarterly labour force survey, 2018) table 4: employment by industries. (source: quarterly labour force survey (figures are in the thousands)) table 4 shows that between the periods of q2 2017 and q2 2019, the south af rican industries experienced the shedding and creation of jobs. there was a net gain of a total of 213,000 jobs across all industries. this was reversed by the onset of covid-19. in the first months of the ‘hard lockdown’, 2.2 million people lost their jobs (smit, 2021). the majority of the job losses are concentrated in the trade sector at 483,000, followed by the community and services industry shedding a total of 378,000 jobs. the manufacturing industry closely trails with 330,000 jobs and manufacturing with 297,000 jobs. peer review 23t h e t h i n k e r tables 5 and 6 depict labour market transitions, a moving picture of the labour market, as opposed to the previous tables which were a view of the economy at a point in time. tables 5 and 6 isolate the school to work transitions, and are therefore only reflective of youth aged 15–34. table 5 presents transition rates for cohorts aged 15– 34, and table 6 presents transition rates for those with at least a matric qualification. the rows represent the state of the individual in september 2017, while the columns represent the state of the individual six months later in march 2018. the rows indicate the labour market state of the candidate in september 2017, while the columns indicate the status six months later in march 2018. for example, in table 5, of those in active search for employment in september 2017, 43.9% were still engaged in search activity six months later, while 15.98% grew discouraged and ceased searching for employment. only 12.26% landed employment in the formal industry. together, table 5 and table 6 show three key points. firstly, movement between formal industries and informal industries is quite rare, but being in possession of a matric improves the likelihood. secondly, once one has landed employment in formal industries, one has the tendency to hold onto work (not the same job, however) in the formal industries. the retention rates are quite high (67.44%) for those aged 18–35, and almost 81.69% for those who have at least a matric. lastly, there is less likelihood (30.70%) of having a job in the informal industries six months later, which indicates barriers to entry in the informal industries. table 5: transition matrix of employment status for all youth. table 6: transition matrix of employment status for all youth with at least a matric. informal informal searching searching formal formal total total discouraged discouraged nea nea n n nea discouraged searching informal formal total nea discouraged searching informal formal total 15.30 37.08 19..8 9.68 4.62 15.53 11.10 47.78 15.98 5.85 2.82 11.99 63.87 20.85 19.19 10.71 6.58 27.88 55.21 18.93 19.08 8.56 7.57 19.18 1281796 769545 928749 362967 1361128 4735162 276587 222856 347550 94883 651888 1654954 13.32 28.71 43.97 16.37 8.48 29.29 15.67 35.73 45.82 18.04 6.35 22.38 3.32 5.36 5.63 53.83 4.38 8.88 2.23 4.51 3.84 30.70 5.74 5.97 6.20 10.01 12.26 28.10 67.44 38.22 18.03 8.35 17.28 25.76 81.69 43.46 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 (source: september 2017 and march 2018 quarterly labour force survey panel) (source: september 2017 and march 2018 quarterly labour force survey panel) peer review 24 t h e t h i n k e r lessons from india and china some useful lessons can be learnt f rom the development paths of china and india. in 1978, china and india were two developing countries, experiencing low levels of per capita gdp growth and diametrically opposed political, economic, and social institutions. the real gdp per capita income in 1980 stood at $556 and $917 in china and india respectively (alm, 2008). the chinese and indian economies were characteristic of gerschenkronian ‘latecomer countries’ experiencing an infinitesimal industrialisation pace, with an inability to extract meaningful value f rom their relative economic backwardness (saccone, 2009). in the gerschenkronian sense, the typical situation in a backward country prior to the initiation of considerable industrialisation is the antagonism between the actual state of economic activities and existing obstacles to industrial development, and the great promise inherent in such a development. however, the extent of opportunities intrinsic in industrialisation varies between countries and is predicated on each country’s endowment of natural resources. furthermore, industrialisation in china and india seemed virtually impossible due to the formidable institutional obstacles that remained (alm, 2008). china was toiling under a communist yoke and india emphasised labour-intensive agricultural farming (alm, 2008). additionally, both countries were lacking in, in the stable sense of the word, a reliable, disciplined industrial labour force that has been detached f rom the land and has become suitable for utilisation in factories or factory-like environments. india, with its legacy of british colonial rule, possessed a large number of english-speaking workers and familiarity with the west. india also offered an ample supply of educated workers, many of them college graduates available at a f raction of what they could earn in the u.s and other advanced economies (alm, 2008). china was the opposite: in 1978, the chinese labour force still applied their trade in the agrarian economy, with 70.5% of the labour force and 28.8% of gdp in agriculture, forestry and fishing (alm, 2008). the primary catalyst for growth in both economies was the retracting of the government in favour of relative f ree-markets, which led to a substantial dependence of export-led growth (alm, 2008). china and india have espoused different development paths. development paths an observation of data reveals the emergence of two different development paths in india and china, as stated above. the chinese development path, after the loosening of the communist yoke, took on an industrialisation production trajectory f rom 1978 onwards. achieving notable success in production of input goods and finished goods, a comprehensive list is as reflected in table 7 below: table 7: china’s goods output soars. [note: in 1978, china produced 28,000 ref rigerators, 200 acs, 400 washing machines and 3,800 colour tvs. chemical fibre cloth paper plastics electricity coal pig iron steel steel products 19901978types of goods 2006 units(millions) .3 11030.0 4.4 .7 256.6 618.0 34.8 31.8 22.1 1.7 18880.0 13.7 12.3 621.2 1080.0 62.4 66.4 51.5 20.7 59855.0 68.6 26.0 2865.7 2373.0 412.5 419.1 468.9 tons meters tons tons 1000kwh tons tons tons tons peer review additionally, china’s goods output as a proportion of gross domestic product exceeds the average of nations with similar per capita income by about 12 percentage points, serving as evidence of china’s predilection for goods production (alm, 2008). furthermore, this proportion of goods output of domestic production is the equivalence of the country’s lag in the world average. comparatively, china has outstripped india in industrial building-up: by the same measure of goods output as a percentage of domestic production and relatively to the world, india trails the world average by approximately 8 percentage points (alm, 2008). this is despite india’s own pursuit of goods manufacturing within a predominately services-based development model. it is not true that while china has focused on goods production and india on services, india is morphing into ‘the office of the world’ and china into ‘the factory of the world’ (saccone, 2009). the growth of indian industries accelerated, in a relatively inferior and lagging fashion to growth rates that emerged in china. table 8 below shows a list of such industries. this adds to any conclusion that development paths are not necessarily unique or that they espouse absolute autonomy in their ideas. development paths may be a healthy fusion of different developmental emphases or trajectories. irma adelman, in a paper titled ‘the fallacies in development theory and their implications for policy’ concluded that: economic development is a highly non-linear, multifaceted, path dependent, dynamic process involving systematically shifting interaction patterns among different aspects of development and therefore requiring predictably changing policies and institutions over time. the bank (and fund) must learn to accept this fact of life. they must start delivering a more state-specific, differentiated message to their clients, difficult as it might be. the cookie-cutter approach to policy is likely to be incorrect or irrelevant at least as often as it is right (adelman, 1999). 25v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 cement plate glass refrigerators room acs washing machines colour tvs motor vehicles microcomputers integrated circuits mobile phones 19901978types of goods 2006 units(millions) 65.2 17.8 0 0 0 0 .1 0 30.4 0 209.7 80.7 68.5 2 6.6 10.3 .5 .1 108.4 0 1236.8 465.7 35.3 68.5 35.6 83.8 7.3 93.4 33575.0 480.1 tons weight (cases) units units units units units units units units (source: september 2017 and march 2018 quarterly labour force survey panel) some useful lessons can be learnt from the development paths of china and india. in 1978, china and india were two developing countries, experiencing low levels of per capita gdp growth and diametrically opposed political, economic, and social institutions. the real gdp per capita income in 1980 stood at $556 and $917 in china and india respectively (alm, 2008). peer review 26 t h e t h i n k e r table 8: output index for the manufacturing industry in india (base 1993–4 = 100; weights* industry = 100) beverages, tobacco and related 12. 38 products 2 transport equipment and parts 3.98machinery and equipment 39.57 other than transport equipment 4 non-metallic mineral products 4.4 5 other manufacturing industries 2.56 textile products (including 62.54 wearing apparel) basic chemicals and chemical 7 products (except products of 14.0 petroleum & coal) 8 basic metal and alloy industries 7.45 wool, silk and man-made fibre 92.26 textiles paper and paper products and 115.73 coal products 10 printing, publishing, and allied 2.65 industries rubber, plastic petroleum and 115.73 coal products 12 food products 9.08 metal products and parts 13 (except machinery and 2.81 equipment) 14 cotton textiles 5.52 leather and leather and fur 2006–072004–05industry and weight 192.1 194.1 182.5 220.8 142.5 156.1 164.6 1469 146.9 197.8 180.5 137.2 444.5 367.7 357.1 305.8 298.4 285.0 283.4 278.9 268.4 248.6 226.3 185.2 peer review 27v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 india, repelled by the strength of china in the production of goods, wisely adopted a services strategy (alm, 2008). this development path was cushioned by india’s advantage in communications technology, language, and cultural compatibility (alm, 2008). despite china’s impressive dominance in the manufacturing of goods, it was particularly overwhelmed by and has lagged behind india’s ability to deliver services. thus, it was relegated to an inferior position in services, just as india was relegated to an inferior position in the manufacturing of goods (alm, 2008). india has taken advantage of cheap transaction costs (specifically transport costs) in the advent of the internet and as such is able to deliver cheap services around the world, but predominately to the u.s and britain (alm, 2008). in the past decade, india’s services have grown aggressively, shooting up 18 percentage points of all exports to 38 percentage points of all exports. in the process, india has surpassed 30 percentage of all exports of the u.s, the largest providers of services in the global market place (alm, 2008). as evidence of the fact that development does not unfold in a linear fashion and often takes different development paths: china has experienced a 5% decline in services sales. in china, services went f rom 15 percentage points of all exports to 8 percentage points of all exports (alm, 2008). the development paths of china and india are also evidence of a gerschenkronian development process that is characterised by initial endowments that determine the trajectory that a country undertakes in pursuit of escaping economic backwardness. the economic argument for the alleviation of unemployment through development of a comparative advantage in services in order to understand what this article is proposing it is important to draw a distinction between the informal and formal economies, which can also be referred to as the formal and informal sectors. the formal sector consists of south af rica’s heavy industries (for example, the mining sector and the metals sector), in addition to commercial agriculture and financial services. the informal sector differs in the sense that it consists of subsistence agriculture, lighter manufacturing, for example food and clothing, and a substantial share of trade and transport services (davies, 2009). some are of the view that the informal sector is an ever-evolving sector with the ability to lead to job creation, and lead to economy-wide growth in output. the distinction between formal and informal activities is that informal sectors are largely unregistered firms. thus, the consequences of policy are largely varying for the informal sector and formal sector. according to the developmental history of china and india, it is crucial for a country to pick a developmental path suitable for the capabilities of its labour force and economic conditions. south af rica, institutionally and economically, adopted the f ree market principle of trade liberalisation in the early 1990s. simultaneously, unemployment and labour force participation rate grew rapidly. trade liberalisation led to a reduction in tariffs charged on imports into south af rica. consequently, this lowered the import prices and led to the improvement of the demand for imported products. a look at the initial tariff rates and collections in 2002 reveals that the highest tariffs stemmed f rom clothing and textiles. therefore, the textiles industry was the most adversely affected and faced unprecedented import competition which led to the production of textiles and clothing declining by 4.7% (davies, 2009). that is to say neither the informal nor formal sector were spared the assault brought on by cheap imports. however, the challenge of cheaper substitutes was avoided in the formal sector, for example in processed foods and other manufactured goods. whereas formal sector production increased in some industries due to access to cheaper imports, production declined for informal producers, who face higher import competition without access to foreign export markets. thus, trade liberalisation caused employment to fall, despite an overall increase in production. there is great reason to believe that jobs have continued to be lost in this fashion in the manufacturing industry. according to the statistical section above, the majority of the job losses, as has been the trend in recent years, are concentrated in the manufacturing industry, which accounted for 108,000 job losses in 2018. in comparison to 2017, manufacturing persisted in job losses with 55,000 jobs lost. however, these national results hide the different outcomes for the formal and informal sectors. the true consequences have been that informal sector production drops significantly, leading to a virtually equal decline in informal employment. however, the formal sector workers and producers make gains, especially in services as a result of improved access to foreign markets. consequently, there is a shift away peer review t h e t h i n k e r f rom the informal sector to the formal sector, which has contributed to the disproportionate smallness informal sector in south af rica (davies, 2009). thus evidently, the informal sector, as well as the formal sector, can gain f rom specialisation in services in the face of cheaper goods f rom asian economies because trade liberalisation significantly reduces informal employment by increasing import competition without providing additional opportunities through the access of foreign markets. the government can create access to foreign markets by specialising in services and promoting a servicesoriented economy, ancillary to the natural resources competitive and dependent economy. whereas the government has opted for trade liberalisation, the best complement to that policy would be a focus on services, following a similar growth path as that of india. the assessment of the south af rican labour market statistical section found that the south af rican labour market is strongly dominated by a relatively unskilled labour force of af rican women and youth. the majority of the men and women have at least a matric qualification. therefore, the development of the services comparative advantage should be done through a services provider who will utilise divisions of labour such that those involved in services in south af rica can upskill themselves and progressively gain the necessary skills. however, it will have to be a move away f rom production. it is worth noting the nature of the south af rican formal sector. the formal sector in south af rica is characterised by the same qualities of the formal sector of middle-income countries. however, the informal sector has those of a poor, less developed country. like middle income countries rich in minerals and competitive in capital and labour intensiveness, it simply cannot compete with east asian economies in low wage, unskilled labourintensive manufacturing. above that, any successful labour-intensive manufacturing will conclude in formalisation, working backwards. as shown in the south af rican labour market statistical section, south af rica has experienced, since apartheid, an increase in relatively unskilled female labour force and the hope to get these women into employment is stifled by a virtually disappearing low wage unskilled labourintensive manufacturing that has relocated to asia. thus, it becomes paramount to upskill this labour force through services where we can carve out a market for services produced, including those ancillary services to the manufacturing process. the idea, and indeed the only hope, is to upskill the labour force through a creation of a comparative advantage in services where they participate through the divisions of labour. it was also shown in the statistical section that the youth is largely unemployed and encounter barriers to entry in the informal sector but are likely to hold a job (not necessarily the same job) in the formal sector. however, we saw through the developmental path of india that the advantage of the services sector is that there are minimal transportation costs, if at all. the barriers to entry in the informal sector in the form of transportation costs can be relaxed if the informal activity undertaken is the production of services and the government is serving as patron to such informal firms. this can create entrepreneurial tendencies amongst the youth. thus, a focus on services can go a long way to reducing the barriers of entry in the informal sector and to creating employment opportunities. to be sure, the services sector faces numerous threats. two have become pronounced over 2020 and 2021: one structural and another contingent but possibly recurrent in the long term. firstly, the onset of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), which threatens to bring automation and online retail to the expense of job-creating brick-and-mortar stores, makes informed investment in this sector that much more imperative. secondly, the looting which took place in july 2021, in the wake of the arrest of former president jacob zuma, evinces the need to provide security to the retail sector. references abhijit banerjee, s.g., galiani, s., levinsohn, j., mclaren, z., and woolard, i. (2008). ‘why has unemployment risen in the new south af rica?’ national bureau of economic research, working paper no. 13167 [online]. available at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13167 adelman, i. (1999). ‘the fallacies in development theory and their implications for policy,’ california agricultural experiment station working paper no. 887 [online]. accessed at: https://mulyanto. staff.uns.ac.id/wp-content/blogs.dir/58/f iles/2009/12/fallacies-indevelopment-theory.pdf alm, w.c. (2008). ‘china and india: two paths to economic power,’ economic letter, 3(8): 1–7. davies, rob j. t. (2009). ‘formal-informal economy linkages and unemployment in south af rica,’ policy research institute. 28 peer review v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 gerschenkron, a. (1951). economic backwardness in historical perspective: a book of essays. cambridge, ma: belknap press of harvard university press. jun, f. (2010). ‘explaining economic growth in india and china: an institutional approach,’ china papers, 1–15. levisohn, j. (2007). ‘two policies to alleviate unemployment in south af rica,’ ford school of public policy. saccone, v. v. (2009). ‘structural change and economic development in china and india,’ the european journal of comparative economics, 6(1): 105–106. shaikh, a. (1974). ‘laws of production and laws of algebra: the humbug production function,’ the review of economics and statistics, 56(1): 155–120. smit, s. (2021) (may 8). ‘covid kills a decade of employment growth in sa,’ mail & guardian [online]. available at: https://mg.co.za/ business/2021-05-08-covid-kills-a-decade-of-employment-growthin-sa/ statssa, (2020). quarterly labour force survey quarter 4: 2020. statssa [online]. available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/ p0211/p02114thquarter2020.pdf 29 peer review abstract both european colonialism and apartheid shaped the economic history of south africa, at the heart of which was the super exploitation of black labour for the benefits of capital, the state, and white labour. while the early mercantile and agricultural economic stages influenced south africa’s racial capitalism, it was the era of the mineral revolution in the late 19th century – as well as the attendant imperative for cheap, black labour – which formed the bedrock of the union of south africa in 1910 and later necessitated the rise of the apartheid state. with vested interests in the racist and later racialist order, which constituted them as the racialised labour aristocracy, white labour conceived of its identity – in racial and cultural terms – as part of european society. consequently, an increasing social gulf emerged between black/african labour and white labour, whose world outlooks were deeply immersed in racist metaphysics. post-apartheid south africa has inherited this dual, contradictory, and mutually antagonistic historical consciousness. this has been exacerbated by poor economic performance based on a neo-liberal framework, the social visibility of the often-self-assertive emerging black middle class resulting from government affirmative policies, and the relative impoverishment of the white working class as they begin to face the cut and thrust of labour market with no preferential state cover. in view of this history of racialised capitalism, racism in post-apartheid south africa is largely located within the black and white working-class socio-economic space, as the latter forfeited its racially vested interests while the former derive the benefits of corrective state action. the historical roots of post-apartheid intra-working-class racism by tlhabane mokhine ‘dan’ motaung | peer review 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review peer review in view of this history of racialised capitalism (where a racist philosophy legitimated officially sanctioned material inequities), racism in postapartheid south af rica is largely located within the black and white working classes. introduction ‘who controls the past controls the future. and who controls the present controls the past.’ – george orwell south af rica’s history was shaped within the context of european colonialism, beginning in 1492, a period which ‘gave the world a centre and a periphery’ (blaunt, 1992: 2). in this racialised global geography, the former was white and european and the latter was af rican, asian, and latin american. as the global climate of racism and racialism began to hold sway as the order of things, the south af rican localised version of this racialisation phenomenon evolved within an economic context: first of mercantile capitalism, followed by agricultural capitalism, and – with the discovery of minerals in the mid-19th century – industrial capitalism (terreblanche, 2000, 1994; magubane, 1979; elphick and giliomee, 1979). both british colonialism (which took on the hue of racism during the segregation era) and the era of apartheid racialism (starting in 1948) racialised society within the capitalist logic. black people were turned into a labouring class at the service of the white master population: their super exploitation, land dispossession, and structured low-paid employment guaranteed better remuneration for both capital and the white working class (mcdonald, 2006; terreblanche, 2002). the result of this structured subordination of black labour was the creation of racialised capitalism, at the heart of which lodged the practice of labour aristocracy. the white workforce, culturally and racially differentiated f rom the black workforce, was given tangible stakes in the defence and continuance of the system of racial oppression (magubane, 1979, 1996; terreblanche, 1994; de kiewiet, 1959). anchored on the ideology of racism at the level of the superstructure, this system of racial privilege fed off prevailing global notions of racial superiority (de kiewiet, 1957; magubane, 1979; fredrickson, 1981). in view of this history of racialised capitalism (where a racist philosophy legitimated officially sanctioned material inequities), racism in post-apartheid south af rica is largely located within the black and white working classes. the latter forfeited its racially vested interests, while the black working class derive benefits f rom corrective state action. compounding matters is the socially and economically visible upward mobility of some sections of the black population (i.e. the black middle class) by dint of affirmative legislation and the attendant process of post-colonial elite formation. at the interface of this epochal social change, marked by the reassertion of scarred af rican/black identities and an economy wilting in the doldrums, an undercurrent of hostile intra-working-class relations have emerged. this essay confines itself to the historical period starting with the formation of the union government in 1910. this moment was largely a synthesis of historical currents (mercantile and agricultural capitalism) that moulded the evolution of race and class materially and ideologically, sculpting the enduring character of the emerging society as a racialised capitalist order based on the mineral revolution of the late 18th century. this essay argues that through both the historical phases of british segregation (racism, 1910–1948) and apartheid (racialism, 1948—1980s), the white working class consciousness was infused with what fukuyama calls megalothymia (2018: 22), ‘something that by its very nature cannot be shared because it is based on one’s position relative to someone else’. megalothymia, as fukuyama further elaborates, ‘is the desire to be recognised as superior’ (2018: 22). in the case of south af rica, it can be understood as a sanctified racial category in which british colonialism and apartheid placed white people. still drawing on fukuyama, i contend that the rising assertion of af rican nationalism following the dissolution of apartheid reflected isothymia, the ‘demand to be respected on an equal basis with other people’ (2018: xiii). framed in egalitarian terms 2 t h e t h i n k e r and expressed through constitutional dispensation, af rican nationalism was inclusive in its central tenets despite its new-found, post-apartheid euphoric exuberance. however, the need for historical redress meant consciously adopting racially affirming policies. this seemed to rouse the resentment of the white working class, who were just beginning to conf ront biting post-apartheid capitalist conditions without the familiar protection of the state. economic stagnation, which failed to either keep up with or bankroll transformation aspirations, meant that the white working class’ thymos, ‘the part of the soul that craves recognition of dignity’ (fukuyama, 2016: xiii), and isothymia were negatively impacted. some scholars ascribe the apparent failure of the post-apartheid state to grow the economy, and thus ensure a fairly commensurate distribution and consumption of public goods to all south af ricans, to the neoliberal economic choices the governing party adopted shortly after assuming power (turok, 2008; mohammed, in mbeki, 2011). stagnant economic conditions in a society with hyper-sensitive racial and ethnic self-consciousness meant not just the exacerbation of inherited mutual resentment between black and white people, especially of working-class provenance, but also sharpened contradictions within the ethnically differentiated black labour itself (an equally apposite sub-theme which is beyond the scope of this essay). british segregation and racial capitalism, 1910–1948 a closer look at the history of south af rica reveals intense intra-class animosities preceding but congealing into clearly discernible form in the period after the south af rican war of 1899–1902 (also widely known as the anglo-boer war). terreblanche (1994, 2001), magubane (1979, 1996), macdonald (2006), and wolpe (1981) attribute the evolution of south af rica’s racial capitalism to this period. according to terreblanche (1994): shortly after the union, the political alliance between the englishand the af rikaans-speaking whites was threatened by both groups’ need for cheap af rican labour. to avert an open clash on this issue, the botha/smuts government and the english establishment agreed on an economic ‘alliance of gold and maize’. the formula on which this alliance was built – a formula that was inherently exploitative – remained the economic foundation of the system of racial capitalism until the early 1970s. from terreblanche’s analysis, it follows that racial capitalism is a definite social order characterised by a plethora of racist laws meant to first entrench the vested interests of capital (gold and maize), and second the interests of white workers above those of black workers. fukuyama’s theory indicates that these asymmetrical racial relations enrooted megalothymia within the people of european descent, while impairing the thymos (‘the demand of the soul craving recognition and dignity’) as well as the isothymia (‘the demand to be respected on an equal basis with other people’) of black people. white supremacy was implanted within white working-class consciousness and tendentiously anchored on material incentives to sustain it within the overall logic of the racist order. within the context of developing modernisation in south af rica, the white working class was always protected against competition f rom the black working class on the grounds of race (de kiewiet, 1957; magubane, 1996). magubane argues that ‘an abstract class analysis not only liquidates the national question, but ignores critical differences in the exploitation of black and white workers which are due specifically to racism’ (1996: 4). throughout the period of racial domination, f rom segregation to apartheid, the white and black proletariats never joined forces; instead, the two working class forces dichotomised racially, what with the collaboration between the state and the pernicious hand of capital (macdonald, 2006). after the signing of the peace of vereeniging in 1902, four main actors steered the history of the country: the racist state, capital, white workers, and black workers. on the one hand, it had always been the responsibility of the white government to uphold the racist/racialist order through policies that ensured that no white people were on the same socio-economic level as black people. on the other hand, capital went along with government’s racist policies to the extent that they were congruent with its interests. where such policies were neither congenial nor compatible, capital simply went it alone. as capital looked after its self-interests, this sometimes meant compromising 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the interests of white labour if that meant cutting production costs, most likely resulting in a fallout between capital and white labour. the result was often embittered industrial action by white labour. industrial action was particularly pronounced in 1907, 1913, 1914, and 1922 (roux, 1948). because capital could play off white labour against its black counterpart when conditions suited it, a template was set which ensured the persistent deterioration of relations between black and white workers. racial capitalism, with the collaboration of state legislation, corralled the white worker into the same camp, but it also calcified structural divisions and inter-racial antagonisms between the white and black worker through differential material existence grounded in racist metaphysics (magubane, 1996). with the projection of partisan white settler capitalism’s interests as the collective interests of the master society as a whole, the most visible fault lines in south af rica became black people as the oppressed and white people as the oppressors. this, of course, did not mean that white society was economically monolithic, as the preceding section demonstrates (de kiewiet, 1957; hazlett, 1993). therefore, in terms of south af rica’s violent colonial modernisation history, it remains true that ‘race is... the modality in which class is “lived,” the medium through which class relations are experienced…’ (hall, 1980, in morley, 2019: 216). from the beginning of the european conquest of south af rica, racism and coerced labour were the most dominant attributes of social relations. conquest was dressed in racist garb and, as jacklyn cock and julia wells (2020) argue, ‘deeply embedded in british colonialism, these settler elites soon articulated and perpetrated a virulent racism.’ according to magubane, ‘throughout the period of colonialism, segregation and apartheid, attempts were made to reduce the af rican into a permanent sub-proletariat on whom the prosperity of the political economy of the settler economy rested’ (2007: 178). terreblanche (1994) argues that the period between 1910 and 1924, when the pact government gained political ascendancy, was the time of the construction of racial capitalism. as terreblanche outlines: the mines and workers act consolidated the jobreservation system in mining and industry in 1911; the native land act was passed in 1913; the native affairs act for the administration of the af rican reserves in 1920 and the native (urban areas) act for the administration of af rican locations in 1923 (1994: 6). like siamese twins, racism and capitalism therefore constituted the forces that incubated south af rica’s historical consciousness. in periodizing south af rica’s history, terreblanche summarises it thus: the 120 years of economic modernisation since 1870 can be divided into three periods […]: the period of british imperial conquest (1870–1910); the period of racial capitalism and segregation (1910– 1948) (under the firm control of the local english establishment with the chamber of mines at its core); and the period of af rikaner volkkapitalisme and apartheid (1948–1990) (1994: 2). like cock and wells, terreblanche traces racial domination in south af rica to the beginning of british conquest in 1870, but it is worth remembering that racism actually arrived with the dutch east india company/vereenigde oost-indische compagnie (voc) in 1652. richard elphick and hermann giliomee (1979) argue that race and class had close correlation in the early cape because of the policies of the voc, and suggest that: ‘(a)n implication of our view is that the origin of cape racial order is one of the antecedents of the modern south af rican racial order’ (1979: 523). reflecting on the nature of europe’s racialisation of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries, elphick and giliomee state that ‘like all colonising peoples of the period, the dutch were convinced of the superiority of their culture and religion. cultural chauvinism was an important component of racism…’ (ibid). the dutch, according to elphick and giliomee, ‘… arrived at the cape with a “somatic norm image” or a collectively held picture of ideal human appearance’ (ibid). therefore, even in its nascent stages, what would evolve into the south af rican state was deeply rooted in notions of racial difference as a predicate to racial privilege. as argued earlier, throughout the formation of south af rica’s history, megalothymia (‘the desire to be recognised as superior’) bore racial imprint. this deeply-etched point of view would prove contradictory to the corrective measures of the postapartheid context. 4 t h e t h i n k e r peer review and split it between white society, in the form of inflated profit. but the state also responded to the political power of whites by enhancing the living standards of whites (or citizens) with resources that were generated through the hyper-exploitation of blacks (or non-citizens) (2006: 58). throughout the history of south af rica, and especially starting with the era of british segregation, race implicated class as successive governments’ efforts were directed at addressing the ‘poor white problem’, as white supremacy would not hear of white people wallowing in the same dehumanising social conditions which were the lot of af rican people. both skilled and unskilled white labour were distressed in their own respective ways. skilled white labour feared the disconcerting tendency of capital to employ cheap but skilled black labour at sub-market rates, which invariably undercut their bargaining position. unskilled white labour – consisting of migrants to urban and industrial centres f rom doomed rural, agricultural conditions – feared competition f rom the multitudes of cheap, unskilled, af rican labour who could perform sweated labour for slave-like pay. the pens of historians have spilled much ink on the intersection of race and class in south af rican history, where white became synonymous with the ruling political and economic class and black with racial privilege was elevated to official state policy with the formation of the union of south af rica in 1910 when mining and agricultural capital (‘gold’ and ‘maize’) could not take off without a constant and reliable supply of cheap labour. to make matters worse, the union government had to conf ront the spectre of the ‘poor white problem’, resulting f rom multiple factors, including the british ‘scorched earth’ policy and the mechanisation of agriculture. both government and white capital also came to the realisation that as long as black people had access to land ownership, white access to cheap and available labour would remain a pipedream; hence the native land act of 1913. throughout the segregation and apartheid governments, the ‘poor white problem’ would shape the contours of south af rica’s historical trajectory. in a society defined by racial identity, the notion of the white subject sinking into conditions of poverty akin to those of the black subject imperilled the key claims of the racial order itself (macdonald, 2006; de kiewiet, 1959). in occupying the same existential space as af ricans, against whom they had been socialised to see themselves as superior, the white working class found itself in an untenable social situation. as de kiewiet explains: it was at the turn of the century that it became evident that white society had developed within itself disturbing inequalities. at the base of white society had gathered, like sediment, a race of men so abject in their poverty, so wanting in resourcefulness, that they stood dangerously close to the native themselves (1959: 181). sharing a station in life with black people went against the grain of notions of white supremacy and therefore posed an existential danger to the racist ontology of the state. the megalothymia propelled by this racist ontology was undermined by these racially indistinguishable social conditions. both the segregation and apartheid states therefore aimed to privilege white capital and white workers at the cost of af rican labour. this was purportedly to maintain the separation of the two cultures, but in truth it maintained white economic privilege. macdonald expresses this point lucidly in explaining that: the state, then, siphoned wealth f rom blacks 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the pens of historians have spilled much ink on the intersection of race and class in south af rican history, where white became synonymous with the ruling political and economic class and black with the oppressed working class. of equal importance, however, is how south af rica’s racialised capitalist history has shaped intra-class relations between black and white working-class segments of the population. the oppressed working class. of equal importance, however, is how south af rica’s racialised capitalist history has shaped intra-class relations between black and white working-class segments of the population. louis botha, the first prime minister of the union of south af rica, agonised over the reliable provision of af rican labour, the warp and woof of the new polity (myers, 2008). botha argued that indirect rule would be unsuited to the country’s needs because it physically located af rican labour outside the white areas which sorely needed it (ibid). as myers puts it, ‘for botha, a black working class was an inseparable – albeit unequal – component of the south af rican settler society, whose hierarchy would be reproduced using nothing more than the state’s basic repressive machine’ (2008: 13). for their part, white workers – under the sway of the skilled segment of the white work force – agitated for the protection of their privileges as a racial group under the guise of not being reduced to the ‘uncivilised’ status of natives. as a result, ‘whites formed labour unions in the early 1900s to guard against this persistent tendency, and the south af rican labour party (salp) was formed in 1908 to explicitly advance the interests of european workers’ (hazlett, in henderson, 1993). dressing the issue of white privilege in the garb of political respectability, frederic creswell – who was later to become the leader of the labour party – rebutted the mining capital’s argument for native labour on the grounds that reliance on af rican labour represented a threat to the future of white society (de kiewiet, 1957). in analysing the history of racial capital in south af rica, harold wolpe (1980) has employed the theory of the ‘articulation of modes of production’ to argue that traditional af rican economies existed sideby-side with the market economy, with the former situated in an auxiliary position. while wolpe’s thesis is larger than the scope of this argument, his most salient, apposite contention is that the segregation government used the two modes of production to sustain the exploitation of black migrant workers, whose sub-market payment was compensated for by the agricultural produce in the reserves, where they retained reciprocal relations with their kin (wolpe, 1980). this absolved the state and capital of the responsibility to maintain social production and reproduction by taking care of the black workers once they were worn out. by implication, and as macdonald argues, the under-payment of black migrant workers was not only to the advantage of capital, but to white workers too. the 1922 rand strike and the pact government of 1924 both the 1922 rand strike and the pact government of 1924 were incremental steps in the process building up to apartheid, which would come into being in 1948. at the centre of these developments were white labour interests. af rikaner nationalism gained ground as the poor, working classes could not take the heat f rom the unf riendly policies of capital. in further illuminating this history, janis grobbelaar states that: af rikaner nationalism, the strategies and organisational inf rastructures forged to give it momentum, the rewards and patronage with which it has endowed its adherents and the mobilising and modernising tendencies it has engendered lead to the embourgeoisement of the majority of white south af ricans – especially those of af rikaner descent – via majority of white south af ricans – especially those of the civil services and in a series of white af rikaner dominated parastatals that were established. (white af rikaner males were the special recipients of those very rewarding affirmative action strategies) (in zegeye, 2001: 305). exclusionary and implemented at the cost of af rican workers, the laws which the pact government brought about not only entrenched the further misery of the black proletariat but also, at the cost of black labour, promoted the racial and class progress/mobility of white people as a group. the 1922 rand revolt represented a clear tipping point in the relations between black and white labour, as well as affirming primary contradictions between labour and capital, irrespective of colour. it indicated the fluid and contingent relations between labour – be it black or white – and capital, as well as further lending credence to the absolute importance of profit as the raison d’être for capital. as historiography has shown, the 1922 rand revolt was instigated by the unusual step of mining capital to lower the labour costs of white workers in the face of depressed profits, 6 t h e t h i n k e r peer review perpetual economic servility of black workers, on the other. as peter walshe argues: when the new pact government began to apply its ‘civilised labour’ policy, passing further discriminatory legislation, and hertzog began to explain his approach to the native problem, congressmen were quick to discern the repressive nature of the supposed new deal. the ‘civilised labour’ policy initiated in 1924 and the ‘colour bar’ act of 1926 (mines and works amendment act) were seen for what they were – an integral part of hertzog’s comprehensive ‘solution’ to the native problem and a means towards his expressed goal of permanent white supremacy outside the reserves (1971: 109). the black population was not to be a source of concern as far as their degraded living standards were concerned because ‘…poverty, in such state of reasoning, was thus a normal condition of native life, like the infertility of barren land’ (de kiewiet, 1959: 220). this historical evolution of oppressive labour laws culminated in the 1948 apartheid state which saw the national party assume political power with the explicit aim of making black south af ricans ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’. with exclusive political citizenship, white people would benef it f rom a government with which they had shared cultural aff inities under the umbrella of af rikaner nationalism. what is also historically worth noting about the leitmotif of the pact government is its ‘welfare state as that of af ricans had already reached miserably low levels (de kiewiet, 1959; magubane, 2007, 1979, 1996; terreblanche, 1994). the 1922 rand revolt’s key thrust was avowedly white supremacist, as evidenced by its slogan: ‘workers of the world unite for a white south africa’. the revolt also represented a fightback against the ‘betrayal’ (on racial grounds) by the smuts government and capital (magubane, 1996; de kiewiet, 1959). in unabashedly appropriating and repurposing the revolutionary marxist slogan, white workers demonstrated a dyed-in-thewool racist animus within the framework of the political economy. in fukuyamian lexicon, the white workers of 1922 did not just seek for fairness and justice in their relationship with the mine owners: they sought to maintain conditions that recognised them as superior to black people at all costs. in other words, they sought to possess megalothymia in its racial variant. terreblanche states that: after the rand revolt of 1922, the smuts government became convinced that conditions conducive to accumulation (i.e. of profit) and legitimation (i.e. of the state in the eyes of the white community) could only be guaranteed if the economic position of the white proletariat and the african petit bourgeoisie could be secured (2002: 249). securing the interests of the white working class could only mean further compromising those of the black workers, further deracinating their isothymia. race had trumped class solidarity in the face of common capitalist exploitation of the proletariat, as amply demonstrated by the outcome of the strike and its political ramifications. for one thing, the pact government unseated the bothasmuts government in the 1924 national election, on the ticket of upholding policies which entrenched and perpetuated the vested interests of white over black workers. this essentialisation of race as a central axis of south african society saw an array of racist laws come into being. many africans lost their jobs as a direct result of the pact government’s policies. the 1925 mines and works (colour bar) act ‘finally established in the law of the land the principle that the right of a man to do skilled work depends on the colour of his skin’ (roux, 1948: 152). quite clearly, the pact government was occasioned by historical exigency to mollify relations between capital and white workers, on the one hand, and canonise the 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the black population was not to be a source of concern as far as their degraded living standards were concerned because ‘…poverty, in such state of reasoning, was thus a normal condition of native life, like the infertility of barren land’ policy which was geared towards compensating poorer whites (of which over 70 percent were af rikaans) for the impoverishment and disruption they were suffering as a consequence of modernisation and urbanisation’ (terreblanche, 1994: 10). this measure found historical parallel in the post-1994 political scenario when the ruling af rican national congress (anc) introduced aff irmative action policies to which most white and especially af rikaner organisations objected vociferously, citing reverse racism. af rikaner nationalism was exclusionary and insensitive to the existence of the ‘other’ and, in its quest to empower its own, ‘it had a clear economic interventionist thrust’ (terreblanche, 1994: 12). the coming into existence of the apartheid state was occasioned by the af rikaner nationalist economic self-interest. in explaining this development, hazlett submits that: the problem apartheid attacked was circular. economic cooperation among the races led to social integration. social integration led to further economic cooperation because industrialists found low-wage blacks irresistible. racists saw social separation enforced by law – apartheid – as the essential way to shore up the economic protection of white labour (in henderson, ed., 1993: 17). apartheid further entrenched racially privileged white af rikaner nationalism and excluded af ricans, indians, and coloureds f rom the polity through what it termed ‘separate development’ (terreblanche, 1994; macdonald, 2006). apartheid continued to provide state welfare to working class af rikaners throughout its lifespan until the 1980s (terreblanche, 1994). separate development, according to terreblanche (1994), was one of the ‘almost desperate attempts made by successive national party heads of state to crystallise a new ideology which could legitimise (or mystify) the continuation of white supremacy and the structures of racial exploitation’ (1994: 15). separate development represented a move away f rom the segregationist era’s avowed racist policy to a policy of ‘racialism’. macdonald (2006) states that ‘racialism insinuates race as a def ining human attribute, a central axis of human society and political organisation, a fulcrum of political representation and participation’. despite the sleight of hand to delineate apartheid as separate but equal political arrangements, the fundamental inequalities resulting f rom structured relationships of dominance remained and continued well until the 1994 democratic breakthrough. racism in the post-apartheid era though it ushered in a political seismic change in south af rica’s racially charged history, the 1994 democratic breakthrough only represented political change and not structural transformation (habib, 2013; mbeki, 2009; terreblanche, 2002). the structural imbalances and inequities emanating f rom the history of racialised capitalism are still in place. however, over the course of this historical trajectory, some socio-economic fluidity has also emerged. terreblanche (1994) argues that during the course of the anti-apartheid struggle much damage was done to the south af rican economy, which also affected the fortunes of the white working class. he notes that the most affected incomes were those of af rikaner households ‘in the ranks of the lower 40 percent’ (1994: 22). as the political economy was the pivot of ‘white politics’, such drastic changes swelled the ranks of af rikaner rightwing nationalism, which, considering its history of comfort at the expense of the black workforce, was to be expected. yet this resurgence in racial consciousness was not to end on the dawn of the new democratic dispensation. given the deteriorating economic conditions of the af rikaner working class and the corresponding rise in rightwing discourse, as well as the massive racial imbalances and great expectations of the formerly oppressed, when the democratic era dawned in 1994 it was alreadly potentially afflicted with congenital impediments. at the same time, one could draw the conclusion that the reconciliatory policies and tone of nelson mandela, south af rica’s first democratically elected president, on the back of heavy compromises by the anc, narrowed the space for strident right wing assertions in the face of the certainty of loss of state power. what resuscitated racial rancour, however, were the democratic government’s policies of redress, which included, among others, affirmative action, black 8 t h e t h i n k e r peer review assertive formulations for equality by historically marginalised groups, with the former invariably appropriating the latter’s mode of discourse to cast itself as the victim of reverse marginalisation and racism. post-apartheid south af rica is not too far f rom this portrait. yet, in comparative terms, white people in south af rica are still far better off and still own strategic assets that the majority of black people can only wistfully imagine. be that as it may, some af rikaner civil and political organisations have re-narrativized the postapartheid experience as one of reverse racism and the marginalisation of white people, af rikaners in particular (mistra, 2018). sharing his musings on this theme, dirk hermann, the ceo of solidarity, an af rikaner lobby group, states the following in an imaginary letter to ‘mother af rica’: why is my quest for a place in af rica racism, but that of my brothers a justified quest? why are you silent about certain parts of history while you emphasise others? (2018: 59) ruminating along similar lines, ernst roets, deputy ceo of af riforum, ‘a civil rights organisation’, opines that: technically there is no legal basis according to which my race is defined. ‘white’ is not defined in the employment equity act, nor in the broadbased black economic empowerment act, nor in the promotion of equality and prevention of unfair discrimination act. ‘black’, however, is defined as economic empowerment, affirmative procurement, and countless other means of enabling black people to stake a claim in the economy of south af rica. as stated above, some observers have blamed the neoliberal policy choices of the anc for the country’s failed economic performance, which, in turn, has resuscitated primordial identities. because south af rica’s concept of identity is racially circumscribed, addressing social imbalances goes against the grain of racial sensibility as those who benefited f rom the unjust past interpret current redress as racial role swapping. transformation is perceived in sweeping, racialised generalisations to the extent that it is seen to represent a threat to livelihoods. de kiewiet has made the acute observation that: in spite of the labours of many students of native life, there continued to prevail amongst most classes of white society a remarkable lack of precise and unequivocal knowledge of native life. it was no shape for the legislator to be ignorant of the condition of the greater part of the population (1959: 226). could it be that these sweeping generalisations ignore the fact that the majority of black working class communities are still trapped in historicallyinduced conditions of powerlessness? in a country were racial and spatial historical patterns are still deeply entrenched, ignorance could still be bliss. to be sure, post-apartheid south af rica has seen a tiny section of political elites, most of them the results of government affirmative procurement policies, rise up the social ladder to become both visible and vocal (habib, 2013). joining the ranks of the white middle class and the rich, the growth of this black, and especially af rican, elite contrasts with increasing social inequality as the majority of unskilled, uneducated black south af ricans sink deeper into conditions of impoverishment. similarly, it would not be drawing the long bow to say, as terreblanche has argued about the period leading up to democracy, that a significant number of white people, especially af rikaners, are also facing impoverishment. fukuyama (2018) has argued that identity and the politics of resentment characterise modern societies, where communities of european descent who have benefited f rom racial privilege push back against 9v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review yet, in comparative terms, white people in south africa are still far better off and still own strategic assets that the majority of black people can only wistfully imagine. be that as it may, some afrikaner civil and political organisations have re-narrativized the post-apartheid experience as one of reverse racism and the marginalisation of white people ‘generic terms referring to af ricans, coloureds and indians’ (2018: 67). both of these speakers are influential members of af rikaner communities and historical products of af rikaner nationalism. their opinions are representative of a fairly large section of the af rikaner community. one can infer that their thinking does not seem to appreciate the presence of history in post-apartheid south af rica. af rikaner sentiment respecting the loss of power and the process of transformation, imperfect and deformed as it is, echoes the history that has incubated it. the ethnic nationalism that bound the af rikaner system of thought over generations will not merge easily into the wider south af rican nationalism ushered in by the democratic era. zegeye maintains that: the af rikaner image was forged by ideologues. to be an af rikaner entailed having a sense of belonging to that group, and birth into the volk (in terms of af rikaner ideologues an imagined community of racially similar people […]) superseded identification with the state (2001: 7). one could be excused for detecting a historical continuity here with the history of racialised capitalism. as de kiewiet notes: without special protection, he (i.e. the white, afrikaner worker) could meet native competition only by a fatal reduction in his own standard of living, and that would simply permit the lower civilisation to drive out the higher civilisation (1959: 225). disentangling oneself from this framework of thinking in the face of a declining economic situation may not be all that easy. however, the majority of the afrikaner community is not wallowing in a debilitated economic state. responding to this train of thought within the white community, terreblanche emphasises that: it is rather hypocritical of whites to claim these benefits with greedy self-righteousness but decline any responsibility (directly or indirectly) for the evil of colonisation and its ugly consequences. in as much as these problems have resulted not only from whites’ obsession with power and entrenched privileges but also from their short-sightedness, greed, and reductionist individualism, white south africans ought to realise that they cannot be effectively addressed without a willingness to make substantial sacrifices – materially and symbolically – as part of an open commitment to the restoration of social justice (2002: 5). for his part, peter hudson sees the structural continuities not only of material inequalities, but also of racism, disguised by the system of democracy. hudson argues that: colonialism does not disappear but is repressed and unconscious. this does not, however, prevent it from continuing to structure social practice. it does this without seeming to disrupt the democratic nonracial order by inserting itself in an ambivalence at the heart of capitalism (in satgar, 2018: 159). conclusion in a society where superordinate national identity had never been constructed, the rising tide of african nationalism, the transformation of the state in demographic terms, and the redistribution of the economic dividend enhanced pre-existing ethnic macro-identities between the black and the white working classes, exacerbating a climate of resentment (fukuyama, 2006). the eradication of legislative racial privilege in postapartheid south africa has dispossessed the white working class of this shelter, which in turn has led to the perception of group marginalisation or reverse racism as legislative redress of past racial imbalances takes place within an ever-shrinking economic base that cannot commensurately sustain adequate living standards for all. the post-colonial resurgence of african identity is being perceived by poor working-class white (afrikaner) communities as evidence of the shoe being on the other foot: i.e. the perception that they are in turn the victims of state oppression. fukuyama has contended that ‘…demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in the world today’ (2018: xv). therefore, the rising tide of unemployment and the corresponding deracialised impoverishment affecting both the black and white working classes – and possibly the former 10 t h e t h i n k e r peer review department of economics. available at: https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/ sampieterreblanche/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/sjt-1994-fromwhite-supremacy-to-racial-capitalism.pdf terreblanche, s. (2002). a history of inequality in south africa, 1652– 2002. pietermaritzburg: university of kwazulu-natal press walshe, p. (1971). the rise of african nationalism in south africa: the african national congress. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press webster, e. and pampallis, k. (2017). the unresolved national question: left thought under apartheid. johannesburg: wits university press wolpe, h. (1980). the articulation of modes of production: essays from economy and society. london, boston, henley: routledge and kegan paul zegeye, a, (ed). (2001). social identities in the new south africa: after apartheid, vol 1. cape town: kwela books and south african history online (saho) more acutely – is perceivable by the latter, which had historically been socialised into the thought-system of comparatively better material wellbeing, as systematic marginalisation (magubane, 1996, 1979; fredrickson, 1934; de kiewiet, 1957). in decomposing the working class along racial lines, both ideologically and materially, settler colonialism implanted a dichotomous albeit mutually hostile trans-historical consciousness between the two working class segments. this consciousness is still extant in the post-apartheid era, albeit in a more subtle and attenuated form. references cock, j. and wells, j. (2020). the arrival of british settlers 200 years ago continues to cast a shadow over south africa. [online] the conversation. available at: https://theconversation.com/the-arrival-of-british-settlers200-years-ago-continues-to-cast-a-shadow-over-south-africa-137319 de kiewiet, c.w. (1959). a history of south africa: social and economic. london: oxford university press elphick, r. and giliomee, h. (1979), (eds). the shaping of south african society, 1652–1840. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press fredrickson, m. g. (1934). white supremacy: a comparative study in american and south african history. oxford: oxford university press fukuyama, f. (2018). identity: the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment. new york: farrar, straus and giroux habib, a. (2013). south africa’s suspended revolution: hopes and prospects. johannesburg: wits university press hazlett, t.w. in david r. henderson, (ed.), (1993). the concise encyclopaedia of economics. indianapolis: liberty fund henderson, r.d. (1993), (ed). the concise encyclopaedia of economics. indianapolis: liberty fund macdonald, m. (2006). why race matters in south africa. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press magubane, b.m. (1979). the political economy of race and class in south africa. new york and london: monthly review press magubane, b.m. (1996). the making of a racist state: british imperialism and the union of south africa, 1875–1910. trenton, nj: africa world press magubane, b.m. (2007). race and the construction of the dispensable other. pretoria: university of south africa press mapungubwe institute for strategic reflection (mistra), (2018). whiteness afrikaans afrikaners: addressing post-apartheid legacies privileges and burdens. johannesburg: mistra mbeki, m. (2009). architects of poverty: why african capitalism needs changing. johannesburg: picador africa myers, j.c. (2008). indirect rule in south africa: tradition, modernity, and the costuming of political power. new york: university of rochester press roux, e. (1948). time longer than rope: a history of the black man’s struggle for freedom in south africa. wisconsin: the university of wisconsin press terreblanche, s. (1994). from white supremacy and racial capitalism towards a sustainable system of democratic capitalism: a structural analysis. transit (sjt33). [online] stellenbosch university 11v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review peer review 38 abstract this paper explores how dancehall lyrics reproduce heterosexist and homophobic discourses in the lgbtq community within a caribbean dancehall context. it advances notable scholarship (chunnu 2021, hope, 2021) on dancehall lyrics by drawing on standard parallels of the colonial same-sex practices used to denigrate enslaved af ricans and the eurocentric religious ideal that lgbtq customs contravene judeo-christian doctrine. dancehall music originated in jamaica within the neo-colonial period (since the 1980s) coming out of reggae. dancehall is the musical expression of the working-class black masses used to protest the criminogenic continuities of colonial history. although dancehall acted as a form of protest against the colonially entangled inequalities, heterosexism prevailed and continued to shape the checkered reality of coloniality within jamaica and t&t societies. as such, this study explores the presentday identities of the lgbtqia community expressed through the dancehall lyrics created within the 19902010 period utilising autobiography, critical discourse analysis by fairclough and gender performativity theory by judith butler. in doing so, the researcher connected dancehall lyrics to heterosexism through an analysis of discourses within religion, sex and sexuality. such discourses contributed to advancing the understanding of stigmatisation, criminalisation and dehumanisation of the lgbtq community in a cross-cultural caribbean context. heterosexism and homophobia in the caribbean dancehall context by nathan chapman, sangeeta maharaj, melanie seeberan, and emmarica houlder v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 39 t h e t h i n k e r peer review this paper critically explores how dancehall lyrics, produced during the 1990–2010 period, re-enforce pre-existing heterosexist discourses within trinidad and tobago (t&t) and jamaica. the authors situate the analysis within hope’s (2021: 4) terminology ‘femmephobia,’ which is ‘the patent fear of feminization and male disempowerment that emanates particularly f rom jamaica’s disempowered lower classes.’ the article also advances chavannes’ (1994) understanding of the delilah complex (cited in hope, 2021), whereby femininity is seen as a danger as it has the potential to weaken male masculinity. the authors engage this academic discourse and draw on dancehall lyrics, through the translation of jamaican patois into english, and on the authors’ high school experiences in t&t. in this way, the article aims to fulfil the feminist principle of making the personal political. this research does not aim to generalise the distinct identities among all members of the lgbtq community. instead, the authors use this acronym as a critical, analytical, and interpretive tool to label dancehall lyrics that reflect heterosexist ideologies. the authors focus specifically on the caribbean male to argue that dancehall lyrics fixate on nonheterosexual men. this view supports the argument of lewis (cited in brown, 1999: 6), who contends that it is impossible to analyse the caribbean male without distinguishing between hegemonic masculinity and other ‘subordinated forms of masculinity’. hegemonic masculinity is defined as: ‘an orientation which is heterosexual and decidedly homophobic. it prides itself on its capacity for sexual conquest and ridicules those men who define their masculinity in different terms. hegemonic masculinity often embraces misogynist tendencies in which women are considered to be inferior. departure f rom this form of masculinity could result in the questioning of one’s manhood.’ (brown, 1999: 6) gutzmore (2004: 1) argues that ending hatred against lgbtq people starts with identifying five homophobic imperatives: ‘religious fundamentalism, heterosexual naturalism, legalism, cultural nationalism, and child protection, which are held to drive the discriminatory discourses and practices.’ thus, to transform this problem, it is important to disentangle small-level and taken-for-granted discourses that reassert linkages between dancehall lyrics, colonial history, and cross-cultural caribbean identities in the neocolonial present. in essence, this study sheds light on the way(s) that dancehall music is expressed within colonially entangled power structures that have shaped identities within the present-day neo-colonial jamaican and t&t contexts. this study adopts a transhistorical approach by contextualising heterosexist discourses within a colonial past. however, greater attention is placed on a comparative analysis within the post-independent (post-1990) contemporary era by emphasising how widely held cultural viewpoints and expressions of heteronormativity are rearticulated in jamaican dancehall lyrics and, uniquely, in their reception in trinidad and tobago. in doing so, the authors utilise the theory of gender performativity and explore how dancehall lyrics reproduce culturally embedded heterosexism. according to butler (1998: 2): ‘gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency f rom which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time, an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.’ bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self (butler, 1998: 2). this study shows how the performative acts within dancehall lyrics reproduce the dehumanisation and degradation of lgbtq identities. this research, through autobiography and lyrical discourse, discusses popular dancehall lyrics. the this research does not aim to generalise the distinct identities among all members of the lgbtq community. instead, the authors use this acronym as a critical, analytical, and interpretive tool to label dancehall lyrics that reflect heterosexist ideologies. the authors focus specifically on the caribbean male to argue that dancehall lyrics fixate on non-heterosexual men. peer review 40 authors are citizens of t&t and do not have a cultural background in the intricacies of jamaican dancehall music. however, they ground their analysis by reflecting on songs that were popular in their high school days, and which shaped perceptions of lgbtq individuals within their socialisation. the dancehall music selected for research analysis draws on popular culture familiar to the authors during their high school experiences f rom 2005–2010 (i.e. the period when the authors attended high school, not necessarily when the songs were created). the origins of the songs span between 1990–2010. the songs selected for analysis include, but are not limited to: ‘batty boi fi dead’, which was made by beenie man in 2005; ‘batty boy (stay far from we)’, created by dr evil in 2006; and ‘boom bye bye’, formed by buju banton in 1988, made famous in 1992. these songs were analysed using the jamaican patwah dictionary, which translated the patois identified in the dancehall lyrics into english. music plays a significant role in shaping sociocultural discourses. in the 2000s, popular music often supported the ideals of heteronormativity. when the authors initially encountered these tracks, the focus was mainly on the beat. while singing along for entertainment, the authors failed to recognise the violence and heteronormative ideology that was intrinsically engineered into the music. for instance, songs such as ‘batty boy fi dead’ depicted gruesome tales which honoured, glorified, and promoted murder, abuse, and hate towards nonheteronormative behaviours. during the authors’ high school experiences, any comment or song that mentioned or pointed to a non-heteronormative behaviour was ridiculed, repudiated strongly, or seen as horrendous or hateful. buju banton’s controversial song ‘boom bye bye’ was supported by famous singer red dragon where he said in the lyrics that non-heterosexual men must die. such a message has a drastic impact on the broader society and, unfortunately, has been normalised. heteronormativity sets an automatic assumption about homosexuality, which may result in social pressures leading individuals to react violently towards people f rom these minority groups. the authors observed that some of the male students bullied other male students who were not interested in sports and rather expressed interest in music, writing, and poetry. the authors grew up in a space where anything that was not part of god’s teaching was seen as an abomination. thus, lesbians and gays were seen as an abomination in the eyes of god. due to this, many of the authors’ f riends, who came f rom similar religious backgrounds, hid their sexual preferences to prevent being disgraced by their families and community members. so far, the authors have lost two f riends to suicide because these f riends could no longer live a double life and they feared the society would ostracise them if they were honest about themselves. much of dancehall music promoted an ideology of violence towards the lgbtq community. for instance, at a party, as noted in contemporary vulgarism, as soon as the anti-gay songs came on, the homosexuals in that space were automatically intimidated since the others looked upon them with scorn. when this music was entirely consumed, it had the potential for mind control, which on numerous occasions led to sounds of gunshots, making people fear for their lives. as the authors gazed into the lyrics of these songs, it was disturbing and disappointing that as a younger generation with access to a world of information, we participated and supported such melodies and rhythms without an adequate investigation or a healthy understanding of what we were promoting. in other words, despite the blatant vulgarity and horrifying messages embedded in the music, we failed to see the wrong in it. kitzinger (2005: 478) describes heteronormativity as ‘the myriad ways in which heterosexuality is produced as a natural, unproblematic, taken-forgranted phenomenon.’ the concept assumes that within society, people must conform to the gendered roles, ideals, stereotypes, and expectations. deviating f rom these norms can initiate specific, robust sanctions, and repudiation. dancehall music is a medium to channel and reenforce this oppression. interestingly, these songs are so powerful that although the authors were never self-proclaimed homophobes, they sang along to the songs without realising the impact of these lyrics and their subliminal messages. it was not until they reached university that the authors began to explore and reflect on dancehall language. lgbtq performers such as the jamaican actor and v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 41 t h e t h i n k e r peer review comedian keith ‘shebada’ ramsey have enjoyed success and overwhelming support, while drawing the ire of the dancehall community. shebada is embraced through the power of his position as an artist and the talented nature of his craft, similarly to globally revered lgbtq personalities such as elton john. this acceptance may not extend to the average, underprivileged lgbtq individual living in jamaica. shebada’s charismatic and self-confident personality is reminiscent of saucy pow in trinidad and tobago, who is known to be unapologetically non-heterosexual and popularly known in t&t for his extravagant dances at parties. such examples of celebrities who enjoy some level of acceptance does not discount the perilous threats, risk, and brutality that these individuals face. shebada and saucy pow have both spoken publicly about receiving death threats and facing abuse (souza, 2018). jamaica and trinidad and tobago share a cultural legacy of colonialism that incorporates a long history of discrimination towards gender diversity and samesex sexualities. these caribbean territories were not always vehemently homophobic. in the pre-colonial era, there were many examples of indigenous communities that provided a cultural space where gender nonconforming people were accepted, particularly the two-spirit people, which was an umbrella term to describe persons who fulfilled the third gender. colonisers also brought the eurocentric version of christianity, which criminalised nonheteronormative behaviours (stewart, 2017: 1–102). it should be noted, however, that many religious scholars argue that the biblical texts traditionally used to condemn homosexuality, such as the story of sodom and gomorrah, have been misunderstood and misrepresented (gnuse, 2015: 68–87). atluri (2015: 309) notes that: ‘the privileging of heterosexist norms and the patriarchal family by the nation-state has its roots not in any indigenous school of thought, but rather in colonial values.’ before 2018, trinidad and tobago had a buggery law, whereby anal sex carried a twenty-fiveyear sentence and oral sex carried a five-year sentence. jamaican buggery laws or anti-sodomy laws dated back to the colonial-era 1864 offenses against the person act (lgbt issues in jamaica, 2012: 1–2). christianity and colonialism introduced notions of ‘respectability’ in sexual mores and ideologies that repudiated non-procreative sexual acts (lafont, 2001; smith, 1965 (cited in charles, 2011: 8)). these living legacies of colonialism are present in dancehall lyrics and are reinforced by both the colonially entangled institutions and masses within jamaica. cowell (2011: 31–60) responded to cooper’s analysis that dancehall is a ‘metaphorical revolt against law and order,’ saying rather that it seemed aligned with the ‘pious morality and conservative gender ideology of fundamentalist jamaican society,’ at least insofar as it relates to conservative outlooks on same-sexualities. such homophobic discrimination has been challenged by varying groups. both the coalition advocating for inclusion of sexual orientation (caiso), which was founded in 2007, and the jamaica forum of lesbians, all-sexuals and gays (j-flag), which was founded in 1998 and forms part of the caribbean forum of lesbians, all-sexuals and gays (c-flag), are civil society organisations in trinidad and tobago and jamaica that challenge socio-cultural discrimination by advocating for the rights and f reedoms of lgbtq communities. dancehall plays an ambiguous role within jamaican society because, on the one hand, it reinforces religious values but, on the other, is painted as a genre that promotes vulgarity (hope, 2006: 1–168). heterosexism in dancehall lyrics has become a problem globally since the 1990s after songs such as buju banton’s ‘boom bye-bye’ caught international interest and attention. hope (2021: 4) identifies this song as opening up the early debate of male non-heteronormative sexuality and in response to the ‘early movement of the male homosexual body f rom the hidden corners christianity and colonialism introduced notions of ‘respectability’ in sexual mores and ideologies that repudiated non-procreative sexual acts (lafont, 2001; smith, 1965 (cited in charles, 2011: 8)). these living legacies of colonialism are present in dancehall lyrics and are reinforced by both the colonially entangled institutions and masses within jamaica. peer review 42 and cloaked spaces to the heterosexual public space of jamaica.’ additionally, dancehall has been rooted in society as its ‘fundamentalist brand of christianity’ and ‘rastafarian religion’ condemn non-heteronormative behaviours and are inculcated in the values of many dancehall artists. dancehall also plays a role within the political arena. for instance, in 2001, tok’s song titled ‘chi chi man’ was the theme song of the jamaican labour party (jlp), and the people’s national party (pnp) took on the slogan ‘log on to progress’ that referred to a song by elephant man, which featured anti-lgbtq lyrics (rogers, 2010: 1–161). despite the controversy surrounding dancehall, it can be argued that it has ties to other genres of jamaican music rooted in a form of resistance to colonial oppression. these genres include mento, ska, rocksteady, and reggae. in particular, we emphasise jamaican icons like bob marley who, through music, stood up against racial injustice and canonised black revolutionaries such as marcus garvey. nevertheless, non-heteronormative sexualities were largely invisible and, in some instances, marginalised within their music. queen if rica patterned heterosexist lyrics in their songs, which were influenced by biblical scriptures. for instance, queen if rica’s song ‘keep it to yourself’ was championed as a reggae tune that reinforced heterosexist ideals in society by drawing on religious scripture. the song’s lyrics include the following: ‘yu fi multiply an replenish di earth, an dats why di woman labor inna child birth, mi nuh want si mi brother dress up inna no skirt’ the first verse draws on biblical scripture that speaks of being f ruitful and multiplying, which meant that reproduction was the duty of humankind and ultimately signalled that relationships that deviate f rom such a purpose are problematic. the reggae artist illustrated this in the following two verses that spoke of women as child-bearers and not wanting to see men or women switch roles where a man wore a ‘skirt’, which referred to playing a woman’s role. in 2004, brian williamson – co-founder of jamaica’s only gay rights organisation (j-flag) – was murdered at his home. the police concluded that this incident resulted f rom a robbery that went wrong, but other activists remained doubtful of this assessment. gareth henry, the man who replaced williamson in 2007, was also pursued and had to go into hiding. heterosexism maintained its space within the dancehall context for a long time, but activists began to emphasise the sheer horror of the verbal violence in dancehall lyrics, also termed ‘murder music.’ british human rights activist peter tatchell coordinated the ‘stop the murder music’ initiative, which urged sponsors to pull funding and to cancel bookings and venues for artists who produced anti-lgbtq music. this initiative led to the signing of the reggae compassionate act in 2007, in which numerous dancehall artists promised to no longer produce murder music and to renounce their homophobia. cooper argued that the invitations found within dancehall lyrics to ‘murda’, ‘bun’, or ‘step pon’ chi-chi man (murder, burn, or step on gay men) were playful and metaphorical lyrical gestures that were not incitements to homophobic attack (cited in noble, 2008: 4). noble raised two essential questions: who got to determine what comprises a homophobic attack? secondly, was verbal abuse acceptable if it does not equate to physical violence? noble further stated that ‘cooper’s position both denies the power of language to shape reality and unremorsefully accepts the accusation of being an apologist for dancehall’s homophobia’ (2008: 4). dancehall lyrics typically reinforce heterosexist discourses through metaphor or allusion. for instance, in his song titled ‘batty boy (stay far from we)’, dr evil stated that he had a general dislike for the word ‘bottom’, an allusion to anal sex. in the contemporary jamaican dancehall context (2010–present), violent homophobic lyrics are on the decline due to years of ‘censorship’. however, ‘most dancehall artistes still express their disapproval for this lifestyle in a subtle manner’ (mm, 2013). bounty killer, for instance, stated the following in reaction to dancehall selector tony matterhorn: ‘man, no act so, that’s feminine gender; he em fi stop that’ [man don’t act so (like how tony matterhorn acts), he acts like a female, and he needs to stop that]. heteronormative discourses such as these are visible in print, social media, and within lyrical discourses. dancehall lyrics often draw on informal language that resonates with a variety of audiences, giving a creole everyday understanding of religious ‘values’ in society. common expressions are used that appeal to multiple audiences. for instance, ‘vagina was made v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 43 t h e t h i n k e r peer review for penis, not penis for penis, not penis for anus.’ parallels can also be found between biblical scriptures and dancehall lyrics. for example, the dancehall lyrics ‘man to man is so unjust, man to man just brings disgust’ and ‘nah promote no nasty man, dem haffi dead’ are reminiscent of certain passages in leviticus. the discourse presented within christian religious texts (as interpreted by some, and contested by others) suggests that sodom and gomorrah were destroyed because of sexual immorality. this discourse is reflected in dancehall lyrics such as buju banton’s ‘boom bye bye’ (1988): ‘world is in trouble, anytime buju banton comes batty bwoy [homosexual male] get up an run [leave] boom bye bye inna batty boy head [let me shoot you]’ these lyrics point to how homophobic aspects of christianity are expressed within dancehall lyrics in vulgar and violent ways. expressions of homophobia are also evident in the lyrics of dr evil’s ‘batty boy (stay far from we)’: ‘batty boy [homosexual male] dem need f i stay far we [they need to stay away or leave] ‘cause we nuh inna wha’ dem inna (nope!) [we are not promoting that homosexual (penis with penis) sexual behaviour] pussy a wha’ buddy f i a go inna [we are promoting heterosexual (vagina with penis) behaviour’] from these lyrics, it is essential to note that on a societal level, sexual orientation is viewed in binary terms: man and woman, and ‘penis and vagina’. this binary, therefore, excludes nonheteronormative relationships, but it also extends to a broader understanding of what constitutes ‘sexual misconduct’. some dancehall lyrics suggest that ‘sexual misconduct’ includes men performing oral sex on women. for instance: ‘wha u nuh f i do, fuck bottom’ [men! what are you not to do? have anal sex.] ‘wha u nuh f i do, suck pum pum’ [men! what are you not to do? have oral sex.] this points to the concept within hegemonic masculinity that dictates that men must be dominant. the idea of men bending down to women through the medium of performing oral sex is interpreted as emasculating. this is suggested in another song titled ‘do not bend down’ by lovindeer, created pre-1990, which clarifies the idea that men, in particular, should not bend down. through the notions of ‘sexual misconduct’, individuals become socially isolated, stigmatised, and ridiculed for any performance of gender which deviates f rom the social norm. therefore, whether one is a member of the lgbtq community or not, he or she is still made to feel or bear the brunt of the consequences of heterosexism if their gender and sexual identity/ practice is not aligned with traditional gendered expectations. these heteronormative notions often derive f rom religious ideals which, as this article has shown, have their roots in colonial contexts. while this article has drawn on dancehall lyrics as a primary source for understanding heterosexist discourses in jamaica and t&t, there is a need for further research into how heterosexism is constructed and continues to prevail within these contexts. references alexander, m. jacqui. 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[online] available at: doi: 10.1177/1367549420951578 cowell, n. m. (2011). ‘public discourse, popular culture and attitudes towards homosexuals in jamaica’. social and economic studies, 60(1): 31–60. [online] available at: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.sastudents. uwi.tt:2048/stable/41635291 foster, t. (2011). ‘the sexual abuse of black men under american slavery’, journal of the history of sexuality 20(3): 445–464 [online]. peer review 44 available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41305880 gnuse, r. k. (2015) ‘seven gay texts: biblical passages used to condemn homosexuality’. biblical theology bulletin, 45(2): pp. 68–87. doi: 10.1177/0146107915577097. gutzmore, c. (2004) ‘casting the first stone!: policing of homo/ sexuality in jamaican popular culture’. interventions, 6(1): 118–134 hope, d. (2006) inna di dancehall: popular culture and the politics of identity in jamaica. kingston: university of the west indies press. hope, d. (2021). ‘chi-chi man fi get sladi: exploring homophobia as alternative discourses of masculinity in dancehall culture.’ human rights first. (2012). lgbt issues in jamaica. [online] available at: https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/jamaicalgbt-fact-sheet.pdf julien, j. (2018) ‘i’m not a lesbian’. trinidad express, 6 february [online]. available at: https://guardian.co.tt/news/2018-02-05/i’m-not-lesbian khau, m. (2009) ‘exploring sexual customs: girls and the politics of elongating the inner labia’. agenda: empowering women for gender equity, (79): 30–37 [online]. available at: http://www.jstor.org/ stable/27868945 kitzinger, c. (2005). ‘heteronormativity in action: reproducing the heterosexual nuclear family in after-hours medical calls.’ social problems (52): 477–498. mm (mouta massi). 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[online] available at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=7029&context=digitizedtheses sanneh, k. (2004). ‘dancehall’s vicious side: antigay attitudes’. new york times, 6 september [online]. available at: https://search.proquest. com/docview/432866831?accountid=45039 souza, j. (2018). ‘my name is kelvin’. the newsday, 20 may. [online] available at: https://newsday.co.tt/2018/08/19/my-name-is-kelvin stewart, z. (2017) ‘the legacy of british rule on lgbt rights in jamaica and the cayman islands’. phd thesis, university of southern mississippi, usa. [online] available at: https://aquila.usm.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1368&context=masters_theses vand dijk, t. (1995) ‘aims of critical discourse analysis’. japanese discourse, (1): 17–27. peer review 56 abstract the incarceration of the former south african president jacob zuma on charges of contempt of court sparked mass looting, destruction, and damage to a staggering economy attempting to navigate through covid-19-related repercussions. early estimates reveal that the initial damage report bill is a r50 billion knock on the country’s gross domestic product (gdp). the level of orchestration behind the attacks alludes to statesponsored violence, given mr zuma’s loyal sympathisers within the intelligence community and in the african national congress. this research postulates that mr zuma’s political rhetoric served as the main inciting factor behind the destruction. indeed, comparative analysis shows how many post-independence/liberation leaders have invoked a language of debt by virtue of their role as independence/liberation heroes to justify dismal governance records. what are the key features of this language of debt? the language of liberation and perpetual eternity: an analysis of jacob zuma’s rhetoric by anton m. pillay v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 57 t h e t h i n k e r peer review introduction the incarceration of former south af rican president jacob zuma on charges of contempt of court sparked widespread looting and destruction of the south af rican economy to the tune of r50 billion (cele & wilson, 2021). initial estimates reveal that the chaos put 150,000 jobs at risk in the province of kwa-zulu natal, and severely affected some 40,000 businesses (cotterill, 2021; harper 2021). the orchestrated attacks allegedly supported by zuma’s formidable faction within the ruling af rican national congress (anc), and instigated by zuma’s intelligence operatives and sympathisers, severely impacted an economy badly hit by the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. with 113 communications inf rastructures destroyed, r120 million rand stolen f rom some 1440 atms, and the disappearance of a protective police force, the plot thickens to suggest state-sponsored violence (mcleod, 2021; stoddard, 2021). one contributing factor behind the anarchy was the rhetoric or political language of mr jacob zuma. as a struggle icon, anti-apartheid figure, and robben island prisoner, mr zuma is the archetypical ‘liberation hero’. the term ‘liberation hero’ commands a lot of respect and affords one political power and prestige. in deploying what this research terms ‘the language of liberation’, zuma was able to move the country to the brink of civil war. this powerful language requires analysis not only because of its destructive power, but because there is a need to examine how long the language of liberation should continue to play a role in post-apartheid south af rica. that is, how long is society expected to be grateful for the achievement of political liberation and does our collective gratitude for political f reedom give those who govern the reign to do so dismally? on the notion of dismal governance, mr zuma’s record speaks for itself, having normalised and instilled a culture of mismanagement in government, para-statals, state-owned enterprises, and institutions of law and order. in the year 2018/2019, national and provincial government wasted r62 billion to wasteful and irregular expenditure (gerber, 2019). informed estimates reveal that during mr zuma’s presidential tenure, r1.5 trillion was wasted through corruption, graft, state owned company bailouts, and corrupt bee deals (bisseker, 2018; merten, 2019; basson, 2021). zuma’s clientele state was exposed by over 300 witnesses in the zondo commission set up to investigate allegations of state capture, corruption, f raud, and other allegations in the public sector including organs of state. the popular political commentator justice malala in 2018 described zuma’s legacy as ‘exploding inequality, booming unemployment, and grinding poverty’. yet, zuma and his sympathisers remain oblivious to these facts, instead perpetuating a vision of victimisation in part due to his status as a liberation hero. the juxtaposition of liberation hero and poor governing president follows a pattern in af rica where a growing disillusionment with the achievements of political liberation is becoming more prominent (carrier and nyamweru, 2016). as noted by alexander et al. (2020), the liberation hero’s struggle is constantly revealed in and remade in attempts to centre the past in today’s present political configurations. what are the key elements in zuma’s language of liberation? the language of liberation as the preserve of the elites, heroic narratives of past events are reiterated and developed to create an unquestionable legacy which allows for prestige, legitimacy, and ultimately tribute (werbner, 1998: 99).  in south af rica, heroic narratives have been the source of much contestation over the years with accusations of appropriating history being levelled against the ruling anc by others who fought against apartheid. to the pan-af rican congress (pac) who organised the 1960 demonstration which would turn into the sharpeville massacre, the anc hijacked the memory of this event. in the run-up to the anc’s centennial celebrations in 2012, veteran journalist alistair sparks remarked how the anc were airbrushing history, and archbishop desmond tutu also claimed the anc were side-lining other parties’ contributions to fighting apartheid (smith, 2011; munusamy, 2015). in creating an unquestionable history, certain historic events are led at the state level and memorialised annually while other events are forgotten – for example, the marikana massacre is dubbed by the government as a tragedy. in some cases, liberation heroes who did not fit the description or had no ties peer review 58 with the anc are erased f rom history, as is the case of hendrik verwoerd’s assassin dimitri tsafendas. driven by political reasons in his murder of the ‘architect of apartheid’, no streets, monuments, or statues of tsafendas exist (dousemetzis, 2018). essentially, the selection and interpretation of history is constructed around a language of liberation which emphasises that society owes a debt for political f reedom. the debt owed cements a party’s and their icons’ uncontested power. in continuously emphasising the contribution of liberation heroes, society is expected to overlook present conundrums in favour of the past. this effectively allows the personal interests of a handful of liberation heroes to override the interests of an entire nation. mr zuma’s ability to override the national interest is due to his mastering of the language of liberation. with his political foundations rooted in intelligence, it is reasonable to argue that zuma – like any other formidable intelligence agent – was trained in the art of propaganda, persuasion, and manipulation. former opposition leader helen zille once remarked on zuma’s outright charisma, noting how when they met, zuma could make her blush with his ability to genuinely make out as if she was a long-lost f riend (hamlyn, 2009). after zuma’s release f rom robben island, he was tasked with setting up the anc and mk underground structures in kwa-zulu natal. during this time mr zuma joined the anc’s department of intelligence, eventually rising as head of intelligence. his excellence in this field allowed him to set up networks in swaziland, mozambique, and eventually zambia, where he was made chief of the intelligence department in 1988. a shadow in the mandela administration and early years of the mbeki presidency, as zuma grew in stature within the anc, he began to militarise his political language (maritz and van rooy, 2021). professor van rooy, who has studied mr zuma’s political rhetoric, has characterised his language as built on warfare; a war against zuma and a war against his fight against the remnants of apartheid (van rooy, 2018). over the years, we see this language in statements like ‘the anc will rule till the return of jesus’, allegedly code for the anc not willing to transfer power. as the contest for the anc presidency heated up around 2007, his followers declared their willingness to die for zuma. anc youth league (ancyl) president at the time, the flip-flop julius malema, vowed at a rally: ‘we are prepared to take up arms and kill for zuma.’ according to one hardcore zuma fan, sdu mdululi: ‘people were prepared to die for the liberation struggle. why can’t they be prepared to die for zuma?’ (russel 2011). indeed, mr zuma is a master of politesse, and when in difficult situations, f rames them with jokes or songs, such as the struggle song ‘umshini wami’ (bring me my machine gun), a mk song. as president between 2009–2018, the umkhonto we sizwe military veterans’ association (mkmva), who were relatively outcast during the mandela and mbeki years, rose to power. in many ways, they came to resemble the sturmabteilung (sa). the sa were the nazi party’s original para-military wing who played a significant role in adolf hitler’s rise to power. the sa were routinely called upon to disrupt opposition meetings, fight opponents, and generally intimidate and bully.  similarly, the mkmva came to resemble zuma’s bodyguard, always present at his court hearings, media briefings, and the zondo commission when a notable opponent was to testify. in february 2021, mkmva president kebby maphatsoe announced ‘we will support zuma until death do us part’ (khoza, 2021). after the announcement that zuma was to report to police custody, the mkmva were mobilised to protect zuma’s nkandla homestead.   while surrounded by a mk guard, and as their spokesperson carl niehaus emphasised the debt of liberation, zuma remarked: ‘i’m not scared of jail. i’ve essentially, the selection and interpretation of history is constructed around a language of liberation which emphasises that society owes a debt for political freedom. the debt owed cements a party’s and their icons’ uncontested power. in continuously emphasising the contribution of liberation heroes, society is expected to overlook present conundrums in favour of the past. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 59 t h e t h i n k e r peer review been to jail during the struggle.’  zuma would state that south af rica was fast sliding back to apartheid rule and that there are signs that the country is already under apartheid-like conditions. comparing the current government to the apartheid government, he noted how both were imposing very similar laws. ‘things like detention without trial should never again see the light of day in south af rica. the struggle for a f ree south af rica was a struggle for justice that everyone was treated equally before the law’, he would state (mckenzie, 2021). zuma’s rent-seekers and sympathisers extraordinaire followed suit in the rhetoric.  phrases like ‘prisoner of conscious’, ‘dedicated liberation fighter’ and ‘fighter of white monopoly capitalism’ were invoked by zuma’s supporters.  zuma’s daughter and spokesperson, dudu zuma-sambuldla, used the terms ‘father of free education’, ‘mayibuye iaf rika!’, and ‘radical economic transformation’ to define zuma as a progressive leader whose revolutionary tasks remain incomplete. similarly, the zuma foundation referred to their patron as a f reedom fighter for peace and someone who struggled for justice. radio personality and zuma loyalist ngizwe mchunu, later arrested for incitement, spoke of ayi-khale, a reference to machine gun fire.  one way the language of liberation enhances its agenda is through paltering. paltering refers to making statements that are technically true, but are purposely skewed to mislead the other side. zuma’s accusation that he was jailed without trial, incarcerated without criminal proceedings, and jailed unfairly on par with his apartheid-era jailing, are examples of this. zuma was jailed for contempt of court, a fact not acknowledged by him or his supporters. indeed, zuma and his supporters are masters of orwellian dystopia, for example turning a swimming pool into a fire pool. the outright lying in public platforms and disguising it as truth was brilliantly captured by wits professor william gumede in 2020. gumede remarked how systemic corruption has infiltrated south af rica’s public discourse, discussions, and debates – to the point where they are increasingly irrational, without integrity, or honesty. the manipulation of truths is captured in struggle slogans, rhetoric, and beliefs, appropriated by the dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent to mobilise the masses. a further element of the language of liberation is viewing the world f rom a pre-liberation binary perspective of black vs white, f reedom vs apartheid, af rican vs racist, or good vs evil. according to basson and du toit (2017), zuma has positioned himself as unfairly targeted by a system that is rigged against the common poor black man. in his 2020 open letter to president ramaphosa, zuma remarked how af rican people have limited civil and political rights and there is a need to ‘f ree the af rican people f rom the bondage of colonial and white minority rule.’ as zuma’s corrupt relationship with the gupta family became more prominent during his tenure, he and his allies began a narrative of ‘white monopoly capital’ (wmc).  anyone who criticised zuma would then be considered in cahoots with wmc. zuma has on many occasions accused president ramaphosa as ‘seeking white validation’ and turning the anc into a tool for white monopoly capital.  zuma and his language effectively create ‘enemies’ out of anybody who disagrees with him. former minister derek hanekom, after giving a statement at the zondo commission, was identified by mr zuma as a ‘known enemy agent’ (van rooy, 2018). this binarism is extremely vitriolic. critics of zuma risk the label of ‘uncle tom’, ‘clever-black’, ‘counterrevolutionary’, or ‘apartheid beneficiary’.  bongi khanyile, a zuma fanatic later arrested for inciting violence on his bail release, justified the economic destruction and defence of zuma as a tool to counter racism and the oppression of the elderly and youth. indeed, all of zuma’s critics face the same fate: pravin gordhan, karima brown, ferial haffajee, lindiwe mazibuko, herman mashaba, general johan booysen, ivan pillay, or dianne kohler barnard have all been accused of racism. institutions also face this label. before their disbanding, the elite crime fighting unit, the scorpions, were accused of having a racist agenda. the investigative journalist jacques pauw, author of the president’s keepers: those keeping zuma in power and out of prison (2017),  similarly was accused of being an ‘apartheid era operative’ following publication of his book. more recently, zuma and his followers declared the zondo commission to be an apartheid-era plot and that the commissioners were aligned with the apartheid government in their peer review 60 prosecution of robert sobukwe.  a perpetual eternity?  af rican liberation has been a cul-de-sac for the liberators with no future reference to the nature of post-liberation society (ackah, 1999). this created a dangerous precedent whereby rhetoric and agitation were more important than content and substance in domestic politics. sixty years after the era of af rican independence in the 1960s, af rican states continue to be the poorest in the world; for example, seven of the ten most unequal countries in the world are af rican. bankrupt of ideas and lacking strategic vision and direction, it is easier for leaders to continue with the ideology of liberation than to construct new ideals to take their societies forward. perhaps it is the simplicity of the binarism of liberation, but whatever the case, the suspicions and negativity previously directed towards colonialists have been now re-directed towards the ‘other’ ethnic groups, tribes, nations, and religions. paulo freire in the pedagogy of the oppressed notes how this is ‘one of the most serious problems the revolution must conf ront when it reaches power’ (1970: 158). to freire, this stage demands maximum political wisdom, decision, and courage f rom the leaders, who for this very reason must have sufficient judgement not to fall into irrationally sectarian positions. zuma’s language of liberation is not novel; throughout the continent there are many similar patterns where independence/liberation movements have clung to power and/or refused to transfer power due to liberation exploits. since 1975, the popular movement for the liberation of angola (mpla) has ruled in angola.  in mozambique, frelimo has taken all the elections since 1994. in tanzania, the tanganyika af rican national union (tanu), later called the chama cha mapinduzi (ccm), has dominated politics since 1977. dynasty politics on the basis of liberation are apparent too: the kenyattas in kenya, the mutharikas in malawi, the bongos in gabon, the obiangs in equatorial guinea, the debys in chad, and the nguessos in brazzaville, to name a few.  in zimbabwe, the zimbabwe af rican national union – patriotic front (zanu-pf) has heavily revised history so as to re-invent its liberation heroes.  masiya and maringira found that the party’s reference to liberation hero status cannot be relied upon as a measure of one’s past participation in the liberation struggle but as a measure of an individual’s circumstances within factions. they state that zanu-pf and former president mugabe’s view of heroes has always been driven by the zeal to fulfil their own political agenda and to remain in power.  as such, they have never been tolerant of other liberation war figures who did not belong to zanu-pf. the same rationale applies to their own party, as seen in the case of joyce mujuru. a dedicated liberation hero for three decades, she was recently accused of ‘collaborating with white people’ and of plotting the assassination of mugabe.  on a separate note but worthy of mentioning here, the zanu-pf on numerous occasions noted that they would welcome a coup by the country’s military if they were to ever lose power in an election. uganda’s president yoweri museveni, in power since 1986, flaunts his liberation credentials as reason for his stranglehold on power. referring to his role in ousting the dictator idi amin and later on milton obote, museveni f rames much of his image as a guerrilla fighter for east and southern af rica. his time spent as president has turned him into an ‘expert in governance’. in 2021, he reminded the world that uganda ‘doesn’t need lectures in democracy’  and that ‘[w]e designed this system not f rom the airconditioned rooms but f rom the jungles of our country where we lived with the people in their huts for much of the 16 years of the resistance (1971 to 1986).’ as the architect of ugandan democracy, he thus is incapable of destroying it. when faced with opposition that his government is ethnic based, he reminds the nation of paulo freire in the pedagogy of the oppressed notes how this is ‘one of the most serious problems the revolution must confront when it reaches power’ (1970: 158). to freire, this stage demands maximum political wisdom, decision, and courage from the leaders, who for this ver y reason must have sufficient judgement not to fall into irrationally sectarian positions. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 61 t h e t h i n k e r peer review his rebel army’s role in ending the ethnic massacres in the luwero triangle. nigerian novelist and nobel laureate wole soyinka described museveni’s mockery of democracy as ‘the very thing he fought against.’ gratitude to the liberator is not solely an af rican phenomenon. in cuba, the state is instrumental in determining history and how it’s told.  in venezuela, political leaders have for nearly 200 years evoked the legacy of their liberator, simon bolivar, to stir popular support in what norman (2017) calls a ‘vicious cycle of liberation’. the idea of perpetual gratitude is what snyder (2018) dubbed ‘the politics of eternity’. ‘time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats f rom the past,’ snyder writes. in their analysis of this concept, madubedube and fakie claim that south af rica’s politics of eternity might be:  ‘collective resignation to a status quo of oppressions, a state of being of pessimism where enemies lurk in every corner, for south af rica has always been thus — whether for the white minority during apartheid or xenophobia now. here there is no real future, just a denial that the future exists because of the very real and legitimate critique that we aren’t getting the benefits of the f ruits of liberation... eternity places south af rica in a cyclical story of perpetual victimhood.’  in order to move beyond the language of liberation, it is necessary to move away f rom a history defined by the ruling party. it is not to deny in totality the liberation heroes, but to identify new ones in order to inform a country’s prestige and trajectory. going further back in time could allow for new figures, events, and characters to emerge and be given attention to. this is key to af rican states still tackling disunity and f ragmentation. freire claims that postliberation societies require a cultural revolution in order to reconstruct society. as the cultural revolution deepens, a level of consciousness and creativity will emerge and people will begin to perceive why mythical remnants of the old society survive in the new (freire, 1970: 159). conclusion in an interview, the former minister of intelligence ronnie kasrils stated that his own status as a liberation hero is simply not enough to earn one respect. he said: ‘i can’t say i’m ronnie kasrils, f rom 1960 i joined the mk and i did this and i did that.’ he cautioned the anc against hero worship, living in the past, and continued ties to those who once fought for democracy but had now become anti-revolutionary. south af rica’s fixation on yesteryears’ liberation heroes is proving divisive. there is a need for the new generation to reassess and reinterpret new state heroes and heroines, in order to produce a common ownership of history which is the basis of nation-building. in doing so, a language of possibility can override the now-defunct language of liberation. references ackah, w. b. (1999). ‘pan af ricanism: exploring the contradictions, politics, identity, and development in af rica and the af rican diaspora.’ interdisciplinary research series in ethnic, gender and class relations, ashgate publishers. alexander, j. et al. (2020). liberation beyond the nation: an introduction. journal of southern af rican studies, volume 46, 2020 – issue 5e oliveira. basson, a and du toit, p. (2017). enemy of the people: how jacob zuma stole south af rica and how the people fought back. jonathan ball publishers.  basson, a. (2021). jacob zuma did not only steal our money; he also stole our dreams. news24 [online]. 15 march 2021. available at: https:// www.news24 .com/news24 /columnists/adriaanbasson/adriaanbasson-jacob-zuma-did-not-only-steal-our-money-he-also-stoleour-dreams-20210314 bisseker, c. (2018). r1-trillion: the cost of jacob zuma. financial mail [online]. 11 october 2018. available at: https://www.businesslive.co.za/ f m/features/2018-10-11-r1-trillion-the-cost-of-jacob-zuma/ carrier, n. and nyamweru. c. (2016). reinventing af rica’s national heroes: the case of mekatilili, a kenyan popular heroine. af rican affairs, 115(461: 599–620, https://doi.org/10.1093/af raf/adw051  cele, s. and wilson, l. (2021). south af rica economy set to take $3.4 billion hit f rom riots. bloomberg [online]. 20 july 20201. available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-20/south-af ricaneconomy-set-to-take-3-4-billion-hit-f rom-riots cotterill, j. (2021). south af rican counts the cost of its worst unrest since apartheid. financial times [online]. 25 july 2021. available at: https://www.ft.com/content/1b0badcd-2f81-42c8-ae09-796475540ccc dousemetzis, h and loughran, g. (2018).  the man who killed apartheid: the life of dimitri tsafendas. jacana media. south af rica. du plessis, c. (2010). pac hijacked sharpeville march – malema. iol [online]. 23 march 2010. available at: https://www.iol.co.za/news/ politics/pac-hijacked-sharpeville-march-malema-477188 freire, p. (1970). the pedagogy of the oppressed. continuum: new york. gerber, j. (2019). sa govt’s irregular expenditure soars to r62bn, material losses at r2.8bn. news24 [online]. 20 november 2019. available at: https://www.news24.com/news24/southaf rica/news/ sa-govts-irregular-expenditure-soars-to-r62bn-material-losses-atr28bn-20191120 gumede, w. (2020). the truth has been captured by corrupt, opportunistic sa leaders. wits university [online]. 8 september peer review 62 2020. available at: https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/ opinion/2020/2020-09/the-truth-has-been-captured-by-corruptopportunistic-sa-leaders.html hamlyn, m. (2009). zille: anc attacks on judiciary masked by zuma charm. mail & guardian [online]. 18 september 2009. available at: https://mg.co.za/article/2009-09-18-zille-anc-attacks-on-judiciarymasked-by-zuma-charm/ harper, p. (2021). riots, looting cost the kwazulu-natal economy r20 billion. mail & guardian [online]. available at: https://mg.co.za/ news/2021-07-20-riots-looting-cost-the-kwazulu-natal-economy-r20billion/ khoza, a. (2021). ‘we will support zuma until death do us part’: mkva heads to nkandla. times live [online]. 9 february 2021. available at: https: //www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-02-09-we-will-supportzuma-until-death-do-us-part-mkmva-heads-to-nkandla/ malala, j. (2018). anc favours thoughtless populism. dispatch live [online]. 3 april 2018. available at: https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/ news/opinion/2018-04-03-anc-favours-thoughtless-populism/ maritz, a. and van rooy, b. (2021). “linking the dots”: metaphors in the narrative of self-justification by former president zuma. language matters, studies in the languages of af rica, vol 52(1). [online] available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10228195.2 021.1885478 masiya, t. and maringira, g. (2017). the use of heroism in the zimbabwe af rican national union-patriotic front (zanu-pf) intra party factional dynamics. strategic review for southern af rica, vol. no 2. [online] available at: https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/85/strategic%20 review/vol%2039(2)/pp-3-24-masiya-and-maringira.zp136790.pdf mcleod, d. (2021). icasa says 113 base stations attacked as violence spirals. tech central [online]. 13 july 2021. available at: https:// techcentral.co.za/icasa-says-113-base-stations-attacked-as-violencespirals/109046/ v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 mckenzie, d. (2021). former south af rican president jacob zuma likens his treatment by courts to apartheid-era south af rica. cnn [online]. 5 july 2021. available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/04/ af rica/jacob-zuma-courts-south-af rica-intl/index.html merten, m. (2021). state capture wipes out third of sa’s r4.9 trillion gdp – never mind lost trust, confidence, opportunity. daily maverick [online]. 1 march 2019. available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ article/2019-03-01-state-capture-wipes-out-third-of-sas-r4-9-trilliongdp-never-mind-lost-trust-confidence-opportunity/ munusamy, r. (2015). history, distorted: forgiving and airbrushing apartheid’s protagonists. daily maverick [online]. 4 february 2015. available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-04history-distorted-forgiving-and-airbrushing-apartheids-protagonists/ norman, k. (2017). a hero’s curse: the perpetual liberation of venezuela. london: hurst publishers russel, a. (2011). after mandela: the battle for the soul of south af rica. random house: south af rica smith, d. (2011). anc accused of airbrushing allies and rivals out of anti-apartheid struggle. the guardian [online]. available at: https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/31/anc-centenary-airbrushinghistory snyder, t. (2018). the road to unf reedom: russia, europe and america. new york: tim duggan books. 53 t h e t h i n k e r opinion abstract the epitome of pre-colonial af rican history and culture is embedded within the institution of traditional leadership. yet, this institution is still mired by much controversy and the cloud of being seen as not f itting the principles of democracy, while needing to remain relevant to its subjects. having survived both the colonial and apartheid eras in south af rica, it still faces legislative control in the post-1994 era. the discourses presented in this paper advance the contested views regarding the legislative control by the state over the institution of traditional leadership. within rural areas, the institution is perceived by local citizens as independent and a valuable institution, upholding gender justice and cultural rights. providing focused attention on the abuse of women, this paper offers insights f rom empirical evidence in kwazulu-natal on the prominent role played by senior women traditional leaders in addressing women abuse in rural communities. a critical review of the roles and functions of traditional leaders by gladys nkareng klaas-makolomakwe and tanusha raniga | opinion 54v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion introduction the outright rejectionists argue for the total irrelevance of the institution of traditional leadership and validate the uncivilised and barbaric nature lens through which it was branded by colonialists (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2014). in the same breath, the predisposed colonised detractors assume a position of labelling it backwards (moodley, 2012) and unable to move with the times. however, the institution of traditional leadership has since pre-colonial times acted as a beacon of hope and serves as an exemplar of upholding af rican ‘history, culture, laws, values, religion, and communitarian governance espoused during pre-colonial sovereignty’ (ray, 2003: 5). the institution remains relevant for people living in rural areas of south af rica as it maintains af rocentric traditional and cultural interests (george and binza, 2011; tshitangoni and francis, 2016; matshabaphala, 2017). traditional leaders are valued for encouraging democratic styles of leadership, facilitating conflict resolution, and being ‘representatives of community identity, unity, continuity, and stability’ (logan, 2013: 355). if these are qualities embraced as a lifestyle, then who is better placed to cast a judgement and thereby take intentional exclusionary steps towards supressing locally resonating management systems. in the post-1994 era, the branding of tradition and culture practiced by black af ricans has clouded even the judgement of intellectuals who sit and contribute to public policies drafted for congenial adherence to the democratic state. within the de-colonial agenda, there needs to be concerted efforts by policy makers to critically reflect on the restoration of traditional and cultural practices that in the past successfully maintained law and order within rural communities. even in contemporary times, the role of traditional leaders continues to resonate as a reliable source that offers critical support to people in rural areas (mathonsi and sithole, 2017). while deemed relevant to people by its nature of business and constitutional grounding, the institution of traditional leadership cannot shy away f rom the developmental changes that affect south af rica. in the past, ‘the ethos of traditional society was enshrined in an oral, legal, religious, and literary tradition through which the community transmitted its customs, values, and norms f rom generation to generation’ (nobadula, 2013: 39). in contemporary times, the innovative transformation realised by the country demands fast-paced changes that would allow for the prosperous existence of the institution, as opposed to obstructive and ambiguous developments that would keep it stagnant in the past. the authors of this paper reject the pathological view that the institution of traditional leadership is resistant to the anc-led government changes. based on insights f rom an empirical study, the paper presents the argument that senior women traditional leaders (swtl) play a critical role in addressing the abuse of women within rural communities in the province of kwazulu-natal. historical prominence given to the institution of traditional leadership prior to colonialism, traditional leaders were perceived as a symbol of unity and functioned as religious leaders, guardians of culture, and judges of the people (george and binza, 2011). these qualities amplified the unifying ability essentially embedded within traditional leadership. during that era, af ricans understood traditional leaders to possess massive power and authority and drew gratification f rom such leadership qualities (dodo, 2013). the similarities born of leadership were such that even at the dawn of misunderstandings and condemnation, abandonment and parting f rom the traditional leadership that one belonged to was unlikely (dodo, 2013). parting ways in itself would risk leaving behind one’s family graves, which were central and symbolic to everyday communal life with the ancestors (dodo, 2013). thus, af ricans enjoyed a sense of belonging (akyeampong and fofack, 2014) and association which influenced most of their actions and behaviour. thereby, institutions such as marriage were utilised to promote f riendly ties and mutual respect (koyana, 2013). marriage also promoted peace, tolerance, and interrelations beyond traditional geographic and cultural boundaries, which in turn ensured that governance was not autocratic and therefore did not rest with traditional leaders. according to twikirise, prior to being altered, af rican ‘ways of helping and solving problems […] were largely informal, micro-level operations carried through the family, kinship, and local chiefdoms and based on mutual aid and collective action 55 t h e t h i n k e r opinion facilitated by traditional customs and culture’ (2014: 76). in this way, life was inclusive and made easy, but demanded accountability and valuing f rom everyone. retrospectively, this means that af rican communities (men and women alike) relied on each other to solve their problems. such a lifestyle ensured that community values of ‘sharing; mutual aid; caring for others; interdependence-relying on each other for the fulfilment of one’s needs; solidarity-unity that is based on shared interest, feelings and aspirations; reciprocal obligation and social harmony are respected’ (lawrings, 2016: 735). the succession through the male blood-line within the institution of traditional leadership for the inherited positions of senior traditional leaders has been a practice over the years. according to chauke, ‘the institution of traditional leadership was founded and grounded in the patrilineal system, whereby only the firstborn male children were afforded the opportunity to succeed their fathers’ (2015: 35). however, this stance has never precluded women f rom becoming leaders within the institution. colonial and apartheid definitions, and the subjection of women to an inconsequential status in relation to men through patriarchy, mislead many views (chauke, 2015). as such, the focus has been misdirected to take attention away f rom the important roles and responsibilities of men and women within the institution. sesanti (2016) firmly opposes biased views that af rican culture marginalises women, instead of highlighting the historical af rican cultural and traditional practices that shared and maintained power within women’s and men’s respective roles of power. pre-colonial af rican life honoured women and their power was permeated within communities. according to weir, women in those times were powerful, and ‘their leadership took a variety of forms, sometimes military, but more often economic and religious’ (2006: 4). women’s leadership went beyond fulfilling social functions and providing labour and formed an integral part of essential systems. thus, af rican traditional leadership was lawful (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2014) and women were not excluded (twikirise, 2014). a study conducted in the baswelu village of tanzania indicated that the abuse of women was averted through rituals, taboos, songs, and proverbs which were traditionally believed to have been used to protect women f rom abuse in pre-colonial times (kanyamala, 2010). such findings confirm the various strategies that were used to prevent the abuse of women. the thinking that democracy must be praised for harmonising male primogeniture with equality in south af rica (chauke, 2015) stands to be disputed on the grounds of first regaining accurate pre-colonial af rican lessons on how women were treated within the institution of traditional af rican communities. it can be argued that succession disputes within the institution of traditional leadership were not necessarily targeting women but have been the order of the day even when rightful heirs were known. as matshidze (2013) argues, there has never been outright automated succession within the institution of traditional leadership. this invalidates the claim made by ncapayi and tom that ‘the inclusion of women in traditional government structures by the democratic government adds democratic value and credibility to the institution of traditional leadership, which for many years remained essentially male-dominated’ (2015: 88). there is evidence to corroborate the critical role of women within traditional leadership. the core failure needs to be associated with little consideration given to the strides of women within positions of commanding power and leadership. research conducted by dodo notes that ‘women have always been part of the traditional leadership though they have been behind the scenes’ (2013: 29). thus, af rican literature does not downplay the support women have given to men despite men accruing all accolades of wisdom and fierce decision-making abilities (dodo, 2013). the thinking that democracy must be praised for harmonising male primogeniture with equality in south africa (chauke, 2015) stands to be disputed on the grounds of first regaining accurate pre-colonial african lessons on how women weare treated within the institution of traditional african communities. it can be argued that succession disputes within the institution of traditional leadership were not necessarily targeting women but have been the order of the day even when rightful heirs were known. 56v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion this denotes that women have maintained powerful influence behind the leadership positions occupied by men within traditional communities. dodo (2013) also noted leadership positions in which women’s capabilities surpassed that of men. for instance, ndlovu (2008) recollected the roles and functions of the zulu regents queen mkabayi [sic] who ruled ebaqulusini and officiated over the annual first f ruits ceremony. queen mkabayi was celebrated for her capacity to solve problems, her fearless and conf rontational fight against corruption, and her direct participation in war within the zulu kingdom (ndlovu, 2008). similarly, her twin sister queen mmama oversaw entonteleni and commanded respect, where the launching of military campaigns prior to consulting with her was prohibited (ndlovu, 2008). these are contrary representations of feeble women given the suggestive evidence of decisiveness towards protecting the zulu kingdom. thus, sesanti (2016) and kasongo (2010) advocate for total blame on colonialism for seizing the cultural practice of respecting women and replacing it with rendering af rican women vulnerable. women were respected even beyond their graves. during the times of king shaka, punishment was ceased once culprits sought refuge at the graves of queens nqumbazi and mkabayi (sesanti, 2016). the respect of women has always been an inherent af rican cultural practice (segueda, 2015). it is therefore a misleading assumption that the abuse of women is peculiar to af rican traditional communities. despite imposed western cultural ideologies within the institution of traditional leadership, af ricans still rely on their culture and tradition to match life expectations (kang’ethe, 2014). swtl in kwazulunatal relied on old af rican practices when intervening in cases where women had been abused. despite the modern controversy surrounding virginity testing and boys’ circumcision, respect for women, virginity testing for girls, and the circumcision of boys were strategies applied to ensure that order and peace were maintained. swtl stressed that respect has been an important cultural practice accorded to women within af rican communities. respected not only for their roles but also as individual human beings, the scourge of women abuse was believed to have been fuelled by the loss of such an important trait. early interventions through virginity testing of girl children and circumcision of boy children were suggested to play a critical role in detecting abuse in girls and diverting perpetration of women abuse by boys. virginity testing assisted in detecting unreported sexual abuse. swtl had the power to intervene and prioritise girl-child wellbeing by reporting abuse matters, particularly in situations where it was difficult for the mothers of victims to report. with regard to male circumcision, swtl would encourage older men to engage with young boys and discourage the abuse of women. older men were viewed as important anchors and role players in the socialisation of young boys. men and women’s forums were also viewed as powerful platforms for use in early intervention. as a shared responsibility to address the abuse of women, swtl saw it fit that in their areas, men talk as men and women talk as women on this issue, prior to the occurrence of incidents of abuse. disruptions over the institution of traditional leadership south af rica experienced the harshest colonial and apartheid regimes that subjected af rican people to suffering as their traditional and cultural ways of life came under siege and had to adapt to foreign control and alteration. a key strategic point of disruption in order to get to the people within traditional communities was the institution of traditional leadership, which according to tshitangoni and francis (2016) had been entrusted with leadership since pre-colonial times. the distortions exerted onto the institution were conceptualised by the colonial regime, which passed the baton to the apartheid regime, which then intensified the targeting of traditional administrative and governance structures (ehrenreich-risner, 2013). power and privilege were not the only infiltrations of both colonialism and apartheid over the institution of traditional leadership, but leadership reform against local traditional community expectations formed an integral part of intentional divisions created between leaders and local communities. burns (2002) considers that af rica had no peace during the pre-colonial era and that its liberation depended on its submission to colonialism. this assertion ignores the dynamics of co-existence and assumes irresponsibility. colonialists solidified their ideology of portraying af rica as a violent and 57 t h e t h i n k e r opinion ungovernable continent. other contributions, such as that of stauffacher (2013), postulate af rica as having had a long history of autocratic leadership. such perceptions, according to ray (2003), fuel western hegemonic relations with af rica and suggest a mockery of the roles and functions of the institution of traditional leadership as a system of governance. it was during colonialism that land and property, and subsequently culture and dignity, were taken away f rom af ricans. deliberate weakening strategies were introduced to render institutions ineffective when peace institutions were impossible to destroy (mohamed, 2018). colonialism taught af ricans f rom a young age to reject the tenets of af rican knowledge as both barbaric and superstitious (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013). as twikirise (2014) suggests, colonialism is the architect for af ricans’ identity crisis. in his novel things fall apart, chinua achebe (1958) expounds a clear transition and abandonment of the gods and ancestors by af ricans who marked the beginning of embracing an imposed ideology. as a result, af rican practices struggle to occupy their initial central position among af ricans (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2014). this remains a challenge that influenced the loss of many important cultural practices (kang’ethe, 2014). the roles occupied by traditional leaders, women, and customary law are among the many that were effectively weakened (sesanti, 2016). while maliciously birthing patriarchy by depicting af rican males as oppressors of women, colonialists repudiated the humanity of women and rendered insignificant their position within af rican communities (mutua, 2016). the result of this move can be seen today, where communities and families are breaking and the grip of families over conflict resolution is disappearing. due to ‘a poisonous mix of culture, colonial-era laws, and religious practices,’ af rican women and girls are atrociously subjected to ‘domestic violence and exclusions f rom land and property ownership’ (dodo, 2013: 39). colonialism not only introduced moral decay, but also weakened customs, rituals, tradition and culture, thereby causing irreparable damage to af rican life. taking over f rom colonialism, apartheid was a segregation regime that advanced legislative measures to ensure that any af rican traditional forms of leadership and governance were suppressed (houston and mbele, 2011). racialised legislation was introduced to further dismantle af rican traditional leadership as a core af rican structure, using the institution as its implementation agent (ehrenreichrisner, 2013). apartheid’s advancement of a colonial agenda (williams, 2010) dismissed and ousted rebellious traditional leaders (houston and mbele, 2011). as a result, apartheid gave birth to the dark cloud of disputes that continues to engulf the institution of traditional leadership (ehrenreich-risner, 2013) where royal families now demand for rightful heirs to be recognised. the circumstantial irony is that liberty has been created to enable dragging the institution into common law court battles as attempts are made to restore and redress legitimacy issues. traditional leadership is rendered ineffective to manage its affairs. not only do such court battles disparage the position of the institution within traditional communities, but they also create lasting divisions within royal families. sizani (2017) writes on the continued control of apartheid legislation over the functioning of traditional courts, imposing limited criminal jurisdiction and function under the department of justice and constitutional development. by implication of section 39(2) of the constitution of south africa, traditional courts, tribunals, or forums can develop customary law in traditional communities (moodley, 2012). however, institutions within traditional leadership are nonjudicial bodies and have no jurisdiction to develop customary law (moodley, 2012). although moodley (2012) pins the probability of the traditional court qualifying as a judicial body to develop customary law, traditional courts do not preside over landmark cases such as that of shilubana vs mnwamitwa (sa 66 (cc), 2008). the guilty verdict of the case of king buyelekhaya dalindyebo of the abathembu in the eastern cape province of south africa was also bent from a common law court and never tried on the merits of any traditional body. again, the institution of traditional leadership was deprived of the possibility of first constituting an amaxhosa traditional court relevant to his clan stature or comprising the nguni tribe at large. it is clear that when tradition and common law are at crossroads, common law takes precedence. the power exercised by traditional leaders is therefore illegitimate because it originates from the state, rather than from traditional communities (williams, 2010). in contemporary af rican government, influence is 58v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion derived f rom eurocentric ideology in exerting some degree of external control on traditional leadership (du plessis and scheepers, 1999; moodley, 2012; williams, 2010; dodo, 2013; sizani, 2017). modern af rican states, as stated by igboin (2016), install traditional leaders and various new expectations that affect the nature and rule of the institution are imposed (williams, 2010). at varying degrees, several af rican countries have adopted eurocentric control of the institution of traditional leadership. for example, the confirmation and endorsement of traditional leaders in zimbabwe is a function entrusted to the state (dodo, 2013). the kenyan government treats traditional leaders in a manner similar to civil servants, through appointments and compensation, while the state in botswana has rendered traditional leaders powerless (dodo, 2013). a rod cannot be spared for the current democratic south af rica which commenced in 1994 following the first democratically-held elections. according to ray and reddy (2003), the democratic era also bears contributory traits towards eroding important aspects and disregarding traditional leadership. failure has in particular been identified around the inability to fully embrace and restore the lost functions and strengths of traditional leadership that would enable a meaningful contribution to development in rural areas. as pointed out by bikam and chakwizira (2014), democracy is hailed for recognising and giving constitutional effect to the institution through chapter 12 of the south af rican constitution (act 108 of 1996 as amended) but it has equally failed to practically restore the responsibilities of traditional leaders. the current roles and functions of traditional leaders are legislated through the traditional leadership and governance framework act (act 41 of 2003) (george and binza, 2011). however, the state has the questionable objective of transforming the institution as outlined by the department of traditional affairs (2011). while this objective is pitched at a level of enhancing cooperation between the state and the institution of traditional leadership, it contains a subtle management implication by the state. thus, control measures that were put in place during colonialism and apartheid are still being legislatively advanced. for instance, while the recognition of the institution of traditional leadership is a constitutional mandate implying its autonomy, the repeal and amendment of positions and the regulation of customary law is done by statute (du plessis and scheepers, 1999). through the traditional leadership and governance framework act (act 41 of 2003), the state also tampers with the roles of traditional leaders (williams, 2010). traditional leaders are expected to perform roles where they ‘provide order and security, solve disputes and allocate land in the community’ (williams, 2010: 7). however, unlike in the past practices, traditional leaders are expected to issue permission to occupy certificates for land allocations and are limited in the types of court cases they preside over (williams, 2010). in the past, court decisions taken by traditional leaders were announced verbally and were based on the principles of trust and mutual respect. apartheid laws introduced the handing over of certificates to traditional leaders as proof of their positions (ehrenreich-risner, 2013), and this performance is currently legislated in south af rica as per the traditional leadership and governance framework act (act 41 of 2003). thus, the post-1994 democratic government continues to control and endorse the recognition and appointment of traditional leaders and traditional councils (sizani, 2017) who are regarded as illegitimate until their recognition and appointment is sanctioned by the state. to seal the deal, the state offers salary remunerations for traditional leaders. conclusion the disruptions injected on the institution of traditional leadership during the colonial and apartheid regimes still stand ground during democracy in south af rica, while this objective is pitched at a level of enhancing cooperation between the state and the institution of traditional leadership, it contains a subtle management implication by the state. thus, control measures that were put in place during colonialism and apartheid are still being legislatively advanced. 59 t h e t h i n k e r opinion given the intentional crises mode these were set at. interrogation of the current legislative prescripts suggests continual control maintained by the state over the institution of traditional leadership. at the rate at which af ricans are still adhering to their tradition and culture, agenda setting to fight the abuse of women needs to aim at treating the institution of traditional leadership as an equal contributor to finding solutions. efforts that tap into old traditional af rican cultural practices served as important contributors applied by swtl when addressing the abuse of women. thus, policy interventions for this heinous crime need to incorporate culture and tradition in order to resonate and become useful for fighting the scourge within traditional rural communities. references achebe, c. (1958). things fall apart. london: penguin books akyeampong, e. and fofack, h. (2014). the contribution of af rican women to economic growth and development in the pre-colonial and colonial periods: historical perspectives and policy implications. economic history of developing regions, 29(1): 42–73 bikam, p. and chakwizira, j. (2014). involvement of traditional leadership in land use planning and development projects in south af rica: lessons for local government planners. international journal of humanities and social science, 4(13): 142–152 burns, s. (2002). the samaritan strategy. in: t. schirrmacher, and k. mccall, eds. a life of transformation f rom politician to good samaritan. hamburg: bod, 17–29 chauke, m. t. (2015). the role of women in traditional leadership with special reference to the valoyi tribe. studies of tribes and tribals, 13(1): 34–39. doi: 10.1080/0972639x.2015.11886709 department of traditional affairs (2011). capacity building strategy for the institution of traditional leadership (draft). republic of south af rica dodo, o. (2013). traditional leadership systems and gender recognition: zimbabwe. international journal of gender and women’s studies, 1(1): 29–44 du plessis, w., and scheepers, t. (1999). house of traditional leaders: role, problems and future. paper delivered at the colloquium: constitution and the law, 03 november. potchefstroom ehrenreich-risner, v. (2013). the effect of apartheid’s ‘tribal authorities’ on chieftaincy and the zulu people: separate development in mtunzini district 1950–1970. history and af rican studies seminar. durban: university of kwazulu-natal george, k., and binza, m. s. (2011). the role of traditional leadership in promoting governance and development in rural south af rica: a case study of the mgwalana traditional authority. journal of administration. 46(2): 947–962 houston, g. f., and mbele, t. (2011). kwazulu-natal history of traditional leadership project. pretoria: human science research council igboin, b. o. (2016). traditional leadership and corruption in precolonial af rica. up journals, 42(3): 142–160 kang’ethe, s. m. (2014). the need to resuscitate the cultural rite of virginity testing as a tool to strengthen the campaign against hiv/ aids and moral decadence in south af rican region. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 5(8): 484–489 kanyamala, m. a. (2010). exploring sukuma traditions that protected women against intimate partner violence: a case study of baswelu village in mwanza region, tanzania. (unpublished ma dissertation). dublin: kimmage development studies centre kasongo, a. (2010). impact of globalisation on traditional af rican religion and cultural conflict. journal of alternative perspectives in the social sciences, 2(1): 309–322 koyana, d. s. (2013). the indigenous constitutional system in a changing south af rica. speculum juris, (1): 66–101 lawrings, c. c. (2016). exploring the role of culture in governance and leadership within institutions in ghana: a study of the civil society. imperial journal of interdisciplinary research (ijir), 2, issue 10: 734– 749 logan, c. (2013). the roots of resilience: exploring popular support for af rican traditional authorities. af rican affairs, 112(448): 353–376 mathonsi, n., and sithole, s. (2017). the incompatibility of traditional leadership and democratic experimentation in south af rica. af rican journal of public affairs, 9(5): 35–46 matshabaphala, m. d. j. (2017). traditional leadership and a simpler way to accountability in local government. the 2nd annual international conference on public administration and development alternatives. 26–28 july, tlotlo hotel, gaborone, botswana: 288–293 matshidze, p. e. (2013). the role of makhadzi in traditional leadership among the venda. (unpublished phd thesis). durban: university of zululand moodley, i. (2012). the customary law of intestate succession. (unpublished phd thesis). pretoria: university of south af rica mutua, m. (2016). af rica and the rule of law: the problematic rebirth of liberalism in af rica and why the rule of law must be reconsidered to achieve sustainable development. international journal on human rights (sur) 23, 13(23): 159–173 nobadula, v. (2013). no glory without sacrifice. the thinker, 48: 38–39 ncapayi, f., and tom, b. (2015). democratisation of rural local government: perspectives f rom civil society on local governance in south af rica. trust for community outreach and education, 87–93 ndlovu, s. (2008). a reassessment of women’s power in the zulu kingdom. in: b. carton, j. laband and j. sithole, eds., zulu identities: being zulu, past and present. london: hurst and company: 111–121 ndlovu-gatsheni, s. j. (2014). global coloniality and the challenges of creating af rican futures. strategic review for southern af rica, 36(2): 181–202 ndlovu-gatsheni, s. j. (2013). why decoloniality in the 21st century? the thinker, 48: 10–15 ray, d. i. (2003). rural local governance and traditional leadership in af rica and the af ro-caribbean: policy and research implications f rom af rica to the americas and australasia. in: d. i. ray and p. s. reddy, eds., grassroots governance? chiefs in af rica and the af rocaribbean. calgary, ab: university of calgary press: 1–30 ray, d. i., and reddy, p. s. 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(2013). christian leadership in a malawian context: a practical theological evaluation of af rican bible college (phd thesis). stellenbosch university tshitangoni, m., and francis, j. (2016). pillars of resilience of traditional leadership in vhembe district of limpopo province. journal of social science, 46(3): 241–250 twikirise, j. m. (2014). indigenisation of social work in af rica: debates, prospects and challenges. in: h. spitzer, j. m. twikirise, and g. g. wairire, eds., professional social work in east af rica: towards social development, poverty reduction and gender equality. kampala: fountain publishers, 75–90 weir, j. (2006). chiefly women and women’s leadership in precolonial southern af rica. in: n. gasa, ed., women in south af rican history. cape town: hsrc press, 3–20 williams, j. m. (2010). chieftaincy, the state, and democracy: political legitimacy in post-apartheid south af rica. bloomington, in: indiana university press 10 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 abstract south af rica is a highly unequal society with high levels of inequality, poverty, unemployment and other injustices that continue to affect the majority of the population. although great strides have been made in addressing these challenges, there continues to exist a significant gap between the urban areas (usually over-developed) and the rural areas (usually under-developed), making it harder to bridge these parallel worlds. worth noting is the report f rom the human sciences research council (hsrc) which suggests that covid-19 has further widened the gap between urban areas and rural areas. these disparities have always existed, but the covid-19 pandemic has brought to light a lot of challenges that have been ongoing, especially in the case of south af rica. to mitigate the urban-rural divide, agriculture in rural areas should be considered as a viable solution, with the support of technological platforms. the results of investing in rural economies will have spill-over effects, positively impacting on urban areas, while creating employment in the peripheries of the country. now more than ever, it is crucial that we look into other alternatives which will not only benefit the country, but also bridge the gap between rural and urban areas. by lesego masenya | peer review development in south africa: bridging the rural-ur ban gap peer review introduction to live in one of the most unequal yet highly urbanised societies in the world means that there are high levels of inequality, poverty, unemployment, and other injustices that the majority of the population have to live with (burger et al., 2017). this reality carries with it not only decades of discriminatory policies, but poverty-stricken livelihoods that cripple any chance of progress in a society where wealth has a strong racial correlation (burger et al., 2017; leibbrandt, woolard, and woolard, 2000). while south af rica is the most advanced and diversified economy in af rica, and the wealthiest in terms of gdp per capita, the country is still haunted by high levels of inequality. according to the 2018 world bank report, more than half of south af rica’s population lives below the upper poverty line of r992 per month per person, by use of 2018 prices. these are the realities that we are faced with – this is in addition to being the leading country in the world in unequal income distribution, with a gini index of 63.4, as shown below in table 1. structural challenges and weak economic growth have undermined the progress in reducing poverty, which have been further heightened by the covid-19 pandemic in the last year. according to the world bank, covid-19 has had a major impact on south af rica’s economy resulting in a contraction of 7% in 2020. additionally, this severe contraction is estimated to increase poverty levels by 2 million people. these are the challenges that will ultimately affect the ability to achieve progress in household welfare – an indicator that is severely constrained by rising unemployment. peer review 11t h e t h i n k e r ranking gini coefficient country 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 south africa namibia haiti botswana suriname zambia central african republic lesotho belize swaziland 63.4 61.3 60.8 60.5 57.6 57.1 56.2 54.2 53.3 51.5 (source: world atlas, 2020) while south africa is the most advanced and diversified economy in africa, and the wealthiest in terms of gdp per capita, the country is still haunted by high levels of inequality. according to the 2018 world bank report, more than half of south africa’s population lives below the upper poverty line. table 1: the world’s 10 most unequal countries although great strides have been made in targeting unemployment and economic growth, it is crucial to address these historical inequities adequately, in order to improve the quality of life for the majority of south af ricans and to bridge the gap between these parallel worlds. thus, this article will take measure of the nature of inequality and make an effort in advancing some routes which could potentially be taken to allay the present challenges. not a new idea the idea of bridging the gap between two parallel worlds is not one that is unheard of (zhu, 2017). asia, being the largest continental economy by gross domestic product (gdp), has also experienced rapid socio-economic development in recent years. a great example of this is china: since the late 1970s, the development of chinese cities has not only attracted immense inflows, but has also been a key driving force for urban growth and development, with the 2010 census stating that 87% of china’s ‘floating’ population migrated to cities and towns f rom villages. zhu and his colleagues make use of in situ urbanisation, which refers to the process of rural settlements t h e t h i n k e r12 and populations transforming themselves into urban or quasi-urban ones with little geographical relocation of the residents. this phenomenon has two dimensions whose development has played a key role in china’s urban growth between the late 1970s and the late 1990s (zhu, 2017). of the two dimensions, one focuses on the creation of new industrialised centres, while the other refers to the practical and physical modifications of rural areas through the expansion of township and village enterprises (tves) (zhu, 2017). the experiences of developed countries propose that in the industrial period and post-industrial period, many individuals and their families move between and/or within cities numerous times due to changes in either employment status or housing needs, which are often caused by various life cycle events such as marriage and childbearing. this is the kind of urbanurban and intra-urban mobility that is often observed in many developed countries (zhu, 2017). from the case study mentioned above, we learn that incorporating migration along with in situ urbanisation will not only ensure that people residing in rural areas benefit f rom the prosperity of cities, but will also benefit f rom the resources and potential development that could occur in their hometowns (zhu, 2017). spatial links will need to be visualized and implemented at finer spatial levels, with ‘a coordinated regional approach’ that ‘cuts through f ragmented boundaries’ in order to assist the movement of people between and/or within urban and rural spaces (zhu, 2017). additionally, more attention will need to be given to issues of various social security programs and public services, to safeguard so that migrants will not be disadvantaged by this migration (zhu, 2017). gopaul’s (2009) paper based on the south af rican case also indicates that something needs to be done to assist people living in rural areas who live in extreme poverty, or else their standard of living will continue to worsen. he suggests that the solution lies in tourism: ‘to accomplish rural development, there is a need to nurture a sense of willingness and enthusiasm amongst the poor communities to participate in rural development’ (gopaul, 2009). the evolution of urban development in south africa rapid development and large scale rural-urban migration in south af rica were inspired by the discovery of diamonds in kimberley, and that of gold in the witwatersrand in the 1860s and 1880s respectively (mabin, 1992; turok, 2012). these economic activities brought some much-needed opportunities to rural communities, and transformed south af rica f rom an agricultural state to an industrialised nation (moomaw and shatter, 1996; turok, 2012). an invasion of foreign investment in mining f rom de beer, anglo american and consolidated gold fields was also witnessed in the late 1800s, and further generated the rapid growth of support industries and services that were supported by temporary migrant labour that was migrating to the cities (turok, 2012). as a result, the developing world – including south af rica – has witnessed unprecedented growth in urbanisation rates in the last two decades (cohen, 2006). thus far, urbanisation in south af rica has been increasing by roughly 0.5% on a year-to-year basis, with technological innovation and employment in urban areas continuing to increase due to its ability to offer considerable socio-economic opportunities in comparison to rural areas. behrens and robertnicoud (2014) further argue that cities are not the only locus in which inequality materialises, but that they are hosts to instruments that contribute extensively to changes in that inequality. thus, it is not surprising that individuals seem to migrate to economic hubs where more opportunities exist (behrens and robert‐nicoud, 2014; ozler and hoogeveen, 2005). having an urbanised economy or cities as economic powers while rural communities are under-developed is not an exclusively south af rican phenomenon – it happens all over the world because of several reasons, as seen in the case of asia. amongst the key reasons is that of economies of scale and ruralurban migration. as such, fields (1972) referred to the rural-urban migration theory as an economic phenomenon in his paper. the theory hypothesises that workers compare the projected incomes in the urban sector with agricultural wage rates in the rural areas and migrate if the former exceeds the latter. in addition, rural-urban migration is often regarded as the adjustment mechanism that workers use to assign themselves between different labour markets, some of which are located in urban areas and some located in rural areas. thus, rural-urban migration is the equilibrating force that connects rural and urban projected incomes and is regarded as a disequilibrium phenomenon (fields, 1972). peer review v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 consequences of urbanisation to date, af rica and asia are the only remaining continents where the rural population outnumbers the urban population. however, both continents are urbanising at unprecedented rates that can be thought of as a double-edged sword. while urbanisation spurs economic opportunities and often increases access to inf rastructure, it is also widening inequalities in health and development (feng, 2015). worth noting is that while asia’s urban population is projected to surpass its rural population within five years, af rica is not expected to have a majority urban population for at least another 20 years (feng, 2015). looking at south af rica, we have observed how urbanised the cities are, and how they continue to advance. the downsides of these advances have had destructive societal, economic, and environmental consequences (turok, 2012). meanwhile, rural areas continue to remain under-developed with high levels of deprivation with respect to sanitation, access to water and access to energy, high levels of unemployment, inadequate use of natural resources, insufficient access to socio-economic and cultural inf rastructure, low skills levels, and insufficient literacy rates (behrens and robert-nicoud, 2014; burger et al., 2017; gopaul, 2009; krishman, 2016; ozler and hoogeveen, 2005). upon an analysis of international studies, barro (2000) found that people living in rural areas might be using old technological methods, whereas urbanised areas employ more recent and advanced techniques in their daily undertakings. as such, we observe how large municipalities within the cities are deeply accommodative of additional commercial services and more advanced roles concerning finance as well as developmental projects, whereas smaller municipalities – which are mainly located on the peripheries of cities – are only able to accommodate a large portion of lower mandate facilities and industrial work (behrens and robert-nicoud, 2014). in addition, these smaller municipalities are often under-resourced and are surrounded by areas that have high levels of poverty and deprivation. currently, an approximate 66% of south af ricans live in urban areas, with the expectation that eight in ten people will be living in urban areas by the year 2050. this not only means that the demand for inf rastructure and housing will increase rapidly, but that the cost of living will also increase for the average south af rican. though urbanisation is the most convenient instrument currently being used to accelerate the rate of growth in developing countries by means of (i) driving economic growth, (ii) sustaining larger and more productive populations, (iii) sourcing higher means of income, new and diversified engines of growth need to be considered. the results of having cities that are too urbanised may have negative externalities that may adversely affect rural economies, whose role is to provide economic sustainability and food security (krishman, 2016). as such, other measures need to be considered if we are to sufficiently and effectively bridge the gap between rural economies and urban economies in order to ensure that growth takes place in a way that is beneficial to everyone. although cities are the dominant centres of economic activity and employment, and continue to attract maximum foreign investment, they are not performing to their potential or reaping the benefits of agglomeration due to prevailing shortages of energy and water inf rastructure, transport congestion, and deficits in education and skills (turok, 2012). this is in addition to creating poverty traps on the peripheries of cities, which results in favouritism for road-based transport: private cars and minibus taxis (turok, 2012). to ensure that rural economies are not left behind in this fast-paced economy, we need to consider redeveloping rural areas into sustainable communities that can support themselves economically (gopaul, 2009; krishman, 2016). consequences of the urban-rural divide on youth young people who reside in the urban areas of developing countries are generally more likely to stay in school longer than those who reside in rural areas. in addition, there exists a signif icant gender divide, as young men (aged 15 to 24) are more likely to complete lower secondary school than women. generally, women and girls who reside in rural areas are least likely to complete schooling. as seen in figure 1 below, malawi is an exception amongst af rican countries, in that more urban women than men are likely to have completed school. 13 peer review in d o n e sia 20 12 urban female rural femaleurban male rural male 88 84 81 77 81 77 73 69 70 64 61 44 58 58 54 58 57 41 31 18 23 43 69 66 56 54 33 32 46 42 11 28 20 16 5 2 4 29 26 41 18 15 57 56 50 47 53 49 47 39 27 20 13 7 46 n ig e ria 20 11 k e n ya 20 0 8 -20 0 9 in d ia 20 0 5-20 0 6 c o n g o , d r . 20 10 p a k ista n 20 0 6 g h a n a 20 11 b a n g la d e sh 20 11 ye m e n 20 0 6 m a law i 20 10 a fg h a n ista n 20 10 l ib e ria 20 0 7 s e n e g a l 20 10 ta n za n ia 20 10 figure 1: percentage of young people aged 15–24 who have completed lower secondary school 14 t h e t h i n k e r 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 (source: new security beat (woodrow wilson centre for international scholars), 2015 the urban-rural divide in the education space has always been evident in south af rica, mostly to the disadvantage of rural areas. however, the need to adopt online learning during covid-19 further highlighted the lack of access to resources required to succeed. while some learners were fortunate enough to be able to access online learning platforms during lockdowns and school closures, others had to depend on government and private funders for smartphones, tablets or laptops and, in some instances, f ree data. thus, providing the technological tools was and is a critical step in ensuring that learners do not fall behind. if a student or learner has never used the internet, or has not been taught the necessary skills to evaluate or create information, a technological tool meant to aid in the learning becomes one more obstacle in the learning process – an obstacle that many rural learners have had to face. consequences of the urban-rural divide in covid-19 outcomes a report f rom the human sciences research council (hsrc) suggests that covid-19 has widened the gap between cities and rural areas. the disparities between urban areas and rural areas have always existed, but covid-19 has brought to light a lot of issues that have been ongoing and are now further exposed due to the need to vaccinate as many people as possible. a study conducted at oregon state university documented the disparity in outcomes during covid-19 in terms of ethnic minorities, who are not only more likely to have died f rom the virus but have also suffered economic destitution. the two key findings that came f rom this study are: i) unequal outcomes and ii) high levels of vulnerability. the former found that people who reside in either mostly rural or completely rural settings are 15–26% more likely to die f rom covid-19, as opposed to their peers residing in mostly urban environments; the latter found that minorities are usually on the lower end of the socio-economic status spectrum which may result in a need to work in occupations where there is contact with a lot of other people, ultimately putting them at a higher risk of contracting the virus. peer review in south af rica, the common challenges that both urban and rural settings have faced during the pandemic include stigma and misinformation with regards to the virus, high levels of fear among health care workers, and issues around oxygen provision in hospitals. unfortunately, the differences far exceed the commonalities. using the vaccine as an example, it is harder to implement vaccine rollouts in rural areas due to a lack of amenities such as good road networks, clinics and hospitals, and limited access to personal protective equipment. other challenges include fewer health resources available and multilayered governance systems, to name a few. what has been key in these under-resourced rural areas is the need to think out of the box, since strategies that work in urban areas are not always a good fit for rural areas. additionally, strong partnerships will need to be formed at all levels of society. it is also key to have policies that prioritise rural health and the adequate distribution of health resources to meet the needs of minority populations, especially with the distribution of covid-19 vaccinations. poverty and inequality in rural areas households that have high levels of poverty and inequality are largely black or coloured communities who tend to reside on the peripheries of cities. thus, a high level of vulnerability is usually observed in areas that are remote and isolated f rom the main cities (burger et al., 2017). high levels of unemployment are largely concentrated among poor people in rural areas and continue to remain a core challenge in the south af rican economy with a 238% growth f rom 1 703 863 in 1994 to 5 752 632 in 2016 (dube et al., 2018; quantec, 2018). according to ozler and hoogeveen (2005), south af ricans are neither separate, nor are we equal in post-apartheid south af rica. the authors make this statement because the question of whether the economic inequalities of the apartheid era have faded remains, especially with the high levels of poverty and inequality that this country still faces in rural areas. poverty is at an all-time high in south af rica and is highly concentrated within the af rican race, women, rural areas, and the youth (triegaardt, 2006; woolard, 2012). statistics show that af ricans account for 95% of the poor population and a large percentage of them reside in former homelands, rural areas, and townships households (woolard, 2012). it is also important to note that poverty is closely linked to an increased mortality. this stems f rom the fact that poor people have difficulties in accessing health care facilities as they do not have the basic income for transport services, nutrition, and clothing – further perpetuating high levels of inequality (woolard, 2012). consequently, unsatisfactory living conditions continue to intensify high poverty levels, which further exclude and marginalise poor people f rom participating in the economy (triegaardt, 2006; woolard, 2012). as such, agriculture presents opportunities for job creation, particularly in rural areas (dube et al., 2018). as a labour-intensive and rural industry, agriculture makes a contribution of 10% to total employment. however, a slight decline has been observed between the period of 1994 and 2016 – f rom 12% to 6% (dube et al., 2018). how can agriculture help eliminate poverty and deprivation? in rural areas all over the world, agriculture represents the principal land use and is a major element of the practicality of rural areas. rural communities can be developed to increase their competitiveness in agriculture. the in situ urbanisation case mentions how rural areas have to transform themselves into urban or quasi-urban ones with little geographical relocation of residents; in the case of south africa, this can be achieved through agriculture. farming and related undertakings primarily encompass the basic fabric of rural life, contributing meaningfully to the overall state of rural areas by facilitating and creating employment, business prospects, infrastructure, and quality of the environment. this can be a driving force for economic growth and can have lasting impacts on the overall community. 15v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 using the vaccine as an example, it is harder to implement vaccine rollouts in rural areas due to a lack of amenities such as good road networks, clinics and hospitals, and limited access to personal protective equipment. other challenges include fewer health resources available and multilayered governance systems, to name a few. peer review 16 t h e t h i n k e r in sub-saharan af rica, the agricultural sector remains the dominant livelihood for many, more especially in rwanda and burkina faso, with 79% and 85% respectively of the population relying on agriculture. in the case of south af rica, agriculture is a twofold production system that comprises of large-scale commercial farmers and small-scale farmers (dube et al., 2018). as it stands, agricultural production remains concentrated on field crops given their prominence in determining national food security. however, the growth in south af rica’s agriculture sector – the f ruit sector and small-scale farmer participation in particular – is restricted by insufficient inf rastructure: mainly ripening facilities, pack-houses, and cold storage facilities (dube et al., 2018). this limitation causes costly delays, limits entry into the formal sector, and hinders expansion into export markets. government or private sector needs to intervene by initiating and constructing capabilities in agriculture and agro-processing if these small-scale manufacturers do not have the means to get their products to final consumers (dube et al., 2018). what will ensure success in this initiative is linking farmers with large producer-exporting companies that already have access to inf rastructure and international markets (dube et al., 2018). the government can then incentivise large producer-exporting companies to collaborate with minor producers. in return for largescale companies lengthening technical services and information on production and standards to smallscale farmers, the large companies can be offered tax breaks, grants for investments in storage and cold chain amenities, or support with raising funds. this initiative is one that not only benefits small-scale farmers, but also has the capability to have spill over effects that will benefit the whole economy. conclusions and recommendations rural areas undoubtedly have the potential to lead to great economic growth; however, this reality will only be possible if skills are uplifted and investment in research and development is prioritised. the results of investing in rural economies will have spill over effects and positively impact on urban areas, while creating employment in the peripheries of the country. with a highly urbanised country such as south af rica, it is crucial that we look into other alternatives which will not only benefit the country as a whole, but also have an undeniable impact that can bridge the gap between rural and urban areas. competitive agriculture in rural communities, particularly when supported by technological platforms, can drive economic growth. an example of this is the khula farming app, founded by karidas tshintsholo with the aim of assisting emerging farmers to find their feet. to date, 175 farmers are currently using the app, and this has ensured that famers who were initially unable to access formal markets can connect with suppliers. the purpose of the app is not only to assist small-scale farmers, but to assist with alleviating poverty and ensuring that young entrepreneurs have an opportunity to make a decent living. with such great innovations taking place in the country, the possibilities of the kind of development that can be fostered in rural areas are endless. indeed, south africa’s developmental woes can only be resolved from within: through south african ingenuity, and through modulation of the experiences, technologies, and investments of external partners. references barro, r.j. (2000). ‘inequality and growth in a panel of countries’. journal of economic growth, 5(1): 5–32. behrens, k. and robert‐nicoud, f. (2014). ‘survival of the fittest in cities: urbanisation and inequality’.  the economic journal,  124(1): 1371–1400. behrens, k. and robert-nicoud, f. (2014). ‘urbanisation makes the world more unequal’. [online] voxeu; centre for economic policy research. available at: https://voxeu.org/article/inequality-big-cities burger, r., van der berg, s., van der walt, s. and yu, d. (2017). ‘the long walk: considering the enduring spatial and racial dimensions of deprivation two decades after the fall of apartheid’. social indicators research, 130(3): 1101–1123. cohen, b. (2006). ‘urbanization in developing countries: current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability’. technology in society, 28(1): 63–80 dube, s.c., das nair, r., nkhonjera, m. and tempia, n. (2018). ‘structural transformation in agriculture and agro-processing value chains.’ industrial development think tank. ccred working paper 8/2018, centre for competition, regulation, and economic development, university of johannesburg. feng, j. (2015). ‘as af rican cities grow, rural-urban divides widen too.’ [online] new security beat. available at: https://www.newsecuritybeat. org/2015/07/af rica-urbanizes-rural-urban-divides-widen/ gopaul, m. (2009). ‘the significance of rural areas in south af rica for tourism development through community participation with special reference to umgababa, a rural area located in the province of kwazulu-natal’. ma geography dissertation, university of south af rica. peer review 17t h e t h i n k e r peer review krishman, k.p. (2016). ‘urban and rural development should be planned together.’ policy paper written by the secretary in the ministry of rural development, government of india. leibbrandt, m., woolard, c. and woolard, i. (2000). ‘the contribution of income components to income inequality in the rural former homelands of south af rica: a decomposable gini analysis,’ journal of af rican economies, 9(1): 79–99. mabin, a. (1992). the apartheid city and beyond: urbanization and social change in south af rica. routledge: london. moomaw, r.l. and shatter, a.m. (1996). ‘urbanization and economic development: a bias toward large cities?’ journal of urban economics, 40(1): 13–37. ozler, b. and hoogeveen, j. (2005). ‘not separate, not equal: poverty and inequality in post-apartheid south af rica.’ the william davidson institute, working paper number 739. triegaardt, j.d. (2006). reflections on poverty and inequality in south af rica: policy considerations in an emerging democracy.  midrand: development bank of southern af rica. turok, i. (2012). ‘urbanisation and development in south af rica: economic imperatives, spatial distortions and strategic responses,’ international institute for environment and development, united nations population fund: urbanisation and emerging population series, working paper no. 8. van schalkwyk, b. (2015). ‘challenges in realising sustainable community development in rural south af rica’. agriculture, forestry and fisheries. special edition: planning for sustainable communities: green-spaces in rural areas, 4(4): 73–79. woolard, i. 2002. ‘an overview of poverty and inequality in south af rica.’ unpublished briefing paper, pretoria: hsrc. abstract since race categories do not pick out biologically significant divisions of humanity, their use can be misleading and offensive. yet racialisation – society’s viewing and treating south af ricans as though they comprised different races – has generated real societal groups which are significant f rom the perspectives of justice and identity. in the philosophy of race, these facts make for a conceptual conundrum. is common-sense race thinking right that races, if they exist, are human groups differing in significant, inherent and heritable ways, in which case there are no races? or has common-sense race thinking failed to grasp races’ socially constructed nature, and should we say races are the really existing groups generated by racialisation? the same facts conf ronted the noneuropean unity movement (neum) – a mid-20thcentury south af rican liberation movement – with an organisational and theoretical challenge. given its uncompromising non-racialism, how could it justify a federal structure which effectively divided its membership into af rican, coloured, and indian sections? if this was not race-based division, what was it? a former neum member, neville alexander, provided the unity movement with the conceptual resources to answer this challenge. i argue that his major work, one azania, one nation, is also a contribution to the philosophy of race. alexander first contends that social constructionists cannot, without equivocation, claim that common-sense thinking about race in one sense has created races in a quite different sense. he then shows that introducing a second concept, ‘colourcaste’, can preserve the insights of the constructionist approach. while races are unreal, colour-castes are real social identities which need to be overcome. 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review by george hull | peer review race, racialisation, and colour-caste: neville alexander’s contribution to the philosophy of race peer review ...after explaining why there is a philosophical question about the nature of race, i detail how the same factors which make this philosophical question so hard to answer created a theoretical and practical conundrum for the leaders of the unity movement in mid-20th century south africa. i then outline neville alexander’s distinctive position on race in his major work, one azania, one nation introduction in south africa, as in other countries where race thinking has in the past played a determinative role, race presents itself to us today clothed in paradox. race categories and the concept of race can strike us as unsound, race itself as unreal – relics of an age of illusion and oppression which should be discarded. public discussion of a research publication from 2019 – which claimed that ‘colored women in south africa have an increased risk for low cognitive functioning, as they present with low education levels and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors’ (nieuwoudt et al., 2019: 1) – correctly stressed that there are strong scientific objections to the use of, and especially generalisations in terms of, race categories such as ‘coloured’ (see, for instance, jansen et al., 2020) [1]. at the same time, race can strike us as real and important – a phenomenon which should factor into policymaking by societal institutions and government. this applies particularly in relation to efforts by south af rican institutions to redress historical injustices inspired or rationalised by race thinking. for example, a newspaper opinion piece recently questioned a south af rican university’s commitment to redress in staff appointments, on the basis that its ‘top management team […] is dominated by coloured and indian or white south af ricans’, with individuals ‘of af rican descent’ (sic) in the minority (naidu, 2020) [2]. examples like these raise conceptual questions. is it possible both to criticise a scientific study for employing race categories and to criticise an institution’s redress policy by invoking race categories? does the one criticism simply contradict the other? or would a correct theory of race allow that both lines of criticism could be legitimate? at the root of all these questions is the question which is my focus here: what is race? due to its conceptual character this is, in part, a philosophical question – though only philosophy informed by relevant biological and social-scientific research findings could hope to answer it adequately. but professional philosophers are not the only people who engage in philosophical thinking. i argue here that an important contribution to philosophical thinking about race is to be found in the work of an activist and intellectual from south africa’s unity movement tradition: neville alexander. in recent years, several studies have highlighted the relevance of unity movement ideas for south africa’s renewed engagement with questions of race and identity (see especially maré, 2014; zinn, 2016; brown et al., 2017; motala et al., 2017; erasmus, 2017; soudien, 2019). these studies have, however, tended to focus on the unity movement’s general anti-realist position about race, without paying attention to the particular more nuanced account of race which neville alexander developed. where they have given attention to alexander’s position (see zinn, 2016; motala et al., 2017), they have not pinpointed the advance it makes on the theoretical work of the previous generation of unity movement intellectuals, or the fact that alexander’s thinking also makes a contribution to the contemporary philosophical debate about race. in what follows, after explaining why there is a philosophical question about the nature of race, i detail how the same factors which make this philosophical question so hard to answer created a theoretical and practical conundrum for the leaders of the unity movement in mid-20th century south africa. i then outline neville alexander’s distinctive position on race in his major work, one azania, one nation, showing how his thinking advances not only the debate about race in unity movement circles, but also the philosophical debate about race today. as we will see, alexander argues that, though race is unreal, the societal process of racialisation has given rise to real groups, colourcastes. while real now, colour-caste identities need not 2 t h e t h i n k e r exist forever. in alexander’s view, they are something which can, and must, be overcome. why is there a philosophical question about race? [3] not many people would think to ask a philosopher what race is. the expertise of human biologists and empirical social scientists seem more relevant. and in the first instance, it is. but sometimes a few uncontested empirical observations, taken together, create a paradox or dilemma which only careful conceptual thought will resolve. many philosophical problems arise this way. for instance, the observation that it is open to us humans to decide whether or not to carry out some physical actions, combined with the scientific observation that universal laws govern physical events, creates the philosophical problem of free will. in the case of race, three observations – on which there is wide agreement among empirical researchers – create a philosophical conundrum. (i) races, on the common-sense understanding, are not real there is a common-sense understanding of ‘race’ of which almost all english speakers are aware, even if they distance themselves from it. on this understanding, races are human groups which differ significantly, significantly enough to justify our giving them their own labels: ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘asian’, ‘pacific islander’, in south africa ‘coloured’, and others besides. the differences – says this common-sense understanding – are certainly physical, perhaps also cognitive and emotional. what is more, they are relatively fixed and immutable. unlike cultural and religious differences, they are not a matter of choice or training; rather, they are inherent to the individual, possessed by nature, and passed on down the generations like a family’s distinguishing traits. to say this is the common-sense understanding of ‘race’ is not necessarily to say that common sense takes races on this understanding to exist. there is, after all, a common-sense understanding of ‘unicorn’, though it is not common sense that unicorns exist. there have always been sceptics about race. and it is likely that some, despite being sceptical, have nonetheless spoken and acted as though they believed in races – for example, because they found themselves, or desired to be, on the privileged end of a racialised hierarchy (blum, 2010: 317n4). but ‘race’ is not quite like ‘unicorn’. an unexamined assumption that races in the above sense exist is widespread in many parts of the world. as charles w. mills puts it, ‘lay consciousness’ about race ‘is typically realist’ (1998: 60). what is more, belief in races in the above sense has informed influential scientific theories and political doctrines – both the harmful doctrines underlying colonial, fascist, and apartheid politics (see fredrickson, 2002), and some of the political theories of africanists and pan-africanists in the 19th and 20th centuries (see appiah, 1992: ch. 1). for significant and inherent differences to be transmitted within discrete populations, they would need to be genetically encoded. yet that is not what scientists find. humans have more than 99 per cent of their dna in common. when geneticists compare the chromosomes of members of what we count as different races, they consistently find that the overwhelming majority (85% or more) of what little human genetic variation there is can be found within groups we call races. only a small proportion (a maximum of 15%) can be classed as variation between groups we call races (nei et al., 1972; lewontin, 1972). at the phenotypic level, traits also do not cluster as common-sense race thinking would lead one to believe. human skin pigmentation varies along a spectrum by latitude (jablonski, 2015). nose shape varies among humans, but not along the fault lines of ‘race’: for example, many east af rican ‘black’ people have the same nose shape as north european ‘white’ people (atkin, 2012: 35). tightly curled hair can be found among people classed as ‘white’ as well as among those classed as ‘black’. all in all, if one’s purpose was to come up with a rational categorisation of human beings by physical traits, one would not arrive at the divisions common-sense race thinking presses upon us. if one focuses on the 15% of human genetic variation which exists between the groups we call races, among the different clusters detectable are some which correlate in a rough and ready way with common-sense race thinking’s divisions. for example, noah rosenberg and his colleagues’ cluster analysis identified five populations corresponding very approximately to groups we would class as races – except, notably, it counts south asians (for e.g. bangladeshis) as 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review members of the same population as north europeans (rosenberg et al., 2002; rosenberg et al., 2005). though the differences such a cluster analysis detects are real biological differences, they are not significant biological differences. indeed, the clusters rosenberg and his team located are largely made up of nonfunctional dna in the human genome (spencer, 2019: 104). neither at the phenotypic nor at the genotypic level does common-sense race thinking carve human nature at its joints. (ii) racialisation is real though there are not significant, inherent, heritable differences between the groups we call races, this has rarely stopped us, over the past 500 years, from behaving as though there were (see, for e.g., fredrickson, 2002). perceiving and treating groups as though they were races is what social scientists call racialisation. lawrence blum defines it as ‘the treating of groups as if there were inherent and immutable differences between them; as if certain somatic characteristics marked the presence of significant characteristics of mind, emotion, and character; and as if some were of greater worth than others’ (2002: 147). what blum describes here is racialisation on a racist basis – i.e., based on the notion that the putative different human races form a natural hierarchy. this form of racialisation has been especially pervasive (and destructive) in human history. but it is also possible to treat people as though they were members of different races, while taking those races to be of equal, or incomparable, worth; as it is to treat people as though they were members of races which differed only physically. here i will understand racialisation broadly, as the pervasive viewing and/or treating of groups as though they were discrete, relatively homogeneous divisions of humanity which differ from one another in significant, inherent, heritable ways. (iii) racialisation can give rise to real societal groups centuries of racialisation has in some cases given rise to real societal groups. members of these groups have had in common the similar types of treatment, whether favourable or unfavourable, they receive in certain contexts. ‘[t]he black man,’ w.e.b. du bois famously remarked, ‘is a person who must ride jim crow in georgia.’ ([1940] 2002: 153) that is not necessarily to say that they are aware of having types of treatment in common. ‘[w]hite privilege,’ chike jeffers has claimed, ‘is […] a condition of which it is characteristic that having it makes it more likely that one will be unaware of its existence.’ (2019: 53) the groups to which racialisation gives rise are not only distinguished by ways in which they are perceived and ways in which they are treated. members of a group may respond to racialisation with an alternative vision of their group identity, subverting the identity imposed from outside. we should be cautious about generalisations in this area, since any cultural identity ascribed to a group is likely to be contested by many individual members of the group (shelby, 2005: 224–25; soudien, 2019: 84). but it is not implausible to think that a group which is racialised could actively respond to racialisation in this way. chike jeffers has claimed that ‘black identity […] is an identity partly shaped by the agency, creativity, and traditional cultures of those who came to inhabit it and, as such, it has distinctive cultural meaning and value’ (2013: 419–20). in the south african context, denis-constant martin has made a similar claim about the group racialised as ‘coloured’. he writes: the people who were to be classified coloureds were stripped of their names, as individuals and as people, when they were organized as a group from the outside. they nevertheless took possession of this group and invented an original culture; they created rules to live by and ideals to dream from. (martin, 2000: 117) rather than resolving the issue of what race is, let alone answering the question of whether races exist, the three empirical observations above generate a dilemma. one could take the view that the commonsense understanding is right about what ‘race’ means, and conclude that races do not exist in the real world. this is the option favoured by kwame anthony appiah in in my father’s house. ‘the truth,’ writes appiah, ‘is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do all we ask race to do for us.’ (1992: 45) on this anti-realist view, the identities to which racialisation gives rise are illusory; racialisation is nothing but the propagation of illusion. however, there is another option. rather than deferring to the common-sense understanding of ‘race’, one could take the view that 4 t h e t h i n k e r peer review today; and several others in between – including the african people’s democratic union of southern africa (apdusa) and the cape action league (cal). the neum came into being through the federation of two organisations dedicated to opposing segregatory legislation in the union of south africa. the first of these was the all african convention (aac), founded in 1935 to oppose proposals from j.b.m. hertzog’s government for further political and territorial segregation of africans, and comprising mainly africans from rural areas of the eastern cape. the second was the anticad, founded in 1943 to oppose plans from jan smuts’ government for a coloured affairs council (cac) and ultimately a coloured affairs department (cad). later, in 1948, the anti-segregation council, a splinter from the natal indian congress, also affiliated to the neum (jaffe, 1992; adhikari, 2005). the overlapping leadership of the aac, the neum, and the anti-cad was drawn from a small group of cape town intellectuals. most prominent were ben kies, goolam gool, hawa ahmed, janub gool, i.b. tabata, and hosea jaffe. in their leadership roles, these intellectuals – dubbed ‘the cape radicals’ by crain soudien – applied ideas which they had developed over a number of years in discussion groups, especially the new era fellowship. their interactions with a compulsively secretive trotskyist organization, the workers’ party of south africa (wpsa), whose members included the scottish novelist and political theorist dora taylor, were also decisive in shaping their thinking (soudien, 2019). the unity movement intellectuals did not aim to write philosophy. they aimed to provide a societal analysis adequate to guide a liberation movement in its opposition to south africa’s successive regimes of segregation and oppression in the 20th century. yet, races do exist, and are the groups to which racialisation gives rise. going down this route entails agreeing with the idea that races exist, but holding that the commonsense understanding of ‘race’ needs to be revised. precedents for this second, semantically revisionist, type of response to the facts are easy to find. in the first dictionary of english, samuel johnson recorded the common-sense understanding of his time, when he defined ‘whale’ as ‘the largest of fish’. yet whales are not fish; they are mammals like us. are we to conclude that whales do not, or did not then, exist, or that when people in johnson’s time said ‘whale’, they were referring to the rhincodon typus, which is the largest fish? surely not. we know what organism they were referring to, and we know that it exists (albeit in ever-decreasing numbers). what needed to be revised in this case was the common-sense understanding of a whale’s nature. perhaps the same is true in the case of race. philosophers such as charles w. mills and sally haslanger have argued that races are not biologically but socially real: they are constituted by the societal processes of classification which seize on a cluster of physical markers, and by the societal processes of privileging and disadvantaging which order the groups with these markers into a generally recognised hierarchy. for haslanger and mills, race is a social construction not in the sense that it is an illusion, but in the sense that its reality depends on societally inculcated habits of perception and behaviour (mills, 1998; haslanger, 2019). a variant on this social constructionist position holds that, though races were originally constituted solely by processes of privileging and disadvantaging, they are now also partially constituted by the cultural ways of life which unite their members (see jeffers, 2013). the philosophical debate over which of these views of race is correct remains unresolved (see, for e.g., glasgow et al., 2019). the unity movement’s response to the question of race [4] ‘the unity movement’ refers to a cluster of south african political organisations, encompassing the non-european unity movement (neum), founded in 1943; the new unity movement (num), still in existence 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the unity movement intellectuals did not aim to write philosophy. they aimed to provide a societal analysis adequate to guide a liberation movement in its opposition to south africa’s successive regimes of segregation and oppression in the 20th century. in their attempts at this analysis, they were confronted by the same three empirical observations, and by the same dilemma in how to respond to them, as are philosophers of race today. (i) races, on the common-sense understanding, are not real their uncompromising non-racialism set the neum and its affiliates apart from other mid-20th century south african liberation movements. for the neum, non-racialism signified not merely the equality of races, or even the irrelevance of race in all practical contexts, but the non-existence of race. nowhere is this more evident than in ben kies’ speeches from the 1940s and 1950s. in his address to the anti-cad conference of may 1943, kies repudiates the ‘vicious racial myths’ prevalent in south af rica at the time. these include, on kies’ analysis, not only ideas of racial hierarchy – ‘the idea of white trustees and non-white child races’ – but also the very idea of ‘racial differences’ (1943: 1, 14). kies’ a.j. abrahamse memorial lecture f rom 1953 likewise critiques ‘the myth of race’ (1953: 7). once again, kies rejects not only ideas of ‘inherent “racial” superiority’, but also the very idea that there are different human races: [o]ne thing is quite certain, and that is that mutations in skin-colour, hair texture, shape of nose or skull, and stature, owing to geographical dispersal, isolation and diet, have made not the slightest difference to the biological unity of man as a single species, and provide no scientific basis for a division into what are popularly mis-called “races”. (1953: 12) there was no genetic evidence for kies to draw on in the early 1950s, but he cites then-recent work in physical anthropology to substantiate his critique. kies’ position can also be seen as an organic development of the scepticism about racial categories prevalent among political activists in the cape, going back to abdullah abdurahman’s african political organisation (apo). the apo had mocked the 1905 school board act’s attempt to provide a definition of ‘european’ and in 1925 abdurahman had denounced government policies for being based on unscientific race theories (lewis, 1987: 68, 134). in the 1940s and 1950s, the national party government was beginning the process of legally codifying the common-sense race categories which had been in use for a century or more. over the ensuing decades it was to apportion different rights and entitlements to south africans, depending on their assigned race, creating a notorious system of legally sanctioned racism (maré, 2014). but it was not only in government circles that race thinking intensified during this period. within the congress movement, which campaigned against segregation and apartheid, the leading intellectual of the youth league, anton lembede, articulated a hardline africanism based on biological racial realism: the leader of the africans will come out of their own loins. no foreigner can ever be a true and genuine leader of the african people because no foreigner can ever truly and genuinely interpret the african spirit which is unique and peculiar to africans only. some foreigners asiatic or european who pose as african leaders must be categorically denounced and rejected. (lembede, [1946] 1996: 92) consistent with their uncompromising non-racialism, unity movement organisations took a stand both against d.f. malan’s national party government, and against the african national congress (anc). the aac founded the society of young africa (soya) – in phyllis ntantala’s words – ‘to counter the rabid racism of the youth league with its slogan “africa for the africans”’ (2009: 153) [5]. meanwhile, the anti-cad instituted a social boycott of everyone who participated in the cac, instructing its members: ‘don’t meet them, even if it is necessary to cross over to the other side of the street. don’t see them, even if you do come face to face with them.’ (lewis, 1987: 214) (ii) racialisation is real the leaders of the unity movement paid a lot of attention to the societal process of racialisation. it was something they wanted to bring to a halt. they had a marxist explanation for why racialisation had occurred in south africa as it had. ‘the real cleavage is one of class, not one of colour,’ wrote tabata in the awakening of a people; ‘[b]ut […] the herrenvolk found it possible, and in fact extremely convenient to utilize colour differences to cover over and obscure the fundamental dividing-line, that of class.’ ([1950] 1974: 4) 6 t h e t h i n k e r peer review [w]hen we speak of a united front of all noneuropeans we do not mean lumping all noneuropeans holus-bolus together and fusing them all together in the belief that since all are noneuropean oppressed, the african is a coloured man, an indian is an african, and a coloured man is either indian or african whichever you please. only those who are ignorant of both politics and history can believe in this nonsensical type of unity. (kies, 1943: 13) given that he has already told us they are not races, this passage invites us to expect an explanation, based on politics and history, of what the groups kies mentions are. but no explanation is forthcoming. instead kies defers the very question at issue, continuing: when [the non-europeans] have thrown off their chains, then they can settle whatever national or racial differences they have, or think they have. (kies, 1943: 13) mohamed adhikari and crain soudien claim statements like these from kies show that the unity movement’s abandonment of race categories was at this time incomplete (adhikari, 2005: 408; soudien, 2019: 133). i believe the correct diagnosis is somewhat different. while the first generation of unity movement intellectuals were confirmed anti-realists about race, they were still groping for an adequate characterisation of the groups to which racialisation in south africa had given rise, and which, they were convinced, made the neum’s federal structure necessary. the crucial next analytical step was to be taken by neville alexander – albeit from outside the unity movement’s organisational structures. echoing v.i. lenin’s economic analysis of imperialism (see lenin, [1917] 2010), kies contends that the propertyowning class in south africa and in the imperial metropole overseas used the idea of race to effect a ‘basic segregation of the working class into a white labour aristocracy and a black serf majority’ (1943: 3). the higher-paid and privileged white working class would be willing to support the ruling class in the super-exploitation of the majority of the working class. meanwhile, the owner class used its psychological weapon of race a second time, playing ‘divide and rule’ against the non-white working class: the african is told that he is superior because he is “pure blooded”—and he has believed this. the coloured man is told that he is superior because the “blood of the white man” flows in his veins— and he has believed this. the indian has been told that he is superior because he belongs to a great nation with a mighty culture—and he has believed this. the herrenvolk of south africa have nothing to learn from dr. goebbels, for their vicious racial myths have bitten deep into the life and ways of the non-europeans. (kies, 1943: 5) (iii) racialisation can give rise to real societal groups the unity movement also showed clear awareness that racialisation in south african society had given rise to real societal groups. this awareness is manifest not only in statements by its leaders, but also in the form unity movement organisations took. the neum, though committed to non-racialism, was deliberately structured as a federation of ‘three federal bodies representing the three racial groups,’ as tabata put it (1945: 14) – the aac membership being virtually all africans, the anti-cad membership coloured people, and (from 1948) the anti-segregation council indians. yet the first generation of unity movement intellectuals proved unable to conceptualise adequately the nature of the groups to which racialisation in south africa gave rise, making it difficult for them to articulate the justification for the neum’s federal structure. this is evident in kies’ address to the 1943 anti-cad conference. after deprecating the myth of race and the unsavoury motives behind racialisation in south africa, kies enters the following qualification to his call for non-european unity: 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review the unity movement also showed clear awareness that racialisation in south african society had given rise to real societal groups. this awareness is manifest not only in statements by its leaders, but also in the form unity movement organisations took. the neum, though committed to nonracialism, was deliberately structured as a federation of ‘three federal bodies representing the three racial groups,’ neville alexander’s contribution to the philosophy of race neville alexander was expelled from apdusa in 1961 for contending, unlike his mentor tabata, that the time was right for armed struggle in south africa. from 1964 to 1974, he served a term of imprisonment on robben island for his activities with the yu chi chan club and the national liberation front. though writing from outside the unity movement’s formal structures, neville alexander’s published works following his release remained firmly in the tradition of unity movement non-racialism. his magnum opus, one azania, one nation, written in the second half of the 1970s and published under the nom de plume ‘no sizwe’, is the most successful attempt by a theorist in the unity movement tradition to conceptualise the nature of south africa’s population groups. since the factors which led the unity movement into a quandary about the population groups are the very factors which make for a dilemma in philosophical theorising about race today, the conceptual portions of one azania, one nation are also a contribution to the philosophy of race. the ‘central thesis’ of one azania, one nation, according to its author, is ‘that the officially classified population registration groups in south africa are colourcastes and that it is of pivotal political importance to characterise them as such’ (no sizwe, 1979: 141). like the previous generation of unity movement intellectuals, alexander is adamant that affirmations of racial equality are insufficient. ‘there is something fundamentally wrong,’ he writes, ‘in accepting that the “population groups” in south africa are “races” at all’ (no sizwe, 1979: 133). alexander agrees with his forerunners in the unity movement that this is both because race is a scientifically discredited concept and because the belief that there are different races in south africa does the ruling class’s work of division for it: it dissipates in inter-sectional rivalry the activist energies which alone could overturn the inegalitarian status quo. a social constructionist about race would say alexander could have resolved the unity movement’s quandary by affirming that the population groups are races – so long as races are to be understood not along common-sense biological lines, but as groups constituted by societal processes of classifying, privileging, and disadvantaging. alexander is aware of this theoretical option, and he rejects it. social constructionism, in his terminology, is the position that there exist ‘sociological races’. to understand alexander’s thinking on race, it is crucial to unpack his reasons for rejecting this view. he writes: put very simply, this approach implies that, because a very large number of human beings (but how many? by what statistical formula is an adequate number to be arrived at?) believes that there are “ghosts”, science must accept the reality of “ghosts” because the belief in their existence occasions individual and group behaviour that could be expected if such things did in fact exist. because “many” people still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, therefore the sun does revolve around the earth! or because racial prejudice is a very real phenomenon, therefore “race” is a reality. (no sizwe, 1979: 136) it would be easy to dismiss this passage as putting the matter not just simply, but simplistically. however, i believe there is an insight buried in this passage written by a unity movement political theorist more than 40 years ago which can advance the contemporary philosophical debate about race. a constructionist would likely object that alexander clearly has not grasped the social constructionist position. key to this position is that the descriptive meaning of ‘race’ employed by the constructionist who affirms that there are races (‘sociological races’, in alexander’s terminology) is entirely different f rom the common-sense meaning of ‘race’ employed when people affirm that there are races in everyday life. the constructionist would also point to a significant disanalogy between ghosts and planetary motions, on the one hand, and races, on the other. while individuals’ beliefs and behaviours have no impact on the movements of heavenly bodies or the ability of humans to appear in spectral form following their death, individuals’ beliefs and behaviours do have an impact on what societal groups come into being and persist. it is precisely because racialisation is a real process which gives rise to real societal groups that societal groups are available as candidates to count as the referents of – as that which is designated by – race terms. but this objection misses the point. if i have understood it correctly, the thrust of alexander’s 8 t h e t h i n k e r peer review african, coloured, indian, and white – are not races, not that they are not real. alexander holds that the process of racialisation in south africa has given rise to colour-castes. the concept caste is appropriate, he argues, because racialisation has constituted the four groups hierarchically, with white people the most advantaged and privileged, africans the most disadvantaged, and indian and coloured people in between. as in other caste systems, south africa’s colour-castes have exhibited tendencies towards endogamy, cultural distinctness, and job specialisation. as alexander writes, they ‘exhibit two fundamental tendencies, economic integration and non-economic separation within a single politically defined territory’ (no sizwe, 1979: 146). whereas the ideology which held the hindu caste system in place was religious, south africa’s has been held in place by a pseudo-scientific racial ideology: hence south africa’s caste system is a colour-caste system in alexander’s view (no sizwe, 1979: 148). neville alexander’s contribution to the philosophical debate about the nature of race is twofold. in the first place, he supplies – albeit in abbreviated form – an argument against the social constructionist form of realism. the constructionist cannot, without equivocation, hold that the belief in races in one sense creates races in a quite different sense. a theorist who denies the existence of race on the common-sense understanding of it, but believes that racialisation gives rise to real societal groups, must conceive of these groups not as races but as groups of another kind. in the second place, alexander shows that adopting an antirealist position about race does not entail jettisoning the insights about racialisation and its impact which critique of ‘sociological races’ is as follows. the social constructionist cannot both hold (a) that people’s everyday beliefs framed in terms of ‘race’ as they understand this term generate real races, and (b) that the real nature of races is very different from what people’s common-sense thoughts or beliefs framed in terms of ‘race’ would predict. constructionism about race is an attempt to have one’s cake and eat it. a theory which says the groups produced by racialisation are constituted by ordinary race thinking, and behaviours based on race thinking, has already invoked the concept race and established its content. common-sense race thinking assumes that races are groups which differ significantly and inherently from one another, in ways which are passed on down the generations. a theorist who accepts that the groups produced by racialisation are brought into existence by beliefs about race in this sense cannot, without equivocation, go on to claim that the groups produced by racialisation are races in a quite different sense. this is the light in which alexander’s comparison of race thinking with beliefs about ghosts and planetary motions must be viewed. if it were true that people’s believing in ghosts produced ghosts, the ghosts produced would have to be ghosts in the very sense in which people believed in them. the same applies to planetary motions. but equally, if it were true that people’s thinking and acting as though there were races produced races, the races produced would have to be races in the very sense in which people thought of races. if one holds that common-sense race thinking gives rise to real groups, but is not willing to affirm that these groups are races in the way common-sense race thinking understands races, then one must hold that the groups to which race thinking gives rise are not races, but groups of another kind. having rejected the social constructionist position, alexander is not constrained to deny that racialisation gives rise to real groups. on the contrary, in one azania he reserves some of his harshest words of criticism for members of the fourth international organisation of south africa, who insisted on a purely class-based analysis of south african society and castigated the unity movement for its federal structure. ‘[t]he ultraleft vestiges of the fourth international,’ according to alexander, faced ‘the national question […] with total incomprehension’ (no sizwe, 1979: 112–13). alexander’s position is that the south african population groups – 9v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review a theorist who accepts that the groups produced by racialisation are brought into existence by beliefs about race in this sense cannot, without equivocation, go on to claim that the groups produced by racialisation are races in a quite different sense. the constructionist position takes on board. introducing a second concept, alongside the concept race, which captures the nature of the groups which racialisation creates, enables us to acknowledge their social reality. it is quite possible to follow alexander in adopting this second concept, even if one has doubts that ‘colourcaste’ is the best label for it. though ‘caste’ is frequently used in a general sense to mean a group with a place in a hierarchy (see, for e.g., wilkerson, 2020), it might be thought that the associations with the hindu caste system will inevitably create confusion, so a label like ‘racialised group’ may be preferable (see, for e.g., blum, 2002: 149) [6]. by denying the reality of races but affirming the reality of colour-castes, alexander provides the conceptual resources which the unity movement needed in order to justify its federal structure. organising its members by population group was not a regression into race thinking, but an acknowledgement of the reality of colour-castes. but since a caste identity is one which denies humans’ fundamental equality, it will be natural for members of subordinate colour-castes, once they understand the nature of such an identity, to wish to co-operate in dismantling the system which makes it possible. as jaffe had put it, without the benefit of alexander’s colour-caste theory, the ‘federal form’ was ‘necessary because it proceeds from conditions as they actually are, […] transient because it overcomes the conditions which made it necessary’ (1953: 20). finally, alexander’s theory provides a cogent way of resolving the paradox with which we started. if ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘coloured’ or ‘indian’ are used as terms for races – biological groups exhibiting significant, inherent, heritable differences – then they are relics of the past in need of being discarded. if, on the other hand, they are used as terms for colour-castes – the hierarchical products of south africa’s history of racialisation – then they refer to group identities which, while real, are in need of being overcome. pursuing redress policies and monitoring their progress are plausibly one step on the way towards doing this. notes [1] the article by sharné nieuwoudt and her colleagues was soon retracted by the journal which had published it. in a statement on 2 may 2019, the editors said this was because ‘a number of assertions about “colored” south african women […] cannot be supported by the study or the subsequent interpretation of its outcome’. this seems to me a valid criticism of the article. whether these general assertions were based on ‘racial essentialism’ is a different matter. i am not as confident that they were as several of the contributors to jansen et al. (2020) appear to be. [2] i am not associating myself with the analysis in this opinion piece. my purpose is simply to illustrate the racial language often used in discussions of redress policies. [3] i am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal whose comments enabled me to improve this section. [4] parts of this section draw on hull, 2019. [5] to be fair to lembede, his published writings suggest his thinking was racialist but not racist – i.e., he affirmed the existence of races, but did not view them as forming a natural hierarchy (see appiah, 1992: 13–20, for discussion of this distinction). [6] i am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for pressing me on this point.. references adhikari, m. (2005). ‘fiercely non-racial? discourses and politics of race in the non-european unity movement, 1943–70’. journal of southern african studies, 31(2), pp. 403–418 appiah, k. 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(2002). racism: a short history. princeton: princeton university press glasgow, j., haslanger, s., jeffers, c., and spencer, q. (2019). what is race? four philosophical views. new york: oxford university press haslanger, s. (2019). ‘tracing the sociopolitical reality of race’, in glasgow et al. 2019, pp. 4–37 hull, g. (2019). ‘neville alexander and the non-racialism of the unity movement’, in hull, g., (ed.), debating african philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial ethics and comparative philosophy. london: routledge, pp. 75–96 jablonski, n. (2015). ‘the colour of our past and present: the evolution of human skin pigmentation’, in mangcu, x., (ed.), the colour of our future: does race matter in post-apartheid south africa? johannesburg: wits university press, pp. 17–24 jaffe, h. (1953). ‘the first ten years of the non-european unity movement’ (mimeograph), african studies special collection, university of cape town 10 t h e t h i n k e r peer review of the new era fellowship, 1930s to 1960s. johannesburg: wits university press spencer, q. (2019). ‘how to be a biological racial realist’, in glasgow et al. (2019), pp. 73–110 tabata, i. (1945). ‘the building of unity’, in neum (ed.), “the basis of unity” (by b. m. kies) & “the building of unity” (by i. b. tabata): two addresses delivered at the 3rd unity conference held in the banqueting hall, cape town, on 4th & 5th january, 1945. cape town: non-european unity committee tabata, i. [1950] (1974). the awakening of a people. nottingham: spokesman books wilkerson, i. (2020). caste: the lies that divide us. london: allen lane zinn, a. (ed.). (2016). non-racialism in south africa: the life and times of neville alexander. stellenbosch: sun media & canrad jaffe, h. 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(1998). blackness visible: essays on philosophy and race. ithaca: cornell university press motala, e., and vally, s. (2017). ‘neville alexander and the national question’, in webster, e., and pampallis, k., (eds.), the unresolved national question: left thought under apartheid. johannesburg: wits university press, pp. 130–48 naidu, e. (2020). ‘transformation at uct: statistics paint a bleak picture’. weekend argus (cape town), 16 august nei, m., and roychoudhury, a. (1972). ‘gene differences between caucasian, negro, and japanese populations’. science, 177(4047), pp. 434–36 nieuwoudt, s., dickie, k., coetsee, c., engelbrecht, l., and terblanche, e. (2019). ‘ageand education-related effects on cognitive functioning in colored south african women’ (retracted). aging, neuropsychology, and cognition: a journal on normal and dysfunctional development (https://doi.org/10.1080/13825585.2019.1598538) no sizwe. (1979). one azania, one nation: the national question in south africa. london: zed press ntantala, p. (2009). a life’s mosaic: the autobiography of phyllis ntantala. johannesburg: jacana media rosenberg, n., pritchard, j., weber, j., cann, h., kidd, k., zhivotovsky, l., and feldman, m. (2002). ‘genetic structure of human populations’. science, 298(5602), pp. 2381–85 rosenberg, n., mahajan, s., ramachandran, s., zhao, c., pritchard, j., and feldman, m. (2005). ‘clines, clusters, and the effect of study design on the inference of human population structure’. plos genetics, 1(6), pp. 660–71 shelby, t. (2005). we who are dark: the philosophical foundations of black solidarity. cambridge: the belknap press soudien, c. (2019). the cape radicals: intellectual and political thought 11v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review alliteration in w. shasha’s zihlabana nje ziyalamba 19 t h e t h i n k e r peer review abstract t his paper examines the use of alliteration in welile shasha’s poetry in zihlabana nje ziyalamba. this aspect is chosen as shasha uses it very intensively in his poetry. alliteration is discussed as demonstrated by the use of assonance and consonance in the poetry. to be considered then is the repetition of vowel and consonant sounds. the subheadings of this discourse are introduction, theoretical framework, research methodology, assonance and consonance. the concept of alliteration is defined as part of the introductory section of the study. a concluding remark, which provides the summary of the research, evaluation and recommendation for further study, will be included towards the end of the discourse. the theoretical framework that underpins this study is that of literary stylistics. the study uses the qualitative research methodology of data collection and analysis. by zilibele mtumane and ruth nozibele tabu peer review 20 introduction while shasha employs alliteration very convincingly in his poetry in zihlabana nje ziyalamba, very little attempt has, so far, been made to analyse this aspect of his poetry. tabu (2007), on whose master’s study this research is based, is probably the only scholar who has attended to it. however, the concept of alliteration has been discussed by scholars analysing the works of other poets. for instance, mtumane (2000) has a section on alliteration in his study of s. m. burns-ncamashe’s poetry. bobelo (2008) also includes a discussion on the concept as part of her discussion of isixhosa poetry on nelson rholihlahla mandela. the discussion is structured according to the following subheadings: theoretical f ramework, research methodology, assonance, consonance, and conclusion. according to milubi, as quoted by kgobe (1994: 237) and mtumane (2000: 194), alliteration plays an important role in determining the external form of poetry. it is a literary device whereby a sound (consonant or vowel) is repeated in two or more nearby words in a line. mc rae (1998: 149) views alliteration as the repetition of the initial sound of successive words in a line of text. barnet et al. (1997: 610) also define alliteration as the repetition of initial sounds in adjacent words in a line and sometimes as the prominent repetition of a consonant. bobelo (2008: 95) views alliteration as ‘a literary device, where a consonant or a vowel is repeated more than once in a line. it is a repetition of consonants, vowels and/or syllables in close proximity within a line’. she further cites myers and simms who see alliteration as ‘deliberately used for the sake of melody and rhythm’ (ibid.). the above scholars seem not to agree about the exact position of the repeated sounds in words. for instance, milubi (op. cit.) and mtumane (op cit.) do not mention any specific position while mc rae and barnet et al. (op cit.) emphasise that it is the initial sound that is repeated. this difference might be caused by the fact that alliteration applies differently in the poetry of different languages. for instance, the poetry of disjunctive languages such as english, sesotho, and setswana has alliteration that applies differently f rom that of more conjunctive languages such as isizulu, isixhosa, and siswati. this study only considers the poetic effect of such a repetition in a particular line, irrespective of the exact position, as isixhosa, the language of the poetry studied, is a conjunctive language with morphemes combined together in a single word. theoretical framework the purpose of this section is to introduce the theoretical f ramework of this discourse. as this research is conducted with literary stylistics as the underpinning theory, the discussion in this section will then concentrate on this theory. this section commences with a general comment on literary theory. thereafter, the theory of literary stylistics will receive more attention under the following subheadings: the concept of stylistics, historical background, assumptions, and stylistics and poetry. literary theory literary theory developed in the course of the twentieth century into a branch of literary studies that is studied and taught as a distinct subject. it is, however, not a very new subject, as scholars have always been inclined to speculate about the theoretical implications of literary practice. most literary theorists of the twentieth century were also conscious of belonging to a tradition that goes back at least as far as plato and aristotle (jefferson and robey, 1986: 7). theories of literature vary greatly with regards to the importance they ascribe to the language component of literature. to the extent that literary theory can be distinguished f rom aesthetics, it seems obvious that it needs to take some account of the main element which distinguishes literature f rom other art forms: the linguistic medium. some of the theories concerned with establishing the distinctiveness of literature as an independent category use language as a central feature in their definition of that distinctiveness, usually by defining literature as a special use of language. literary theory has benefited f rom the enormous expansion in linguistic science and certain theorists such as roman jakobson and his colleagues in the prague school, who developed their theories in relation to and alongside their works on linguistics. other theorists, such as those associated with v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 21 t h e t h i n k e r peer review parisian structuralism, actually use linguistic theory as their starting point for literary theory. saussurean linguistics, in particular, has had enormous influence on the development of a number of different kinds of literary theory (jefferson and robey, 1986: 16–17). some practitioners of literary stylistics, including halliday, as cited by jefferson and robey (1986: 70), would insist on supplementing the comparative approach that is described with some kind of functional analysis that questions what the language of a text does, and how it contributes to the meaning and the effect of the whole (jefferson and robey, 1986: 70). the concept of stylistics according to baldick, as quoted by mabuza (2000: 12–13), stylistics is a branch of modern linguistics devoted to a detailed analysis of literary style or of the linguistic choices made by speakers and writers in non-literary contexts. in the words of weber (1996: 94), stylistics is an attempt to put criticism on a scientif ic basis. jefferson and robey (1986: 62) view stylistics as a convenient label for the branch of literary studies that concentrate on the linguistic form of texts. literary stylistics is also viewed as the analysis of the language of literary texts, usually taking its theoretical models f rom linguistics, in order to undertake this analysis (simpson as quoted by mills, 1995: 4). simpson (op cit.) further states that stylistics uses linguistic analysis to provide a window on the devices which characterise a particular literary work. peck and coyle (1992: 137) state that a much more productive and precise way of talking about language is to concentrate on style. this involves describing how a particular piece of writing functions and discussing what words are used and why. literary stylistics, then, may be viewed as a theory that deals with the analysis of literary works, putting more emphasis on the use of language in texts. this use of language may be determined by the use of stylistic techniques in literary texts. these stylistic techniques may include figures of speech, imagery, repetitions, and idiomatic expressions, among others. it is on this basis that this contribution examines the use of alliteration, which is a repetitive device, as a stylistic technique in w. shasha’s poetry. in the twentieth century, stylistics developed into a significant academic discipline, situated on the borderline between the study of language and literature, and concerned to engage in technical analysis of what may be referred to as ‘manners of expression’. it is important for students of literature due to its close relation to literary studies, and it has introduced a number of specifically linguistic terms and methods of analysis into literary analysis and theory (hawthorn, 1994: 284). stylistics is also growing as a branch of general linguistics that studies variations in non-literary language use. these are variations connected with the different contexts in which language is used (the style of radio commentaries, journalism, official documents, etc.). stylistics, as a branch of literary research, can draw on this kind of work. however, its concerns must, in general, be very different because, from a literary point of view, the linguistic form of texts is of importance only in certain respects. literary stylistics views the language or style of literature as ‘embellishment, self-reference, representation and manner’. these four categories correspond to real differences of approach in the study of literary language. they also help to show how stylistic and linguistic studies differ. this takes the form of the assumption that writing is made beautiful through the addition of certain linguistic ornaments, such as poetic figures, metaphor, antithesis, hyperbole, and the like (jefferson and robey, 1986: 62). carter and simpson, as quoted by mills (1995: 4), distinguish between linguistic stylistics and literary stylistics is also growing as a branch of general linguistics that studies variations in non-literary language use. these are variations connected with the different contexts in which language is used (the style of radio commentaries, journalism, official documents, etc.). stylistics, as a branch of literary research, can draw on this kind of work. however, its concerns must, in general, be very different because, from a literary point of view, the linguistic form of texts is of importance only in certain respects. peer review 22 stylistics. for them, linguistic stylistics is where ‘practitioners attempt to derive f rom the study of style and language, a refinement of models for the analysis of language and thus to contribute to the development of linguistic theory.’ literary stylistics, on the other hand, is more concerned with providing: ‘the basis for fuller understanding, appreciation and interpretation of avowedly literary and authorcentered texts. the general impulse will be to draw eclectically on linguistic insights and to use them in the service of what is generally claimed to be fuller interpretation of language effects than is possible without the benefit of linguistics.’ (ibid.: 4) leech and michael, as quoted by mills (1995: 5), state that in general, literary stylistics has, one way or the other, the goal of explaining the relation between language and artistic function. historical background stylistics enjoyed a certain vogue in the 1960s. that was when it underwent a profound revolution. it is remarkably resilient. it has included some of the findings of literary theory and critical linguistics, although in a more piecemeal fashion. it has now moved into the domain of ‘literary linguistics, poetics and linguistics, contextual stylistics and discourse stylistics’ (toolan et al., 1995: 8). in the late 1970s, stylistics was still wobbling f rom attacks of fish and other critics. however, it managed to gather strength and developed in two most promising directions, the first of which is ‘pedagogical stylistics.’ these stylisticians turn away f rom theoretical matters and f rom bold claims of scientificity. they claim that stylistic analysis may not be objective and scientific while they agree that it can be ‘rigorous, systematic and replicable’ and, hence, ‘achieve inter-subjective validity and pedagogical usefulness.’ their aim is simply to demonstrate that stylistic analysis, as a way of reading, can be of direct use to students, both in mother tongue-language learning and in the context of english as a foreign language – something that was already advocated by henry widdowson as early as the 1970s. in the 1980s, with the support of the british council, more and more stylisticians worked towards an integration of language and literature study, and developed what they called pre-literary languagebased activities (weber, 1996: 3). another important development, which took place in stylistics at that time, was ‘an orientation towards contextualization’. this gathered a new strength under the influence of similar approaches in mainstream linguistics, where the growing importance of context was acknowledged through the rise of sub-disciplines such as ‘pragmatics and discourse analysis’. it became more and more clear that style is neither inherent in the text nor totally in the reader’s mind but an effect produced in it, by and through the interaction between the text and reader. the movement towards greater ‘contextualization’ in stylistic criticism could be thought of as a succession of ‘concentric circles’ representing the gradual widening of the text’s contextual orbit (weber, 1996: 3–4). stylistics was often used during the early period of its development ‘to back up intuitions about the meaning of the text under analysis’ (mills, 1995: 7). assumptions stylistics was born out of a reaction to the ‘subjectivity and imprecision’ of literary studies. ‘for the appreciative raptures of the impressionistic critic, stylisticians purport to substitute precise and rigorous linguistic descriptions to interpretations for which they can claim a measure of objectivity. stylistics, in short, is an attempt to put criticism on a scientific basis.’ (weber, 1996: 94) stylistics largely found its theoretical foundations f rom ‘contemporary literary criticism and linguistics’. as these fields have moved on, stylistics needs to respond to the new ideas which have emerged f rom both fields. for example, many of the early stylisticians took for granted that it is possible to analyse a text in isolation, as a ‘self-contained entity’, which has a meaning not dependent on any external considerations (mills, 1995: 8–9). it is true that each reader will interpret a text differently f rom others, due to the fact that people are different f rom one another, have had different experiences, and so on. however, it should be clear that such a subjectivist opinion of literary understanding runs v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 23 t h e t h i n k e r peer review against the presuppositions of stylistic analysis, as its proponents assume that a shared knowledge of the process for giving meaning to utterances points to a relatively large degree of common understanding, in spite of variations in individual responses. mills (1995: 5) states that: ‘for the stylisticians, the major fact to be explained is that, although we are all different, we agree to a remarkable extent over the interpretation… the range of interpretations which have been produced for even the most discussed texts is remarkably small compared with the theoretically infinite set of possible recordings.’ in stylistic analysis in general, the type of text and language that is used is rarely explicit. that is: ‘the text itself is assumed to exist in some selfevident state, whereby it contains meanings, which the critic does not need to explain to the reader because it is taken as common sense knowledge about texts in general, which both the reader and the critic share.’ (mills, 1995: 25) stylistic studies which have been undertaken have used ‘a text immanent model of meaning’, that is, they have taken it that what the analyst finds in the text is discovered in the text itself, rather than being the result of a ‘negotiation between the reader and the text’ (ibid.). a question that may arise is what the student of the stylistics text is supposed to do with the knowledge which is produced, since there is, very often, an underlying belief that the reader is supposed to learn the techniques and skills described, in order to be able to perform better readings than he currently does (mills, 1995: 26). sperber and wilson, who are quoted by mills (1995: 27), attempt to bring to the surface some of the assumptions. they illustrate that it is assumed that thought comes before the production of words and speech and that it is separate f rom language and exists outside of it. it is taken for granted that the message that is encoded in language is the same as the message that is decoded. that means that there are no obstructions to communication and there are no misinterpretations. this is an ideal form of communication, where words have meaning in a clear and simple way. it is assumed that the normal manner of language-use is between two role players, speaking face-to-face: the speaker or author, and the listener or reader. lastly, it is assumed that the speaker or author has perfect control over language and can choose to utter whatever s/he wishes; the language exerts no limitations on what can be expressed. here, language is seen as an unambiguous medium that is used for the conveyance of thought to information. new critical stylistics is concerned not only with the identification of linguistic features that make poetry different f rom other discourses. it is also concerned with poetry as a form of signification which strangely changes the familiar relationship between language and meaning. bradford (1997: 35–36) insists that, although terminology and f rame of reference are founded upon non-literary linguistics, the effects produced by poetry are not easily reducible to predictable and scientific models of language. stylistics and poetry poetry uses language in a special way as it uses figurative language and repetitions. figurative, in this sense, means language used in a non-literal way. figurative language includes imagery as determined by simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, euphemism, and idiomatic expressions. repetitions include alliteration, linking, parallelism, and ref rains (peck and coyle, 2002: 40–41; newmark, 1995: 70). alliteration is the technique that is studied in this discourse. as a form of literature, poetry is written in language, using techniques and features of language. that is why, in order to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of poetry, the reader must have an understanding of language, its function, and its mode of operation (ngara, 1982: 11). the way in which the poet employs poetic devices determines his style, which then determines the form and standard of his poetry. stylistics, as a literary theory, then concerns itself with the analysis of the style of the poet as it is determined by the use of literary devices, of which alliteration is part, as later sections of this study will illustrate. when reading a poem, use is made of linguistic peer review 24 techniques, the aim being to present the reader with a vocabulary to describe what is going on in the text and in the reader’s mind when he reads the text. when a text is read, it is not always done so suspiciously, as the reader is used to certain types of messages, which often strike him as necessarily oppressive or pernicious. language is viewed as a vehicle for ideas rather than as material. stylistics is then used to discover what is revealed by linguistic units, as in communication, and how the effects of different conventions reveal themselves in the way messages are structured in the text. all of this is applied with regard to alliteration in this paper. from the discussion in this section, it is clear that stylistics offers itself as an easily definable activity with specific functions and objectives. it enables the reader to identify the distinguishing features of poetic texts and to specify generic, figurative, and structural subdivisions of the genre. this section has introduced literary stylistics as the underpinning theory for this study. it has done so by commenting briefly on the significance of theory in the analysis of literary texts, and by explaining the concept of stylistics – including its historical background, its assumptions, and how it links to poetry. research methodology this research is conducted with qualitative research methodology as the relevant approach. this methodology considers people’s views about life and the world. it makes an in-depth description and understanding of social actions (babbie and mouton, 2015: 269). malterude (2001: 483) views the qualitative method as involving ‘the systematic collection, organization, and interpretation of textual material derived f rom talk or observation’. this kind of research generally includes ‘interviews, observations, surveys, content analysis of visual and written materials and oral history’ (mason, 2002: 49). as compared with the quantitative method, in which data and findings are presented in numbers, qualitative research presents its data and findings in words (walliman, 2011: 71). as this discourse analyses how shasha uses alliteration in his poetry, it involves the collection, organisation, and interpretation of textual material. no interviews will be conducted. even observations will be based on the reading of the poems. the poems have been studied with the aim of identifying the use of alliteration. therefore, shasha’s zihlabana nje ziyalamba is the primary source of the study. books, journals, and theses have been relied on as secondary sources. assonance assonance is a form of alliteration that is sometimes referred to as vocalic rhyme and consists of the repetition of similar vowel sounds, usually close together, to achieve a particular effect of euphony (kgobe, 1994: 237). it is the recurrence, in words of proximity, of identical vowel sounds (barnet et al., 1997: 610). poems where shasha uses assonance very vividly are ‘ihagu’, ‘ucango’, ‘izinja namathambo’ and ‘unongqawuse’. for instance, in the poem ‘ihagu’ the poet uses assonance with the recurrence of the -ivowel within a line or even a word in the line, as the following example illustrates: kwathi ngxingxilili kwangamantsintsintsi; (there was an abrupt standstill and heavy quivering followed;) (shasha, 1992: 2) the poem from which this example is taken is about a pig that was pursued by dogs. in the above example, the -ivowel is used eight times. the repetition of this vowel in the ideophone ngxingixilili (dead stop) emphasises how frustrated the pig was when the dogs arrived in the field to attack it. the re-use of this sound, specifically, emphasises that the pig remained on the same spot. the word ngxingxilili (dead stop) is employed to illustrate how the pig came to a standstill, confused as to which direction to take, as it was attacked by the dogs from all directions. again, in the word kwangamantsintsintsi (there was quivering) the repetition of the -ivowel illustrates how the dogs attack the pig, one tearing the ear, the other one holding the tail and the next one pulling any part it could bite. it also illustrates that this action took place at one spot, as the pig could not run away. the recurrence of the vowel gives the line a musical effect. in the poem ‘ucango’, which is about knocking at v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 25 t h e t h i n k e r peer review the door, the poet uses assonance in the following line: onkqonkqoza ngobunono ngontliziyo –mhlophe, (the one who knocks gently is a good-hearted person,) (shasha, 1992: 4) the vowel sound -oappears nine times in the above line and is repeated in all the members of the line. the repetition of this vowel emphasises that the person who knocks gently is a good-hearted one, who has no bad intentions and does not cause any fear or threat, unlike someone who knocks as if to break the door because of their cruel hearts. this is reflected by the beautiful rhythm that is created by the repetition of this vowel. the repetition of the -ovowel also illustrates the consistency with which a gentle person knocks, as he does not change the rhythm of knocking. here, the intention is to illustrate that there are different ways of knocking. there is a way of knocking that illustrates love and one that illustrates distress and hatred. in the poem ‘izinja namathambo’, which is about dogs fighting over bones, the poet uses assonance in the following lines: zaxhomana ngamathambo zada zabulalana; zangqavulana zabulalana ngenxa yamathambo; zancam’ inyama yazo zalibala ngamathambo! (they were fighting heavily because of bones until they killed each other; they attacked and killed each other because of bones; they gave up on their meat and concentrated on bones!) (shasha, 1992: 28) note is taken of the repetition of the words ngamathambo (because of bones) and zabulalana (they killed each other). this is to emphasise that the dogs fight and kill each other because of bones. the -avowel appears 12 times in the first line, 12 times in the second line, and 11 times in the third one. by this practice, shasha draws the reader’s attention to the importance of bones to dogs. he illustrates how dogs can even go to the extent of killing each other just for the sake of bones. among amaxhosa, dogs are normally given bones when there is meat. that is the reason they are depicted as very fond of bones to the extent of killing each other. this fondness of bones is emphasised by the dogs giving up on meat and focusing on bones to the extent of killing each other. this shows how they are not used to eating meat but bones. by repeating the -avowel in all the words of the three lines, the poet also draws the attention of the reader to the hidden meaning of these lines. the presence of a hidden meaning becomes apparent in the fact that dogs are presented giving up on meat and concentrating on bones. while dogs are normally given bones to gnaw when there is meat, in reality, they never leave meat for bones when it is available for them to eat. what is not understandable then is that, even though there is meat available for the dogs, they leave it and still rush for the bones and fight over them. this idea is discussed in more detail later in this paper. it should also be noted that the bones, for the sake of which the dogs kill each other, are f rom animals that were hunted and caught by them, but taken away by a human being. it is this human being who gives the bones to the dogs while he eats up the meat. xhosa literary writers often use animals to represent oppressed people, and human beings to represent the oppressors (tshomela, 2006: 56). this is also found in siyongwana’s novel ubulumko bezinja (1962), in the poems ‘ukwenziwa komkhonzi’ by jolobe (1992), and ‘inkabi kabawo’ by qangule (1970). bones are what remains after meat has been cut away f rom them. in this sense, they are the leftovers of the meat that is taken away. they then represent the leftovers of the wealth that is taken away by the oppressors. in the above lines, then, the poet depicts a situation where the oppressed fight and kill each other for leftovers, while the oppressor consumes the actual wealth which the oppressed worked hard to make available. this is what happened during the apartheid regime in south af rica. black people (the oppressed) fought and killed one another because of a very small portion of the wealth that they worked hard to create, while the white people (the oppressors) held the bulk of the wealth of the country. black homeland leaders would be at loggerheads among themselves for the sake of the little wealth they were given by their white bosses in south af rica. a clear example of this peer review 26 was when the then-president of ciskei, l. l. sebe, and that of transkei, k. d. matanzima, would have a war of words as matanzima wanted to include ciskei under his authority. this became more apparent when the transkei government attempted a failed coup d’état over ciskei in 1987. in addition, general bantu holomisa staged a successful coup against stella sigcawu, who was the premier of transkei, in 1987, while brigadier oupa gqozo staged a successful overthrow of l. l. sebe of ciskei in 1989. at some stage, mbotoli and his company staged an unsuccessful ousting against holomisa, where people died. all of this proves that black people fought each other over the little wealth they were given by the whites who controlled the wealth of greater south af rica. this little wealth can be regarded as the leftovers of the larger wealth of south af rica, as the homelands would receive their budget f rom south af rica after the latter had completed its own budget. black people, most of whom resided in the bantustan homelands (transkei, bophuthatswana, venda, ciskei) and the selfgoverning states such as zululand and kangwane, but worked in the mines of south af rica to create the wealth there, should have concentrated on fighting for the real wealth they had created. instead, they fought over the leftovers. note should be taken of the use of the possessive yazo (theirs) in the third line of the extract. this refers to the meat as belonging to the dogs. in the same way, the wealth in south af rica belonged to the oppressed people, as they were the aboriginal inhabitants of the land while the oppressors came to it f rom 1652. the minerals were mined f rom their land, and they worked to create wealth by labouring in the mines and farms of the country – all of which should have given them ownership of this wealth. it was unfortunate that the oppressors took the real affluence and gave the residue to the oppressed. the idea of ownership is further emphasised by mtumane and tshomela (2019) as: ‘the black people who inhabited af rica (including south af rica) long before the whites came to it, belong to the land. blacks, who were then called the bantu, are reported to have been in south af rica already by 300 ad…the minerals and all other forms of wealth produced by the land should be their inheritance. the whites, who only came to the land around the 17th century, were foreigners or newcomers. by taking away the wealth of this country f rom the indigenous people, whom they found in af rica, they were usurping the latter’s inheritance.’ mqhayi (1974: 73) also depicts this scenario in the poem ‘aa! zweliyazuza’ (hail! zweliyazuza) when he views sir george grey, who visited south af rica f rom great britain, as ndlalifa yelakowethu (heir of our own land). with this phrase, mqhayi emphasises that sir george grey was considered as the beneficiary of the land (south af rica) which had its own inhabitants, while he was an external person and a visitor f rom great britain. in this manner, he is presented as seizing the birth right f rom its legitimate owners, the af ricans. the fact that black people were given the leftovers of the wealth is also evident when one considers that the more developed towns and farms belonged to ‘white’ south af rica while the less developed ones belonged to the bantustan homelands. for instance, the more developed towns of east london and king williams town, although they fell within the borders of ciskei, belonged to white south af rica, while the less developed towns of peddie, whittlesea, alice, including their rural areas, belonged to the ciskei homeland. in the poem ‘unongqawuse’, the poet uses assonance in the following lines: indlala yasandlala sangcadalazela singcungcutheka, sayilata sangcucalaza sayoba ngenxa yephango (famine degraded us as we emaciated, we moved f rom one place to another and fainted because of hunger) (shasha, 1992: 47) the poem f rom which this excerpt is taken is about the cattle killing of 1856 among amaxhosa, which was the plot of the white people who pretended to be ancestors and used nongqawuse to order people to destroy their livestock and crops as they said there would be wealth thereafter, and that the britons would be driven away, among other promises. in the above excerpt, the -avowel is repeated 12 times v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 27 t h e t h i n k e r peer review in the first line and 11 times in the second one. the repetition of this vowel emphasises how people fainted because of famine and hunger after the cattle killing brought by nongqawuse’s prophesy. the people who introduced themselves as ancestors, to convey the message to amaxhosa that they should destroy their livestock and field crops, appeared to nongqawuse, who was mhlakaza’s niece. these people claimed that they (as ancestors) wanted to cleanse the land and destroy witchcraft. they promised that, in turn, there would be great wealth as people would have plenty of food, and that the dead would rise. amaxhosa obeyed and destroyed their livestock and field crops. after all this, a big famine befell the nation. there was death all around (brownlee, 1977: 126–159; soga, 1989: 159–170; peires, 1989: 78–181). the repetition of the -avowel in the above lines then illustrates and emphasises the death caused by famine, which came because of nongqawuse’s prophesy, which later proved to be incorrect. the foregoing discussion has illustrated how assonance is used in shasha’s poetry. besides emphasising certain actions and situations, the repetition of vowels creates a beautiful rhythm and gives the poetry an aesthetic effect as the reader appreciates reading it. when the poem is read aloud, the beautiful rhythm becomes audible and gives structure to the lines in which it is used. consonance consonance is a form of alliteration that is the repetition of a sequence of consonants but with a change in the intervening stressed vowel (kgobe, 1994: 238). it is the repetition of identical consonant sounds (barnet et al., 1997: 610). this repetition tends to give the poem a definite structure and creates audible rhythm. poems in which shasha uses consonance clearly are ‘isiphango’, ‘utyhilo lwelitye kwantsebeza ecala’, and ‘ukhelekenkce’. for instance, in the poem ‘isiphango’, which is about a hailstorm, the following lines reflect the repetition of consonant sounds: isichotho sichothoze sacothoza, sachol’ icham lobuchopho begusha; (the hailstorm dropped steadily, it picked up a sheep’s brain at no cost;) (shasha, 1992: 10) consonance, in these lines, is formed by the recurrence of the -chand -thsounds. the -chsound occurs two times in the first line and three times in the second one. the -thsound occurs three times in the first line only. the repetition of these consonants in the above lines emphasises the manner in which the hailstorm fell and its consequences. note should be taken that the -chand -thsounds form part of the root of the word isichotho (hailstorm). the recurrence of these sounds in the first line then points to the action connected to the hailstorm. it also gives the auditory image of the drops of the hailstorm dripping steadily. the f requency of the -ch sound in the second line enhances the idea of the actions associated with the hailstorm. the hailstorm is depicted as having destroyed the sheep and the owners of the sheep lost out, as they got nothing in return, hence the storm is said to have picked up a sheep’s brain at no cost. in the poem ‘utyhilo lwelitye kwantsebeza ecala’, which is about the unveiling of a tombstone, the poet uses consonance as follows: ndahlokoma ndihlikihlwa lihlombe! (i made noise as i was moved by excitement!) (shasha, 1992: 41) consonance in this line is fulfilled by the recurrence of the -hlconsonant sound, appearing four times in the line. the recurrence of this sound creates a the foregoing discussion has llustrated how assonance is used in shasha’s poetry. besides emphasising certain actions and situations, the repetition of vowels creates a beautiful rhythm and gives the poetry an aesthetic effect as the reader appreciates reading it. when the poem is read aloud, the beautiful rhythm becomes audible and gives structure to the lines in which it is used. peer review 28 beautiful rhythm. its repetition illustrates the noise that was made by people at the unveiling of the tombstone because of excitement. this repetition then emphasises the excitement experienced by people at the ceremony, as everyone (including the poet) present, wanted to say something. it is the positive speeches of the speakers about ntsebeza that excited the audience. the poet, also, could not avoid the exciting feeling, as he reveals in the above line. in the poem ‘ukhelekenkce’, which is about the appreciation of isixhosa language, consonance is fulfilled with the recurrence of the -tyhsound in the following line: batyhil’ intyilazwi zatyhwatyhwa izityhakala (they opened dictionaries and fools were threatened) (shasha, 1992: 36) the -tyhsound appears four times in the above line. this consonance mainly serves emphatic and decorative functions. it also promotes the musical sounds effect in the poetry. the repetition of the -tyh sound illustrates fear f rom those who fail to reason, as they cannot stand in defence of isixhosa that is undermined by foreigners. although they are being assisted by the presence of dictionaries, they are still being suppressed, as they are not f ree to use their language. all this causes concern to those who are proud of isixhosa. the above situation was a result of the undermining of the indigenous languages of af rica, in favour of english and af rikaans, under the apartheid regime in south af rica. the speakers of these languages then felt apologetic and lacked confidence when using their own languages, isixhosa being one of them. it should be noted that the repetition of the -ch, -th-, and -tyhsounds, as illustrated in the above discussion, is a case of what bobelo (2008: 98) refers to as the repetition of double consonants. double consonants are an instance where different ‘consonants are grouped at the area of the mouth or nostrils, where they are articulated. this results in the articulation of double consonants at the same time.’ for instance, the -chsound is a double consonant in the sense that it consists of the alveolar click sound -cand the voiceless glottalic -hsound, which are joined together to form the -chsound. this results in aspiration of the c sound with the -hsound. the -thsound is also a double consonant in that the ejective alveolar -tsound is articulated at the same time with the voiceless glottal -h-, which results in the aspiration of the -tsound. the same applies with the -tyhsound where the -tyconsonant is articulated simultaneously with the -hglottal sound, resulting in the aspiration on the -tysound. conclusion this article has discussed the employment of alliteration in shasha’s volume of poetry entitled zihlabana nje ziyalamba. alliteration was discussed as it gets revealed through the use of assonance and consonance. prior to discussing these forms, the theoretical f ramework, the theory of stylistics that underpins the study and research methodology, were introduced in the study. assonance and consonance, as they are used as forms of alliteration in the poetry under study, primarily serve decorative or ornamental and emphatic functions as they make the reading of the poetry more interesting. they also create rhythm, which, in turn, gives the poetry a definite structure, and affords it a musical sound effect or euphony. they further give the reader a clearer view of what the poet is presenting in his poetry. while this study deals with alliteration in the poetry of w. shasha, it is recommended that scholars of literature attend to the concept in considerations of the works of other poets. it would be interesting to read how other poets use alliteration to emphasise their messages in their works. references babbie, e. and mouton, j. (2015). the practice of social research. cape town: oxford university press. barnet, s., berman, m., burto, w. and cain, w. e. (1997). an introduction to literature (11th ed.). new york: longman. bobelo, n. (2008). ‘isixhosa poetry on nelson rholihlahla mandela.’ unpublished master’s dissertation. johannesburg: v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 29 t h e t h i n k e r peer review university of johannesburg. bradford, r. (1997). stylistics. london: routledge. brownlee, c. p. (1977). reminiscences of kafir life and history and other papers. durban: university of natal. hawthorn, j. (1994). a glossary of contemporary literary theory. 2nd edition. norway: university of trondheim. jefferson, a. and robey, d. (1986). modern literary theory: a comparative introduction. 2nd edition. london: batsford. jolobe, j. j. r. (1992). umyezo. johannesburg: witwatersrand university press. kgobe, d. m. (1994). content, form and technique of traditional and modern praise poetry in northern sotho. vol. 1. unpublished doctoral thesis. pretoria: university of south af rica. mabuza, j. k. n. (2000). stylistic techniques in the short stories of d. b. z. ntuli. unpublished doctoral thesis. pretoria: university of south af rica. malterude, k. (2001). ‘qualitative research: standards, challenges, and guidelines’. lacet. vol. 358: 483–488. mason, j. (2002). qualitative researching. london: sage publishers. mc rae, j. (1998). the language of poetry. 1st edition. london: routledge. mills, s. (1995). feminist stylistics. london: routledge. milubi, n. a. (1988). aspects of venda poetry. unpublished doctoral thesis. pretoria: university of south af rica. mqhayi, s.e.k. (1974). inzuzo. johannesburg: witwatersrand university press. mtumane, z. (2000). the poetry of s.m. burns-ncamashe. unpublished doctoral thesis. pretoria: university of south af rica. mtumane, z. and tshomela, z. 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(2006). social and political concerns as addressed by three prominent xhosa poets. unpublished master’s minor dissertation. johannesburg: university of johannesburg. walliman, n. (2011). research methods: the basics. new york: routledge. weber, j. j. (1996). the stylistics reader: from roman jacobson to the present. london: arnold. note from the editor contributors to this edition 2 the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity t h e t h i n k e r prof ronit frenkel aigbavboa, clinton. clinton aigbavboa is a professor at the department of construction management and quantity surveying, university of johannesburg, south af rica. before joining academia, he was involved as quantity surveyor on several inf rastructural projects, both in nigeria and south af rica. prof. aigbavboa was the vice dean of the faculty of engineering and built environment, university of johannesburg, south af rica. he is currently the chair of the centre of excellence & sustainable human settlement and construction research centre at the university of johannesburg. he is also the author of seven research books that were published with springer nature and crc press. he is currently the editor of the journal of construction project management and innovation. he is rated by the south af rica national research foundation. levin, melissa. melissa levin is a lecturer in the af rican studies programme at new college, university of toronto where she was awarded a phd in political science. her publications focus on questions of nationness and belonging, memorialization, democratic practices and institution-building. until recently, she co-ordinated an andrew w. mellon funded collaboration between the jackman humanities institute at the university of toronto and the centre for humanities research at the university of the western cape. she is currently a member of the conf ronting atrocity project team based at mcmaster university. nhleko, zeph. zeph nhleko is the development bank of southern af rica’s (dbsa) chief economist. before this he served as a deputy director-general at the national economic development department (now the department of trade, industry and competition) overseeing economic policy development and coordination, as well as social dialogue. before that he was a deputy director-general at the province of kwazulu-natal department of economic development tourism and environmental affairs responsible for economic planning, sector development and business governance. mr nhleko is an economic practitioner who has acquired vast strategic leadership skills and economic policy coordination experience over his many years spent as a senior economist interpreting economic development and macroeconomic policy outcomes at the south af rican reserve bank. ratshitanga, tshilidzi. tshilidzi ratshitanga is a mitchell fellow and ph.d. graduate of the school of public policy and administration, university of delaware, united states of america. he holds an mphil and bachelor degrees f rom the university of port elizabeth, (currently nelson mandela university) and rau (now university of johannesburg) respectively. dr. ratshitanga is also chairman and founder the new cities new economies institute, the global consortium for af rica’s economic development and the global black people’s convention (gbpc). contributors to this edition dr. ratshitanga previously worked as a senior manager at the south af rican government’s government communications and information system (gcis) and subsequently joined the private sector, where he got involved with companies in the property development and mining sectors. he currently serves in a number of boards, including as chairman of both bokamoso barona investment trust and kaborona investment holdings. he is a director of the mapungubwe institute for strategic reflection (mistra), deputy chairperson of the gauteng growth and development agency (ggda) and chairman of the innovation hub (tih). tshilidzi is a social activist. he is an active member of south af rica’s ruling party, the af rican national congress (anc). previously he served as secretary general of the congress of south af rica students (cosas) and also secretary general of the south af rican students congress (sasco), both of which are anc aligned progressive student movements. dr. ratshitanga also served the af rican national congress youth league (ancyl) in gauteng province and was also a commissioner of the anc’s 2012 national congress elections commission. serote, wally mongane. in his 18 years of exile, mongane wally serote participated on various levels in the anc structures for the mobilization, planning, negotiation and struggle for the liberation of south af rica. he was the head of the regional underground structure in botswana, head of the department of arts and culture; member of the regional political military committee in botswana and in britain. he was the cultural attaché of the anc, in britain and europe. from 1990, he was head of arts and culture of the anc in south af rica. he spearheaded the organization and mobilization of cultural workers through major festivals, symposiums, conferences in botswana (1982), amsterdam (1987) london (1990), johannesburg (1993) which resulted in the formation of national organizations of writers, musicians, theatre workers, dancers, photographers and filmmakers. he is a writer of a number of novels, poetry collections, essays and plays, and has been awarded national and international awards in this regard, including the inkamanga in silver, by president thabo mbeki, the pablo neruda award, by the chilean president, the ingrid jonker award for poetry, the noma award for writing in af rica, the english medal for contributing in writing in southern af rica, the presidential award by the black management forum, the bbq statesman award, the department of arts and culture life time achievement award, the international golden wreath for poetry in strugga macedonia; he was awarded the alexandra icon award and the pan south af rican language board award for contributing to the development and promotion of af rican languages in south af rica. he became a member of parliament and chairperson of the arts, culture, languages, science and technology portfolio committee of parliament.. he participated in the arts, culture, heritage sectors of the national negotiations at codesa. he has a master of fine arts f rom columbia university in new york. he was ceo of the national heritage site and memorial, freedom park, and received a long service award. he has been awarded honorary doctorates, by the universities of natal, transkei, and the university of johannesburg and an honorary professorship by unisa and the university of johannesburg. he is a member of the advisory council of the thabo mbeki foundation; and the magazine, the thinker. he is the director of seolo sa serote institute pty ltd; and founding chairperson of the bookela botho iks integrated and complimentary healing institute based at the clinix private hospital in johannesburg and seolo se mpande iks healing. he is also the founding chairperson of the indigenous knowledge systems portal based at the university of johannesburg. he was initiated as a ngaka in 1999. he has initiated and spearheaded discussions at a national level for the creation of medicinal plant gardens in the 9 provinces of south af rica, and spearheaded the cleansing, healing, and return of spirits rituals and ceremonies in southern af rica and the usa. he has lectured on various platforms, and in 3v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 contributors to this edition different universities abroad and in south af rica on politics, arts, culture, iks and heritage. he is a member of the living legacy legends project (lllp) founded by the minster of arts and culture, and the chairman of its heritage committee. he is the chairperson of the credo mutwa reference group for the protection and promotion of the legacy of baba credo mutwa appointed by the minister of sports, recreation, arts and culture, mr nathi mthethwa. he was named, the national poet laureate of south af rica in 2019 by the south af rican literature association(sala). thwala, wellington. wellington thwala is a professor at the department of construction management and quantity surveying, university of johannesburg, south af rica. he was head of the department of construction management and quantity surveying, university of johannesburg, south af rica. currently, he is the chair of sarchi in sustainable construction management and leadership in the built environment, university of johannesburg, south af rica. he offers research support and advice on construction related issues to the construction industry in south af rica. prof. thwala, has extensive experience as a consultant in project leadership and management of construction projects, and in teaching project management subjects at the postgraduate level. he has practical industry experience with a research focus on sustainable construction, leadership and project management. he is the editor-in-chief of the international journal of construction project management and innovation. wambui, john. born and raised in kenya, dr. wambui spent part of his early childhood in one of the largest slums in af rica called kibera slum where he received part of his earlier education. while growing up in kibera slum, dr. wambui witnessed not only the challenges but also the opportunities that slum livelihood presents for both the residents of the slums and also for broader metropolitan lifestyles. equipped with personal experiences f rom the slum, dr. wambui proceeded to pursue his higher education in the united states where he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology f rom felician university, a masters in social work f rom ohio university, and both a master’s in public policy and a doctoral in urban affairs and public policy f rom the university of delaware. dr. wambui’s work focuses on analyzing the geographies of urban poverty with an emphasis on the inventiveness of the urban poor. his work examines how similarly disposed marginal urban groups invent themselves through f rugal yet radical creativity; where they create identities and lifestyles that enable them to thrive through competing geographies of contemporary metropolitan lifestyles where the realities of the slum and promises of prosperity in the cities intersect. dr. wambui believes that the stability of 21st-century cities in the global south will depend on how well the city development f rameworks integrate the collective experiences and innovative ideas emerging f rom the slums. currently, dr. wambui works as a social worker in the united states while seeking a career in policy development. dr. wambui’s career goal is to join local and [or] international policy institutions/think tanks to contribute to the theory and knowledge of urban development, especially in the cities of the global south. ware, leland. professor leland ware has been the louis l. redding professor and chair for the study of law and public policy at the university of delaware since 2000. before his present appointment, he was a professor at st. louis university school of law f rom 1987 to 2000. he was a visiting professor at boston college law school in 1992 and at the ruhr university in bochum, germany, in 1997. professor ware was university counsel at howard university f rom 1984 to 1987. for the five years prior to his position at howard, he was a trial attorney with the u.s. department of justice, civil division, in washington, d.c. he had previously practiced with a private firm in atlanta, georgia, and with the u.s. department of health, education and welfare. 4 t h e t h i n k e r contributors to this edition the journal for progressive thought www.thethinker.co.za publisher english department university of johannesburg kingsway campus, auckland park, johannesburg tel:+27 11 559 2553 editor prof ronit frenkel editor@thethinker.co.za thethinker@uj.ac.za design & art direction on the loose matt@ontheloose.co.za tel:+27 83 302 8969 www.ontheloose.co.za advisory council dr ademola araoye (nigeria), professor puleng lenka bula (south africa), dr faisal devji (tanzania), professor chris landsberg (south africa), professor tshilidzi marwala (south af rica), professor sabelo j ndlovu-gatsheni (zimbabwe), dr morley nkosi (south africa), dr francis onditi (kenya) professor eghosa e osaghae (nigeria), dr mzulcisi qobo (south af rica), dr garth le pere (south africa), professor alioune sall (senegal), addai sebo (ghana), dr mongane serote (south af rica), professor mammo muchie (ethiopia). material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without proper citation. views and opinions expressed in the thinker are not necessarily those of university of johannesburg. they can accept no liability of whatsoever nature arising out of or in connection with the contents of the publication. © 2020 university of johannesburg www.thethinker.co.za professor ware’s research focuses on various aspects of civil rights law. he has authored more than 100 publications consisting of books, academic journal articles, book chapters, essays, book reviews, editorials and other publications in academic journals and other publications. professor ware has organized a number of academic symposia, professional programs and hosted many distinguished lectures. professor ware is a co-author, with robert cottrol and raymond diamond, of brown v. board of education: caste, culture and the constitution (2003). he is the editor of choosing equality: essays and narratives on the desegregation experience (co-edited with robert l. hayman with a foreword by vice president joe biden) penn state press (2009). his most recent book, a century of segregation: race, class, and disadvantage, (lexington) was published in november of 2018. he has lectured and made other presentations to numerous audiences in the united states, europe and af rica. professor ware is a graduate of fisk university and boston college law school. 5v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 introduction for af ricans to live and thrive as a people we must, as a nation, commit social and cultural suicide, so that parts of our nation come out of merely being the masses and grassroots. we must resurrect, reclaim, recreate, reawaken, embrace and nurture the belief and culture which lie deep in our hearts and minds, which we achieved through a fierce and protracted liberation struggle, based on the belief that: ‘…south af rica belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity...’ for us to do this we need a program of action to rebuild and develop the nation and the country. that program must have as its anchor the freedom charter and our national constitution, both of which – it seems to me – must be the means to strive to understand and to achieve the cultural principles and expressions which must walk the alleys and streets of our townships, the footpaths of our rural areas, and the highways leading to our suburbs. integral to those projects must be the means to conscientize and promote anticorruption principles, the culture of entitlement, and the culture basic income grant, communities, indigenous knowledge systems – imagining the new south african society by mongane serote | opinion 74 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the basis for that must be that the people themselves must reach consensus, accept and take responsibility for the projects to be implemented, in order to ensure the success of programs which can completely transform the lives of the poor, the unemployed, and the politically and economically discriminated against. of dependency and expectation to be saved by a messiah culture. that program must also have, as its base, what is known by the people, what the people have identified as a problem, and what they have identified and understand as that which will transform their lives for the better. on the basis of consensus, decisions must be reached as to what exists in communities, what has the potential to develop the people so that they can develop things. the basis for that must be that the people themselves must reach consensus, accept and take responsibility for the projects to be implemented, in order to ensure the success of programs which can completely transform the lives of the poor, the unemployed, and the politically and economically discriminated against. besides the above, emanating f rom the iari and iikssa conference on food security held in pretoria in november 2019, it would be essential to create a program of action on food security with the following objectives: 1. how do we turn the tide where 20% of south af rica’s commercial farmers contribute 80% of the country’s total food production? 2. how do we work with government in addressing the challenge that the majority of the farms bought by government for restitution/ redistribution to black farms after 1994 are unproductive and non-functional? 3. how do we encourage households in south af rica to produce vegetables in their backyards, rooftops, or window sills in urban areas? this initiative could address the challenging situations where households use 70% to 80% of their income to purchase food (hendrick 2014, iikssa trust report). covid-19 has dramatized the spectres of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination of the masses of people in our society in a most cruel manner. it has exposed that those who are black, poor, and marginalised are forever the most vulnerable. we have no choice as a nation but to fundamentally change and transform that circumstance and trajectory, beginning now and into the long-distant future after the covid-19 pandemic. we have, as a people, and as a nation, overcome great adversities, such as when we overcame the colonial and apartheid regime in our country. as suggested above, we have laid the reference basis for the emergence of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous south af rican cultural base and expression. that expression, as if a bonfire, caught up and raged across the continent, and the world, as flames which sought to erase imperialism, colonialism, tribalism, racism, and neo-colonialism. then, there was a f resh air blowing, as if a storm, over the continent to fan the energy and spirit for the emergence of the rebirth, recreation, reawakening of af rica, the af rican diaspora, and humanity. international multilateral institutions listened carefully to that af rican voice and discourse, but an anti-af rican renaissance and pan af rican discourse also emerged, targeting the af rican leaders who pioneered the nepad project, which would become the steam engine for the renaissance and pan af rican cultural discourse in south af rica, on the continent, and among the af rican diaspora worldwide. in that time, the cultural concepts of the af rican renaissance and pan af rican objectives were not only on our lips, but emanated f rom within us as a deep cultural belief, conviction, and commitment to the cultural expression of af ricans. the question we must pose, using hindsight, about this is: how deep and how broad was this cultural expression among the masses? how should the history of the liberation struggles deepen an af rican consciousness which would exert that as a cultural expression which would protect and defend the gains of the struggle? 75v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies besides that, let us also not overlook and discard other achievements which we gained in the past fifteen years (1994–2009) or so. the pan af rican and af rican renaissance cultural expressions, which were part and parcel of the national democratic revolution, would have been linked to revolutionary processes nurtured by the liberation struggle concept among the masses, and on the continent as a whole. ‘motho ke motho ka batho ba bang’, as part of this principle, is the expression of our national constitution. in the same spirit of the above-mentioned gains and achievements, we must note that we have almost transformed the landscape of our country f rom the early nineties to the present time. what reminds us of our unfinished business is the spread and sprawl of shanty towns and poverty-stricken rural areas, especially of the former bantustan and township areas. it is also that the majority of the people, who are held on the necks by a tight vice grip of poverty, discrimination and unemployment, who scream ‘…i can’t breathe, i can’t breathe…’ while it is not only black people, black people are in the majority. we must know, as democrats, that negative culture does not and cannot augur well for our non-racial, nonsexist and democratic national culture. it is almost late in the day of the history of non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy to still cite that evidence, which is so glaring under the sky. whichever direction one takes in our country, one is bound to see the many rdp houses, which sprawl and spread across different myriad landscapes, across flat lands, slope spaces, and steep mountains in both rural and urban areas. those are the achievements of our struggle which we must still claim. however, we note also that they are infested with grave challenges. they are there, these rdp houses, people live in them! the question is: how, besides the fact of their having provided and promoted the concept of shelter for all, have they transformed the lives of the poor in the urban centres, especially, and also in the rural areas? this question, while inspired by the potential driven by the democratic government to address the quality of life of those who were impoverished and dehumanised by the apartheid system, raises the question: did we succeed to address those conditions holistically – economically, socially, culturally, through inf rastructure, and even politically? if so, how so? if not, how do we conduct an audit which defines this move by government as noble, but which answers the question, why is this still an unfinished business? they have changed the lives of some poor people, as has the inf rastructure to distribute arvs, as have the social welfare grants which have intervened in the lives of millions of retired, poor, unemployed, and socially marginalised citizens. there are the lives of single parents, whose children and themselves had to be rescued through the social welfare grants. these programs of grants have shifted the quality of lives of the recipients, f rom here to there. as also have the rdp houses and the arv program. is it f rom poverty to quality of life? or: would it be that these were programs which were meant to develop the people who are pinned down under the three scourges of poverty, unemployment and social marginalisation, all of which are apartheid’s legacy, so that the people themselves begin to develop things? which proximities and which institutions should the masses of the grassroots have developed themselves, after which programs should have been accessible to them? in which way should they have empowered themselves, especially f rom the basis that they have been a resource which kept them afloat against the greatest and most brutal odds? which resources would have been twin creations with their organic knowledge creations for the interventions referred to above? in other words, what education systems must be put in place which would complement their own and enhance the organic education and knowledge inherent in the people? statistics say there are sixty-million south af ricans. certainly, there will be more after the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the nation and on the continent. the issue of the continent is also the issue which we must factor into the thinking and planning in our country. if we do, we will have no space in our consciousness for xenophobia. migration is a human factor, but also, it is now over five and a half decades since we declared to all to know, that we are uniting af rica. if f rom a bird’s eye view we scan both the rural and urban areas, the eye being focused among the poor, and the question which we seek to answer being: what is the superstructure which we together with the inhabitants of this space must create here to 76 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the best guardian and possibility of this is our constitution and both the superstructure and the myriad of institutions which oversee it. fundamentally transform these spaces to achieve their being habitable and to create possibility for quality of life where it never existed? what must dominate our collective minds as we scan that view? in other words, given the backdrop of the liberation struggle, what values, what politics, what historical understanding, what cultural reference would have to guide how we scan and how we ponder and what vision emerges as we perceive what is there facing us and what is to be done? there are the masses, there are the grassroots, there are the lives which voluntarily stepped forward and joined the organs of civil society, the liberation army, the labour movements, the liberation movements, youth and women organisations, and entered the struggle without looking backwards. even as these are not completed projects, interventions have been made in this way in both the rural and urban areas through sanitation, electricity and water supply – all massive projects indeed, which are a pointer to the possibilities of serious interventions. again, these are the universities of the developing nation, which is also, our continent. these are possibilities to nurture the foundation and emergence of a cultural expression of patriotism, a humane, progressive and optimistic cultural consciousness for the future of our country and nation. the challenge is how to nurture a common culture which is part and parcel of everyday cultural understanding and practice? have we, as a people, achieved a common understanding as to what is culture and how it is nurtured? all these achievements, incomplete as they are, are known by the people, they are the base to learn f rom and to take off f rom in order to advance the reconstruction, development and transformation of the south af rican nation. in the same manner as these parts of the superstructure in townships and the rural areas of our country are the evidence of an attempt at the transformation of the geopolitical landscape of the nation, they are also a glaring example that the nation is still in the grip of colonial and apartheid division, reflecting the institutional presence of a diabolical past system within the emerging non-racial, non-sexist and democratic nation. the best guardian and possibility of this is our constitution and both the superstructure and the myriad of institutions which oversee it. we must keep this matter on our national agenda, we must still pose the question: how is a cultural expression and consciousness owned by a people, by a nation? which superstructures of the nation must drive this urgent and necessary project and understanding which must forever claim and forever rescue the gains of our non-racial, non-sexist, democratic cultural consciousness? the people experience their benefits daily. put together, the collective people’s experiences have inherent in them the potential to transform the lives of what covid-19 has so painfully exposed and dramatised, in the whole world, within af rica and in the black rural and urban areas of the world. south af rica, were you witness to the long long queues at the supermarkets; the long long queues for social welfare grants; the long long queues for pensions and at the taxi ranks? soon, it will be long long queues in hospitals for beds and long long queues at cemeteries too. that is the challenge facing our nation now, as the covid-19 pandemic rages and peaks across the nation. what must be done? to implement the reconstruction and development programme (rdp) of the rural and township communities through the length and breadth of our country; to implement processes, programs and projects based on the concepts of indigenous knowledge systems (iks), vuk’uzenzele, and acquired skills using the basic income grant (big) as an incentive and in the process identify relevant and appropriate audited skills in the communities for this purpose. to kickstart this process, the plan must be to mobilise 77v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies while there is a myriad of causes of food insecurity in the country, the keycause can be attributed to the arid and semi-arid conditions that exist within the country. the average annual rainfall is less than 600mm. these arid conditions have adverse effects on food production and expose many households to problems of food and nutritional insecurity. a small number of iks holders and practitioners (for example, two f rom each province for starters) on the basis of the nine iks languages of our country for a brainstorm session and conference on the five categories of iks. this must begin with the food and medicinal plant security project. besides the fact that the food, herbal and medicinal plants can be projects in both the rural and urban areas, it is also a fact that knowledge about them resides among the people, knowledge about both the indigenous and nonindigenous plants, herbs and foods, their use and their cocktails, which unfortunately, is being harvested because all of it is unprotected, let alone valued, by the departments which should be in partnerships with communities. the objective of the conference must be to shift the iks discourse in the country, f rom being only a theoretical discourse or only related to and defining the iks healing system (iksh), as the department of science and innovation (dsi) has done for the past fifteen or so years. as iks is elevated to theory, it must also be elevated to the level of practice, the basis and push being of and by the people supported by the government. that is so that it can contribute to the economy, to social transformation, to national cultural diversity and the intervention by digitisation and innovation. beginning with access to cell phones, which is a basic 4ir means of production with the objective to eventually orientate the masses, the grassroots digitally, we must mobilise the youth and elders into a partnership. the youth to introduce the digitisation history and culture, the elders to lead and introduce the history, culture and iks processes, so that the youth can answer the question: who am i? the objective, in engaging in iks thus, must be to at all times ensure contribution to a vuk’uzenzele consciousness of communities and nation building. as also it must be to promote, protect and innovate iks so that it must yield positive, humane and progressive historical, cultural, political, social and economic expressions nationally. the history of research into iks, as initiated and unfolded by the portfolio committee of parliament of arts, culture, languages, science and technology (paclst) has thus far yielded the result that there are five main categories of iks. these are social, institutional, technological, biodiversity and liberation processes. the suggested conference must be convened to validate and verify these categories through practice. as also, it must be an intervention to empower the communities to engage the culture of vuk’uzenzele through food and medicinal security processes, programs and projects f rom an iks position. there are diverse and myriad forms of industries which can emanate f rom this project, which must be initially engaged as pilot projects, as a study is also conducted about those projects in the past which did not work. food security, including iksh as in other parts of af rica, food insecurity and malnutrition are major problems facing south af rica. while there is a myriad of causes of food insecurity in the country, the key cause can be attributed to the arid and semi-arid conditions that exist within the country. the average annual rainfall is less than 600mm. these arid conditions have adverse effects on food production and expose many households to problems of food and nutritional insecurity. (iikssa 2020 conference) ‘…however, local communities in south af rica have, over the years, developed different food security strategies and mechanisms for surviving in these conditions. these strategies include various technologies of food production, processing, preservation and storage that have not received much attention f rom policy makers and extension workers. they tend to be underrated and their potential has not been documented and exploited for sustainable community livelihood…’ (sibanda, 2004). research conducted on what was called the af rican primary institution (api) by iari, funded by both 78 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the department of arts and culture (dac) and the national heritage council (nhc) has indicated that even as the imperialism, colonialism and the apartheid system focused on the destruction of the api, the so called af rican extended family, with the objective to destroy af rican organisation, programs and social foundations and communities, the iks institution has been most resilient. besides indicating resilience, given how the imperialist, colonialist and apartheid systems not only continuously, but also with a focused attention, put in place policies and legislation (e.g. pass laws, group areas acts, etc.) which were intended to and resulted in the near destruction of this api, it continued to sustain its value systems, which are based on the concept and philosophy of ‘motho ke motho ka batho ba bang’ – a fundamental iks institution and philosophy (iari). given the understanding that the api is the foundation and base of any nation on the continent, iari’s intention and ambition to contribute to the strengthening of the diversity of the emerging south af rican nation, which is based on the strategic objective of the liberation struggle, and which is also to let emerge a non-racial, nonsexist, democratic and prosperous nation, it is understandable to claim that the api is still the basis for anchoring community projects for the transformation of those communities. this suggestion implies that a juxtaposing of a project of food and medicinal plant security, the api, schools and universities (unisa and uj among others) and communities with the basic income grant (big) project has a potential to prime interests in community building projects. this must be based on, on the one hand, the big as an incentive for skills audits in communities as stated above, and on the other, as a program to kick start and encourage cohesion processes within communities, through both big and the stokvels (an urban iks innovation investment process and culture). besides that, it would be the potential to establish a sustainable social locomotive process, which mobilises individuals and communities in the rural areas and townships. if on the one hand there are community food, medicinal plant and herbal gardens in communities, as also there are provincial food, medicinal and herbal plant gardens and nurseries. as these projects merge and yield gains in communities, the land question and the housing projects must be on the agenda, discussed by all relevant structures f rom within the government structures, the private sector, and the communities, including also high schools and universities. the superstructure for these projects must be perceived as being part and parcel of the inf rastructure projects of different government development processes and projects, e.g. arts and culture, science and innovation, trade and industry, social development, cogta, education and health. while on the one hand, there must be a concerted program and process of skills audit as an incentive for big, and for engaging in self-reliance and self-upliftment processes and programmes by the communities, in a word, vuk’uzenzele of and in communities and villages, another focused project must be that of the complete eradication of illiteracy. it must also be an urgent project which is focused on contributing to the development and upgrading of at least two af rican languages, namely sesotho and isizulu. this while not stopping the processes of development of the other remaining af rican languages. this is an urgent matter which the pan south af rican language board (pansalb) must engage with the department of education (doe) on the basis of the new community-orientated education curriculum which i will briefly refer to later. kiswahili, which is the official au language, has also been put on the national agenda, as the government has done, through the doe so far. the governmentfunded pansalb and the kiswahili institute based at the university of the western cape (uwc) must be encouraged to enter into partnership with the kiswahili institute, based in tanzania, as a deliberate intention and objective to contribute to the unity of our continent on the basis of a promotion of a pan af rican and af rican renaissance cultural expression and the emancipation of the af rican voice and culture. the iks curriculum for education must in the near future factor digitisation among the youth and the elders. the youth are steeped in this culture, in its present and future, and the elders are steeped in the history, the present and the future. how will the bigcommunities-iks, digitisation, the youth, iks and the elders transform the culture of the masses and the 79v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies this is a category of indigenous knowledge which is pregnant with bounds of possibilities for creativity if it is synergised with digitisation. culture, spirituality, languages, heritage, and the arts also fall under this category. culture of the grassroots into and as a contribution to the cultural diversity of our nation? the youth excel in digitisation, but will also be encouraged if their skills in this regard are formally recognised as they are engaged and related to the reconstruction and development program of the country. on the other hand, formally engaging the elders in the history, culture and social circumstances of the communities and the nation would be a social and cultural investment, to conscientize them to the information and data which is inherent in the digitisation culture, the objective being how to use the data and knowledge acquired to enhance and to innovate iks where and when it is necessary. the doe’s new complementary education takes into consideration the fact that indigenous education has existed and continues to have a place in south af rican communities. this new form of education will focus learning on self, community, the country and the world. the certificate will be an education that encompasses both indigenous and local knowledge and embeds scientific knowledge wherever possible and/or necessary. the initial basis for the take-off of this new form of education will be, at all times, to do a skills audit in communities, to empower the participating individuals, and to use the acquired skills for the further development of communities. as one educator stated: ‘…one of the prominent features of this education will be a focus on entrepreneurship f rom both the indigenous and western systems. this new system certificate will groom learners to participate in the economy, governance and make decisions f rom informed positions. the education system will also focus on learning how to deal with social issues in their own communities. the education will be largely project based…’ (morongoa masemola, 2020). it is this approach which makes it urgent that in the first place, the existing mine, the iks categories are unpacked, verified and validated so that they are the basis for the release of the incubation and innovation reference of iks. validation and verifying of the 5 iks categories the foundation for the iks is the 5 categories mentioned above, namely: social, technological, institutional, biodiversity and liberation processes. the categories were yielded by the 13 years of a national research program which was conducted by the portfolio committee of arts, culture, languages, science and technology committee (paclst) of the democratic parliament (1995–2008), in partnership with historically disadvantaged universities, the science councils of the country, named above and relevant government departments, iks holders and practitioners, international organisations like unesco, the world health organisation (who) and world intellectual property organization (wipo). the indigenous knowledge systems categories social issues taking digitisation into consideration and harnessing this category, social issues will be explored. how must we create the science of harnessing its content so that it must result in a revolution? a rupture f rom equating a mono-knowledge, western knowledge, as civilisation… of recognising that there is as diverse knowledge in the world as there are diverse people, cultures, heritages, histories, languages, beliefs, and so on. all of these are the content of the social issue’s category. one of the steam engines which must complement the relationship between social issues and digitisation, is a simultaneous interpretation facility and a language lab which must be anchored in the youth and the elders. this category can facilitate, create and open up communication among all people, in south af rica, southern af rica, the continent and even the diaspora and the world at large, especially if kiswahili is also 80 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies factored in. very quickly, the combined teaching of af rican languages and technology must be instituted, through a drill and practice method, which can contribute to the minimisation of illiteracy in villages and townships as also it becomes the non-racialisation of pan af ricanism. we must note that research emanating f rom the af rican union language academy states that there are seventeen af rican languages on the continent, rather than 2,000 (kwesi prah-sala language seminar, 2018). in as much as we can say, there are two af rican languages in south af rica, rather than nine, namely sesotho and isinguni. this must not mean that we are doing away with sesotho, sepedi, setswana, isizulu, isindebele, isixhosa, tshivenda, tsonga, khoi and san. this is a category of indigenous knowledge which is pregnant with bounds of possibilities for creativity if it is synergised with digitisation. culture, spirituality, languages, heritage, and the arts also fall under this category. indigenous knowledge institutions the institutions exist, are being utilised, and form the consciousness, emotions, spiritual orientation, and physical being of af ricans. besides their having to be juxtaposed with the 21st century objective reality, it is important to unpack these institutions, with the objective of identifying within them, what must be retained, and what must be discarded. the objective here must not be to integrate them with other knowledge systems as a priority, but to continuously ask: what f rom them can contribute to empower and fundamentally transform the rural and township areas, moving f rom what the communities know to creating new ideas? but also, we must ask and answer the question: how will they contribute to the human experience, which is humane? individuals as institutions, for instance, malome and rakgadi, as well as the family and communities, bongaka, bogosi, bogwera, bojale, letsema, masiela, lobola, etc. are the institutions which must be revisited with the view to promote social engineering for quality of life and progress. if we approach these processes informed by an understanding, conviction and commitment that there are skills, expertise, positive values which inform social processes in these concepts within the communities, we will find the resources for the engagement of the projects. indigenous technology what is technology? if it is the means to mobilise resources, both human and material, and if it is the knowledge repeated through generations to ensure the quality of all forms of life and their perpetuity, then there are more questions which, if answered, will further create knowledge and enable the human race to access the knowledge of the universe. we therefore cannot talk about technology and not also talk about science. what and which is the science in iks? how must we identify the technologies within iks which have the potential to prevent the reinvention of wheels, while also stimulating innovations which will allow for sustainability through a careful, creative and concerted unpacking of social, ecological and economic content, with the objective of ensuring the continuity of the regeneration of resources and their container, the earth? before we even think about sputnik science, it is most imperative that we focus on the fact that the fourth industrial revolution is imminent and must be compatible with the survival of life, be couched within progressive culture, and be humane. from a calabash, to a house, to both social and natural sciences, iks as a science, if contextualised within af rican perspectives, promises all kinds of possibilities. for instance, a technology exists within iks to cleanse and heal the institutionalised terrible psychic and spiritual wounds of violence, racism, and sexism inflicted by the apartheid system on all south af ricans. indeed, sooner rather than later, we must, as we already do, verify, validate and examine iks against the backdrop of sputnik science and technology. biodiversity the 3 bs – biodiversity, biotechnology, and bioprospecting – are a content of this category. inherent in this category is the preservation, conservation and stimulation of the ecosystem, the universe, and all forms of life. the enhancement of iks in this category must be with the vision and objective of encompassing the renewal, rebirth, reclamation, and furtherance of pan af ricanism within the whole of the af rican continent, the af rican diaspora, and the global context. the challenge and dialectic facing us as human beings here is: on the one hand, we must understand and be part of the self-perpetuating 81v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies cycles of the universe, and, on the other, in line with the iks af rican story of creation, we must understand and engage the fact that it does seem, for now, that our consciousness, which produces thought, which produces expression, which must produce organised and planned action, is unique to the human species, and therefore, that it must be trained and disciplined to be in tandem with the cycles of the universe, as also it becomes constructively creative with them, because we came here to be creative beings. if the lid is lifted f rom bongaka, bojale and bogwera, we will discover millions of men and women who have survived the terror of the apartheid system, who have been revolutionaries. liberation processes except for a few islands around the continent, all of the continent has been liberated politically. taking into consideration that most of the liberation movements which were responsible for this achievement, which have their roots in the 15th century and which also emerged in the 19th century, sought to resolve issues of tribalism, racism, sexism, poverty, as simultaneously their strategic objective was to rid their countries and people of the burden of imperialism, colonialism and the apartheid systems, how must both the successes and failures of the strategies and tactics, programs, processes and projects be within the reach and access of the masses? how can this category be shared with peoples of the world to, on the one hand, contribute to the creation of a peaceful, secure and f ree world, as also on the other hand, they contribute to the historical, political, social, cultural, artistic, economic and heritage development of the continent and the world? it is not only the strategies and tactics which were used to conduct the struggles for liberation which must be studied, but also the various methods used. how, why and what did they achieve? why were they founded? there are those countries which were liberated on the basis of non-violence and negotiations, and there are also those which were liberated on the basis of armed struggles, negotiations and/or international interventions. there are a mixed bag of strategies and tactics among the af rican diaspora, which can contribute immensely to the transformation of the world as we know it now. the stories for creativity abound in these categories, which can be film, theatre, music, dance, and different writing genres. they are also subjects for history and culture and a contribution, as being part and parcel of the education system, to a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, multilateral and peaceful world. all of these categories demand that the objective to enrich the diverseness of af rican experience – through its recreation, reawakening, rebirth, reconstruction and revitalising – after it being buried for centuries, must really liberate the human experience. conclusion (we believe that) ‘…south af rica belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity...’ this statement can no longer be just theory. it is urgent that the south af rican nation emancipate the af rican voice within the diverse context of our country: historically, politically, culturally, socially and, equally importantly, economically. while this reality must be buttressed by the diverseness of our nation, through implementation, by legislation and superstructures, af ricans must lead those processes of the political, social, economic, heritage and cultural liberation. to do so, in communities supported by the non-racial, nonsexist and democratic national culture as a whole, not as charity, but through material and human resources (without paternalism), with support and by endorsement, will not only be for the nation to experience the reality and evidence of the diversity of the south af rican experience and culture, but will also be a national paradigm shift. at this passing long hour of the covid-19 pandemic, millions of ordinary south af ricans, having experienced the drastic, dangerous and cruel impact of poverty on millions of citizens, can become a potential motive force for the fundamental transformation of that circumstance and of our nation. while big must be shaped to be an incentive for personal improvement, it must also motivate people to become activists in their own right, in their communities. vuk’uzenzele, and ‘motho ke motho ka batho ba bang’ must be the clarion call linked to big. 82 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies abstract in navigating the complexities of race and inequality in south af rican society, shadowed by colonialism and apartheid, the term transformation has gained traction as the mantra for growth, retribution, education reform, and economic and societal prosperity. however, the capitalistic and neoliberal environment within which the country operates has resulted in transformation initiatives becoming an obsolete contradiction. the education arena, in particular, exemplifies this contradiction and the plethora of inequalities still prevalent in society today. race has been, and still is, at the foref ront of understanding societal inequalities and socio-economic challenges, even though it doesn’t operate in isolation, and relies on the chaotic politics of intersectionality to reveal how power operates in ways which occlude and disguise different kinds of inequalities. in this article, i focus on race as a construct and its deep-rooted significance in south af rican society, by dissecting conceptualisations of race as a signifier and symbolic, as a structure of division and marker of exclusion, and as a construct of power. presenting these conceptualisations of race sets the foundation for understanding why transformation initiatives became focal and imperative in charting a new, democratic course in the country. however, these initiatives have become blatant contradictions, as exemplified in the covid-19 moment in relation to the education sector and the return of students to schools, highlighting deep-rooted inequalities. in acknowledging the severe plight of south af rican society, handicapped by a superfluity of disparities and discrimination, an offer of hope to reimagine society is deliberated as a way forward, by analysing concepts of antiracism, decoloniality, and a turn to re-defining transformation initiatives to f ree society f rom the captivity of neoliberal mentality. race, transformation, and education as contradictions in a neoliberal south africa by isha dilraj | peer review 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review peer review one such arena which aptly illustrates this contradiction, and displays the nuances of race and inequality, is that of education. for years, one of the focal points for democratic change in post-apartheid south af rica has been to provide greater access to education for the large majority of the population who previously could not readily access either education or skilled work introduction the dynamic environment within which our world exists is rife with complexities which perpetuate inequality, injustice, corruption, power, poverty, and racism. societies, therefore, place value on principles of f reedom and human dignity, and a political agenda which propagates such becomes adopted as a believed benefit and remedy to the growing ills of the world. at this juncture, theories of neoliberalism emanate as the ‘perceived’ holy grail to combat the aforementioned tribulations, in allowing for economic progress in a globalised world. the reality, however, is far more complex and convoluted. neoliberalism, adopted in an attempt to redefine the world f rom the mid-1970s onwards, is a right-wing propaganda founded on ideas of f reedom and the individual, the promotion of privatisation, f ree markets, and trade. however, in practice, neoliberalism seeks to commodify our world and its people, and consequently serves the interest of the elite class of capitalists in further promoting the economic prosperity of a miniscule group in society, thereby threatening the transformation initiatives required to eradicate poverty, inequality, and racism in the majority of the world – south af rica being no exception. freedom is never f ree – it always comes with a hidden price and, sometimes, that burden becomes too heavy as it is carried by the poor and disadvantaged in society, who are already crippled by a legacy of marginalisation and deprivation. in the wake of covid-19, a worldwide pandemic which has changed the functioning of the world as we know it, which has halted economies and threatened job security, which has redefined borders and re-emphasised technology, which has torn apart families and loved ones, and endangered livelihoods and survival, we have been rendered defenceless and our vulnerabilities have been exposed. we are forced to reconsider what our idea of ‘normalcy’ entails, and question whether the world order, as we know it, is truly based on equity, equality, and justice. one thing is evident: a spotlight has been shone on the blatant contradictions of society and the illusion of transformation. our world and, in particular, our country, displays the paradox of society in encompassing, on the one hand, privilege in all its whitewashed layers and, on the other, the extremities of poverty, social inequality, and racial injustices which have been entrenched into society for years, thereby rendering a host of transformation initiatives unsuccessful. these inequalities have existed prior to this moment, but the neoliberal world in which south af rica operates has provided covid-19 with an opportunity to further exacerbate and deepen them. one such arena which aptly illustrates this contradiction, and displays the nuances of race and inequality, is that of education. for years, one of the focal points for democratic change in post-apartheid south af rica has been to provide greater access to education for the large majority of the population who previously could not readily access either education or skilled work (mandela, 2003). the scars of apartheid and colonial rule are so deeply entrenched in our society that even today, 26 years post-democracy, the effects still linger in terms of racial inequalities which are prevalent in the schooling and post-schooling systems. over the years, south af rica has witnessed the deepening of the socio-economic divide and the aim for greater access to education not being actualised. the reason for this could be (arguably) attributed to the neoliberal context in which the country has found itself to exist: borrowing f rom the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank, the subsequent structural adjustment policies, increased privatisation, and the commodification of education and humans as capital are but a few of the instances which hamper transformation (connell and dados, 2014: 119). furthermore, covid-19 (operating within the neoliberal context) has served as a marker to further highlight how damning the social inequalities are and how race is still very much at the foref ront of understanding societal inequalities and 2 t h e t h i n k e r socio-economic challenges. it must be noted that, in this article, race is selected as the primary focus, but it is imperative to acknowledge that race does not operate in isolation – the intersectional nature of race, class, gender, etc. is crucial in trying to make sense of the complexity of neoliberalism. the chaotic politics of intersectionality brings to the fore how power operates in ways which occlude and disguise different kinds of inequalities. imperative to unpacking the issues prevalent in the education terrain in south africa, is a robust understanding of neoliberalism, its imprint on the world and its effects in the south african context, and how this has allowed race to be enacted in particular ways by delving into the intricacies of how race is woven into the lived realities of all, via a haunted past of colonial rule and apartheid. navigating these conceptualisations of race as a foundation to exploring and coxswaining the various necessities and attempts at transformation, the article uses the current landscape of the south african schooling and education terrain, particularly in the light of covid-19, as an exemplification of how inequalities are still heavily embedded in institutional arrangements and the blatant contradictions of transformation. in acknowledging that south africa (and the majority of the world) operates in a market-economy-driven neoliberal world, writers like arundhati roy offer insightful provocations: ‘historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. this one is no different. it is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next’ (2020). consideration should, therefore, be given to alternate thoughts to charter a new course in the direction of ‘reimagining’ our future – a turn towards anti-racism, decoloniality, and re-defining transformation in an honest, practical, and unpretentious reconcilement, whereby the complexities of the neoliberal grip are understood and teased out, but at the same time, allowing new possibilities to emerge as we forge forward. briefly navigating neoliberalism neoliberalism in its ubiquitous complexities may be succinctly summarised in the words of david harvey as: ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial f reedoms and skills within an institutional f ramework characterised by strong private property rights, f ree markets and f ree trade’ (2005: 2). following the trajectory of neoliberalism, its roots can be traced back to the fall of fascist regimes in the mid-1970s and a response to the supposed failed keynesian programme. from thinkers like p.t. bauer, friedrich von hayek, and milton (to name a few), to the introduction of neoliberal ideas in chile and iraq in the 1970s, f rom the mont pelerin society, to the thatcher and reagan administrations, and the successive worldwide spread of neoliberal principles and agendas, either via independent country adoption or via structural adjustment programme requirements (instituted in countries who borrow f rom the imf and the world bank), the neoliberal agenda forged through and became the dominant world order of the 21st century (harvey, 2005; connell and dados, 2014). essentially, neoliberalism has become a hegemonic power which attempts to redefine the world order f rom public to private, f rom fair/f ree to commoditised, and is arguably the latest phase of capitalism (connell and davos, 2014). in prioritising economic value above all else and assigning human beings as capital to produce wealth in the economy (livingstone, 1997), this system has perpetuated the inequalities f rom the remnants of apartheid and colonial rule in south af rica. from the mid-1990s, the south af rican newly elected democratic government swiftly aligned its policy agenda to neoliberal agendas in focusing on ‘f ree market, privatisation, globalisation, reduction of government spending, repayment of apartheid debt, cutting corporate taxes, and cutting social programs’ (kgatle, 2020: 3). these prioritisations, unfortunately, sacrificed the reform that was needed socially in the country in order to address racism, inequalities, and poverty. clarno described neoliberalism in the south af rican context as a system that ‘denies the continued significance of racism and enables assaults on corrective policies such as welfare, affirmative action and land redistribution’ (2017: 12). instead of focusing on policies which benefited the majority in the restructuring of a just society, neoliberalism instituted a sense of individualism that resulted in the prosperity of a small group, thereby producing an elite black class, leaving behind the majority of previously disadvantaged groups in states of poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment. 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review these issues have existed in south af rican society since the inception of democracy (and prior to it); however, against the backdrop of neoliberalism, covid-19 has reiterated and exacerbated the multifarious concerns pertaining to how racism is enacted in particular spaces and how transformation initiatives are depicted as blatant contradictions, particularly in the education terrain. traversing race for centuries, the term race has been used to grapple with, and understand, the functioning of human interrelations, inter alia political, socio-economical, and sociological. we have pondered, theorised, analysed, inscribed, and transcribed. race exists as much in the physical world as it exists in each person, and is torturously interwoven into the way the world operates, how people interact, and what shapes dialogues, policies, and practices. in the south af rican landscape, race plays out a particular narrative that is entrenched in the aftermath of oppression and the symbolic (and physical) weaponisation of its use f rom apartheid and colonial rule. this has been further influenced by the neoliberal society in which we operate, which has not allowed the emotional (historical) dimensions of race to be dealt with. race as a construct is a multi-dimensional term heavily loaded with the burden of history, with the pain of it being weaponised, and with an attribution of various symbolic representations. it has become a variable of analysis, and holds in its construction a hope for rectification, retribution, and transformation. understanding the multifarious epistemic nature, history, and connotations of the term ‘race’ is both complex and comprehensive, and intertwined into the histories of the world (in this instance, south af rica). various understandings and conceptualisations of race have emerged over the years, and as with other social constructs (i.e. gender, sexuality, and class), race opens a narrative regarding discourses of power, inclusion, exclusion, discrimination, oppression, privilege, and transformation – all imperative in unpacking the complexities surrounding the conceptualisation of race. the following three sections – (i) race as both a signifier and symbolic, (ii) race as a structure of division and marker of exclusion, and (iii) race as a construct of power – offer a f ramework for delving into the conceptualisation of race as a construct. race as both a signifier and symbolic over the years, in south af rican society, the social reality of race has become irremovable f rom our identities. it has become, in the words of crain soudien, ‘a master signifier’, as a means of explaining everyday life, as well as providing an understanding of deep philosophical and enigmatic occurrences (2012: 6). race, as a signifier (the physical form a word, term, or concept takes on), allows for us to gain a deeper perspective of the complexities in navigating our identities. apartheid, shadowed by colonial rule, instilled in both society and the self the belief that race is a defining human characteristic that holds the utmost importance in the organisation of society. another intriguing idea is one of race as the preservation of privilege. since the inception of race as a signifier, a means to define difference, it has exhibited symbolic properties: the arbitrary distinction of individuals based on the colour of their skin, then precipitously designated ideas of superiority and inferiority as a means to maintain privilege, to separate, and to dominate. whiteness became associated with superiority, privilege, and status, while blackness – or anything non-white – became associated with inferiority, mediocrity, and unworthiness. these ideas, instilled into the fabric of human make-up and entrenched via institutionalised practices, ensured that race became an inextricable part of the mosaic of every south af rican’s identity, and is the reason we have become so accustomed to reading our world and understanding our reality through the lens of race. we have normalised associating race with our definable identity – as a descriptor in social interactions, on various application forms and, most importantly and curiously, as an intrinsic identity for ourselves. why have we become so complacent in accepting the realities played out by the designation of race? why is it that we still view race as an imperative signifier in social relations and settings, in understanding our individual and national identities, and in political and organisational deliberations and functioning? an attempt at demystifying this lies in the idea of race as symbolic. the challenge in defining race as symbolic is that the symbolism it holds for various groups of people is different across the board, based on each individual’s history, experience with race, thought-process, and 4 t h e t h i n k e r peer review undermine people of colour by breaking their spirits and controlling their lives. these deep-rooted wounds left unimaginable scars on the south af rican people and the make-up of society, so much so that post-1994 the stain filtered through, marring the rainbow nation that the newly-elected democratic government tried so desperately to create, but were unable to, in the wake of the neoliberal world in which it operated. the entire underpinning of apartheid rested on the ideas of inclusion and exclusion: white equalled good and valued, which meant inclusion, and non-white equalled subpar and inferior, which demarcated exclusion. therefore, in order to conf ront the years of social exclusion based on race, it necessitated that the newly-elected democratic government sought to acknowledge, rectify, and instil representation and justice by instituting policies of ‘inclusion’ for all previously disadvantaged groups. (note, the article does not aim to delve into the various government strategies that attempted rectification and transformation, which naturally encompassed policies rooted in inclusion. it merely notes these attempts as an exemplification to the construct of race as a structure of division and marker of exclusion.) the stark reality, however, is that inclusion begets exclusion and vice-versa. in including a particular group of people, another group is automatically excluded. this is not to demerit the necessity of ‘inclusion’ and the substantive reasoning behind its requirement; however, theorising ideas of inclusion can become controversial in the ways it positions extremities embedded in the historical contexts of south af rica, and in how it approaches these in efforts to bring about change. racial segregation, exclusionary laws, physical separation, deliberate denigration, and violent oppression are particularly difficult historical constructs to ‘redress’ in a neoliberal, lived reality. written f rom my positionality as an ‘indian, south af rican woman’ (the irony of this identification does not surpass me, but rather aptly exemplifies the importance of race as a signifier), race as symbolic holds particular significance in how my identity has been shaped and presented. for me, and for many people of colour in south af rica, conceptualising race as symbolic is significant in terms of a vast array of circumstances. race is symbolic as it represents one’s historic diaspora – where one comes f rom, what one has been through – and holds substance for where one still needs to go. it clutches importance as a mark of what one has endured, what one has grown through and overcome, and represents what one has now achieved (even if much more remains to be charted). it is a reminder that one’s history (and that of one’s family) is so rooted in racial identity and a fight for democracy. it is even more so a symbol of injustice, oppression, and pain; of difficulties and unwarranted endurance; and of all that was superficial and indecorous. at the same time, it is a symbol of a new dawn, one’s untiring spirit in the fight for change and transformation, and a pride for having walked decades indefatigably. race as a signifier/symbolic helps one understand why race is ever-present in oneself, one’s identity, and one’s interactions. it is a reminder of why one needs to continue to use race as a signifier to quantify progress, to rectify, and to transform. race as a structure of division and marker of exclusion in understanding the symbolic nature of race and its role as a signifier, a deviation down a historical lane is necessary to understand how race was weaponised and why race held, and holds, the significance it does in south af ricans’ identities. colonial rule and the apartheid regime left south af rica a canvas of tainted paintwork, drenched in morose colours of division and exclusion. the institutionalising of laws and behaviours, which divided the nation by excluding people of colour (designated as black, indian, and coloured), meant that race was used as a structure of division and a marker of exclusion. in dividing people on the basis of race in separating where they lived, which facilities they could use, which schools they attended, what level of education they could be accepted into, what jobs and income they could be restricted to, and many other oppressive and dehumanising practices, the apartheid government sought to devalue and 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review in understanding the symbolic nature of race and its role as a signifier, a deviation down a historical lane is necessary to understand how race was weaponised and why race held, and holds, the significance it does in south af ricans’ identities. global environment where external pressures and internal hegemonic forces constantly ‘push back’ at transformational efforts. this is most evident in the ways ‘race as a construct’ has been addressed ‘in relation to questions of domination and subjugation, inclusion and exclusion, and the creating of new social hierarchies’ (soudien and sayed, 2004: 102). therefore, the debate cannot simply be about who to include, how many to include, where to include, or what mechanisms are required to achieve this (soudien and sayed, 2004: 106). rather, the debate needs to be considered within larger social justice concerns in terms of why particular groups need to be included and how to facilitate their inclusion, and what the moral imperatives and implications are for the exclusion or deliberate disadvantaging of others. it can be argued that, as long as these considerations are built on social justice goals and do not perpetuate inequalities and lead to new forms of racialisation, inclusion approaches and policies can justifiably choose or privilege certain groups (if in the best interests of society) (soudien and sayed, 2004). on the other hand, inclusion – written in political ways to privilege certain groups – may generate new logics for exclusion that could have dire consequences for future processes, thus reinstating that race as a construct will almost always encompass ideas of it being a structure of division and a marker of exclusion. race as a construct of power this notion sparks another final thought pertaining to the construct of race in identifying the ideological aspect of how race plays out a significant role in matters of power – attaining, maintaining, and exercising. power is a curious creature, particularly in terms of how it rears its head in individual interactions and in the realm of politics. (note: seeking to understand the mechanisms of operation is beyond the scope of the paper, which for now, aims to simply acknowledge a broader and complex relationship between power and race.) power, at one level, imperceptibly drives policy, practice, and decision-making, particularly in a neoliberal context. governments yield power f rom the symbolism embedded in race conceptualisations and by the inclusion/exclusion of certain groups of people, which is driven by political agendas. french intellectual michel foucault offered interesting insights into how power operates and the governmentality behind certain decision-making – his terms ‘biopower’ and ‘biopolitics’ are significant in understanding how the state denotes a particular ‘form of governmental power which addresses the administration, control and regulation of human beings as members of populations: their health, sanitation, birth-rate, longevity, race’ (christie, 2006: 375). for foucault, power is to be explored in every micro manifestation, in the most imperceptible places – ‘his concern is to explore ‘strategies of power’: networks, mechanism and techniques as well as the accompanying rationalities which normalise acts of power so that there is a sense that a particular decision ‘could not but be taken in the way it was’’ (christie, 2006: 375). following this understanding of power and decisionmaking, it can be understood how race distinction and division was instituted via policy and practice. it is imperative, however, to note that the ‘regimes of truth’ that governments relied on were not rational laws or foundational truths, but were rather results of particular strategies in exercising power that were either by chance or illusionary in driving a particular political agenda which the government rationalised as necessary. in this manner, race was a construct of the power wielded by the apartheid government. similarly, in an effort to collapse this bias and injustice, the democratic government relied on transformation policies which also privileged race, but, as a strategy to empower rather than disempower, and to institute social justice as a means to rectify past injustices. race, therefore, embodied complex strategies to exercise power f rom a political/governmental perspective. on another level, power is existent in the intricate relations between individuals – their actions, their subjectivities, their prejudices, and their treatment of others. in this sense, race holds a power identity because it is ‘fundamentally a power construct of blended difference that lives socially. race creates new forms of power: the power to categorise and judge, elevate and downgrade, include and exclude’ (kendi, 2019). it is evident in the relationships that each individual shares with others in terms of how they relate and interact, but is more subtly displayed in the self via personal beliefs and understandings of the world, society, and people. it is evident in our everyday lives and decisions: where to live, what transportation to take, which route to drive, what area or neighbourhood to walk in, which schools to 6 t h e t h i n k e r peer review been flawed by the guidance of neoliberal policies and the fields of power, politics, and economics, which is why these initiatives have not been truly achievable. damning socio-economic conditions and poor standards of living for a large population of previously disadvantaged communities in south af rica have been ongoing concerns of the postapartheid era. the years 2020 and 2021 have been blatant examples of these struggles, as covid-19 has unearthed the realities that have always existed in the education terrain: an unequal education system which has privileged the privileged (and still does). this is due to education operating in a neoliberal environment in which humans are viewed as ‘capital’ for a means to an end in economic growth and development, i.e. those who gain education and pass through the system effortlessly will benefit the economy by getting higher-paying jobs, which leads to the system prioritising those who have a higher probability of success. livingstone explains this as human capital theory which ‘equates workers’ knowledge levels with their level of formal schooling, to rely on quantitative indices of amount of schooling in estimating individual economic returns to learning and to infer that more schooling would lead to higher productivity and macroeconomic growth’ (1997: 9). following this thought process, explicit and blatant contradictions are evident in the schooling sector, which has been spotlighted in terms of the governmentality behind send one’s children to, and where to shop, eat, or travel. it is in the subconscious ideas that we hold, that guide our decision making, and that denote particular subjectivities. power, therefore, lives both in the internal and external self, and is manifested in outward action by people, society, and organisations, based on each individual’s context, history, upbringing, and conditioning. south af rica’s complicated history has predetermined that its people, therefore, will always have race as a part of their construct. what is unfailingly disconcerting, however, is that the power that was wielded years ago by the apartheid government still has lasting effects on south af rican individuals, society, and organisations. this can be particularly attributed to the fact that neoliberal institutional arrangements have positioned the marginalised in a particular way and have entrenched divisions so deeply that they have yet to be unravelled. coxswaining transformation – south af rican education in crisis transformation initiatives were imperative to chartering a new path of democracy in an effort to address the years of suppression, racial division, and exclusion. the continuous struggle, however, is how to transform, what to transform, and how to ensure that transformation is successful in changing the realities of the previously disadvantaged. the term transformation has gained traction over the years as a widely-used expression to institute change, but what exactly is meant by transformation? for the purposes of this article, in the south af rican post-1994 context, transformation is closely aligned to concepts like equity, redress, and social justice, where the transforming of the education system is seen to be closely tied to societal improvement and fundamental social change. more often than not, change is understood as political, social, and economic, and is about reversing the effects of the past. akoojee and nkomo note that ‘the challenge for the success of education strategies, however, lies in the need to balance issues of institutional autonomy and change with the national imperatives of efficiency, equity and redress’ (2007: 366). however, transformation is complex and faces the struggle of the embeddedness of race in south af rican societal makeup. furthermore, transformation initiatives have 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review what is unfailingly disconcerting, however, is that the power that was wielded years ago by the apartheid government still has lasting effects on south af rican individuals, society, and organisations. this can be particularly attributed to the fact that neoliberal institutional arrangements have positioned the marginalised in a particular way and have entrenched divisions so deeply that they have yet to be unravelled. the opening of schools and completing the academic year during the covid-19 pandemic. the covid-19 moment in a neoliberal world in an interview with times live, the south af rican democratic teachers’ union (sadtu) stated that ‘corpses can neither be taught, nor teach’ (govender, 2020). this simple yet heavily loaded statement struck a chord and erupted an explosion of emotion in many citizens – an anger at the ill-thought-through plans to let our students and teachers be our ‘soldiers’, as minister of basic education, angie motshekga, called it. however, what guides the decision-making behind the opening of schools to save the academic year at all costs? is it truly a fight for aiding our disadvantaged students and providing them with an education? is it truly social justice concerns? i argue, not! the reality is that the ‘hidden’ neoliberal hand is always at play. when lockdown was announced in march 2020, all ‘privileged’ schools shifted to teaching online almost immediately. their students sat in the comfort of their technologically-f riendly homes and quickly adapted to zoom classes, google drive, and virtual learning in a stable home life that supported their new schooling environment. academically, they were on par with the curriculum, if not ahead, and were able to keep up with learning, bar a few adjustments here and there. contrast that with the rural child, or the child who lives in an informal settlement whose reality could not be further f rom the above described. these children live in households that survive on a minimum wage or less, their parent/s are essential workers who risk their lives just to provide food for the day, or their parents are now unemployed and overcome with the struggle of not knowing how to provide a meal at all. these children become the unsuspecting victims of a further unjust, unequal divide. those who live in a small space inhabited by many, and have no room to sit and learn, or further still, those who have no laptop, data, or phone are, ironically, left further behind in so-called ‘tech-schooling’ – a gap the department of basic education vehemently, yet hypocritically, asserts they are bridging. if anything, the gap has widened, and still is widening, at an alarming rate. forget technology though, for the only thing that matters right now is survival. these children and their families face a plethora of struggles of great magnitude: physically, emotionally, materially, and financially. many have lost their jobs, have lost their loved ones, and are hungry and scared. many do not have the privilege of social distancing, sanitising, and wearing a mask. these children have lost far more than just the academic year, and this is precisely what the government fails to acknowledge. in the quest for health, safety, and survival, the government has, not for the first time, prioritised differently – placing the completion of the academic year above lives. people have been reduced to mere statistics and insignificant extras in the theatre of life – like fists in a container of water. remove the fist, and one cannot tell the difference. in proudly announcing the resumption of schools and the completion of the academic year in the midst of a pandemic, the government relied on the logic of providing meals to hungry children, providing a safe haven to shelter students f rom abusive homes, and the provision of an equal opportunity for these children to receive an education so that they would not fall behind and drop out of school. at face value, this sounds noble, democratic, and fair, but if we truly unpack this, it reeks with the aroma of a neoliberal political agenda packed with misinformed solutions. firstly, what is the true purpose of schooling? the pandemic has shown that schools have become the panacea for all ills. schools have become daycares with pastoral functions that operate as points of nutrition acquirement – a weak response to solving other non-learning issues. this hides the government’s inability to truly address the real issues of the socio-economic conditions faced by many disadvantaged communities. instead of ensuring that no citizen goes hungry with focused efforts in job creation and broader community feeding projects, they rely on schools to provide a meal a day to only attending students. secondly, a critical mistake made by a neoliberal and capitalist-driven government is attributing education to the field of power, politics, and economics in using the school as a day-care for children, so that parents can resume work to reopen the economy. whilst reopening the economy is essential to maintaining the livelihoods of, particularly, the disadvantaged, it is misinformed to not outrightly acknowledge that schools were being called on to play a different role 8 t h e t h i n k e r peer review colour – who hails f rom a range of societal, economic, and financial issues – has been ‘given up on’. we no longer consider these children to be worth fighting for. they have been left so far behind in the race that we can barely see them on the horizon. we focus on achievements and standards, goals and accomplishments. we see humans as capital and commodities to enter the workforce to add to our gdp. we have lost sight of our humanity. each year, as we progress to the next level, we nonchalantly acknowledge the need for further transformation initiatives to rescue the marginalised without a deliberate attempt to truly impact the reality, and this unfortunately is the unadorned contradiction of democracy in our country. our education system privileges the privileged, and perpetuates socioeconomic divides in our society, wherein our poor sink further into the cesspool of poverty and disadvantage. we are not addressing the true problems faced by poor socio-economic conditions and are, instead, bandaging the wounds with neoliberal policies and false hope by providing broken crutches to a very dysfunctional and ailing society. government has not yet achieved the disentanglement of past inequalities and so we limp through institutional arrangements which have positioned the marginalised in a particular manner – their plight unaided by the failure to unravel these injustices that continue to hamper healing. re-imagining: a turn to anti-racism, decoloniality, and re-defining transformation so, where then does this leave us? do we sink silently in the cesspool of mourning and complexities within which we find ourselves entangled, or do we grab onto ideas of hope, reimagining, and deliberate action to pull us out of the drowning? do we succumb to a directionless defeat or do we use the compass of opportunity to guide us to a new reality, a new world order? balfour, explaining james baldwin’s ideas of racial innocence, defined it as: ‘a willful ignorance, a resistance to facing the horrors of the american past and present and the implications for the future’ (2001: 27). although written for american society, this quote is significant for south af rican society, as well, in reiterating how complacent we have become as a society in truly understanding other than to provide education. this is essential in determining whether the academic year can and should be saved. once again, this reiterates the socioeconomic divide, as the privileged still continue safely – either online or physically in properly resourced schools with small class numbers – whilst children f rom disadvantaged communities, who have not been learning online, are now faced with a storm of anxieties. these children are pressured into cramlearning a curriculum on staggered days in order to write exams and pass the year, and are forced to return to schools which lack proper inf rastructure, have poor sanitation facilities, and possibly no running water – all whilst facing untold struggles at home. thirdly, try as much as we may, the playing field is not level. teaching and learning in this crisis (and in general) mean different things to different communities based on their privilege. the reality is that saving the academic year is not a social justice decision, but rather a decision driven by neoliberal mindsets and capitalistic gain which benefits the economy and the privileged. the decision has been wrapped in the guise of transformative thinking and concern for equal opportunity and education, but at the heart of it lies a contradiction which essentially heavily disadvantages the poor child of colour. covid-19 has explicitly shown that the schooling system is a site of power where race and class continuously play out as variables of inclusion/ exclusion. the ghastly truth that we fearfully hide away f rom is that the poor, disadvantaged child of 9v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review our education system privileges the privileged, and perpetuates socio-economic divides in our society, wherein our poor sink further into the cesspool of poverty and disadvantage. we are not addressing the true problems faced by poor socio-economic conditions and are, instead, bandaging the wounds with neoliberal policies the effects that institutionalised racism has had on our country, the society we live in, and on each individual. transformation is a long road and navigating change is complex and challenging. in acknowledging that, to date, the government has not been able to truly institute the required change, we need not succumb to pessimism, but rather use the current situation as an opportunity to pave forth a new direction – a turn to anti-racism, decoloniality, and re-defining transformation. if we are to truly heal and forge a new path, we need to grapple with the enormity of race disparity and inequality prevalent in our society. we need to acknowledge the pain and hurt experienced by the recipients of the system and its grave effects, which are still embedded today. we need to engage, not only from a symbolic position, but to create change physically in changing the lived realities of the marginalised. we need to all actively be anti-racist. what does it mean to be truly anti-racist though? anti-racism is a term which has gained traction in recent months, particularly in the wake of the #blacklivesmatter movement. however, the term has been used and defined widely prior to this. underpinning the comprehensibility of anti-racism, is the acknowledgement of the premise that to be anti-racist, one must be against racism and fully conscious of privilege – one must see race, acknowledge, and identify how racism is prevalent in structures, institutionalisation, beliefs, and behaviours, and then actively resist all forms of racism in attempting to create a change in these practices, in turn creating a transformation of being in the world (kendi, 2019). anti-racism is about examining every aspect of: (a) interpersonal interactions that result in power imbalances between people of different races, and which disadvantage the black (refers to all nonwhite people) person; (b) the acknowledgement of white privilege which perpetuates difference and racism, and which is often unrecognisable, but impacts how ‘whiteness’ has promoted and advantaged one’s progress, standing, and access in all facets of life. it encompasses an awareness of how racism has affected people of colour and how it still does; how racism has been systematically engrained in society via previous institutionalised policies, via behaviours and attitudes, via unspoken and subtle inherent beliefs and actions; how it has hampered progress and access to education, a better standard of living, employment, and a respectable socio-economic standing for the black person, not excluding the personal, mental, and emotional turmoil experienced. therefore, particularly in our south african context, being anti-racist is a necessary, non-negotiable prerequisite in charting a new path and reimagining our society – it is the first step to becoming authentically aware of the true transformation required to create a society based on true principles of equity, equality, and justice. a second aspect necessary to reimagining our society is that of decoloniality. according to maldonado-torres: colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. thus, coloniality survives colonialism. it is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the selfimage of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. in a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and every day (2007: 243). south af rica’s history of apartheid, shadowed by colonialism and its current operation in a neoliberal world, has complexified racism and the inequalities prevalent in our society, and so, if we are to truly unravel the deep-rooted scars embedded, we must use this narrative and moment as an opportunity to address coloniality. we need to assess how, as a society in all its functions, we still embody ideas of coloniality. we need to have deliberate conversations to shift power and define an ‘af rican’ identity without a ‘north’ influence – via education structure, curriculum, knowledge, practices, the order of society, economic policies and shifts in thought, awareness, and understanding. the process is, and will be, arduous and multifaceted, and will be a perpetual undertaking; however, it is one that south af rica desperately needs to incessantly pursue in order to institute meaningful change. the moment is now – timing, circumstances, practicalities, acknowledgement of our country’s socio-economic context and rational thought are what is needed to guide us on the plan moving forward. 10 t h e t h i n k e r peer review will we perish further into a drain of murky contradictions carved with the scars of the past and racial indifference? will we forge a new future and make our mark as the generation who realised and actualised anti-racism, decoloniality, and transformation in creating a new world order, or will we simply remain pawns on a chessboard moved aimlessly (yet covertly calculatedly) around by a neoliberal political agenda, and according to a variety of contradictions? references akoojee, s. and nkomo, m. (2007). ‘access and quality in south african higher education: the twin challenges of transformation’. south african journal of higher education. 21(3): 385–399 balfour, l. (2001). the evidence of things not said: james baldwin and the promise of american democracy. ithaca, new york: cornell university press christie, p. (2006). ‘changing regimes: governmentality and education policy in post-apartheid south africa’. international journal of educational development. 26(2006): 373–381 clarno, a. (2017). neoliberal apartheid: palestine/israel and south africa after 1994. chicago: university of chicago press connell, r. and dados, n. (2014). ‘where in the world does neoliberalism come from? the market agenda in southern perspective.’ theory and society. 43(2): 117–138 govender, p. (2020). ‘sadtu calls for strict health protocols before pupils, teachers return to school.’ times live. [online] available at: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-04-24-sadtu-callsfor-strict-health-protocols-before-pupils-teachers-return-to-school/ harvey, d. (2005). a brief history of neoliberalism. oxford: oxford university press kendi, i.x. (2019). how to be an antiracist. new york: one world kgatle, m.s. (2020). ‘the relationship between the economic strand of contemporary pentecostalism and neo-liberalism in post-1994 south africa’. religions. 11(156): 1–10 livingstone, d.w. (1997). ‘the limits of human capital theory: expanding knowledge, informal learning and underemployment’. policy options. 18(6): 9–13 maldonado-torres, n. (2007). ‘on the coloniality of being’. cultural studies. 21(2): 240–270. mandela, r.n. (2003). address by nelson mandela at launch of mindset network: lighting your way to a better future. nelson rolihlahla mandela. [online] available at: http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_ speeches/2003/030716_mindset.htm roy, a. (2020). ‘the pandemic is a portal’. financial times. [online] available at: https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fefcd274e920ca samoff, j. (1996). ‘which priorities and strategies for education?’ international journal of education development. 16(3): 249–271 soudien, c. and sayed, y. (2004). ‘a new racial state? exclusion and inclusion in education policy and practice in south africa.’ perspectives in education. 22(4): 101–115 soudien, c. (2012). realising the dream: unlearning the logic of race in the south african school. cape town: hsrc press williams, d.r. (1997). ‘race and health: basic questions, emerging directions’. annals of epidemiology. july, 7(5): 322–333 therefore, this combination of decoloniality and antiracist practices are the suggested tools required to aid us in re-defining tangible transformation in our country. in acknowledging the many blatant contradictions evident in the governance of the country, particularly in the education terrain, we need to take responsibility and make a commitment to rectifying failed transformation initiatives, even if this means abandoning the neoliberal principles that have been surreptitiously crafted into the order of society. in addressing the above highlighted education crisis, we need to acknowledge that the opening of schools will not be just. we need to acknowledge that the education terrain is rife with injustice and contradictions and that there are countless issues of inequality in the staggered opening of schools and saving the academic year amidst covid-19. however, we must then take this as the opportunity to open not just a conversation, but an action plan towards the re-imagining of a new world based on a platform of social justice and genuine transformation. we must make a commitment to fight for the marginalised child of colour who is left far behind on the horizon, and pledge that we will rescue their future so that they, and future generations, can all walk side by side. we need to question and re-define the role of education, of schools, and of tertiary institutions. we need to re-define our structures and curriculum by analysing what was, what exists, what the pitfalls are, and what needs to transform for true equity, equality, and justice to prevail. we need to veer away f rom viewing individuals as capital and instead commit to acknowledging each human as a being who is essential and important to society and our country as a whole. we need to value every life irrespective of race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, and creed. we need to reimagine our rainbow nation to achieve the dream that tata madiba so fervently believed we could realise. we need to create a movement that will ignite and accelerate this paradigm shift, and we need to understand that movement is a verb. finally, returning to arundhati roy’s quote in her article ‘the pandemic is a portal’: ‘historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. this one is no different. it is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next’ (2020). this quote so aptly captures the mantra for reimagining the future and hints at the necessity for change, an opportunity for betterment. will we, however, take it, or 11v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review t h e t h i n k e r south af rica’s transition f rom apartheid to democracy was both enabled and burdened by the global political conditions of the late 1980s. the shifting balance of forces at the time meant that the global appetite for authoritarianism was passing as the horizon of possibility suggested by socialism was fading. in other words, democratisation efforts were encouraged by the international community, while radical transformative economic and social projects were not. tied to this global ‘pressure f rom above’ for political transformation was country-wide mobilisation of the masses of people for change. this local organisation put pressure on, but was unable to dismantle the power of the apartheid military and the white-owned economy. coupled with that social reality was an ideational perspective articulated by the leading liberation movement, the af rican national congress (anc), that ‘south af rica belonged to all who live in it, black and white’. in other words, the national imaginary accommodated both oppressor and oppressed, albeit in a new relationship of political equality. the navigation of this moment and the compromises that ensued significantly limited the depth of democratisation that would unfold in the polity. whilst momentous, the project of democracybuilding without a twin project of decolonisation of the social, economic and cultural life of the polity has reinforced the power of the already empowered johannesburg, ontario: street naming strategies and the decolonised city to come by melissa levin | peer review 36 new cities new economies however, while the reversal of historical injustices discursively informs all statist policy, the reckoning with history as a site of struggle and transformation does not. the end of authoritarian and colonial regimes has generally been accompanied by the spectacle of the demolition of their symbols, or, at least, the removal of their symbols to less prominent spaces. this has not happened in south africa. and naturalised the impoverishment of the formerly, formally oppressed. this neo-apartheid reality (cf. ratshitanga, 2019) is evident politically in the reproduction of the bifurcated state (cf. mamdani, 1996), economically in the persistence of massive unand under-employment of af rican people in particular, and culturally in the symbolic presence of colonial statuary and monuments throughout the country. over two and a half decades after its official demise, apartheid’s presence remains ubiquitous in south af rica.  it is visible in the gulf between rich and poor, in the spatial geography that still segregates the country, in the statues of boer generals that still stand tall and proud across the land.  central to the transformative agenda of the new state is the undoing of this legacy and the elimination of persistent social divisions.  however, while the reversal of historical injustices discursively informs all statist policy, the reckoning with history as a site of struggle and transformation does not. the end of authoritarian and colonial regimes has generally been accompanied by the spectacle of the demolition of their symbols, or, at least, the removal of their symbols to less prominent spaces.  this has not happened in south af rica.  the statue of the boer general louis botha proudly stands before the entrance to the parliament in cape town.  queen victoria’s statue guards the back of the relatively democratised legislature.  to reinforce the normalcy of the memorial presence of colonial leaders are the city monikers and streets whose names commemorate colonial leadership, thus obscuring their atrocities.  modernist theories of the nation suggest that the manner in which the past is constructed is central to building national solidarities and that nationalists build nations through constructing usable pasts.  the anc has chosen a  bureaucratised  route to accommodating histories in an effort at building national solidarities and legitimising statehood.  nowhere is this ambiguous, administrative, and often denationalised practice of nation-building more evident than in the street and place re/naming processes in south af rican cities. but the reproduction of coloniality through public memorialisation on city streets is not a south af rican issue alone. the title of this essay deliberately yokes together two distant places: johannesburg and ontario, in an attempt to make the point that the very character of coloniality is its global reach, and that nationalising memory and counter-memory serves to reinforce institutional practices (like the nationstate itself) that derive f rom european expansion. as illustration, each day i spend countless hours commuting to my place of work at the university of toronto (or tkoronto, the mohawk name for the city) along the bathurst core to the st. george campus. bathurst street is named for henry bathurst, the 3rd earl bathurst who ran britain’s colonial office, sent settlers to canada after the war of 1812 and appointed lord somerset as administrator of the cape colony. as markers of his colonial reach and success, numerous towns and streets are named for him, such as bathurst county in new south wales, australia; bathurst island in nunavut, canada; and bathurst, a small town in the eastern cape in south af rica. bathurst was also once the capital city of gambia. that city was renamed banjul after the end of formal colonialism. st. george signifies a multitude of histories. he was obviously not a coloniser himself, but his memory was deployed in the service of imperialism, his cross the symbol of english domination as represented in the flag, and as a call to conquest when portuguese soldiers captured af ricans as chattel in the trans-atlantic slave trade: ‘the age of discovery required a man of arms, and george fit the bill. the conquering knight personified civilization pitted against beastly antagonists and monstrous races. the dragon slayer mounted on his steed antedated the charge: “exterminate all the brutes.” it would be hard to imagine a better representative of the portuguese errand or a saint more suitable to the task’ (hartman, 2007: 65). 37v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies as markers of lived space, streets are symbolic and also utilitarian and functional and, as such, are expressions of politics. colonial city streets are designed to control and assert formal dominance over the colonised. apartheid spatial geographies maintained segregation in both form and practice. the history of both of these characters is not evident immediately; their roles in the violence of imperialising projects is not apparent. in masking that historical violence, we tend to mask the on-going ‘slow violence’ of systems of coloniality that are reproduced in the present. to get rid of bathurst everywhere, to decolonise the city, in symbolism and practice, demands that the city to come must be imagined transnationally. an analysis of the symbolic import of street and place names as well as processes of renaming in cities alerts us to the multiple articulations of power in the settler colony/neo-colony. it contemplates the ways in which street and place naming practices normalise a settler presence and colonial present; and, in particular, alerts us to the possibilities and challenges that inhere in efforts to transform the city.     street re/naming too presents a productive avenue for reading the relationship between cities and the colonial present. street names, according to maoz azaryahu (1997: 311) have been understudied by social scientists ‘in their studies of the structures of authority and the legitimation of power’ since they are ‘ostensibly visible, quintessentially mundane, and seemingly obvious’. duncan light (2004: 154) suggests that streets have garnered less attention than public place renaming more broadly in political life and the academy since they are seen at first glance as a ‘trivial topic of investigation’. however, light argues that street names can be ‘significant expressions of national identity with a powerful symbolic importance’ (2004: 154). nowhere is this more apparent than in south af rica where, according to subesh pillay, member of the mayoral committee of the tshwane municipality, no other issue of state transformation has created as much oppositional concern and antagonistic mobilisation of both people and resources (pillay, personal communication, 2009/2010). i argue that the everydayness of the street, or azaryahu’s ‘mundaneness’ of streets and their names after the event of naming, reinforces and reproduces a sense of cultural belonging and ownership. to change the landscape, through renaming practices and in spatial terms, is a form of unsettling, in the sense of both a feeling of unease and instability, and in the practice of removing settlers (not the people, but the practices of coloniality). streets – as signs of mobility, modernity, and f reedom – are central objects in the imagining of a ‘new’ south af rica. the apartheid state tasked itself with significantly curtailing the mobility of black people. the ‘tribalisation’ of af ricans found expression in the ‘bantustan’ system that apportioned homelands to different tribal authorities, in an attempt to deny the possibility of unified af rican nationalism as against primordial segregation. the strategy was classically ‘divide and rule’ and, in mamdani’s terms, south af rican apartheid did what colonialism achieved across the continent, which was to erect a ‘bifurcated state’ – a state that was racialised at the centre and tribalized at the periphery. a significant part of the ‘traditionalising’ apparatus of the modern apartheid state was to create urban zones of impermanence for af ricans who laboured in white south af rica. these transient zones, the urban townships of south af rica, racialised the landscape into segregated living spaces. movement, for af rican people, was circumscribed by the advance of settler colonialism, ultimately articulated as apartheid. as markers of lived space, streets are symbolic and also utilitarian and functional and, as such, are expressions of politics. colonial city streets are designed to control and assert formal dominance over the colonised. apartheid spatial geographies maintained segregation in both form and practice. the design of black townships gave expression to the logic of apartheid supremacy. nowhere was this more evident than in the streets of the township. the usual township had one major arterial route into and out of the township. rendering residents immobile was imminently available as a mode of control. the web of streets through the townships attest to the impermanence of their residents, at least in apartheid 38 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies i therefore argue that the idea that history will be forgotten or erased if statues of racists, misogynists and colonisers are toppled, or their names on streets, cities and towns are changed, is misplaced. it is less that the nationbuilders will be forgotten than the content of the city will become dominated by another vocabulary, that another common-sense will prevail. theory if not in everyday practice. the venous streets that circulate through townships were mostly unnamed, a symbolic injunction towards the transitory position of black people in white south af rica. in apartheid’s aftermath, unnamed township streets are not just an issue for symbolic redress, but also a bureaucratic problem for the state. the dispatchment of ambulances or other multiple services of state is hindered in the absence of order, of intransience, of maps. authoritarian control requires the capacity to close down avenues for mobility. democratic control demands state access to the individuated mass. the inverse of the restraints on movement for the indigenous populations of colonised countries is the role of streets as technologies of conquest, enabling the colonising forces to expand through indigenous land. this role is explicitly referred to in the context of canadian colonisation, where streets called ‘colonization road’ can be found throughout the provinces of ontario and manitoba. these were the roads that encouraged and enabled european settlement, transported economic goods, and forced indigenous people off their land. in naming the landscape and streetscapes of south af rica, the ‘af rikanerising bureaucrats’ (alexander, 1989) also sought to limit the ideational mobility of its subjects. in other words, authoritarian control demands a physical and mental component. control of the ideational domain is about the production of ‘common-sense’, the construction of the takenfor-granted aspects of daily life (like, in apartheid south af rica, the belief in the normative value of whiteness and the alterity of blackness). part of the normalising practices of white dominance included the naming of the environment. the white country in general, and the af rikaner country in particular, were vivified in the names and languages of its streets and places. it is in this regard that the nationalism of the liberation movement needs to be read differently to the democratising impulses of the global third wave. national liberation was historically posited as a drive towards decolonisation and the idea of democracy was one amongst many means towards achieving decolonisation. but the global democratic moment outstripped the exigencies of decolonisation and the response to statist attempts to name and rename the landscape has been dominated by the former imperative. for amilcar cabral, national liberation is ‘an act of culture’, a political act that fundamentally alters the terrain of the taken-for-granted. part of altering the terrain is the political act of naming. extending on this perspective, even the forgotten named on street signs become part of the language of a place. they become part of the sound and geography of public space, the vocabulary and culture of nationhood, and what is regarded as a community of people. this quiet and implicit memorialisation is what some scholars refer to as ‘habit memory’ and what pierre bourdieu (1977: 82–83) refers to as ‘habitus’, ‘a system of lasting, transposable dispositions’ in consistent albeit muted dialogue which ‘functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions.’ in this sense, street names as part of the vocabulary of a city become devices for what eviatar zerubavel (1997: 87–89; 2003: 317) calls ‘mnemonic socialization’ – the process through which citizens are culturally attuned to the narrative of a place prior to, and outside of, a formal process of education. in a sense, it is the everyday reinforcement of groupness. i therefore argue that the idea that history will be forgotten or erased if statues of racists, misogynists and colonisers are toppled, or their names on streets, cities and towns are changed, is misplaced. it is less that the nation-builders will be forgotten than the content of the city will become dominated by another vocabulary, that another common-sense will prevail. the extent to which that common sense internalises the changed markers of the city as more than just a name on a street is a question of democratic politics (which is briefly discussed below). this unremembered historical figure is the peculiar legacy of street and place names. on one level, they are memorial plaques that pepper a cityscape. on 39v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the renaming of streets thus becomes historically momentous on two occasions: at the moment that the street is renamed and political conflict or consensus prevail, and as markers of the cultural content of a city that infuse everyday life with a sense of belonging or estrangement. another, they are simply geographical markers with invisible histories and obscure political import. street names in this second sense are easily disregarded – in the fsu it was possible ‘to walk along socialist street without thinking of socialism’ (kirschenbaum, op cit: 251). similarly, king george street in durban is equally devoid of political significance or meaning. the renaming of streets thus becomes historically momentous on two occasions: at the moment that the street is renamed and political conflict or consensus prevail, and as markers of the cultural content of a city that infuse everyday life with a sense of belonging or estrangement. in other words, we might not think about socialism whilst trekking down socialist street, or know of or think about british imperialism when ambling across king george but, combined with other street names of the revolution or of imperialism, these nonetheless help shape our imaginations and sense of ownership of a city. in lefebvre’s (1991) terms, place and street naming work to produce space and to produce its ‘essentialized’ characteristics. kirschenbaum (2010: 243) regards city streets as ‘palimpsests’ that are expressions of cities of memory. these ghosts, she argues, ‘coexist with the modern state’s tendency to use its control of the city streets as a means of supplanting local associations’ (ibid, 244). urban geography, particularly manifesting through the street, accordingly inscribes ‘a particular view of the national past’ (light, 154) by the modern state. but the modern state is neither monolithic nor homogenous. even if its bureaucratising impulse numbs the political content of those at its helm, it does so differently, conforming to the multiple contexts of the diverse spheres or tiers that institutionalise the state in daily life. the extent to which ‘the national’ can incorporate ‘the local’ and articulate the perspectives of these locals to its own is the extent to which hegemony is achieved, is the extent to which, in this instance, ‘the national’ is achieved. it is the local that, at once, is steeped in and expresses neo-apartheid and is the site through which democratic practices can tear away f rom it. at their most powerful, then, street names are significant as naturalised markers of the cultural content of a city that infuse everyday life with a sense of belonging or estrangement. in other words, we do not think about colonialism whilst walking along palmerston or down bathurst street in toronto, but combined with other street names of imperialism, these streets help shape our imaginations and our sense of ownership of a city. familiarity is a forgetting. part of unsettling the colonial city is about a spatial reorientation that deracialises it, transforms its divisions based on social class, and creates safety for women (among other vulnerable groups). this is eloquently outlined in ratshitanga’s new cities, new economies. as he points out, this is not simply a technical exercise, but is deeply political and as such needs to be mobilised and fought for. and that fight is not easily won. ratshitanga points to the question of ‘path dependence’ of neo-colonial/neo-apartheid cities that acts to reinforce their presence. most af rican capital cities, he points out, are inherited f rom colonial states and these cities, in the settler colonies at least, maintain the spatial divisions devised by colonisers; maintain what fanon refers to as the manichaean world of colonialism, the world ‘cut in two’. this path dependence, which is understood as the tendency of institutions to reproduce themselves, even at moments of potential rupture, is evident in street naming and renaming strategies, as the imperatives of struggle give way to the exigent conditions of the moment, to the apparent balance of forces, and to the bureaucratisation mechanisms of statehood. within the anc itself, there were multiple contending perspectives as far as memorialisation was concerned. pallo jordan, former minister of arts and culture, argued that ‘history would resolve itself’ and was not worth battling in such an emotional terrain. joel netshitenzhe contended that the anc at the moment of democracy was consumed with what it regarded as the more important domain of politicaleconomy. for bridget mabandla, former deputy culture minister, the pursuit of a democratic memory was key. unlike the collapse of regimes across the 40 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies the un standardisation gets complicated when contextually administered. the politics of south africa are such that some of the international resolutions invariably collide. in particular, the resolutions on the promotion of minority groups and commemorative naming practices make for lively political battles. globe, south af rica had a much less certain or more ambiguous response to the question of transforming the discursive environment of apartheid. alexei yurchak (14–16) contends that the primary ‘irreversible results’ of perestroika were achieved ‘at the level of discourse’. this was not the case with south af rica. for the fsu, the collapse of communism was symbolically accompanied with the tearing down of walls, statues, and monuments; and with the restoration of historical places and street names where, as early as 1990, name changes were central to the transformative agenda (cf. azaryahu, light, kirschenbaum). this was not the immediate case in south af rica. daniel milo segregates street naming in french historical political practice as either honoring heroes or honoring ideas; that is, as ‘honorific’ or ‘ideological’. in south af rica, changes have most often not been ‘honorific’ of the heroes of national liberation, nor ‘ideological’ (as in ‘liberation street’, ‘freedom street’ etc.). in significant ways, these untransformed name-scapes are an illustration of path dependence. the south af rican state begins to democratise within the context of an elaborate domestic and international web of institutionalised and technical naming practices. at the level of the united nations, its economic and social council (ecosoc) saw the need for a group to standardise geographical names at national and international levels. amongst other things, ecosoc was of the view that ‘geographical names’ play an important role in ‘economic, social and cultural development, particularly in the developing countries’ (un, resolution ix/2). as such, in 1959, it carved the space for the elaboration of what became the united nations group of experts on geographical names (ungegn). the first conference on geographical names standardisation was held eight years later in 1967 and has taken place every five years since. between 1967 and 2007, geographical naming conferences under the auspices of the un have adopted 195 resolutions. some of those resolutions divide af rica into four linguistic/geographical groups in the un group of experts on geographical names: af rica, west; af rica, central; af rica, east and af rica, south (un, resolution 111/26). drawing f rom the un guidelines, south af rica has enacted its own legislative f ramework for place names during apartheid, which was amended in 1998. the legislation siphons much of its content f rom the un recommendations on national standardisation (un, resolution i/4), including the establishment of authorities tasked with directing the standardisation of national geographical names (un, resolution v/15). the un standardisation gets complicated when contextually administered. the politics of south af rica are such that some of the international resolutions invariably collide. in particular, the resolutions on the promotion of minority groups and commemorative naming practices make for lively political battles. in february 2010, the minister of arts and culture, lulu xingwana, released the following statement: ‘the standardisation of geographical names in a democratic south af rica is part of the process of redressing the marginalisation of indigenous language, culture, and heritage. it reclaims this wealth for the benefit of all, now and for the future. it is an exciting and dynamic process filled with opportunity for south af ricans to enhance their understanding of themselves and their geographical places and in this way, to celebrate our common identity. geographic names standardisation is not a uniquely south af rican phenomenon. in terms of united nations (un) resolution 4 of the first un conference on the standardisation of geographical names, each country has, the sovereign right to standardise its geographical names and decide what the name for each feature in that country should be and how that name should be written. in 1998 the south af rican geographical names council act (act no.118 of 1998) was passed by parliament. names standardisation is part of the broad 41v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies the language used is not language of fundamental and revolutionary change, but the language of aspirant social cohesion and a democratic polity that values and foregrounds the notion of a common heritage. reconciliation and social cohesion process. the standardisation of geographical names in south af rica is part of the healing and reconciliation process, within the broader context of social transformation. the truth and reconciliation commission recommended the re-naming of geographical features as a form of symbolic reparations to address south af rica’s unjust past. we all know that many of the existing names of our geographical features are not reflective of our society and our quest for national unity. names standardisation is not an attempt to obliterate the history of any section of our society. it seeks to contribute towards inclusivity and participatory democracy that acknowledges our common heritage.’ this statement is quoted in its entirety for its careful articulation of the key concerns of the state with regard to history, change, and the rewriting of south af rica’s national narrative. the state’s considerations of name changes are fundamentally concerned with altering the historical denigration of af rican life, while not alienating white people f rom a sense of national belonging. at once, the state presents an argument for redressing the specificity of south af rica’s racist past whilst placing south af rica in an international context that generalises its concerns and argues its case in terms of a global technicality. the language used is not language of fundamental and revolutionary change, but the language of aspirant social cohesion and a democratic polity that values and foregrounds the notion of a common heritage. the statement goes on to list twenty-eight name changes approved by the minister. this list mainly comprises the names of rivers, mountains and other ‘natural’ features, ‘innocuous’ changes such as the names of post-offices or other buildings and changes that reflect the correct spelling of af rican names (such as enyoni rather than nyoni). there is a yawning gap between the formal statist naming practices of the ‘new’ south af rica and the informal conventions of the unofficial living spaces of south af rica’s burgeoning squatter communities. the ‘informal settlements’ that pepper the urban landscape unabashedly name their places for their heroes, dead or alive, such as ramaphosa, thabo mbeki, or slovo. the process of the institutional deracialisation of south af rica’s towns and cities began in earnest in the early 1990s during negotiations between the apartheid regime and the liberation forces. the product of the negotiations was the local government transitional act (no. 209 of 1993) which laid the groundwork for the incorporation of segregated neighbourhoods into unified local authorities. the imperative of this round of negotiations underscores the impasse that resulted in apartheid’s demise. in political terms, at least, there were no clear victors in the historical battle for and against apartheid. the municipal electoral system, produced alongside the demarcations of the new townscapes, provided for a larger share of the vote for those who became known as ‘minorities’. for most of the country, this system skewed votes in favour of whites. by the second local government elections, the municipal structures act (117 of 1998) and the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) had secured overall proportionality of the municipalities and produced the context for the first one-person, onevote municipal elections. the municipal demarcation act (27 of 1998) reduced the number of municipalities f rom 843 to 284. this included 6 metros (city of cape town, city of johannesburg, city of tshwane, ekurhuleni, ethekwini, and nelson mandela bay; buffalo city and mangaung were designated as metros after the 2011 local election), 231 local councils, and 47 district councils. whereas the previous interim legislation had demarcated wards on the basis of segregated areas rather than voter numbers and given ward 60 percent of council seats, the new legislation demarcated wards on the basis of voter numbers and assigned ward and proportional representation seats on a 50:50 ratio. cities, towns and townships became amalgamated in form into single administrative units, but remained untransformed in content. in other words, institutional 42 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies continuity was more apparent than institutional change. this is revealed in street naming strategies that after 2000 took the form of adherence to a litany of regulatory mechanisms; of international, national and local legislation for it to unfold. what became clear, especially f rom the experiences in the tshwane and ethekwini municipalities, is that those with the organised cultural and material capacity to thwart name changes used the regulatory environment to do so. simply put, the regulatory environment provided opportunity for the reinforcement of already existing power relations, as conf rontations in courts played out between the local state and af rikaner social movements. absent f rom these contests were previously disenf ranchised peoples. in contrast to that approach to street name changes was the 2013 ogimaa mikana project in toronto. this project is indigenous-led and insists on reclaiming colonised space through (guerrilla) renaming strategies of streets, lanes, and pathways. this reclamation happens through the restoration of anishinaabewomin place names inserted over the canadian name. for instance, the hip queen street west in downtown toronto was renamed ogimaa mikana or ‘leaders’ trail’ as a tribute to the women leaders of the resurgent idle no more anti-colonial movement. spadina road, another street that often takes me to work, was recast as ishpadinaa which corrects the corruption of the o jibwe name. these naming tactics are an attempt to make visible the attempted erasure of toronto’s indigenous history. typical of colonialism as an event and ongoing process is the effort to name space since, in naming, a culture appropriates, owns, controls and defines space, in an attempt to negate the violence of conquest. ogimaa mikana forces, at least, an acknowledgement that the city we dwell in was not terra nullius. the reception to the name changes has been mixed. again, in the capacity of institutions to reproduce themselves, canadian national identity that pivots on the idea of multiculturalism has absorbed and domesticated these new names, and their critique, into that multicultural identity. in other words, instead of indigenous peoples being regarded as a colonised people, they are recast as part of the multicultural edifice of canadian society, as one group among many. for instance, the dupont business association officially appropriated ishpidinaa onto street signs, the name sitting above the still operational spadina. however, the fight against the colonial city has not ended with street name changes. the canadian truth and reconciliation commission has designated land acknowledgements as part of the everyday institutional practice of public institutions, like schools, universities and legislatures. every day, children in toronto acknowledge that they live on and are educated on indigenous land. they also still sing the canadian national anthem. indigenous gardens are appearing throughout the city, and the city’s lakes are sites of cultural and spiritual practices. protests against police brutality and corporate/state alliances in exploiting indigenous lands mobilise thousands. in other words, naming alone does not transform the colonial city. but it is a necessary part of the process. representation, after all (according to stuart hall), is about ref raction – both reflecting and producing normative values and aspirations. it is thus a key site in the battle of ideas and the battle for a changed society. it is on this question – the transformation of society – that the attention of liberation forces in south af rica has been deficient. stuart hall (1988: 7) is instructive here in his analysis of the emergence of thatcherism as a political project. he posits the important insight by antonio gramsci about politics, that it is not: ‘an arena which simply reflects already unified collective political identities, already constituted forms of struggle. politics… is not a dependent sphere. it is where forces and relations, in the economy, in society, in culture, have to be actively worked on to produce particular forms of power, forms of domination. this is the production of politics – politics as a production.’ the thatcherite project was thus one to transform the state in order to restructure society (hall: 3). like early decolonisers, the liberation forces in south af rica sought first the political kingdom in the expectation that all else would follow. but, in the above analysis, the political kingdom does not just exist, but has to be actively built. the political kingdom is not a given and is never homogenous. this is true of both the state and society. a democratising and decolonising project would have to create a new cultural dispensation, one in which the subjection and subjugation of black people and women articulated through the naturalisation of capitalist accumulation would no 43v o l u m e 8 5 / 2 0 2 0 new cities new economies longer persist. put differently, the historic project would be a contest ‘not just for power, but for popular authority, for hegemony’ (hall: 4). what this refers to is a contest for the transformation of common-sense, taken-for-granted ways of being in the world. this project demands a deepening of democratic life, a democratic proliferation that is usurped in the current moment by the tendency towards bureaucratisation and seizing decision-making f rom those resident across the country. the significantly untransformed cities of south af rica, both in form and content, reflects that bureaucratising tendency. as hall (8) posits: ‘that bureaucratic conception of politics has nothing to do with the mobilisation of a variety of popular forces. it doesn’t have any conception of how people become empowered by doing something: first of all about their immediate troubles; then, the power expands their political capacities and ambitions, so that they begin to think again about what it might be like to rule the world ... their politics has ceased to have a connection with this most modern of all resolutions — the deepening of democratic life.’ ‘without the deepening of popular participation in national-cultural life, ordinary people don’t have any experience of actually running anything. we need to re-acquire the notion that politics is about expanding popular capacities, the capacities of ordinary people.’ references alexander, n. (1989). language policy and national unity in south africa/ azania. cape town: buchu books. anderson, b. (1991). imagined communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. london: verso. azaryahu, m. (1996). the power of commemorative street names. environment and planning d: society and space 14, pp. 311–330. azaryahu, m. (1997). german reunification and the politics of street names: the case of east berlin. political geography 16, pp. 479–493. bourdieu, p. (1984). distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. london: routledge. bourdieu, p. (1990) ‘the intellectual field: a world apart’, in: in other words: essays towards a reflexive sociology. stanford: stanford university press, pp. 140–149 cabral, a. (1970). ‘history is a weapon: national liberation and culture’, lecture, delivered as part of the eduardo mondlance lecture series, syracuse university, syracuse, ny. fanon, f. (1963). the wretched of the earth. new york: grove press gramsci, a. (1985). selections from cultural writings. cambridge: harvard university press. hall, s. (1980). “race, articulation and societies structured in dominance”, in: sociological theories: race and colonialism. paris: unesco: pp. 305– 345 hall, s. (1982). the rediscovery of ‘ideology’: return of the repressed in media studies in gurevitch, m., bennett, t., curran, j. and woollacott, j. (eds) hall, s. (1986). the problem of ideology: marxism without guarantees. journal of communication inquiry 10(2), pp. 28–44 hall, s. (1988). fragment from the hard road to renewal: thatcherism and the crisis of the left. verso books [online]. available at: https://www. versobooks.com/blogs/2448-stuart-hall-gramsci-and-us hall s. (2013). the work of representation. in hall s. evans j. and nixon s. representation: cultural representations and signifying practices london: sage and open u. hartman, s. (2007). lose your mother: a journey along the atlantic slave route. farrar, straus and giroux. huyssen, a. (2003). present pasts: urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. standford ca: stanford university press. jacobs, a.b. (1993). great streets. boston: massachusetts institute of technology kirschenbaum, l.a. (2010) place, memory, and the politics of identity: historical buildings and street names in leningrad-st. petersburg. in bassin, m., ely, c. and stockdale, m.k. space, place, and power in modern russia: essays in the new spatial history. dekalb: northern illinois university press. lefebvre, h. (1991). the production of space (trans. donald nicholsonsmith). malden, ma: blackwell publishing. light, d. (2004). street names in bucharest, 1990-1997: exploring the modern historical geographies of post-socialist change. journal of historical geography 30(1), pp. 154–172. mahoney, j. and thelen, k. (2009). explaining institutional change: ambiguity, agency, and power. cambridge: cambridge university press. mamdani, m. (1996). citizen and subject: contemporary africa and the legacy of late colonialism. princeton, nj: princeton university press. milo, d. (1997). “street names”, pp. 363–389. in nora, p. (director) and kritzman, l.d. (ed) realms of memory: the construction of the french past, new york: columbia university press. zerubavel, e. (1996). social memories: steps towards a sociology of the past. qualitative sociology (19): pp. 283–299. zerubavel, y. (1995). recovered roots: collective memory and the making of israeli national tradition. chicago: university of chicago press. 44 t h e t h i n k e r new cities new economies contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel narnia bohler-muller is professor of law and the executive director of the developmental, capable and ethical state (dces), human sciences research council (hsrc), south africa.she is also adjunct professor at the nelson r mandela school of law, university of fort hare and a research fellow at the centre for gender and africa studies at the university of the free state. previously, she was professor of law at vista university and nelson mandela metropolitan university (nmmu) before joining africa institute of south africa (aisa) as research director of social sciences in 2011. prof. bohler-muller has over 100 peer reviewed publications and has co-edited five books on gender violence; human trafficking, the dynamic of brics, the evolution of the constitution and the blue economy. she is an admitted advocate of the high court of the republic of south africa. andy carolin a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at the university of johannesburg. he holds a phd in english literature and has received a y-rating from the national research foundation (nrf). he is the author of post-apartheid same-sex sexualities: restless identities in literary and visual culture (routledge 2021). his research focuses broadly on race, gender, sexuality and history in south african literary and cultural studies. thulani andrew chauke a youth development practitioner by profession is a national youth service: provincial coordinator at the national youth development agency, western cape province, south africa. he holds a doctorate degree in education from the tshwane university of technology, a master of arts in youth development degree with cum laude, and a bachelor of arts in youth in development degree from the university of venda. he is a peer reviewer for eight accredited journals and holds membership for various academic associations. his research interest includes youth deviant behaviour, school violence, youth work, positive youth development, and youth entrepreneurship. thulani has published 14 articles in dohet accredited journals and author of the vusiwana va hleka book. he has a vast of experience in project management ranging from local government, electoral democracy, investment, and youth service. his day-today job is to help all three spheres of government, private sector, civil society, and institutions of higher learning to deliver their youth development intervention through the national youth service model. edward chikuni is a professor in the faculty of engineering, and technology at botho university, gaborone, botswana. his area of expertise is engineering education as well as energy and power systems. he has a beng (first division) electrical engineering f rom the university of sierra leone, an msc in electrical power engineering f rom the university of manchester (umist) and a phd (electrical engineering) f rom the university of wales. his over 20 years of academic experience has included teaching major universities in zimbabwe, namibia and south af rica. he has over 25 years’ industrial experience acquired during his tenure of senior positions in the railways and major private sector industries. prof. chikuni is registered as a professional engineer in the united kingdom, botswana, zimbabwe and south af rica. he is also a certified measurement &amp; verification professional (cmvp). his consulting experience has included assignments funded by note from the editor t h e t h i n k e r world bank and regulatory authorities in zimbabwe. he has published two books, two patents and over 60 scientific articles in refereed conferences and journals. his current research is the development of electric vehicles to meet local and regional needs. sally field is a researcher at the university of cape town. she has an ma focussing on participatory practices for development. she authored a distance learning book on maternal mental health for health and social workers and has published book chapters and journal articles related to service development, screening tools and provider training for maternal mental health, as well risk factors for maternal mental illness in low-resource settings. she works as a consultant to singizi and was involved in the heartlines “what’s your story?” evaluation. john boulard forkuor is a lecturer at the department of sociology and social work, knust. he teaches social work at the undergraduate level and qualitative research methods at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. his research focuses on transformation in urban areas and its implication for urban social life. the urban street as an important space for urban actors (street beggars; street children and street hawkers) has also been a focus of his research. his research interest also include the provision of social welfare for vulnerable groups in urban areas, especially for the vulnerable aged and for persons living with intellectual disabilities. his publications have appeared in journals like journal of contemporary af rican studies; urban forum; urban review; sage open; gender studies and qualitative social work. for his career development, his aim is to conduct research that will have implications for social work practice and social service delivery in ghana and in af rica. candice harrison-train is a qualitative and quantitative researcher and m&e specialist who has worked with singizi consulting africa for twenty years. she has worked with singizi on global projects, projects in the sadc region and the rest of the continent, as well as projects in south africa. these have included projects in the human rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, general health and rights, employment, and skills development sectors. candice has been involved in evaluating heartline’s “what’s your story?” programme since 2017. ashraf jamal is a research associate in the visual identities in art and design research centre, university of johannesburg. he is the co-author, with sue williamson, of art in south af rica: the future present and co-editor of indian ocean studies: cultural, social, and political perspectives. jamal is also the author of predicaments of culture in south af rica, love themes for the wilderness, the shades, in the world: essays on contemporary south af rican art, and strange cargo: essays on art (forthcoming). lehlohonolo kennedy mahlatsi holds a phd degree in public management and governance f rom north-west university (vaal campus). his minidissertation f rom the same institution evaluates the developmental role of local government in fighting poverty in the free state. his dissertation explores the developmental mandate of district municipalities in the free state in promoting environmental rights. he also holds b. iuris and llb f rom the university of the western cape. he has published dozens of newspaper articles and columns. he has extensive experience in public service, especially in local government. he was the former municipal manager of metsimaholo local municipality and he is also accredited facilitator with the south af rican local government association (salga). he has interest in the working class heritage and he is involved in the campaign for the recognition of coalbrook mine disaster as national heritage site. he is a founder member of the zamdela youth congress (zayco) and he is currently provincial executive committee (pec) member of the south af rican communist party (sacp) in the free state. francis onditi, d.phil., heads the school of international relations and diplomacy, riara university, kenya. he was recently enlisted as professor of research and distinguished author at the institute of intelligent systems, university of johannesburg, south af rica. he is the 2019 recipient of the aisa fellowship awarded by the human sciences research council (hsrc), south af rica. he is a widely published pan-af rican researcher specializing in conflictology with a bias in the geography of af rican conflict and institutional evolutionary theory. he has published numerous research papers in peer reviewed journals, contributed several chapters to edited volumes and authored/co-edited 6 books. his current research focuses on “exploring the analytical conception of the v o l u m e 8 7 / 2 0 2 1 contributors to this edition closeness centrality and its implications for a theory of interactivities for enhancing understanding of the process of conflict excavators and extractives with the aim of providing an explanation of the intrinsic character of interaction among human beings, communities and states as a process of diffusion of power, conflict reversals, and peace interlocutors.” tanusha raniga teaches social work and community development at the university of johannesburg. she is a c2 nrf rated researcher. she is actively involved in research primarily in the area of social protection policy, feminization of poverty and sustainable livelihoods. she has published widely in national and international journals and has presented at social work conferences. her teaching areas include: social policy, development management and integrated social and economic development. iqra raza is a research scholar in the department of english at ashoka university, india. her areas of academic interest include south af rican anglophone writing, muslim representation, post 9/11 literature, empire studies, literature f rom conflict zones, human rights literature, critical race studies, identity (and) politics, literary studies and cultural studies. she is also a poet and a haijin (haiku poet) whose works have been published and awarded internationally. douglas yates is professor of political science at the american graduate school in paris (france). he recently published the fourth edition of the historical dictionary of gabon (rowman & littlefield, 2018), which brings the political affairs of this frenchspeaking, oilrich, equatorial af rican country up to date since the accession to power of ali bongo, eldest son of omar bongo, who died in 2009 after the publication of the third edition. dr yates is an established country expert who has been researching and writing about gabon since 1993 with his doctoral dissertation at boston university, later published as the rentier state in af rica: oil-rent dependency and neo-colonialism in the republic of gabon (af rica world press, 1996). since then, he has taught and directed graduate research on af rican politics at the american graduate school in paris and has consulted for the state department and defense of the united states government as well as non-governmental organizations, private international investment firms, af rican studies centres, and european development agencies. yates is the co-author (with marquette university’s david gardinier) of the previous edition of the historical dictionary of gabon (2006) and has also authored the annual chapter on “gabon” for brill’s af rica yearbook since its creation in 2004. v o l u m e 8 7 / 2 0 2 1 contributors to this edition the journal for progressive thought www.thethinker.co.za publisher english department university of johannesburg kingsway campus, auckland park, johannesburg tel:+27 11 559 2553 editor prof ronit frenkel thethinker@uj.ac.za design & art direction on the loose matt@ontheloose.co.za tel:+27 83 302 8969 www.ontheloose.co.za advisory council dr ademola araoye (nigeria), professor puleng lenka bula (south africa), dr faisal devji (tanzania), professor chris landsberg (south africa), professor tshilidzi marwala (south af rica), professor sabelo j ndlovu-gatsheni (zimbabwe), dr morley nkosi (south africa), dr francis onditi (kenya) professor eghosa e osaghae (nigeria), dr mzulcisi qobo (south af rica), dr garth le pere (south africa), professor alioune sall (senegal), addai sebo (ghana), dr mongane serote (south af rica), professor mammo muchie (ethiopia). material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without proper citation. views and opinions expressed in the thinker are not necessarily those of university of johannesburg. they can accept no liability of whatsoever nature arising out of or in connection with the contents of the publication. © 2020 university of johannesburg www.thethinker.co.za contributors to this edition t h e t h i n k e r thethinker@uj.ac.za 95 t h e t h i n k e r peer review abstract south af rica has one of the highest violent crime rates globally, where physical and emotional trauma is used in homicides and suicides. while this is apparent to the ordinary south af rican, what is less clear is what happens after the police and forensics have done their job at a crime scene: who cleans up the bloody mess? in south af rica, as in many other nations, trauma cleaners restore the scenes where homicides and suicides have been committed, and where industrial accidents have taken place. little to no scholarly research has been conducted on the experiences of the cleaners of trauma scenes. cleaning up these scenes consists of labour charged with violence that most cannot countenance, but which the cleaner must face. drawing on 13 qualitative interviews, this article explores the challenges of cleaning up a site where violent and/or traumatic acts have occurred, and how the cleaners develop strategies to cope with their own concomitant trauma. the cleaners are exposed to various health and safety issues, as well as the emotional trauma associated with cleaning up horrific accidents and crimes. findings show that trauma cleaners emotionally distance themselves f rom the violence to which they bear witness and use emotional labour, spirituality, humour, and debriefing as coping strategies. in its conclusion, this article suggests a greater acknowledgement of trauma cleaners’ responsibilities and recommends that proper physical and emotional training is necessary to ensure their wellbeing. another bloody clean-up: the experiences of trauma cleaners in south africa by david du toit and buck whaley peer review 96 introduction trauma and cleaning are two distinct and uniquely intertwined concepts relevant to south af rican life. the interrogation of trauma cleaning – the marriage of these two concepts – is novel. the job of a trauma cleaner involves the clean-up of violent scenes where suicides, homicides, attacks, industrial accidents, or unattended deaths have taken place, as well as other cleaning jobs including biohazard spills, general disinfection, and, more recently, covid-19 disinfections. trauma cleaners clean up industrial accidents where sewage pipes have burst, hoarders’ homes with years’ worth of rubbish, and biohazard spillage. they clean, scrub, and disinfect every surface that needs it. this job is essential to the process of restoring an environment and cleansing its spirit. trauma cleaning is a grim job that is traumatic, bloody, risky, and unpredictable. it is a physically and emotionally challenging job that requires careful consideration of trauma and triggers, and one that not many people want to do. trauma cleaning is particularly relevant in south af rica – a country with one of the world’s highest violent crime rates. recently, the south af rican police service, in collaboration with statssa, has published the country’s crime statistics for 2019/20. these statistics show an increase in violent contact crimes, including murders, sexual offences, and robbery, with aggravating circumstances. most notably, murder rates have increased f rom 21,022 in 2019 to 21,350 in 2020 (saps, 2021). in the first few months of the covid-19 pandemic, almost 1,800 suicides occurred in south af rica (besent, 2020). these statistics are glaring. we all watch television and are aware of the protocols that follow a crime or trauma scene: the police are called in, the medical team attend to the victims or bodies, and the forensic team details and notes the scene’s intricacies. television, however, does not privy us to the clean-up of that crime scene. from the blood, the maggots, and the stench that follows: who cleans it? while sometimes the victim’s family, f riends, or acquaintances may clean up the scene, it may be too traumatic for most people, and they may rely on external help f rom a crime scene clean-up company. this article aims to demonstrate, through in-depth interviews, the challenges and coping mechanisms of cleaning up trauma. we begin with an overview of how and when data were collected, followed by a discussion of the different types of cleaning duties that trauma cleaners perform. hereafter, the physical preparation and labour involved in the clean-up of trauma scenes are outlined. finally, the emotional preparation and the challenges and coping strategies involved in a trauma clean-up are discussed, including emotional labour and dissonance, spirituality, humour, and debriefing. methods and study participants through a google search, two trauma cleaning companies with f ranchises across south af rica were selected. both companies have specialised in a range of trauma cleaning for more than five years. company a, ‘sunshine cleaners’ (pseudonym), have 10 f ranchises across south af rica, while company b, ‘the cleaning angels’ (pseudonym), have 12 f ranchises. the f ranchises’ owners were contacted and virtual interviews with 13 trauma cleaners were conducted during april and may 2021. interviews were conducted on zoom, recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed. the conducting of interviews via online platforms was an unexpectedly positive experience. while research on online interviews indicates that they can come with challenges such as technical difficulties, noisy environments, and a lack of privacy, we did not experience any of these challenges. we conducted our interviews more than a year after the start of the trauma cleaning is a grim job that is traumatic, bloody, risky, and unpredictable. it is a physically and emotionally challenging job that requires careful consideration of trauma and triggers, and one that not many people want to do. trauma cleaning is particularly relevant in south africa – a country with one of the world’s highest violent crime rates. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 97 t h e t h i n k e r peer review covid-19 pandemic. all the participants were stuck at home and were delighted to share their views on working as trauma cleaners. for us, the online setting enabled participants to be more upf ront in sharing their stories, as most interviews lasted around an hour. we also did not experience any challenges regarding internet connectivity or problems utilising zoom. most participants had flexible schedules and the interviews were conducted at a convenient time. regarding ethical protocols, all the participants received a consent form via email before the interview. this consent form included the details of the study: explaining that participation was voluntary and that all data would be treated as confidential. participants were also informed that pseudonyms would be used to protect their identity, as well as the identity of their company. given that the sharing of experiences of cleaning up trauma could be sensitive, the details of a counsellor were also provided in the consent form. once participants connected on zoom, we reminded them about the aims of the study, as well as the ethical protocols. participants gave verbal consent to start the interview. a total of 13 interviews were conducted: 11 of the participants were white women, and 2 were white men. table 1 below provides a summary of the participants’ profiles: table 1: participants’ profiles pseudonym geographical area company name (pseudonym) anna johannesburg sunshine cleaners mary george sunshine cleaners samantha mbombela sunshine cleaners yolandi durban sunshine cleaners rose gqeberha sunshine cleaners belinda pretoria sunshine cleaners patricia cape town sunshine cleaners patrick cape town the cleaning angels melissa cape town the cleaning angels johan pretoria the cleaning angels henriette pretoria the cleaning angels lizette johannesburg the cleaning angels stella centurion the cleaning angels the cleaning job when the cleaners arrive at a trauma scene, the the cleaning job when the cleaners arrive at a trauma scene, the victim’s body has already been removed. all that is left is the evidence of a crime or traumatic event that must be cleaned. the intensity and duration of the cleaning job are linked to the type of crime or trauma. for example, the cleaning up of violent farm attacks was described by belinda as particularly horrific, given that they are ‘done with a lot of anger and violence’ and that ‘there is usually a lot of blood everywhere’. patricia also added that the cleaning up of such trauma is challenging as she needs to ensure that there is ‘not a drop of blood left behind’, adding: ‘the scene must be cleaned to perfection.’ similarly, the cleaning up of violent break-ins is also challenging. rose described how she was called in to clean up the trauma caused by a violent burglary where the victim was bludgeoned to death: ‘this old gentleman was in a wheelchair. they broke in and murdered him. it looked like a bloodbath f rom one point of the house to the other end of the house. they were running through his blood. a job like that is horrific. we had to clean up everywhere. peer review 98 we even had to pick up his dentures f rom the floor that the police left behind.’ this cleaning job was not easy for rose as she could see the trauma that the victim experienced, a victim she described as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘incapable of defending himself.’ these sentiments were shared by other cleaners who had to clean up the trauma of violent burglaries. cleaning up suicides is another task that many cleaners experience as diff icult and traumatic. all the participants said that the cleaning up of suicides has increased since the covid-19 pandemic started. while the cleaners do not necessarily know who the victim was, it remains a diff icult job to clean up a suicide, given that they often wonder: ‘what drove a person to do this to themselves?’ interestingly, it appears that men and women commit suicide differently. yolandi describes: ‘men go out with a bang. they usually shoot themselves and it is blood and brain matter everywhere. on the ceiling, everywhere. women mostly slit their wrists in the bath or drink pills. it is easier to clean when a woman did it.’ other cleaners shared similar views on gender and suicide. unattended deaths – which refers to deaths in which the body is not found for days, weeks, or months (aftermath, 2021) – are another challenging part of a trauma cleaner’s job. a decomposing body releases bacteria and toxins that can harm humans and cause signif icant physical damage to the property. anna explained: ‘the worst is an unattended death, especially when the body is starting to decay. a few months ago, we did an unattended death. the victim was found after a week. we were sliding in this victim’s bodily fluids. the smell was the worst. flies everywhere. maggots. you name it.’ while the body had been removed before anna had to clean the scene, the stench and the remains f rom the bodily fluids were particularly unpleasant and challenging. several other cleaners described cleaning up an unattended death scene as ‘the worst’, ‘really gross’, and ‘requir[ing] a strong stomach’. at these scenes, trauma cleaners need to disinfect, sanitise, and thoroughly clean surfaces, as well as remove infected furniture f rom the premises. cleaning jobs also involve the cleaning up of industrial spillage or dirt. as mary described: ‘there was a burst pipe of sewerage and i had to clean up the sewerage things. it was a shit show, you know.’ similarly, samantha was called in to clean up the toilets of male factory workers, where the ‘faeces solidified’. these types of jobs are both physically and olfactorily challenging. other jobs include helping families clean up, improving properties that hoarders have neglected, and making homes liveable again. cleaning up hoarder homes can involve unexpected findings. as patricia recounted: ‘i once found a dead cat under piles of rubbish and old magazines. it was dead for months.’ in essence, a trauma cleaner’s job is unpredictable. it contains a range of cleaning tasks that are violent and non-violent, but that have potentially hazardous consequences to individuals and society if not taken care of. cleaning up a scene also requires physical preparation, training, and attention to detail. physical preparation trauma cleaners need to adhere to specific regulations when they clean up a scene. personal protective equipment such as a hazmat suit, gloves, gumboots, and respiratory masks are mandatory to protect the trauma cleaners and prevent cross-contamination. other items include scrubbers, cloths, buckets, mops, brushes, sponges, and other tools such as saws, knives, and ladders to cut away infected areas on carpets and furniture and to reach ceilings. once the cleaning is done, contaminated items are put into biohazard boxes that are incinerated. special cleaning chemicals are required to clean up blood, bodily tissue, and fluids, as these may contain pathogens such as hepatitis a and b, hiv, and mrsa. the next step is to inspect the type of infected surfaces to determine which chemicals and equipment should be used. yolandi explained: ‘you see what has been infected, and then you decide, okay, the mattress needs to be incinerated, wrap it up, get it out the way. is the blood dry, is v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 99 t h e t h i n k e r peer review the blood still wet, is it gooey? you need to use specific chemicals and techniques for different surfaces. you look at the floor. is it tiles? is it carpet? is it wooden floors? parquet floors take forever because the blood seeps in there and we have to remove it and get it incinerated.’ participants described that although they went through some form of training when they bought the f ranchise, there is no formal training or a training manual for trauma cleaners in south af rica. the training they receive is usually a five-day course where mock scenes are created with pig’s blood. the owner of the company then teaches them proper cleaning methods, how to use equipment and chemicals on specific surfaces, and how to use personal protective equipment. the lack of formal training in trauma cleaning is not unique to south af rica. in the us and europe, trauma cleaners also do not receive formal training. in the us, trauma cleaning firms need to be registered at the occupational safety and health administration (osha, 2021). they also need to have proper biohazardous waste disposal documentation f rom licensed medical waste transportation and disposal firms. this is something that the trauma cleaning industry may consider in south af rica. however, beyond the lack of physical training, what is particularly worrying is the lack of emotional training associated with the job. emotional preparation emotional labour and dissonance ‘you are dealing not with something but with somebody.’ across many sectors, there are behavioural and emotional cues that employees ought to follow. work that requires a close connection to the dead, death, or to the scene at which a death occurred can be particularly emotionally taxing for some. doctors and police officers need to speak with compassion and empathy when engaging with victims and their families (du toit, 2012; waters et al., 2020). trauma cleaners, too, are expected to present particular emotions and to behave in a specific way when at a clean-up, similarly to employees in other service sectors such as healthcare and hospitality (funk et al., 2020). these employees engage in emotional labour that refers to the management of expressing appropriate emotions while suppressing inappropriate ones while doing a job. the term ‘emotional labour’ was first applied to air cabin crew who need to suppress negative feelings to create a proper mood in others (hochschild, 1983). similarly, trauma cleaners engage in emotional labour by being sympathetic and empathetic to the victim or victims and their families. for example, anna and lizette echoed similar views that they don’t show ‘disgust’ or ‘repulsion’ when cleaning but try to remain ‘neutral’ and ‘professional’ at all times. in this regard, mary approaches cleaning up trauma as ‘just another mess’ to clean while she is on-site. mary consciously employs this position – that cleaning is physical and an ordered process – as she believes that, at her core, she is a sensitive person who ‘cries for no reasons at all’ in her everyday home life. therefore, despite being a sensitive person, mary understands that she must go into an operational mode when she is on the job. the language that mary uses indicates that she compartmentalises her emotions to ‘make it through the scene’. this shows that mary has the propensity to feel – to be empathetic and sympathetic to the victim – but insists that too much emotionality on the trauma scene would affect her ability to complete the job at hand. mary notes that ‘the trauma scene is personal until i get there and personal after i leave’, adding that when she puts on her protective clean-up gear and picks up the chemicals she uses to clean, it becomes ‘just another cleaning job’. in this way, mary emotionally distances herself f rom the trauma to cope with the job. emotional distancing is not unique to trauma cleaners’ jobs. nurses and other health care and service employees also use emotional distancing to protect themselves f rom emotional arousal, burnout, and exhaustion. in essence, emotional distancing is a self-controlled protective strategy to remain neutral (kim et al., 2020). in this regard, patricia confirms that she emotionally distances herself f rom the trauma of cleaning up by saying: ‘it’s a willing decision you’re making of not getting involved emotionally.’ interestingly, patricia, who worked as a police officer in the forensics department for 21 years before becoming a trauma cleaner, said that one cannot be trained for emotional distancing, but that it is ‘more a thing of peer review 100 mentality’ and that ‘one needs to be made for it’. henriette echoes patricia in her notion that her ‘personality is not wondering and ruining over [a] situation’, by suggesting, instead, that trauma cleaners should put their ‘head down and do the job’. adding to her words, she emphasises that a trauma cleaner must not sit and wonder, ‘why? what’s the ... if there’s an emotion caught there …’. she trails off and concludes her point: ‘we don’t go there’. it appears that trauma cleaners consciously decide to set aside their emotions when cleaning up trauma. henriette suggests that cleaners should develop, to a point, an ignorance of their emotions to complete the job at hand. patrick builds on the sentiment described by henriette and other trauma cleaners that the job of cleaning trauma scenes should be performed while utilising a ‘form of desensitization’. however, contrary to patricia’s suggestion that trauma cleaners should have a certain mentality, patrick states that developing desensitization to trauma comes with ‘experience and time’. in this way, while acknowledging the embedded personality of a crime scene, he resonates with the need to desensitise yourself f rom the job at hand. despite trauma cleaners’ use of emotional labour to emotionally distance themselves f rom a scene, emotions are sometimes triggered and carried home with a cleaner. following a trauma scene, henriette, for example, notes how she often leaves feeling f rustrated and helpless because she cannot change the situation, and that this f rustration could be carried home to her family. luckily, she has a supportive partner who gives her space to debrief. she notes how her partner allows her to cry and let the emotions out. hence, the emotional toll of having to express and suppress emotions can be difficult. in the emotional labour literature, service employees often engage in either surface acting or deep acting. surface acting occurs when felt emotions and expressed emotions are not aligned (ogunsola et al., 2020). it appears that some trauma cleaners use surface acting to cope with trauma cleaning, by hiding felt emotions and expressing emotions that are deemed professional and neutral. another coping mechanism that trauma cleaners use is spirituality. spirituality spirituality is often used as a coping mechanism by employees in stressful jobs and to promote workplace well-being (kutcher et al., 2010). for example, nurses often rely on prayer to cope with the emotional aspects of treating ill patients (baskar and indradevi, 2021). spirituality also appears to be important for trauma cleaners to decrease depression, stress, and burnout. trauma cleaning is a very intimate and personal experience. while it involves the cleaning up of bodily fluids, the scrubbing of floors, the application of chemicals, and the intense physical and emotional labour of the clean-up crew, a more spiritual, deeply personal face to trauma cleaning exists. trauma cleaning, essentially, comprises the cleaning of death, or at least, the gruesome aftermath of a violent one. across populations of people, death has meaning as it is a time for mourning, for the community, for prayer – not simply for the life or lives lost, but the circumstances that surrounded the death and the scene on which the traumatic event occurred. developing on the latter, johan notes that when a violent incident occurs at a particular site, ‘a lot of things happen in the spirit [of a place]’. when cleaning up a violent crime scene, one can feel that ‘something is not right’. johan adds: ‘we also clean the places spiritually. on that basis, we are a christian business. so, we pray, specifically, at these places where there was death. we clean the atmosphere around the ground where it happened. the physical side is just one part of it. because [the] emotions that the victim has stayed behind. one part is the traumatic event in the trauma cleaning, essentially, comprises the cleaning of death, or at least, the gruesome aftermath of a violent one. across populations of people, death has meaning as it is a time for mourning, for the community, for prayer – not simply for the life or lives lost, but the circumstances that surrounded the death and the scene on which the traumatic event occurred. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 101 t h e t h i n k e r peer review time, but there can also be something that stays behind in the spirit there, and that harasses people for a long time.’ thus, spirituality is used not only as a coping mechanism but also metaphorically to cleanse a space of the trauma that occurred. for example, patrick and his wife melissa clean up violent crimes by removing all the physical evidence that a crime has occurred, but also spiritually to restore the atmosphere. patrick notes that spiritual cleansing at trauma clean-ups is especially important when ‘blood has been spilled’ at the scene of either a horrific, bloodied suicide or a homicide. these instances are particularly traumatic and need spiritual intervention due to the nature in which these scenes are created. patrick emotively states the following: ‘to see the brain matter splattered all over the ceiling – if you start thinking how that happened, what the person had to go through to be able to take his own life because it is the most unnatural thing to do is to commit suicide. everything in us – the animal instinct, the inherited instinct is to survive, so you will do everything to survive. to override that basic instinct in a person must take a lot of influence – be it natural or spiritual – but some hectic instinct has to come through to give up that primal instinct of survival. i wonder what this person has to go through to put a gun to the head and blow their brains all over this place.’ we have all heard the saying: one should leave a place cleaner than how one found it. this line is particularly important in the context of spirituality in trauma cleaning. in this way, just as emotional labour is used to hide emotions, prayer is used to return a sense of dignity and life to the affected place. furthermore, prayer functions to comfort the victim’s kin and the cleaners who labour at the scene. this is an important procedure in the clean-up process as it helps cleanse the aura and the integrity of the space. mary suggests that, without it, some cleaners have reported having taken ‘spirits home with them’. henriette also mentions that the clean-up aims to ‘bring and restore peace’ which involves making sure that the ‘atmosphere is clean and calm’. in this way, henriette alludes to the entirety of what it is exactly that is being cleaned. the spiritual element to trauma cleaning expands the role and the realm of cleaning, begging us to interrogate the act of cleaning as a spiritual practice. spirituality also connects trauma cleaners f rom different f ranchises. when a quotation for cleaning has been approved in one trauma cleanup company and the trauma cleaners get the goahead to clean a particular scene, the relevant team sends a message notifying their network of cleaners in south af rica to hold them in prayer as they embark on this new clean-up. they also attempt to ‘sensitize people locally to pray and cover us when we go there’. through this, the cleaners insinuate that the cleanup is a communal effort that requires the spiritual support of all those willing to give it. while there may be criticism of the intrusion or imposition of an anonymous team of people praying over a scene, henriette emphasises that her trauma cleaning team do not go into trauma scenes and start ‘bible-bashing’. instead, henriette notes that they do not proclaim it publicly, and only include nearby people in the prayer if they ask to be involved. whether it involves the trauma cleaners in prayer or on-site family and community members, she believes that prayer is healthy for the potential betterment of the affected communities. this sends a message to the affected community that a single death affects everyone in that community. this coping strategy – to rally the community to prayer – is an interesting technique. it places the responsibility for the future health and wellbeing of a space into the hands of the people who, in one way or another, determine the context and circumstances of the space. another important aspect of trauma cleaning is the usage of humour. humour there are many different coping strategies used by trauma cleaners to deal with what they see, smell, and experience at trauma scenes. while the spiritual side of trauma cleaning is evident and vast in its reach, humour is used by some cleaners during clean-ups as a strategy to cope with stressful work situations (romero and cruthirds, 2006). research on humour in the workplace indicates that it benefits employees by decreasing stressful situations and burnout (mathew and vijayalakshmi, 2017). at crime scenes, humour was not expressed concerning trauma scenes ‘at the expense of the person that passed [a]way’. instead, peer review 102 mary said light humour was made of a scene where there was a ‘burst pipe of sewerage. they had to clean up the sewerage, so they talked about it as a shit storm, you know. so, they use humour to get over the seriousness of this’. thus, one of the benefits of workplace humour could lead to team cohesion and relationships among colleagues during difficult tasks (sacco et al., 2021). humour can be a productive tool to cope with gruesome scenes, but it often can be inappropriate. stella notes how she knows that ‘other people [make] jokes on scenes and stuff but i don’t do that’. by stating that others might find humour where she does not, she insinuates an opposition to the use of humour. stella understands that there is a ‘thin line between a well-timed, well-crafted joke and being insensitive’. similarly, patrick takes the trauma scene very seriously. on humour, he has this to add: ‘you also don’t want to desensitize yourself or your people to the actuality of what has happened there. you need to be very careful that you don’t contribute to the desensitization of horrific perpetrations. it remains a horrific thing for someone, someone, to shoot somebody else. it remains a horrific thing for a father to kill himself or hang himself in f ront of his children… it is not acceptable for someone to shoot a child with a stray [bullet]. so, no, i will not joke about it.’ in the above statement, patrick emphasises the severity with which he treats crime scenes and the trauma embedded within them and, in so doing, dismisses the use of humour as a coping strategy. he mentions that most people live in a ‘cocoon’ and ‘do not know what is happening in society, and the violence that goes with that’. building onto this, he concludes the interview by stating that the greatest disadvantage of his career is seeing the incredible, insane violence about which many never have to think. finally, debriefing is a much-needed strategy used by trauma cleaners. debriefing debriefing is fundamental to processing a potentially traumatic event or incident. after completing a clean-up, some trauma cleaners ‘come home and write a full report’. johan explains that debriefing requires trauma cleaners to answer: ‘what did they see? what happened? what did they smell? and so forth.’ patrick notes the importance of this process by stating that: ‘you don’t even know the things you have seen that are affecting you until you start writing about it.’ henriette points out that after around fiveto-seven trauma scenes, the team practices breathing sessions to manage its collective mental wellbeing. she continues to say that colleagues who might seem sad or express their sadness about a scene are probed by team leaders and asked if they are okay and coping. these cleaners also offer external counselling with a professional therapist to those affected by the trauma. on the topic of debriefing, mary notes that she ‘talk[s] to god’. almost as if putting herself back in that car, she recalls herself leaving a crime scene and spending time ‘talking to god and thanking him for getting me through it without any emotions.’ she mentions that she finds herself speaking about that specific incident days later with god, repeating to him: ‘i need to debrief. i need to debrief.’ conclusion this study has investigated the multifaceted ways in which trauma cleaners cope with the physical and emotional challenges of the job. each cleaner presented uniquely personal views on the circumstances and the contexts that determine their relationship with the trauma cleaning. trauma cleaners use spirituality to support each other when affected by the trauma incident. in addition, some use prayers to cope with the emotional trauma of cleaning up violence. while there is an acknowledgement of the spirit of trauma carried through people who visit the trauma scene, there is a consensus that trauma cleaners should compartmentalise emotions between their professional and personal worlds. cleaning up trauma becomes ‘just another mess’. through the varied ways in which trauma cleaners experience the plethora of factors present within a trauma scene, we can better understand this niche profession. it is a new profession, with potential for growth, particularly in south af rica. this study offers a new window for researchers to produce new research in this field. the emotional experiences of trauma cleaners are vast, spanning f rom emotional dissonance and compartmentalisation, spirituality, humour, and debriefing. while trauma cleaners are restoring the v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 103 t h e t h i n k e r peer review scenes, they lack a deep acknowledgement f rom society. there is no uniform physical and emotional training involved in this profession, which leaves one with a gaping wound that cannot heal. a more profound acknowledgement of this profession is necessary where trauma cleaners undergo training and support to cope with the aftermath of cleaning up trauma in south af rica. references aftermath. 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(2006). ‘the use of humor in the workplace.’ academy of management perspectives, (20): 58–69. sacco, d.f., brown, m., and may, h.d. (2021). ‘not taking a joke: the influence of target status, sex, and age on reactions to workplace humor.’ psychological reports, 124(3): 1316–1334. south af rican police service (saps). (2021). south af rican police service crime statistics. [online] available at: https://www.saps.gov.za/ services/older_crimestats.php waters, j., westaby, c., fowler, a., and phillips, j. (2020). ‘the emotional labour of doctoral criminological researchers.’ methodological innovations, 13(2): 1–12. book interview restless identities in literary and visual culture post-apartheid same-sex sexualities by andy carolin | books 70v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 leila hall – a phd student in the department of english at the university of johannesburg (uj) and assistant editor of the thinker – talks to dr. andy carolin, senior lecturer in the faculty of education at uj, about his recently published book, post-apartheid same-sex sexualities: restless identities in literary and visual culture (routledge, 2021). books 71 t h e t h i n k e r opinion leila hall (lh): congratulations on your book! before we talk about it, could you introduce yourself and tell us something about the work you do? andy carolin (ac): sure, thanks leila. i’m currently a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at uj. i have a phd in english literature and my research focuses on representations of gender, sexuality, race, and history in south af rican literary and visual texts.   lh: your preface describes the events that unfolded at the 2012 jo’burg pride and how this gave rise to your book project. could you describe what happened at this pride event and tell us about the questions that this event sparked for you? ac: ever since pride marches started in the early 1970s, there’s been a growing conversation around what the purpose of pride marches should be. there’s this tension around whether they should be about protest or celebration. and what we saw in 2012 was this tension coming to the fore in quite a violent and unsettling way. in 2012, we saw the organisation the 1 in 9 campaign – a feminist, anti-rape movement – staging a protest as part of the jo’burg pride parade and demanding a minute of silence to draw attention to the specific vulnerability of black lesbian women. part of the protest was what they called a ‘die-in’, where they arranged their own seemingly lifeless bodies with life-like mannequins on the ground, in order to disrupt the progression of the parade. it was this that generated threats of violence and intimidation, with many of the white pride organisers shouting aggressively at the black protestors, saying things such as ‘this is our route’, ‘go and find your own’, and the insistence that the protestors ‘go back to your lokshins’ [locations], which of course evokes such an incredibly disturbing racial history of spatial planning. obviously there was significant commentary in the press for two or three weeks afterwards. much of the critical response to this event relied on the same, sometimes quite obvious, historical tropes of racism and sexism that shape much of the post-apartheid imaginary. there was almost a sense of ‘well, of course it would happen here’. but i had a feeling that there was just something too easy about this analysis – it was too insular and too obvious. so i started to consider what it would mean to think about this particular event as a local instantiation of a transnational sexual politics. this moment in time was not isolated, but was rather the convergence of countless cultural flows that are simultaneously past and present, local and transnational. that’s what started coming up for me. there is a pervasive attitude of being ‘post-race’ among many white people, an attitude that so many of the party-goers embraced at that jo’burg pride in 2012. and i kept thinking to myself that this moment has a history, and that history can be linked back to colonialism and apartheid, sure, but it can also be linked to the type of post-race whiteness we see in publications such as gay pages, which draw their visual repertoires f rom cultural flows in the global north. these might be a contemporary circulation of specific images of wealthy gay men, but it is also the result of historical processes that have shaped the raciology of post-apartheid cultural life. so, these were some of the complexities that i wanted to start unpacking. at the time i had no idea where it would go and now, about eight years later, we have the book.   lh: this book is published in a series by routledge – ‘gender in a global/local world’ – and at the heart of your exploration is trying to understand the relationship between the global (the transnational) and the local in the making and representation of same-sex cultures in post-apartheid south africa. can you tell us more about this? ac: what i wanted to do was to start undoing some of the binary thinking that we have around the homophones ‘routes’ and ‘roots’ – playing with paul gilroy’s formulation. i wanted to think through the binaries of both local and global, on the one hand, 72v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion and past and present, on the other. it was important to understand how historical cultural flows have a bearing in the present, even if those historical cultural flows seem at first to be quite rooted and embraced as some form of authentic timeless essence. actually, of course, those cultures that have the appearance of timelessness are themselves the result of myriad cultural flows in the past. so, for instance, in the one chapter titled ‘same-sex sexualities and the idea of af rica’, i focus on the truism that same-sex sexualities are ‘unaf rican’. i try to trace the connections between what it means to talk about sexuality in af rica in the present, not only contrasting it with the past but also showing how the past in fact shapes the present in sometimes unexpected ways. it is of course homophobia and institutionalised heteronormativity that were brought to af rica as part of the colonial project, rather than same-sexualities themselves – and i think that’s been attended to quite successfully in recent scholarship. but i wanted to go further and trace, for example, the peculiar dalliance between notions of fundamentalist christianity and ‘authentic’ af rican tradition. many social conservatives articulate, in the same breath, both christian values and a seemingly timeless ‘tradition’ to define the borders of what constitutes moral and ‘authentically’ heterosexual af rican identities. and i found this to be a fascinating relationship, given the centrality of christianity during colonialism. homophobia was institutionalised in af rica through the colonial project, and now homophobia has been institutionalised in much of post-colonial af rica through some of the anti-colonial movements themselves. by historicising this, i hope to show that the homophobia that we see in south af rica today has a history of being deployed for ideologically expedient purposes. one text that demonstrates this is the film inxeba (the wound). the film was read by many commentators and critics as being a very uniquely south af rican event – i say ‘event’ because of the practices of reception, the legal action, and the protests that surrounded the release of the film. similarly, the debates surrounding the film and the tensions between different claims to rights-based discourses were seen as uniquely south af rican. and yet, if we take a step back, we can read many of these discourses not as grounded in a south af rican exceptionalism, but instead as the result of global cultural flows that are characterised by transnational ideas around christianity, essentialist claims to nationalist af rican identities, and liberal internationalist human rights discourses. these factors certainly have a specificity in the south af rican context, but they can’t be separated f rom global discourses. i found that what the film was doing – rather than offering us a uniquely south af rican event ...we can read many of these discourses not as grounded in a south african exceptionalism, but instead as the result of global cultural flows that are characterised by transnational ideas around christianity, essentialist claims to nationalist african identities, and liberal internationalist human rights discourses. 73 t h e t h i n k e r opinion – was offering us something far more complex, and a way of thinking through how cultural flows come to constitute a very specific notion of the local. what i try and do in the book is theorise ‘restlessness’ to try and bring together these two almost disparate axes – that of space, so the relationship between the local and the global, and that of time, the relationship between the past and the present. and through this notion of ‘restlessness’, i try to bring them together in a coherent analytical f rame. to go back to your question around this particular routledge series, which speaks to thinking through gender in a global/ local world, what i wanted to bring to this was an emphasis on transnational cultural flows that can be both contemporary and deeply historical. one of the issues that i look at is around the constitutional recognition in 1996 of the right to equality and the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. i raise some concerns about the historiography through which 1996 and the adoption of the constitution has almost become the defining moment in our sexual rights history: the point towards which everything moved, and the point f rom which everything henceforth flows. popular histories in south af rica have developed certain mythologies about 1996 that are ahistorical and that don’t map the longer cultural movements that are specific to south af rica, but are also deeply tied to transnational histories of advocacy and identity. so i argue that what the notion of restlessness does is it complicates how we think about the cultural forces that produce same-sex sexualities in south af rica, highlighting transnational resonances and historical trajectories that might not have been immediately visible. lh: the idea of ‘restlessness’ is something you refer to throughout the book. how would you explain this term to someone who’s never come across this concept? ac: ‘restlessness’ as i theorise it in the book would recognise that identities are produced through the intersection of multiple cultural flows, that are related both to geopolitics and historical temporalities. cultural studies scholars have done such important work arguing that identity is always socially constructed. what i’m interested in thinking about is how to make explicit connections between the historical and contemporary cultural flows that produce those identities, and that become visible once we start scratching the surface. in the book, i theorise it in the following way: ‘to refer to restlessness is to point to a range of cultural flows that are simultaneously rooted and transnational, disparate and uneven, precarious and contingent, historical and contemporary, and orientated more towards connections and movement than any inward-looking ossification of the nationstate’ (carolin, 2021: 2).   lh: the intersections between race, gender, and sexuality are central to your study. could you talk about these intersections in apartheid and postapartheid south africa, with some examples from the texts you analyse? ac: there are sometimes surprising continuities in how gender is constituted and performed in different settings, and how circulating discourses about race impact on this. so, one particular chapter looks at how white masculinities were produced both during the apartheid period and in the present, exploring the different race politics that underpin these constructions. another chapter unpacks how masculinities can also be rooted in an af rican nationalist f ramework. in the book, i try to tease out both the differences and continuities between these iterations of masculinity. so, for instance, while i locate the masculinities that might be depicted in the magazine series gay pages, or michiel heyns’ novels the reluctant passenger and lost ground, within discourses of whiteness, i also try to highlight how these very notions of masculinity have echoes with the ones depicted in films such as inxeba (the wound) and ibhokwe (the goat). i try to show how idealised notions of masculinity are themselves mobile forms that can be expediently packaged and deployed for political and ideological purposes. one of the points that i make in the book is that these continuities can sometimes be deeply unsettling for us. we start to see potential overlaps between how white apartheid-era masculinities were produced, and certain essentialist formulations of masculinity rooted in problematic notions of ‘authentic’ af ricanness. similarly, one chapter focuses on women in the indian diaspora, and draws on the novels saracen at the gates and the world unseen. another chapter 74v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion focuses on photographs of black women. across these chapters, i point to recurring discourses of cultural authenticity that position same-sex sexualities as somehow unaf rican or unindian. i try to show how the very notion of ‘cultural authenticity’ is a fiction that is produced and deployed in the service of a conservative patriarchal project that, even if it isn’t universal, certainly has powerful resonances across contexts, across cultural histories, and across texts. while race is a social construct, of course, it’s a construct that – given the specific histories in south af rica and in many other places around the world – continues to have a significant material impact on how people have access to certain resources. to put it simply, inequality in south af rica continues to be deeply racialised. sceptical of the post-race whiteness advanced by publications such as gay pages, the book set out to conf ront the ongoing raciology of post-apartheid cultural life, even as this raciology is mapped historically and transnationally. the book is divided into very specific chapters that theorise and argue in relation to race itself: there’s a chapter on whiteness, another on the indian diaspora, another on black women. so, in many ways, the book itself stages a conversation with historical and contemporary circulations of race. what emerged for me during the study was the importance of reflecting more critically on the complicity of some white gay men during apartheid. for instance, there was the law reform movement in the 1960s that advocated against oppressive intensifications of state policing of same-sex sexualities. the law reform movement was dominated by white men. but it was fundamentally a conservative project because it didn’t challenge the underlying raciology of apartheid; it didn’t draw attention to the brutality and systematic discrimination that millions of south af ricans experienced on the basis of race. instead, the law reform movement presented itself within terms of an acceptable middle-class whiteness that advanced sexual rights even as it remained largely silent on race. there was also the gay association of south af rica’s refusal in the 1980s to explicitly support simon nkoli when he was imprisoned as part of the delmas treason trial. this organisation also tried to insist that it was somehow apolitical in relation to apartheid – a political strategy geared towards securing for itself a certain privileged position in the social order. another example is the 1987 elections for the hillbrow constituency. the local gay press at the time – as well as many gay voters – supported and advocated for a national party candidate, who eventually won the election, simply because this candidate promised reform on gay rights. so, what we saw in the final years of apartheid was white gay men and women voting in their own interest – for the very party that operationalised apartheid – despite the fact that there were progressive anti-apartheid candidates on the ballot who were not caught up in the same evil history of the national party. so, if we think about this history cumulatively, we see that white gay men have a complicated relationship to the apartheid state apparatus that is not entirely separable f rom complicity. while many white gay men might acknowledge the histories of homophobia and sexual moralism, i don’t think that many of us are willing to acknowledge how local efforts towards sexual rights may have contributed to the legitimisation of what was a crime against humanity. lh: in the book, you also talk about the difficulties of addressing race: how to talk about its continued social impact without normalising and perpetuating racialised discourses. can you speak a little more about how you approach this in your study? ac: i think we have a certain responsibility to fight against the ‘post-race’ whiteness that we see in publications such as gay pages. we need to develop analytical tools to complicate how we think about the circulation of discourses about race. the question you ask about the importance of a nuanced approach to race is relevant for my book, but it’s also important for a broader progressive politics: around the world we’re to put it simply, inequality in south africa continues to be deeply racialised. sceptical of the post-race whiteness advanced by publications such as gay pages, the book set out to confront the ongoing raciology of postapartheid cultural life, even as this raciology is mapped historically and transnationally. 75 t h e t h i n k e r opinion seeing a global reckoning with race and histories of racial oppression. an explicit focus on race allows us to engage with and expose the ongoing privileges of whiteness in multiple contexts, hopefully contributing in some way to the work of anti-racism. this has implications for campaigns such as black lives matter in the united states, as well as rhodes must fall in south af rica and the uk. while this book is a study about sexuality, it is probably equally a study of race. i’m hoping that the discussion of race and the idea of restlessness will have resonances in other contexts too. for example, there’s currently an ongoing debate about the new york city pride parade and the decision by the organisers to exclude police officers f rom marching as part of the event for the next few years. this decision has been taken to recognise the experiences of many queer people of colour in the united states who have experienced police brutality. this marks a particular intersection that draws together transnational discourses about human rights and visibility with context-specific histories of racism that have powerful resonances in the present. i would hope that ideas such as restlessness could enrich the analyses of these sorts of social phenomena and the recognition, through an intersectional lens, that history and the ideological mobility of sexual identities are far more complex than they may initially have seemed. by really going to the roots of these contestations, we will hopefully bring new relations into view that will at least complicate how we think about, for example, the relationship between policing and sexual rights activism in the united states. so, it’s my hope that inasmuch as this book is a study of the post-apartheid moment, that it also offers a way of thinking through this broader global reckoning with race.   lh: that leads perfectly to my last question – in general, what do you hope this book will achieve in terms of scholarship and our thinking around issues of sexuality and race in post-apartheid south africa? ac: one of the things is its emphasis on a dynamic historicity. the book resists the impulse to focus only on 1996 and the adoption of the constitution’s equality clause. across the book, i look at multiple texts that engage with sexual rights and same-sex sexualities outside of the hegemony of this historical moment. so, for example, the novel the world unseen, which is set in 1951 and depicts the relationship between two women in the indian diaspora in pretoria, operates outside of the traditional ways of thinking about sexual rights histories in south af rica. furthermore, this setting also falls outside of the high point of the post-stonewall sexual rights movement. in an earlier chapter in the book, i also look at the relationship between the sexual rights and anti-apartheid movements between the 1970s and the 1990s. i use the selected cultural texts to resist the idea that sexual rights in south af rica were somehow inevitable – an argument that many scholars have made, and which oversimplifies many of the cultural forces at play. a focus on a restless historicity reveals that whether to recognise sexual rights in south af rica was caught in the crosshairs of volatile and intersecting cultural forces – and certainly far f rom inevitable. lh: thanks so much. is there anything else you’d like to add? ac: one of the things that i hope this book achieves is to bring attention to some of the really impressive work being done by authors, photographers, and filmmakers in south af rica, who are contributing to a more complex cultural history of sexuality. for instance, there is oliver hermanus’ beautiful film moffie (which had an underwhelming release due to covid, but has now been picked up by an american distributor). there is also the aesthetically innovative and bold film kanarie, the extraordinary photography of siphumeze khundayi, and zinaid meeran’s awardwinning, though largely neglected, novel saracen at the gates. it is these works and many others that make up the rich archive of same-sex public culture that forms the basis of my book. opinion 104v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 abstract ethnic identity has continued to undermine national unity and integration across post-colonial africa, and south africa seems to be no exception. post-apartheid south africa has been bedevilled by the spectre of ethnic politics in a way which shows the durability of toxic ethnicity. ethnic identities in africa and south africa in particular, were forged by colonial powers and apartheid (in the case of the latter) through identity construction and the classic strategy of divide and rule. fluid pre-colonial social ‘identities’ were recast and calcified into hide-bound, immutable and toxic ethnicity that was invested with a separatist consciousness underwritten by corresponding differential economic livelihoods. this study argues for the need to dig deeper into history to understand the state of pre-colonial identities and how colonial designs constructed the latter to undermine resistance by indigenous people and therefore to perpetuate its domination. colonialism and historical imagination: how colonial designs shaped post-apartheid identities tlhabane mokhine dan motaung | opiniontlhabane mokhine dan motaung | opiniontlhabane mokhine dan motaung | opinion 105 t h e t h i n k e r the scourge of tribalism has dominated africa’s political imagination since the dawn of liberation (la hausse, 2000; webster and pampallis; 2017; vail, 1989). ironically, africans, including the revolutionary forces that contributed to freedom, have quite often uncritically accepted these extraneous ascriptions of tribal identities, to the detriment of the post-colonial national imaginary. as a result, the post-colonial nation-building project has been invariably debilitated by allegiances rooted in toxic, fractious social identities rather than a ‘pan-tribal’ vision (cohen and middleton, 1970). the historical record, however, shows that tribalism was/is a colonial construct designed to give bearing to colonial domination (vail, 1989). weighing in on the history of ethnicity, vail (1989: 5) argues that “…empirical evidence shows clearly that ethnic consciousness is very much a new phenomenon, an ideological construct, usually of the twentieth century, and not an anachronistic cultural artefact from the past.” south africa is no exception to this seemingly iron law of post-colonial african politics. it follows that only a deeper understanding of the historical processes that formed tribal identities can enable post-colonial, post-apartheid society some heuristic insights into how to manage this menace. in fact, in terms of historiography (myers, 2008; cohen and middleton, 1970; harries, 1994; peires, 1981; vail, 1989) the term ‘tribe’ may be a misnomer retrofitting forms of identities into pre-colonial african which just did not exist. cohen and middleton (1970: 2) have questioned the history of the term ‘tribe’ and its use by administrators and others in africa, as well as by anthropologists who have adopted the tribe or ethnic group as a focus of analysis. it would seem that the popular notions of tribes and tribalism only emerged in europe and america after the development of fairly clear-cut racist stereotypes concerning africa. earlier travellers, missionaries and explorers spoke of ‘peoples’, ‘kingdoms’, ‘sultanates’, and ‘customs’, but only rarely of tribes. however, by the early twentieth century, colonial administrators and those reporting on african territories were using the term to describe what they believed to be clear-cut and stable groups, each having distinct cultural traditions. in view of the seeming lack of historicity in the terms ‘tribe’ and ‘tribalism’ as socio-cultural categories, this study probes the history of the pre-colonial ethnic relations in the territory which would become south af rica, in order to argue that while forms of group identities were a reality, not only did ‘tribalism’ as understood in post-apartheid society not exist but also--and more critically--that tribal consciousness was the function of colonial conquest (lekgoathi, 2006; mudimbe, 1994; mamdani, 2013). it further holds that the spectre of tribalism in contemporary south af rica is primarily attributable to the history of the strategy of divide and rule of the colonial (and apartheid) state. tribalism became a useful instrument in the hands of the colonial rulers to divide the indigenous populations with the aim of forestalling resistance to external racial conquest and thus sustaining colonial rule (lekgoathi, 2006). it is also worth noting that even in cases where colonial policies did not seem to have direct effect on the creation of tribalism, tribalism remained an epiphenomenon of colonial rule and policies. this last point is supported by the absence of evidence in the oral tradition pointing to conscious tribal resentment between or among the indigenous people whose chiefdoms were largely geographically contiguous or co-extensive (ehret, 2016). on the contrary, historiography points to the heterogeneity of most pre-colonial african societies, such as the nguni and sotho components of the ndzudza ndebele (delius, in bonner at al, 1989). engendered by necessity, processes of ethnic co-mingling, co-existing, assimilation and absorption continued well into the era of european settlement. indeed, where history records conflict, sporadic or chronic, among the indigenous populations prior to the advent of colonialism, such conflicts are largely ascribable to scarcity of resources such as land, and not to any primordial urge to hate ‘the other’ (ehret, 2016; peires, 1981). wholesale socio-economic transformation of the pre-colonial landscape which saw the abrupt changes in the economic make-up of african societies because of the era of proletarianisation, migration system, land dispossession and the creation of the reserves, created conditions of precariousness where ethnic solidarity in the face of potential competition from other ‘outsiders’ became a real threat (marks in vail, 1989). invariably, such periods emerged during the colonial presence (harries, 1994). the tribalisation process was driven by the missionaries, opinion 106v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 the english colonial authorities, as well as the afrikaner governments (i.e., zar and the apartheid government) all of which constitute the collective historical agency that effectively constructed the modern state in its evolutionary stages culminating in the union government of 1910, (mudimbe, 1994; lekgoathi 2006; mamdani 2013). it helps to provide this conceptual clarity given that these three agents (i.e., the christian missionaries as well as the colonial and afrikaner governments) may have each acted alone but all of them manipulated the notion of ethnicity for their respective interests (i.e., divide and conquer). theoretically, it worth reiterating the platitude that ethnicity, like race, is not a ‘natural’ category but a product of complex historical processes (delius in bonner at al, 1989). against this background, ethnicity can be usefully seen as a historically contingent construct. the amaswati, bavenda, matsonga, amazulu and amandebele, for instance, are all break away groups that formed into ethnic units as a result of imposed historical conditions. there are therefore both subjective and objective conditions to the formation of ethnicity. nowhere is this more amply demonstrated than in the history of the amazulu people. as john wright shows in the case of group identity formation of the amazulu people, the notion of ‘zuluness’ is a result of convergence of interests between the colonial policy of indirect rule in natal, the colonial frustrations of the emerging african intelligentsia and the reaction of the natal chiefs to the urbanisation processes that were beginning to undermine their powers (carton at al, 2009). where the creation of ethnic consciousness was neither a direct nor an indirect result of colonial machinations, it most likely resulted from the nascent, novel interests of the african intelligentsia and petty bourgeois as they instrumentalised their relatively privileged social location for both self-preservation and self-affirmation, in the emerging disruptive european modernity (harries, 1994). however, such ethnically-tainted interests were embedded in and were therefore the social outcomes of the constitutive, incipient ensemble of colonial social relations (ibid). prior to colonial conquest, african societies evinced isolated and insignificant cases of identity-based animosity towards one another (peires, 1981; elphic and giliomee 1979). besides the fact that mostly people identified themselves on the clan basis, historiography has shown that the co-mingling and mixing of people (including mass desertions) was par for the course across time and space as dictated by their objective conditions (ehret, 2016). therefore, ethnicity was highly fluid (lekgoathi, 2006). in and of itself, this lack of historicity regarding the systemic and ideologised discrimination of other ethnically different people makes a lie to claims of patterned, hidebound tribally defined group identities. natal was one of the first areas to see the insidious hand of ethnic experimentation. it was in natal that the deliberate strategy that underscored british colonial approach first sputtered to life (mamdani, 2013). according to a body of historical literature sir theophilus shepstone was the main exponent of this strategy in natal (martens in carton at al, 2009; mamdani, 1996; 2013). according to mamdani (2013: 7) “…a theory of history f ramed the agency of the native, set into motion by the colonial legal system, and targeted by its administrative practice. tribalism is reified ethnicity. it is culture pinned to a homeland, culture in fixity, politicised, so that it does not move.” so it was that shepstone, as martens says, “found in the zulu monarchy a model for his system of indirect rule”(martens in carton, 2009: ). chiefs came in handy to the colonialists as the colonial system sought to avoid tempering with the customary institutions and, instead, used them to prop up colonial rule. this was undergirded by the ideology of ‘tribalism,’ propounded into popular consciousness through essentialising the glories of a ‘zulu past’ (ibid). the 1847 natal locations commission report was one of the first documents to outline the principles of shepstone’s native administration and his assertion that prosperity depended on the “management and efficient control opinion theoretically, it worth reiterating the platitude that ethnicity, like race, is not a ‘natural’ categor y but a product of complex historical processes (delius in bonner at al, 1989). against this background, ethnicity can be usefully seen as a historically contingent construct. 107 t h e t h i n k e r of the large native population” which guided colonial policy in the twentieth century (martens in carton, 2009: 125). so, this policy of tribalisation fanned out f rom natal to the rest of the country. in pre-colonial times, many geographic spaces had a conglomeration of ethnic groups living together or sharing borders (ngcukaithobi, 2018; harries, 1994; peires, 1981). in none of these areas does the historical record report toxic ethnic differentiation leading to pronounced ethnically defined resentment or conflicts. mass migration was not unusual among many of indigenous populations in cases of serious, factional disaffection with their monarchies. to be sure, some ethnic communities did submit to the authority of others for a variety of reasons but historiography does not record ethnicity as the primary or even secondary reason for these volitional submission. harries sees the tsonga ethnic consciousness as “very much a human construct, a social product…” which was fabricated over time (harries in vail, 2009: 83). as harries shows, “by 1860 four small semiindependent clusters of the east coast refugees had begun to emerge in the transvaal” (harries in vail, 1989: 84). these are the clans which would later be consolidated into ‘a tsonga tribe’. harries also states that the nkuna and the baloyi clans, who occupied the haernersberg area, fell under the political authority of the pedi chiefs (ibid). once again mutual understanding and deference to the much stronger chiefdoms loom larger as the reasons for this arrangement than identity politics. interestingly, the preceding inter-ethnic co-existence happened outside the context of a colonial presence, which would invariably prove cause for f ractiousness born of self-conscious toxic identities. while, according to harries (in vail, 1989), the people classified under the label ‘tonga’ were generally referred to in a negative way, this does not in any way suggest an ethnic motif. for instance, harries argues that this term was used equally by the zulu speakers and several chiefdoms of southern mozambique. given the multifarious clans and people of shared cultural affinities that lived in the north and south of the spelonken hills, it would have been easy to establish if indeed this pejorative term was ethnically motivated. in addition, harries (in vail 1989) puts down the emergence of a unified tsonga tribe, and thus consciousness, to the agency of christian missionary anthropologists. anthropologists played no small role in the formation of what is known as tsongashangaan people in south af rica. in forging a single tsonga tribe f rom the numerous people, the missionaries perceived to be linguistically related, sometimes extraneous reasons took precedence over the realities of the differences among the people. for instance, the european missionary, henri berthoud “argued f rom a pragmatic perspective that a single language with a common grammar and orthography would reduce the mission’s printing costs” (harries in vail, 1989: 86). it is an indictment that a task of such social and historical implications, as to merge disparate communities into one, could be undertaken for financial reasons. indeed, centuries after the costs were saved south af rica is saddled with the sticky challenges of ‘tribal discrimination’. what accounts for the tribalisation of the tsonga people is the fact that missionaries drew on what they wrongly thought to be similarities between the character of european nationalism and that of af rican people (harries in vail, 1989). this is an important point to understand because it shows us how missionary anthropologists universalised european particularity in their approach to the af rican condition (serequeberhand, 1991). insensitive to the variety of the human experience, they blindly imposed their european understanding of ‘ethnicity’, ‘nation’ and ‘race’ on the af rican world in a way that suggested shared similarities between the two peoples. aware of this flawed manner of proceeding, harries contends that “(c)onsequently, when disputes arose between tsonga and venda and north sotho or vendaspeaking chiefdoms, these were interpreted not as clashes between chiefdoms in the way that intratsonga disputes were, but as ‘race conflicts’” (harries in vail 1989: 90). departing f rom such elementary misconception about different af rican communities or chiefdoms, missionary anthropologists proceeded to consolidate these different people into one ‘tribe’, thus laying the grounds for tribal particularity where one never was historically justified. for their side, af ricans identified themselves at a clan level ‘through the use of a common patronymic’, while those they absorbed f rom outside were assimilated through the opinion 108v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 adoption of such patronymic (harries in vail, 1989). the cultural force of a patronymic served a cohesive and centripetal purpose, capable of drawing into one common identity disparate people. once again, we learn that outsiders were volitionally assimilated into their host chiefdoms without their ethnic make-up being the issue for as long as they both adopted and deferred to the prevailing patronymic. at any rate, the illustrative point in this observation is the fact that ethnicity would not have been an issue since both the host community and the in-migrant saw themselves in clan terms and ‘belonging to the land of’ rather than as a distinctive ethnic entity (ibid). with the development of mining and agrarian capitalism in south af rica the notion of tribe assumed some practical importance for the interests of both migrant labourers and capital, which has been known to manipulate or occasion social difference to f ragment the labour ranks (chibber, 2013; myers, 2008). the native land act of 1913 is said to have been meant to undercut the af ricans’ independent means of living, forcing them to become cheap labour (magubane, 1979; wolpe, 1980). this became particularly pointed after the anglo-boer war, where wealthy farmers and the emerging mineral revolution agitated for actions against this perceived economic independence of af ricans (harries in vail, 1989; terreblanche, 2001). af ricans were dispossessed of land in different ways where, “land bought by a combination of more than six af ricans had to be purchased on a tribal basis and held by the minister of native affairs for the tribe concerned” (harries in vail, 1989: 94). officialdom was embarking on the strategy of forced tribalisation, while at the same time land dispossession and being pushed into the predefined reserves exposed af ricans to the insufferable economic hardships, the survival of which called for consolidation of group identities. with the homogenisation already creating a f ramework for tribe as a mode of identity, against the background of harsh economic conditions, it was a matter of time before some enterprising individuals exploited these contingent conditions to their advantage. harries says that ‘(o)ut of this fluid situation arose a new class of emergent petty bourgeois farmers who, equipped with vernacular literacy, were to lay the basis for the emergence of a tsonga ethnic consciousness’ (in vail, 1989: 95). with land dispossession beginning to bite and expulsion f rom ‘white areas’ swelling the ranks of the reserve population with little or no chiefly power to provide direction or mitigate their hardships, those with the economic means became natural leaders in the face of the sudden power vacuum in people’s lives (ibid). this way tribal consciousness found lush conditions for germination and ossification. harries tells us that ‘the war office was particularly mindful that if the authorities of the chiefs were to collapse it would be replaced by a wider and more unified political consciousness’ (in vail, 1989: 98), so they made sure that chiefs did duties of civil servants, including collection of tax, supply of labour for public works and so on. as in case of natal, chiefs were used as an instrument for the entrenchment of tribalism (ibid). it would appear that co-operation among and between chiefdoms of different ethnic make-up was anything but tribal. more than anything, this political engagement was driven by self-interest, common interests and other forms of self-preservation. delius (in bonner at al, 1989: 237) reports that “(i)n 1882 the pedi pretender mampuru sought refuge amongst the ndzudza after having murdered his brother sekhukhune’, and that nyabela, the southern ndebele chief, ‘refused to hand him over to the zar (zuid af rikanse republiek)…” while various reasons could be adduced to explain the consent of the southern ndebele chief’s agreeing to mampuru’s request for sanctuary, the former’s refusal to hand him over to the colonial authorities despite the risks such refusal entailed to himself, points to mutual compassion and f raternal relations between the two chiefdoms. the most striking aspect of this episode is the appearance of inter-ethnic solidarity. it could be plausibly argued that whatever expediency induced nyabela to accommodate mampuru could not override ethnic resentment, had the two chiefdoms had a history of ethnic rancour. in fact, there would have been all the more reason either to rebuff mampuru’s request, or give him away to the colonial authorities when the chips were down. even at the level of commoners, one finds instances of interethnic solidary. for instance, after being subjected to forced labour on boer farms following their defeat by zar, some of the ndzudza ndebele managed to escape and found sanctuary among other af rican societies, not necessary of ndebele origin (delius in opinion 109 t h e t h i n k e r bonner et al, 1989). delius states that zebediela, the northern ndebele chief, ‘was issued with a stern warning’ after two escapee southern ndebele women were seen in his jurisdiction (ibid). while there have been debates among historians as to the reasons for the survival of the southern ndebele’s cultural distinctiveness into modern day south af rica, delius attributes this phenomenon to the southern ndebele’s reaction to conquest (delius in bonner at al, 1989). in this regard, delius (in bonner at al, 1989: 248) submits that: the experience of the ndzudza serves as a reminder that while ethnic identities and traditions may be moulded or even invented by elites, they can also be crafted f rom below by men and women working with available elements of culture to fashion ideologies and identities which help to sustain them in a harsh and changing world. according to delius (in bonner at al, 1989), the foregoing leads to the compelling inference that people tend to develop or consolidate group identity because of the unique, harsh conditions they experience collectively. given their shared ethnic background, the southern ndebele people reacted to the destruction of their chiefdom by the zar through consolidating group solidarity and identity expressed through material culture. the only way of rebuilding their lives was through cementing common group consciousness which manifested itself in their artistry. nonetheless, this conclusion in no way implicates a conscious effort on the part of this language community to set themselves apart by reason of exclusionary identity. among the zulu people ethnic consciousness was just as much forged by the hand of the colonial authorities. shula marks argues that “…twentieth century ethnic consciousness has been the product of intense ideological labour by the black intelligentsia of natal and the white ideologues of south af rica, designed to conf ront new and dangerous social conditions” (in vail, 1989: 217). thus, natal saw the emergence and intensification of ethnic consciousness among the zulu people following the political calculations of those who saw an existential threat to the status quo as a result of the processes of proletarianization (ibid). atavistic and primeval appeals to ethnic identity, in order to corral the growing black working class into conservative and backward-looking form of consciousness, become a rallying point that would help maintain and perpetual the prevailing colonial power relations. alarmed at the high rate of militarisation, especially among the af rican working class, the colonial authorities saw tribalisation as an efficacious means of stemming the tide of radicalisation and shoring up colonialism (ibid). marks cites g.n heaton nicholls, whom she describes as ‘an architect of segregation’, as the clearest evidence yet that tribalisation was a blatant official policy. nicholls intones that “(i)f we do not get back to communalism we will most certainly arrive very soon at communism’ (ibid)” class-based politics and nationalist impulse among af ricans in natal in the 1920s therefore saw ‘reactionary’ measures against the formation of several black traditionalist organisations. ironically, among such cultural formations was the ‘zulu cultural society’, formed by no less a nationalist figure than chief albert luthuli in 1937. luthuli’s motif was rather noble in that he had sought to help ordinary people through cultural affirmation (ibid). on the whole, however, the zulu cultural society would be used as a bulwark by the colonial segregationists to blunt the sharpening political consciousness of the zulu working class. the above historical episodes give credence to the contention that tribalism was regarded by the colonial administrators as a useful ideology to bankroll the durability of colonialism. black workingclass militancy was thus seen as an outcrop of the opinion the above historical episodes give credence to the contention that tribalism was regarded by the colonial administrators as a useful ideology to bankroll the durability of colonialism. black workingclass militancy was thus seen as an outcrop of the twin phenomena of uncontrollable urbanisation and proletarianisation, which “were acting to transform african ‘ancient habits and customs, their beliefs and modes of being’“ 110v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 twin phenomena of uncontrollable urbanisation and proletarianisation, which “were acting to transform af rican ‘ancient habits and customs, their beliefs and modes of being’“(marks in vail, 1989: 219). yet if the white rulers feared the shifting sands of time, so did af rican chiefs, headmen and homestead chiefs (ibid). while it may not be given that urbanisation negates traditional modes of rule, it would seem as if it does carry within it the seeds of such antithetical culture wrought by the inexorable modern, urban conditions. with their grip on power sliding, the zulu traditional leadership threw in their lot with the colonisers--or perhaps their interests just happened to converge. marks says that as a result of these menacing developments the natal native affairs commission of 1906-7 heard torrents of such complaints f rom the zulu chiefs, headmen and homestead headmen (ibid). in this mix, the black intelligentsia also featured prominently. people like john langalibalele dube, leader of the af rican national congress natal faction and intellectuals such as h.i.e and r.r.r dlomo and many others of modernist cast and upper social crust, sought to restore what they saw as disintegrating zulu ways (marks in vail, 1989). importantly, formations such as zulu society also aimed to push for the recognition of the zulu monarchy (ibid). traditionalists could not come to terms with their loss of power as modernisation decomposed fossilised modes of being in which they had been comfortable. at an objective level, one could argue that even the ordinary (but mostly traditional) zulu men began to feel the effects of these social changes, especially as poverty and social dislocation took effect, ‘undermining patriarchal social relations’ (marks in vail, 1989: 221). under these fertile historical conditions, the consolidation of ethnic consciousness was not going to be a hard task. at the same time, it is equally not inconceivable to see how such deeply entrenched processes of zulu ethnic self-awareness would eventuate in morphing into permanent social forms. with a plethora of related developments, zulu ethno-nationalism would linger on into the post-apartheid era. evidence of such discriminatory instances, fuelled by zulu tribal particularism, were recorded across many areas of natal. among these are the experiences of professor zeke mphahlele, who encountered zulu discrimination in adams college, and reports of zulu antagonism towards south af ricans of indian descent (marks, 1989: 233). the colonial politics of divide and rule did not stop at the level of creating ‘tribalism’. it also racialized society within the same context of divide and rule. according to ian golding, “a distinct coloured identity…is the outcome of the history of divide and rule” (in vail, 1989: 241). pre-colonial ‘south ‘af rica’ was never burdened by inter-ethnic strife between the khoi, the san and the bantu, contra post-apartheid claims to that effect (peires, 1981; ngcukaithoni, 2018). ehret (2016) emphasises the peaceful co-existence among the three language communities, while legassick (in elphick and giliomee, 1979) explains that where f rictions erupted between any two of the three groups, resources such as grazing and livestock was invariably the cause. post-apartheid narratives about the history of bantu domination, usurpation and dispossession of ‘the land belonging’ the two other communities may very well be the function of post-colonial historical memory (phillips in seixas, 2004). in fact, it would appear that their relations did not differ f rom those among af ricans, who, instead of ethnic loyalties, related to each other as clans and people belonging to chiefs rather than distinctive ethnic groups. for instance, “in 1799 a rising of khoi and xhosa under ndlhambi shattered the complacency of the first british administration (17951803)” (goldin in vail, 1989: 241). there were several such inter-ethnic co-operation alliances to head off colonial domination. for example, the khoi and the tembu collaborated through military alliance against colonial military attacks in 1851 (ibid). one would not expect two antagonistic communities to readily enter into some alliance when it could have suited one of them, especially the weaker one, to exact revenge through aligning with the intruding external forces. this is exactly what happened when the amamfengu community, which had been at odds with amaxhosa and amatembu chieftaincies before colonial arrival, readily embraced colonial intrusion as force multiplier to their cause. this unity in action stung the british into reverting to their time-tested strategy of divide and rule. one result of this political calculation was a move to draw the san and the khoi into the colonial administration through job incentives, while shutting the doors in the face of the amaxhosa (ibid). in time, this led opinion 111 t h e t h i n k e r to discernible social differentiation among these language groups. the same strategy was extended to the amaxhosa and the amatembu on the one hand and the mfengu on the other (ibid). in the early colonial period, the designation ‘coloured’ was used interchangeably with the term ‘black’ or ‘negro’, throughout the colonial world and especially the british dominated political geography. in south af rica matters changed in 1904. the ethnic distinctions emerged in the 1904 census which included ‘white’, ‘bantu’ and ‘coloured’. white parties serenaded coloured communities during the introduction of qualified f ranchise in the cape, with the object of not only numeric preponderance marginalising af ricans (ibid). a conscious effort was made to sensitise the coloured communities to the political advantages of dissociating, as well as ethnically differentiating themselves, f rom af ricans (ibid). for good measures, material incentives were introduced to buttress the social differentiation between these two communities. the form these material incentives took included training in artisan skills, to be monopolised by coloured communities, thereby ensuring that even at the level of working class these racialised differences endured. tragically, once people are differentiated for material incentives, in a few generations this artificial separation seems ‘natural’. the colonial entrenchment of tribal consciousness sometimes came in both direct and indirect ways, as in the case of the xhalanga district between 1865 and 1883. heavily influenced by the colonial ways, including both western style education and religion, the amamfengu, or ‘school people’ as they were known, were consciously differentiated f rom the ‘red people’ or amaqaba, made up of amaxhosa and abathembu. ntsebeza makes the case that ‘missionaries were instrumental in the creation of these divisions’ (2005: 40). distinguishing the two ethnic groups was the extent to which each accepted western influences, while cultural borders proved permeable on each side. the selfperception of the ‘school people’ was one where they were disposed to bypass the local chiefs in favour of the local commissioners for their disputes. again, ethnic tensions arose in qumbu after what the local population saw as the sub-colonisation by the amamfengu immigrant community, who were distinguished by being ‘christian and literate’, and were to some extent ‘forged in the process of colonisation’ (beinard and bundu, 1987: 108). such had been the historical depth of the colonial inspired divisions between the amamfengu and all other ethnic groups in the colonial cape colony that by the time of bantustans in the 1970s, hostilities between lenox sebe (xhosa) and justice mabandla (mfengu) assumed an open ethnic barrier. ‘anonymous’ explains the historical roots of these durable ethnic divisions by ascribing them to the 1835 influence of the missionaries who persuaded amamfengu ‘to desert their xhosa patrons and seek colonial protection’ (in vail, 1989: 396). it is abundantly clear f rom the historical record that ethnicity was deliberately introduced in south af rica, and indeed to the whole af rican continent, as a strategy of divide and rule. prior to the onset of colonialism there is no cogent evidence of ethnically defined conflicts. instead, in southern af rica especially, there is strong evidence of many chiefdoms being receptive to in-migration f rom people who may or may not be of their same cultural affiliations, as the survival of many chiefdoms depended on their numeric strength. the basotho under moshoeshoe thrived as a conglomerate of refugees f rom following the advent of difeqane. essentialising the notion of a tribe, as well as imbuing it with political and economic utility, was the insidious stratagem of colonialism. it is true that there are instances where there appears to be ethnic consciousness in the absence of the colonial authorities. in such cases, such as that of the southern ndebele people, the historical context would still suggest that people were reacting to a specific situation. in any case, the southern ndebele people did not so much differentiate themselves f rom the ‘others’ or engage in invidious comparison as to draw closer together in the face of overwhelming odds. there were also cases where the af rican intelligentsia, petty bourgeois, and traditionalists sought to return to pre-colonial ‘af rican mores and customs’ as a rearguard and indeed last-ditch effort to prevent the inevitable the inexorable hand of modernisation that was sweeping aside all the cultural norms that used to constitute their world. for their part, the opinion 112v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 emergent af rican petty bourgeois sought to seize the moment by playing to the ethnic gallery for their own economic self-interests. lastly, it is worth bearing in mind that some social processes take on a life of their own--once the seed has been planted. today, most ethnic challenges draw inspiration f rom these historical roots, where the notion of a ‘tribe’ is accepted passively as if the concept is part of the natural order of things. such is af rica’s history! bibliography anonymous, 1989. ethnicity and pseudo-ethnicity in the ciskei (in the creation of tribalism in southern africa, ed. vail, leroy), berkeley and los angeles, university of california press beinart, wand bundy, c. 1987. hidden struggles in rural south africa, johannesburg. ravan press cohen, r. and middleto, j. 1970. from tribe to nation in africa. studies in incorporation processes. chandler publishing company. pennsylvania delius, p.1989. the ndzudza ndebele: indenture and the making of ethnic identity, 1883-1914 (in holding their ground, class, locality and culture in 19th and 20th century south africa eds. bonner, philip, hofmeyr, isabel and lodge, tom), witwatersrand university press (ravan press) ehret, c. 2016. the civilisations of africa, a history to 1800. charlottesville and london. university of virginia press. goldin, i. 1989. coloured identity and coloured politics in the western cape region of south africa (in the creation of tribalism in southern africa, ed. vail, leroy) university of california press, berkeley and los angeles. university of california press harries, p.1989. exclusion, classification and internal colonialism; the emergence of ethnicity among the tsonga-speakers of south africa (in the creation of tribalism in southern africa ed. leroy vail), university of california press harries, p. 1994. work culture and identity. migrant labourers in mozambique and south africa, c.1860--1910 la hausse, p. 2000. restless identities; signatures of nationalism, zulu ethnicity and history in the lives of pretros lamula and lymon maling. pietermaritzburg. university of natal legassick, m. 1979. the northern frontier to c 1840: the rise and decline of the griqua people, in elphick and giliomee (eds), the shaping of south african society, 1652--1840 lekgoathi, s.p. ‘ethnicity and identity: struggle and contestation in the making of transvaal northern ndebele, ca 1860 – 2005, (unpublished ph.d. thesis, university of minnesota, twin cities, march 2006 mamdani, m. 1996. citizen and subject, contemporary african and the legacy of late colonialism. princeton: princeton university press mamdani, m.2013. define and rule, native as political identity, wits university press, 2013 marks, s. 1989. , patriotism, patriarchy and purity: natal and the politics of zulu ethnic consciousness (in the creation of tribalism in southern africa edited by leroy vail), university of california press martens, j. 2009. enlightenment theories of civilisation and savagery in british natal; the colonial origins of the (zulu) african barbarism myth (in zulu identities: being zulu, past and present, eds. benedict carton, john laband, and jabulani sithole mudimbe, v.y. 1994. the invention of africa. gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. indiana. indiana university press myers, j.c. 2008. indirect rule in south africa. tradition, modernity, and the costuming of political power. university of rochester press. rochester ngcukaitobi,t. 2018. the land is ours. south africa’s first black lawyers and the birth of constitutionalism. penguin books. cape town ntsebeza, l .2005. democracy compromised: chiefs and the politics of land in south africa, hsrc peires, j. 1981. the house of phalo. a history of the xhosa people in the days of their independence. jonathan ball publishers. cape town phillips, m.s. 2004. history, memory, and historical distance, in peter seixas (ed), theorising historical consciousness serequeberhan, t. 1991. african philosophy. the essential readingss. paragon house. minnisota terreblanche, s. 2002. a history of inequality in south africa 1652–2002. durban. university of kwa-zulu natal press webster, e. and pampallis, k. 2017. the unresoloved national question; left thought under apartheid. wits university press wright, john.2009. reflections on the politics of being ‘zulu’ (in zulu identities, being zulu, past and present, ds. benedict carton, benedict, john laband, and jabulani sithole university of kwazulu-natal press wolpe, h. 1980. the articulation of modes of production. routledge and kegan paul. london opinion 75 t h e t h i n k e r peer review abstract opinions are divided on the conduct and nature of the 1967–70 nigerian civil war, occasioned partly by the igbo secession and declaration of the republic of biafra. some believe that the nigerian government adopted a genocidal war strategy characterised by mass violence against civilians, aggressive blockade of the eastern region, artificial famine, and hateful/threatening utterances by many military commanders, accompanied by about one million civilian casualties. on the other hand, some are of the view that the actions of some nigerian military officers and men were not in consonant with the position of the nigerian government during the war, but were influenced by their animosity towards the igbo. in post-civil war nigeria, igbo-hausa/fulani relations and political discourses are increasingly tense and indicative of a fearful resurgence of mass violence due to prevalent lies, propaganda, and misrepresentations –verbally, on paper, and online/on social media – particularly among the youths on both sides. this paper argues that the historical crisis-ridden relations between the igbo and the hausa/fulani, the attendant 1966 mass killings of igbos in the north, the nature of the war strategies of the federal government during the civil war, and the currently mounting tension are all direct results of contending ethnic propaganda including hate speech, lies, and name-calling in a bid to gain political and strategic advantages over other ethnic groups. thus, this paper is a historical inquiry into the role of propaganda and hate speech in socio-political interactions, discourses, and incitements of mass violence among the heterogeneous nigerian population, particularly the igbo and the hausa/ fulani. the paper proposes legislative, constitutional, and active citizenship advocacies to address the menace. the article utilises primary and secondary sources to analyse and interpret the subject-matter of the paper. ethnic propaganda, hate speech, and mass violence in igbo-hausa/ fulani relations in postcolonial nigeria by james olusegun adeyeri and jackson a. aluede peer review 76 introduction and historical background nigeria is a heterogeneous nation of over 250 ethnic nationalities. the dominant ethnic groups consist of the igbo, the hausa/fulani, and the yoruba. the igbo, the yoruba, and other minor ethnic groups (ef ik, ibibio, edo, ijo) who dominate the southern part of the country are predominantly christian. on the other hand, the hausa/fulani – along with other ethnic groups (tiv, jukun, kanem, igala) – occupy the northern part of the country and are predominantly muslim. the different ethnic nationalities that made up the federation were independent states before they were conquered and incorporated into the british colonial empire. in 1914 they were amalgamated, ushering the birth of the nigerian state under british colonial rule. during the era of colonial rule, the british colonial masters orchestrated divide and rule colonial policies that divided the northern and southern parts of the country. the era of decolonisation saw regional politics and other sectional divisive tendencies that polarised the ranks of the three main ethnic groups alongside the minorities. the lack of unity and a weak sense of nationhood marked and undermined nigerian nationalism and the independence struggle so much that, barely three years preceding independence in 1960, the hausa/fulani-dominated north declared that the region was not ready for independence, as against the aspiration of the south, which was vigorously pushing for total f reedom and nigerian statehood. it is imperative to note that the nigerian state was built on a f ragile foundation, which made it susceptible to ethnic and regional tensions, schisms, conflicts, and instability right f rom its infancy. existing conflict studies literature on nigeria have extensively explored the nigerian military coup d’états, the civil war, the insurgency, and inter-communal conflicts f rom political, economic, and ethnic/tribal perspectives (kirkgreene, 1967; oyeweso, 1992; adeyeri, 2015), but the specif ic role of ethnic propaganda and hate speech in violent conflicts in the country is yet to be adequately studied and fully revealed. therefore, the main thrust of this paper is to investigate the trajectory and role of ethnic propaganda and hate speech in igbo-hausa/fulani relations and mass violence during the postcolonial era. the study shall also consider corrective policy and other response measures. conceptual clarification: ethnic propaganda and hate speech ethnicity over the years has attracted considerable attention in academia, government cycles, and the public domain – as it has been manipulated by some groups of people to inflict pain, misery, and death on others they conceive as different f rom them in terms of language, religion, culture, and worldview. adlparvar and tadros write that: ‘ethnicity is a hotly disputed concept. since it emerged as an important form of collective identity in the 1960s, it has been appropriated by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes. from political mobilisation that uses the necessity of ethnic homogeneity as the basis for expelling populations of different racial backgrounds to the conflation of ethnicity with religion (as when people assume muslims are an ethnic category), and the reduction of complex geostrategic and historic conflicts to ‘ethnic strife’’ (2016: 123). ethnicity, according to gurr (2009), has to do partly with the primordial interpretation of issues that recognise the differences among humankind and societies based on their race, language, customs, norms, and civilisation. one of the ways some groups of people or ethnic groups have promoted ethnicity negatively is through ethnic propaganda. this is the deliberate act of one ethnic group inciting its people against another ethnic group through the media and other platforms to inflict pain, assault, and – in some cases – mass violence and death (deng, 1997). history is replete with examples of states and leaders who deployed ethnic propaganda – such as nazi germany against the jews, and several others in other parts of the world. in af rica, there is ample evidence of ethnic propaganda between rival ethnic groups and the resultant consequences in the outbreaks of mass violence and conflicts in the great lakes and the mano river regions, east and central af rica, the horn of af rica, as well as in west af rica and other parts of the continent (aluede, 2019; wimmer, 2004). in nigeria, during the civil war, ethnic propaganda played a major role in inciting some ethnic groups against others. for instance, igbo and hausa/fulani relations were heightened negatively through ethnic v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 77 t h e t h i n k e r peer review propaganda and this influenced the attitudes of some of the combatants and senior military officers during the war to pursue the annihilation of the igbo. the rivalry between both ethnic groups can be traced back to the colonial period and worsened during the failed january 15 1966 coup (amadi, 2020). the coup plotters were dominated by igbo military officers, while the victims of the coup were prominent hausa/fulani military officers and civilians, including the prime minister of the country, sir tafawa balewa (amechi, 2016). the hausa/fulani civilians, military officers, and soldiers took revenge through a counter-coup on july 15 1966. the victims of the coup were the igbo civilians, military officers, and soldiers – including the head of state, general aguiyi ironsi, as well as igbo civilians massacred in northern nigeria (o jo and fagbohun, 2014). since the end of the civil war, igbo-hausa/fulani relations have been underlined by mutual suspicion maintained through subtle ethnic propaganda against one another. hate speech, like ethnic propaganda, has equally received attention among academia, government cycles, and the public domain. this is because of the magnitude of the negative consequences that have emanated f rom hate speech globally. the phenomenon of hate speech dates back centuries but has become a major issue of discourse in recent times due to its scope, conceptual meaning, and definition. the literature on hate speech agrees that it is morally wrong, harmful, and dehumanising to its victims (brown, 2017; noorani, 1992). this is because hate speech has generated a negative impact on society and has been exploited by individuals and groups sometimes driven by ethnic and religious sentiments to incite or provoke disunity and disaffection among rival individuals, groups, associations, and ethnic groups (sorabjee, 1993). however, opinions are divided on what constitutes hate speech? hate speech is a term in legal and political theory that refers to verbal conduct – and other symbolic, communicative action – which wilfully ‘expresses intense antipathy towards a group or towards an individual based on membership group’, where the groups in question are usually those distinguished by ethnicity, religion, or sex (simpson, 2013). seglow (2016) conceives hate speech as speech that attacks (and is intended to attack) its targets because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and so on, and which conveys intense feelings of apathy. ezeibe (2015: 4) refers to hate speech as any speech, gesture, conduct, writing, or display which could incite people to violence or prejudicial action. in other words, hate speech manifests in various forms and is not limited to identity-prejudicial abuse and harassment, the use of slurs and epithets, some extremist political speech, and certain displays of ‘hate symbols’ (for example, swastikas or burning crosses) (simpson, 2013: 702). hate speech is an abuse of f ree speech or f reedom of speech. the negative manifestations of hate speech in different societies across the world have led to litigations as well as the ban or restrictions of comments that can incite violence, and punishment on those responsible for such comments (american bar association, 1994). this notwithstanding, however, some are of the view that punishing people based on comment or speech is an inf ringement on their constitutional rights. this development has continued to generate controversy among scholars based on their varied interpretations and conceptions of hate speech. in nigeria, it is believed that hate speech gained momentum during the colonial period among the various ethnic groups, particularly between the north and south, and spread into the fabric of the respective institutions that evolved during the period (nzemeka, 2021). similarly, it progressed among the rival political parties during the colonial period, and into the postcolonial era (bukarti, 2017). hate speech was at its ascendancy before, during, and after the nigerian civil war, among the combatants f rom the hate speech manifests in various forms and is not limited to identity-prejudicial abuse and harassment, the use of slurs and epithets, some extremist political speech, and cer tain displays of ‘hate symbols’ (for example, swastikas or burning crosses) (simpson, 2013: 702). hate speech is an abuse of free speech or freedom of speech. peer review 78 nigerian side and the biaf ra secessionists (ahmad, 2017). senior military officers f rom both camps made provocative hate speech comments against one another – such as ‘killing anything in sight,’ ‘kaffari’, and ‘infidel’ – and this fuelled the bitterness between the igbo and the hausa/fulani (osuntokun and nwokike, 2002). hate speech between the igbo and the hausa/fulani has been on the increase after the country’s civil war, arising f rom the fall out that led to the nigerian civil war, the perceived marginalisation of the igbos, and other contentious issues in the nigerian polity. despite efforts by successive administrations to tackle the spread of hate speech in the political space, the tension between the igbo and the hausa/fulani has remained unresolved owing to bitter animosity, mistrust, and perceptions. hate speech, propaganda, and the politics of the first republic nigeria attained independence f rom british colonial rule on 1 october 1960, and entered the global arena as a country with rich potential and a leading voice in promoting af rican uniqueness to the world. however, domestic challenges arising f rom rivalry amongst the country’s ethnic groups presented a major threat to nigeria’s unity and progress. before independence was achieved, the political space was already polarised, as demonstrated in the factionalisation of the political parties along ethnic lines during the colonial period (osuntokun and nwokike, 2002). likewise, each party’s quest to dominate the others and to secure the highest political office in the land witnessed all manner of political strategies such as propaganda and hate speech. interestingly, the political elites were at the foref ront in promoting hate speech against their rival ethnic groups. this was one of the features of the politics of the first republic. for instance, leading political figures – namely the premiers of the northern and western regions and nigeria’s governor general – were guilty of hate speech: ‘the igbo are too dominating, if you employ an igbo man as a labourer, he will like to take over as foreman within a short while – late sardauna of sokoto, sir ahmadu bello. the god of af rica has created the igbo nation to lead the children of af rica f rom the bondage of ages – nigeria’s first president, dr. nnamdi azikiwe. nnamdi azikiwe’s policy was to corrode the self-respect of the yoruba people as a group to build up the igbo as master race – chief obafemi awolowo.’ (ezeibe, 2015) it is not surprising that ethnic rivalry and the quest for dominance by the three major ethnic groups fuelled hate speech and propaganda during the first republic and contributed to its extinction in january 1966. reminiscence of igbo-hausa/fulani rivalry before the nigerian civil war nigeria faced numerous challenges after the attainment of independence, namely: the 1962 census and action group (ag) crisis, the disputed 1963 census result, the 1964 election crisis, the 1965 western region crisis, the rising tide of corruption among politicians and senior military officers, the entrenchment of ethnicity within the political space, and the contestation for power among political elites (aworawo, 2002). the postcolonial political elites were unable to find lasting solutions to these challenges that were partly a carry-over f rom colonial rule and a manifestation of a politics of bitterness displaced by the country’s founding fathers in their quest to promote their ethnic group and political party above others. some young military officers were driven by the desire to curb corruption and ethnic rivalry, and to chart the country onto the path of unity and nationhood – but their efforts were truncated by the political elites at independence (oluwajuyitan, 2003; oyeweso, 1992; ladele, 1987). these young officers were led by majors chukwuma kaduna nzeogwu and were primarily f rom the southern part of the country. they were of igbo extraction, except for major adewale ademoyega, who is a yoruba (oyeweso, 1992). these young officers struck on 15 january 1966, in a bloody military coup d’état. in the course of carrying out their assignment, senior military officers f rom the northern region were killed, as were sir ahmadu bello, the premier of the northern region, and sir tafawa balewa, nigeria’s first republic prime minister (siollun, 2009). unfortunately, the coup failed and the military took power. the most senior officer at the time, major general johnson aguyi-ironsi, the general officer commanding (goc) of the nigerian army, v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 79 t h e t h i n k e r peer review became the country’s first military head of state (reviewcious, 2018). major general johnson aguyiironsi was an igbo man. the planning and execution of the january military coup were dominated by igbo officers, coupled with general aguyi-ironsi’s eventual seizure of power, and the casualties were mainly hausa/fulani officers and political leaders. this soon gave rise to the interpretation (at least in the north) that it was an igbo coup primarily targeted at the northern power elite, or what soon became popularly known as ‘igbo plot theory’, indicative of a grand agenda to entrench igbo hegemony over the remaining ethnic nationalities within the fledgling nigerian state. however, there is a need to point out that rather than a violent seizure of power with its attendant negative potential implications for civil governance and national unity and stability, the plotters ought to have allowed the citizenry to adopt the better option of changing the government through the constitutional method of elections. also, given the deep ethnic divides and other centrifugal forces prevalent in the country during the colonial period – which gained ascendancy following the attainment of independence – coupled with the ethnic origin lop-sidedness of the coup planners, and the execution and casualties earlier analysed, it is difficult to dismiss the view that the coup was an igbo tribal plot. following the nature by which the january coup was orchestrated and, more especially, the pattern by which the coup was executed, whereby the victims were of hausa/fulani extraction, it was only a matter of time before the north retaliated. the northern off icers/soldiers retaliated on 29 july 1966 and their targets were the igbos. several igbo military off icers were killed as well as civilians in the north. also, a victim of the july coup was the country’s head of state, major-general ironsi, who was on a state visit to the western region. he and his host colonel adekunle fajuyi were killed by the coup plotters (aworawo, 2002). observers of nigeria’s political development, after the january coup, aff irmed that apart f rom the killings of hausa/fulani in the f irst coup, the actions of ironsi, particularly the nature of his appointment of people of his extraction and the outlawing of the hausa language test which was a core requirement for employment in the northern civil service, provoked the retaliation of the north against the igbos. the promulgation of decree 34 by the ironsiled military government worsened the already tense political atmosphere in the land. the decree replaced the federal structure with a unitary system of government, thereby abolishing the pre-existing regional structure, and unified former regional public services, among other unitary provisions that were upheld by the military government. the decision of ironsi to replace the unitary system of government with the federal system was vehemently opposed in the northern part of the country. amidst the chaos, the emirs (northern traditional rulers) openly threatened secession of the north f rom nigeria unless the unification decree was nullified (johnson, 1990). the development appeared to have confirmed northern suspicions and fears of igbo domination, culminating in the july military coup led by northern soldiers against their igbo colleagues in the military. following the success of the july coup, there was jubilation in the northern part of the country. in the process, the jubilant crowd – with the battle cry araba (‘let us part’) – descended on the igbos residing in the north, and several of them were killed (meredith, 2005). likewise, in the military cycle, many igbo officers – including lieutenant colonels gabriel okonweze and israel okoro, majors christian anuforo, christopher emelifonwu, joseph ihedigbo, bernard nnamani, theophilus nzegwu, peter obi, john obienu, donatus okafor, captains r. agbazue, j. chukwueke, l. dilibe, i. idika, h. iloputaife, t. iweanya, and many others including about 200 nonthe decree replaced the federal structure with a unitar y system of government, thereby abolishing the preexisting regional structure, and unified former regional public ser vices, among other unitar y provisions that were upheld by the militar y government. the decision of ironsi to replace the unitar y system of government with the federal system was vehemently opposed in the nor thern par t of the countr y. peer review 80 commissioned officers (ncos) – were killed during the mutiny and violent change of government (alao, 1990; obiozor, 1994). some igbo civilians, including those fleeing, were not spared either. in kano on 1 october 1966, mutinying northern soldiers mobilised local thugs to help them identify igbo abodes, following which thousands of igbos were murdered in places such as the airport and railway station. the january and july military coups opened a new chapter in nigeria’s political history and, more especially, in igbo-hausa/fulani relations. they furthered entrenched divisions among ethnic groups and heightened the seeds of discord and animosity that have lasted up to the present day. likewise, the development fuelled the use of unf riendly words against each other, regarded today as hate speech. following the killing of ironsi, lieutenant-colonel yakubu gowon was made head of state through a consensus of some leading senior military officers. the choice of gowon was rejected by colonel o jukwu, the governor of the eastern region (aworawo, 2002). he affirmed that gowon was not the most senior officer to take over power following the death of ironsi. furthermore, following the killings of igbos in the north, he pleaded with them to return home. unfortunately, the failure of the top military hierarchy to resolve their differences, after several reconciliatory moves at home and abroad, culminated in the outbreak of thirty months of civil war between the biaf ra secessionists (dominated by the igbos) and the nigerian state. hate speech, ethnic propaganda, and mass violence: igbo-hausa/fulani relations during the nigeria/biaf ra civil war the inability of the political actors in the corridors of powers at the federal and regional levels, in particular in the eastern region, to settle their political differences led to the outbreak of the country’s civil war. prior to the outbreak of the war, the then-head of state, major-general gowon, created 12 states from the four regions’ federal structure (amuwo, 1992). following the development, the defunct eastern region administration and leaders of thought concluded that the interests of their people could no longer be advanced and ensured within the nigerian state (akpan, 1971; lai, 2021). therefore, under the leadership of colonel ojukwu, the former eastern region military governor, the people of the region on 30 may 1967 declared their sovereign state, the republic of biafra, thereby dissolving all pre-existing political, economic, and other ties between them and the nigerian federation. the jurisdiction of the new state covered the entire territory, the continental shelf, and the territorial waters of former south-eastern nigeria (kirkgreene, 1967; alao, 1990). the war was marked by mass violence and atrocities against both combatants and civilians. as de st. jorre (1972) has pointed out, both the federal and biafran sides committed massacres during military confrontations and the immediate post-combat period. it is imperative to state that the federal military government was controlled by the hausa/fulani; likewise, the nigerian armed forces that engaged the biafra forces seeking separation from the nigerian state. during the early period of the war, following biafra’s surprise invasion and capture of the midwest region, murtala’s hurriedly established second division of the nigerian army massacred many biafran prisoners of war (pows), and igbo civilians in their hundreds due to their sympathy for the biafran soldiers, after expelling biafran troops from the region. some soldiers of the division also engaged in a looting spree, after the division’s multiple failed amphibious attacks on onitsha and resultant huge casualties. after the division eventually captured onitsha via ground invasion, some federal troops looted occupied towns, harassed civilians’ wives, and even committed armed robbery on an asababased bank (momoh, 2000). although existing evidence indicates that both sides deployed foreign mercenaries in their war efforts, the federal air force egyptian mercenary fighter pilots were notorious for frequently attacking civilian targets, including many red cross shelters, instead of military targets. also, federal forces launched attacks against biafran hospitals and health personnel, and french doctors working as volunteers with the french red cross. it is worth noting that the international media focus on the worsening humanitarian disaster inside biafra and the need for an appropriate response to such human tragedies was the basis for the eventual formation of the now globally well-known médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders) (new world encyclopedia, 2021; bortolloti, 2004). the aggressive land, naval, and air sieges on the eastern region by federal forces f rom the onset v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 81 t h e t h i n k e r peer review of the war caused deep human trauma and poor living conditions among civilian populations in the various towns and communities. hate speech and threatening language by some members of the federal military leadership created worries that genocide against biaf ra was in the off ing. as an illustration, colonel benjamin adekunle (a.k.a black scorpion), commanding off icer of the lagos garrison command-turned 3rd marine commandos, reportedly once declared that: we shoot at everything that moves and when our troops march into the center of ibo territory, we shoot at everything even at things that do not move. (amadi, 2007) even the strident criticisms and protests by humanitarian organisations in europe and the united states of america (usa) did not make the federal side end the blockade (adst, 1998; adeoti, 2021). about 10,000 persons reportedly died daily f rom starvation caused by the blockade-inspired artif icial famine due to disruption of agriculture and obstruction of food and other supplies distribution (wiseberg, 1975). by the time the war ended, in january 1970, a total of over one million persons were estimated to have died f rom civilian hunger, malnutrition, and diseases (shapiro, 2011). post-civil war hate speech and ethnic propaganda in igbo-hausa/fulani relations on 15 january 1970, the nigerian civil war ended and colonel o jukwu’s deputy lieutenant-colonel effiong surrendered to colonel obasanjo. colonel o jukwu had fled to cote d’ivoire before biaf ra capitulated. gowon declared after that the war was a ‘no winner, no vanquished.’ similarly, the head of state introduced the policy of reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction as part of measures to reintegrate the igbos back into nigerian society, to address the impact of the war in the eastern region, and to promote oneness among the igbos and other ethnic groups in the land. this notwithstanding, development in nigerian politics reveals that the igbos have continued to be marginalised, arising f rom the events that led to the civil war, as well as the acrimony that had characterised igbo-hausa/fulani relations since independence. the hausa/fulani have held on to political power in nigeria more than any other ethnic group in the land, and this has enabled them to marginalise other ethnic groups that they are suspicious of. unfortunately, the development has not only fuelled acrimony between the igbohausa/fulani, but also increased hate speech among their leaders and peoples. for instance, the present minister of justice and attorney general of the federal, abubakar malami, was alleged to have posted the following comments concerning the igbo on twitter: ‘igbos are stupid and unruly. they are the problem of this country’ (the cable, 2011). in the same vein, renowned writer and poet chinua achebe made the following statement concerning the uniqueness of igbos over other ethnic groups in nigeria: ‘the igbo culture, being receptive to change, individualistic and highly competitive, gave the igbo man an unquestionable advantage… unlike the hausa/ fulani, he was unhindered by a wary religion and unlike the yoruba, he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies’ (2012: 74). after the civil war, despite the policies of the gowonled military government to promote unity among the ethnic groups in nigeria, events revealed that the opposite was the case concerning the igbos. in 1971 and 1973 respectively, hundreds of biaf ra ex-military, police, and prison officers were dismissed, including o jukwu’s deputy during the war (aworawo, 2002). likewise, igbos have been marginalised considerably on 15 januar y 1970, the nigerian civil war ended and colonel ojukwu’s deputy lieutenant-colonel ef fiong surrendered to colonel obasanjo. colonel ojukwu had fled to cote d’ivoire before biafra capitulated. gowon declared after that the war was a ‘no winner, no vanquished.’ similarly, the head of state introduced the policy of reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction as par t of measures to reintegrate the igbos back into nigerian society peer review 82 compared to other ethnic groups in nigeria. for instance, the southeast is the only region with five states, whereas other regions have six states (ezeibe, 2015). in the same vein, several administrations at the federal level, except for the civilian administration of president olusegun obasanjo (1999–2007) and goodluck jonathan (2010–2015), have been deprived of equitable political appointments. the southeast region has continually decried poor revenue allocation f rom the federal government, absence of inf rastructural development in the region, and unjust census results that do not represent the population of the southeast (nzemeka, 2021). the igbos have suffered considerably f rom ethnic and religious conflicts in the north, since the return to democracy in 1999. hundreds of igbos were killed in different states of the north and their property destroyed. many had to flee to their states (olu-adeyemi, 2018). as part of a measure to defend itself f rom marginalisation and to promote its collective interest f rom the nigerian government, ralph uwazuruike in 1999 formed the movement for the actualisation of the sovereign state of biaf ra (massob) (duruji, 2009). in 2015, when it appeared that massob was losing steam, nnamdi kanu created the indigenous people of biaf ra (ipob) to sustain the struggle for the creation of an independent igbo state out of the current nigerian federation. pro-biaf ra agitations have repeatedly pitched the igbo against the nigerian state and security agencies, and such conflicts have sometimes resulted in the killing of agitators. following massob’s re-declaration of biaf ra in aba, capital of abia state on 22 may 2000, government security forces introduced repressive measures against the movement to checkmate it and its activities, which the government considered to be anti-state and illegitimate, leading to the death of many biaf ra activists. between may 2001 and february 2006, state security forces allegedly killed approximately 80 pro-biaf ra agitators, arrested and arraigned 66, while more than 200 were arrested and subjected to human rights violations in the form of dehumanising and humiliating treatment. the worst form of state violence against massob agitators occurred afterward in onitsha during which up to 700 agitators were reportedly killed as a result of the state government’s shoot-on-sight order (paran, 2006). due to government crackdown and internal conflict within massob, the group afterward went into decline, a vacuum that was filled by ipob which intensified agitations for biaf ra’s statehood and separation f rom nigeria. in this quest, ipob and its supporters, like massob, have come under government repression and violence (ibeanu et al., 2016). of particular note was the 12–15 september 2017 military siege on kanu’s (ipob leader) home in afara-okwu, umuahia, abia state, with him, his parents, siblings, the elderly, and numerous visitors trapped inside and resulting in the death of about 28 persons and the injury and arrest of many others, as well as serious damage to the home, including gunshot damage to kanu’s bedroom. the ipob leader’s whereabouts became unknown since the military invasion. significantly, this and similar acts of government violence and repression against ipob prompted the af rican commission on human and people’s rights (achpr) to pronounce the federal government’s branding of ipob as a terrorist organisation and violence against its members a prima facie violation of the af rican charter (sahara reporters, 2018; the sun news online, 2018; this day live, 2018). conclusion despite being fellow citizens and stakeholders of the nigerian state, igbo-hausa/fulani relations in the postcolonial period have been marred by ethnic propaganda and hate speech by both sides, leading to phases of violent conflicts, widespread violations of human rights, and attendant mutual suspicion and hatred since the dawn of independence to the present. the igbo-dominated military coup of january 1966 targeted and violently claimed the lives of the leading hausa/fulani political elite. a hausa/ fulani retaliatory coup in july of the same year produced a much higher scale of violence and killing of igbos, especially top military elite and middle-level officers. the pogrom launched by the hausa/fulani against igbo residents in northern nigeria sustained the trend of mass violence and human rights inf ractions and triggered the forced displacement and emigration of huge igbo populations back to their indigenous homeland in eastern nigeria. the 1967–70 civil war marked the peak of violenceladen relations between the igbo and hausa/fulani during the post-colonial period. the genocidal war strategy of the hausa/fulani-dominated nigerian v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 83 t h e t h i n k e r peer review government and military caused very high civilian casualties among the igbo people. at present, igbohausa/fulani relations continue to be marked by ethnic propaganda, hate speech and pockets of violence due to the government’s opposition to some igbo groups’ campaign for a sovereign state of biaf ra. to halt this historical trend of violenceridden relations and human rights violations, there is a need to consistently implement existing laws that prohibit ethnic or tribal hate speech and related activities that breed inter-ethnic grievances and are capable of instigating violent conflicts. there is also the need to appropriately strengthen these laws and introduce f resh legislations where necessary for more effectiveness. finally, it is crucial for all stakeholders in the nigerian project (government, politicians, bureaucrats, traditional rulers, and the entire citizenry) to observe and promote justice, fairness, equity, and fundamental human rights in their activities and relations with fellow nigerians, regardless of ethnic or tribal affinities, religion, and other primordial considerations. references achebe, c. 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(2009). oil, politics and violence: nigeria’s military coup culture (1966–1976). new york: algora publishing. sorabjee, s. j. (1993). ‘hate speech’ dilemma’. fortnight, no. 318: 27. simpson, r.m. (2013). ‘dignity, harm, and hate speech.’ law and philosophy, 32(6): 701. the cable, (2011). ‘fact check: derogatory post on igbo, hausa credited to malami is fake.’ [online] available at: https://www. thecable.ng/fact-check-derogatory-post-on-igbo-hausa-creditedto-malami-is-fake the sun news. (2018). ‘kanu’s whereabouts: anxiety grips ipob.’ [online] available at: www.sunnewsonline.com this day live. (2018). ‘i do not know kanu’s whereabouts, says buratai.’ [online] available at: www.thisdaylive.com wimmer a. (2004). ‘introduction: facing ethnic conflicts’. columbia university [online]. available at: http://www.columbia. edu/~aw2951/fec.intro.pdf wiseberg, l.s. (1975). ‘an emerging literature: studies of the nigerian civil war.’ af rican studies review, 18(1). abstract diversity, equity, and inclusion (edi) are critical issues for leaders, communities, and organisations. throughout history, telling stories has been a method for people to make sense of their environment, organise experiences and ideas, and communicate with their community to create shared understanding. heartlines, a south af rican centre for values promotion, developed ‘what’s your story?’ (wys) – a simple, yet effective initiative to build greater understanding, cohesion, trust, and reconciliation through the sharing of stories. an external evaluation of the programme used a mix of qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods to assess wys implementation in church communities and workplaces. the study showed strong evidence that being exposed to wys results in positive changes at the level of the individual, within churches, workplaces or other organisations, and in the wider community. the findings demonstrated that wys enhanced empathic skills and suggests that this is a useful approach to enhancing appreciation of diversity and building inclusivity. ‘what’s your story?’ building diversity, equity, and inclusion 32t h e t h i n k e r opinion by candice harrison-train, carmel marock, and sally field | opinion 33 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion introduction diversity, equity, and inclusion (edi) are critical issues for leaders, communities, and organisations. while diversity and inclusion are often treated as synonymous, they are distinct issues that contribute to the climate of equity within an organisation or community. diversity is defined as having members f rom broad ranges of demographic profiles within an organisation or community: people of different ages, races, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and nationality (ely and thomas, 2001). inclusion refers to whether those who are part of an organisation or community feel that their identities, voices, and ideas are accepted (mor barak et al., 2016). there is a myriad of reasons why organisations and institutions seek to build an appreciation of diversity and increased levels of inclusion. the national development plan (2030), ‘our future – make it work’, emphasises the importance of living the ‘rainbow’ through appreciating our diversity and by growing inclusivity (national planning commission, no date). this is reinforced in reports that highlight the need for diversity to be viewed as an investment opportunity that aligns economic performance with social progress (deloitte, 2020). seeking greater diversity is an important first step towards change. however, the challenge to the system is to create a space where diverse groups feel supported, respected, welcomed, and willing to contribute (moore et al., 2020). edi researchers indicate that the literature does not go far enough to provide theory on how progress towards more equitable organisations and communities can be achieved. throughout history, telling stories has been a method for people to make sense of their environment, organise experiences and ideas, and communicate with their community to create shared understanding (schank and abelson, 1995). stories are an important part of social change because they have the power to shape the way people think and feel about their worlds and how they interact within them. in contexts where there are diverse demographic profiles, the sharing of stories has the potential to create bridging connections and foster bonding between people who are different f rom one another by facilitating across group information flow and support (putnam, 2000: 22). in organisational development processes, sharing stories or experiences can build trust, cultivate norms, transfer tacit knowledge, facilitate unlearning, and generate emotional connections (prasetyo, 2018). heartlines, a south af rican centre for values promotion, developed ‘what’s your story?’ (wys) as an initiative to build greater understanding, cohesion, trust, and reconciliation through the sharing of stories. the approach is based on the construct that personal storytelling provides a non-threatening foundation f rom which to have authentic conversations to build better understanding. participants are required to share stories with each other in an intentional manner, asking others to share their stories and actively listening when stories are shared. how is wys implemented? heartlines developed a range of user-f riendly resources (available online) for using the wys methodology in different contexts, such as workplaces, churches, and schools. in some instances, heartlines facilitates workshops with selected organisations and/or communities that have identified an issue pertaining to diversity or inclusion that they wish to address. these workshops engage participants in the wys methodology and create opportunities for intentional story-sharing and other activities that promote social cohesion. heartlines also trains community and organisational leaders on the wys methodology so that they are able to cascade this in their own organisations and communities. the training sessions are experiential and include the opportunity to practise the story-sharing approach. in some cases, these sessions include a viewing of the heartlines film beyond the river, which was inspired by true events, and is used to demonstrate issues of difference and inclusion as the backdrop for group discussions. does wys work? singizi consulting af rica conducted an external evaluation to assess wys implementation in churches and workplaces. their mixed method approach to data collection included a retrospective baseline survey that gathered data on perceptions of the programme, activities conducted since exposure to the programme, and perceptions of change as a result 34t h e t h i n k e r opinion of the programme; qualitative in-depth interviews; and eight qualitative case studies. a key indicator of success for a programme of this nature is whether or not those exposed to it adopt the methodology, be it in their own lives or as champions who begin to cascade it to others. the data showed that there were very high levels of take-up (up to 84% amongst a large group of church leaders). the findings showed that uptake improved when, in addition to an increased focus on ensuring that participants understood the purpose of intentional story-sharing, there was opportunity to engage in an experiential story-sharing interaction at the point of exposure. the findings demonstrate that the approach is accessible, cost-effective, and easy to adopt – enabling participants to continue to use wys. the importance of these findings was reinforced by additional data that showed that once individuals have adopted the wys methodology, the vast majority repeat it more than once. in the final evaluation, 41% of church respondents reported that they had repeated wys two to five times, while 38% had repeated it six to 10 times, and 18% 11–15 times. all wys workplace respondents who adopted the approach indicated that they had repeated wys more than once, with 41% reporting they had repeated the process more than 15 times. individuals reported that their motivations for adopting wys included breaking down barriers, addressing racial schisms, addressing religious differences, and understanding the broader community. in the final evaluation, 82% of respondents reported that they believed that wys was a powerful tool that could effectively be used to change society. the evaluation provided strong evidence of positive changes after being exposed to wys at the level of the individual, within churches, workplaces or other organisations, and beyond these organisations into the wider community. respondents uniformly reported positive personal changes against values that are identified as central to empathy. these values include curiosity, the ability to be non-judgmental, appreciation of diversity, ability to take perspective, understanding, feelings of connection with others, trust, communication, and collaboration. respondents interviewed for the case studies discussed how the storytelling process had increased their levels of empathy and supported greater levels of understanding, which helped to resolve negative emotions and even improve relationships at work. church members observed that wys was an ‘eyeopener’ in changing their perceptions about other people. one respondent commented: ‘when i look in the mirror, i only see myself, but wys makes you think about others. i feel more curious and have more empathy as it makes you realise […] to put yourself in others’ shoes. wys helps one to get some perspective and forces one to focus on the needs of others and to look beyond your own problems.’ respondents also spoke about positive changes within their congregations and workplaces as a result of wys. in the wys case studies in churches, respondents reported the deepening of relationships and suggested that it had assisted them to build an appreciation of diversity and, consequently, contributed to increased attendance at church, as members felt more included. one respondent observed: ‘the wys experience has produced obvious changes in the [church] group. they are no longer just a group; they have become a team. people communicate openly with each other, share their thoughts, opinions and ideas with members of their team; as well as taking into consideration what others have to say.’ similarly, workplace respondents reported greater levels of cooperation and connectedness and indicated that this is underpinned by greater levels of communication and trust, which are considered central to strengthening team work, building respondents interviewed for the case studies discussed how the storytelling process had increased their levels of empathy and supported greater levels of understanding, which helped to resolve negative emotions and even improve relationships at work. church members observed that wys was an ‘eyeopener’ in changing their perceptions about other people. 35 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion new forms of relationships in the workplace, and supporting a culture of trust. in terms of the wider community, data f rom the church case studies indicated that both church leaders and church members believe that wys contributed towards churches having a more outward focus and caring about others. this included churches building relationships with other churches in the community, which sometimes involved bringing churches with parishioners who are primarily f rom different race groups closer together. there are other examples of churches cooperating more within their immediate surrounds. how does it work? the wys approach intends to build empathy in participants. empathy means being able to take another’s perspective and feel an emotional bond. there is an important cognitive component in having the capacity to understand others’ emotions (brown et al., 2019). empathy plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling the sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes inclusive behaviour (riess, 2017). empathy can be learned through observation and the reinforcement of experiences. however, of equal importance, is the need to create the right conditions for empathy to be exercised. the value of empathy needs to be understood, a psychologically safe environment created, and people taught to observe and listen without judgement. the wys seeks to enhance cognitive empathy through actionorientated and collaborative strategies. research indicates that multiple types of exclusionary dynamics, such as self-segregation, communication apprehension, stereotyping and stigmatising, need to be overcome to facilitate inclusion within organisations (bernstein et al., 2020). wys provides a structure for meeting and communicating and an approach for overcoming stereotyping and stigmatising, thus addressing some of the barriers to inclusion. further, adaptive learning and attitude change depend on individuals’ first experiencing stereotype inconsistency—an inconsistency between a stereotype of a culture and the actual experiencing of particular members of that culture—then working through such inconsistencies by being in conditions that make them willing and able to interact repeatedly with diverse others (bernstein et al., 2020). through personal story-sharing, wys provides the opportunity for people to experience stereotype inconsistency and initiate attitude change, creating a space for unlearning. unlearning is defined as: ‘not about forgetting. it is about the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm. when we learn, we add new skills or knowledge to what we already know. when we unlearn, we step outside the mental model in order to choose a different one.’ (boncheck, 2016) wys training provides the foundations for new skills development in intentional story-sharing and active listening, building empathic skills and challenging existing stereotypes through bridging relationships with others. the evaluation found that one of the key factors that makes wys successful in building empathy is the simplicity and accessibility of the approach. people of all ages, races, genders, and educational backgrounds can easily use the tool, even without the additional guides and resources that heartlines has made available. heartlines refers to the approach as ‘ask. listen. tell’ – and it appears that this is exactly how participants are using it and, in general, with positive effect. if an organisation adopts the wys approach with increased opportunity for story-sharing practice during training, they also set up some of the preconditions for facilitating inclusion. these include pursuing an important, shared organizational purpose; mixing diverse members f requently over protracted periods of time and being collaborative; and valuing an individual member’s uniqueness and belonging (bernstein et al., 2020). implementation of wys could provide a shared organisational purpose, with multiple trainings and practice sessions creating the opportunity for the f requent mixing of diverse members over protracted time, and the valuing of members’ uniqueness through active listening and mutual story-sharing. however, implementation of wys is not a magic solution for inclusivity. research indicates that negative contact, where participants feel threatened 36t h e t h i n k e r opinion and did not choose to have contact, provides unfavourable conditions for inclusivity (pettigrew et al., 2011). this was evidenced in the evaluation, which reinforced the importance of ensuring buy-in to enable participants to feel comfortable with using the wys approach, and highlighted the importance of creating opportunities for participants to have the chance to experience a story-sharing process, in a safe environment, when introduced to wys. findings f rom the wys evaluation suggest that wys is successful in promoting change and that it is a simple and accessible approach. it is an easy-to-use tool that can be implemented without additional guides and resources. the more people share, the easier it gets for others to take the process forward and integrate it into daily conversations and situations in ways that promote increased levels of connectedness and contribute to organisational inclusivity. the wys approach could be used to address inclusivity on an individual level, to provide impactful voices for equitable change, and to create a basis for understanding diversity practices (gagnon, augustin, and cukier, 2021). heartlines encourages people to share their stories. do you have a story that everyone needs to hear? are you, or do you know of someone who courageously lives our values such as forgiveness, compassion, acceptance, understanding, or reconciliation? do you know ordinary people working together in extraordinary ways? share your story at heartlines.org.za/wys/home references bernstein, r. s. et al. (2020). from diversity to inclusion to equity: a theory of generative interactions. journal of business ethics, 167(3): 395–410 boncheck, m. (2016). why the problem with learning is unlearning. harvard business review [online]. available at: https://hbr.org/2016/11/ why-the-problem-with-learning-is-unlearning brown, k. et al. (2019). empathy, place and identity interactions for sustainability. global environmental change, 56: 11–17 deloitte (2020). the right mind-set: approaching diversity and inclusion in south af rica. value beyond compliance series [online]. available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/deloitte/za/ documents/af rica/za-deloitte-approaching-diversity-and-inclusionin-south-af rica.pdf ely, r. j. and thomas, d. a. (2001). cultural diversity at work: the effects of diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes. administrative science quarterly. sage publications inc, 46(2): 229–273 gagnon, s., augustin, t. j. and cukier, w. (2021). interplay for change in equality, diversity and inclusion studies, human relations, p.001872672110022. moore, k. j. et al. (2020). beyond diversity: focusing on and enhancing inclusion in the society for epidemiologic research. american journal of epidemiology, 189(10): 1042–1046 mor barak, m. e. et al. (2016). the promise of diversity management for climate of inclusion: a state-of-the-art review and metaanalysis. human service organizations: management, leadership & governance. routledge, 40(4): 305–333 national planning commission (no date) national development plan 2030: our future – make it work. pretoria. [online] available at: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/f iles/gcis_document/201409/ndp2030-our-future-make-it-workr.pdf. pettigrew, t. f. et al. (2011). recent advances in intergroup contact theory. international journal of intercultural relations, 35(3): 271–280 prasetyo, y. e. (2018). from storytelling to social change: the power of story in the community building, ssrn electronic journal putnam, r. (2000). bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community. new york: simon and schuster riess, h. (2017). the science of empathy. journal of patient experience, 4(2): 74–77 schank, r. c. and abelson, r. p. (1995). knowledge and memory: the real story. in r.s. wyer, ed. knowledge and memory: the real story. new york: routledge 13 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 abstract this paper studies the representation of the muslim body (within the context of the war on terror) as an instance of disembodied subjectivity that haunts through the remnants of its presence, via a close textual analysis of ishtiyaq shukri’s novels the silent minaret (2005) and i see you (2014). the paper examines the corporeal absence within the said texts as a template for understanding the modus operandi of the necropolitical regime and the extremities of state violence it implies. it explores the implications of spectrality within texts saturated by instances of taxonomical categorisations of the body and examines spectrality alongside the implications of absences and omissions in order to reveal how the three interact and inform each other. conceptualising spectrality as the dominant mode of writing for post9/11 novels, the paper engages with derrida’s work on deferred mourning in relation to spectres, offering a new paradigm for an understanding of the post-9/11 muslim experience. by iqra raza | peer review i (don’t) see you: absence, omissions, and spectrality in the wor ks of ishtiyaq shukri peer review *** ishtiyaq shukri, an award-winning novelist from south africa, premises his two novels – the silent minaret and i see you – on the extremities of state violence and their impact on individual human lives. the global geopolitical concerns are fleshed out in both the novels through characters whose lives are directly affected by the said politics. the locus of all the violence is the human body, whose presence and the lack of it throughout the text have varied meanings for various contexts. while the literature responding to the war on terror has thus far largely focused on visibility as a response to the misrepresentations of the muslim experience, shukri offers an alternative possibility in writing protagonists who are invisible, and who haunt the texts only through their absent presence (raza, 2020: 1). while he largely focuses on spectrality as a condition of being, he inscribes it within the body of his works through absences. hence, the texts are haunted by presences that do not correspond to corporeality in their immediate contexts but are alluded to and presented as memories. shukri uses spectrality as a metaphor to allude to various kinds of absences including omissions from the public discourse and absence from within the body politic. nationality is another contested terrain while undertaking such an activity. shukri’s emphasis hence lies heavily on the transnational aspects of identity, presented less as a treatment for the illness that plagues the world today, than as a mode of diagnosis itself. his protagonists are not preoccupied by their ‘ontopology’, which is not the same as saying that they are not aware of it. (derrida in specters of marx uses the term ‘ontopology’ to refer to an ontology reliant on and determined by topos and geographies.) while tracing their belongingness to the nations of their origin and being acutely aware of it, they not only lend solidarities to the oppressed across the globe, they also do not fashion themselves as located individuals. the writer highlights the limitations of such a transnational subject position by describing in detail their physicality which thwarts attempts at dislocation, tracing their origins to specific topos, which also anchors them to various other political or social subjectivities. profiles and photographs provide the writer a window through which to further his point about spectrality. thus, it is no coincidence that issa shamsuddin in the silent minaret is a research scholar while tariq hassan of i see you is a photojournalist. shukri’s most sustained commentary on the spectral, however, is contained in his second novel, i see you, where through the means of a war photograph captured by his protagonist, the fundamental ambivalence, characteristic of a spectre, is made apparent. tying his commentary on spectrality together is the way the themes intersect with the style of the texts. the silent minaret is crafted as what linda hutcheon calls ‘historiographical metafiction’ to make apparent the absences and omissions from discourse and representations, historical and otherwise. i see you achieves the same through photographs, which are themselves spectral in their superimposition of the past and the present. shukri erases the material body from the space of his textual world. in doing so, he hints at a radical subversion made possible by turning to ‘hauntology’ especially within a context wherein taxonomy reigns supreme and the subject is construed as an object of knowledge. while this might be doomed by the possibility of labelling what is outside epistemology as ‘dangerous’, shukri is cautious of the same and meticulously chooses to build the everydayness of the protagonists’ lives (before their disappearance) with minute details, making them relatable and unrelatable at once (raza, 2020: 1). peer review 14t h e t h i n k e r shukri erases the material body from the space of his textual world. in doing so, he hints at a radical subversion made possible by turning to ‘hauntology’ especially within a context wherein taxonomy reigns supreme and the subject is construed as an object of knowledge. 15 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review in specters of marx, derrida uses the term ‘hauntology’ to describe that which no longer corresponds to the ‘essence of life or death’, an element that ‘is neither living nor dead, present nor absent’ (1993: 63). for shukri, spectrality within the scope of the texts is employed as a stylistic technique, an intervention at the level of style and structure. it allows the writer to operate within and beyond the co-ordinates he chooses to lay his work at. thus, dublin talks to london, talks to pakistan, talks to palestine. it allows anachronism without slipping into absurdity. it links the war on terror to colonial violence at the cape colony, to the palestinian occupation, to apartheidera politics, and so forth. spectrality for shukri is less an ontological concern, and veers more towards social and political implications (raza, 2020: 2). the silent minaret is the story of issa shamsuddin’s absence f rom within the space of the textual world. on a dark night, as he sits in baghdad café, watching images f rom guantanamo and war-torn iraq being projected onto the screen, issa – as a history student conducting research on colonial violence in the cape colony – recognises the historical pattern of neocolonial violence, and quietly ‘slip(s) through the door into a dawn that is beginning to illuminate the devastation wrought by the violent night’ (shukri, 2004: 48). shukri draws the reader’s attention to issa’s absence f rom within the text by italicising his dialogues, which bring his absence to the fore by pointing to the fact that they do not exist within the linguistic registers of the novel’s world. issa’s absence is hinted as being a deliberate act of disappearance consequent of the protagonist’s acute awareness of his corporeality and how it serves the surveillance mechanisms of the necropolitical regime he is located in. in this context, it becomes an act of subversion, of defiance, of resistance. for issa, who is a transnational at heart, for whom differences are mere conversation starters, the reality of his ‘exceptionally good [arab] looks’ thwarts possibilities at subversion while being located and held down by his corporeal f rame. he chooses to turn into a spectre, haunting through the remnants of his presence in the form of clues he leaves behind. these clues highlight, quite literally, the margins, the ones out of f rame, as they present themselves mostly as scribbles at the margins of texts and newspaper reports. shukri’s second novel, i see you, appearing ten years after the first, is a story of its protagonist’s abduction and disappearance. tariq hasan is an award-winning photojournalist, abducted by zar corps, a mercenary organisation. tariq is also an activist who criticises the involvement of nations in each other’s affairs and, more specifically, territorial invasions such as that of palestine. the two novels are set within different contexts with different power dynamics and sociopolitical milieus. however, what unites them is the necropolitical power both the texts assume at the helm of their affairs. these regimes locate the individual body as the site for enacting violence. the necrality of their power lies in turning a body into a corpse while controlling the socio-politics of its being. therefore, the differences between concepts such as resistance and terrorism are eliminated. tariq’s absence, while creating a public hue and cry, does not therefore elicit a response f rom the state and the deep cabals of power. derrida, in writing about spectres, says: ‘…one does not know if precisely it is, if it exists, if it responds to a name and corresponds to an essence. one does not know: not out of ignorance, but because this non-object, this non-present present, this beingthere of an absent or departed one no longer belongs to knowledge. at least no longer to that which one thinks one knows by the name of knowledge. one does not know if it is living or if it is dead.’ (1993: 5) the spectre remains outside epistemology and it is precisely this positioning which allows it to survey without being surveyed. it was once there but no longer is, which equips it with the tools of epistemology, while allowing it to escape the box altogether. this liminality becomes a powerful subject position in that it facilitates a diagnosis. the spectre, knowing the epistemological tools through and through and being able to survey the present while being both in it yet outside it, can spot the lacunae and point out the necrosis. its location outside temporality also allows it to look for solutions f rom across time. in doing so, it poses questions of social, political, and ethical dimensions. the traditional ghost that has associations with the supernatural has often served a similar function in folklores, and later in magical realist texts. commenting on this, maria del pilar blanco and esther peeren write: ‘their [the spectres’] representational and sociocultural functions, meanings, and effects have been at least as manifold as their shapes—or non-shapes, as the case may be—and extend far beyond the rituals, traditions, ghost stories, folktales, and urban legends they populate’ (2013: 9). with the early twentieth century turn of the ‘spectral’, the spectre specifically served functions beyond its supernatural element and began to be incorporated within the scholarly and the theoretical. the ghostly at this moment had already shifted meaning f rom return f rom the dead to radical possibilities: economic, social, political, and ethical. at the peak of the world wars, as death became common, the spectres haunting europe in modernist writing (such as that by yeats and eliot) pointed to a lack of spirituality and a hollowness of being. eliot’s work specifically highlighted the ‘wasteland’ created by the spirits of war whose prayers are uttered only to be aborted by nursery rhymes (eliot, v: 68–98). despite the obvious reference to spirits, the works were never classified as ‘ghostly’, the spirits serving to question the ethics of war instead. as the enlightenment came to be critiqued, so did the principles of reason and the insistence on empirical possibilities. the ghost therefore moved away f rom being a question of rationale to that of ethics. for derrida as well, a ghost is not so much a return of the dead than it is a metaphorical signifier which exists to raise questions pertaining to justice in the radical possibility of its non-being. the spectre, in colluding temporal f rames, allows for a disruption along the said axis, offering alternative versions of history as well, the ones buried and whitewashed. it becomes especially potent in postcolonial texts where history suffers f rom omissions at the hands of the colonials. therefore, the spectre presents a rejection of metanarratives in favour of f ragmented versions of it. del pilar blanco and pereen write: ‘…spectrality is used as a conceptual metaphor to effect revisions of history and/or reimaginations of the future in order to expose and address the way certain subjectivities have been marginalized and disavowed in order to establish and uphold a particular norm, as well as the way such subjectivities can never be completely erased but insist on reappearing to trouble the norm’ (2013: 310). toni morrison’s beloved and michael ondaatje’s anil’s ghost come across as obvious examples of the same. in the former, the revenant is the murdered child of sethe, who comes back to question her death and to seek answers, ones that in turn raise serious moral and ethical questions. in the latter, however, it is not a return f rom the dead that is a spectral figure, but an absence. the skeleton of the ‘sailor’ serves to highlight the extremities of violence inflicted upon civilians by the state in sri lanka. both reappear, one quite literally, the other through the remnants of its presence – a skeleton. in shukri’s works, the functionality of the spectre extends more towards the second kind of reappearance, or a presence anchored on to some remnants of their once-being-there. however, much like in beloved and anil’s ghost, shukri’s spectres critique the politics that have rendered them invisible and point to histories and geographies of violence to bring connections to the fore and hence offer a diagnostic. for issa, the link between the war on terror and the colonial violence is obvious. for tariq, the absolute lack of ‘f reedom’ in post-apartheid south af rica, in palestine, in libya, in yemen, and in afghanistan require the same cure and hence are part of the same necrosis. both protagonists are preoccupied by highlighting connections of violence and building solidarities across the globe. responding to a question on what distresses him the most, shukri in an interview said: ‘when this war… is over, we will stand back and say, “what have we done?” i say “we”, because it’s not syria’s war, or iraq’s war, or the drc’s war. they are our wars, they brutalise all of us’ (shukri, 2014; emphasis added). shukri’s response highlights the need to be empathetic to others’ suffering by identifying with ‘the other’ as a human being, subverting the particularism of ethnocultural subjectivity. however, since such attempts are prevented f rom reaching f ruition by the state’s insistence on corporeal taxonomy, it is the spectre which deftly fulfils this function in his works. hutcheon (2003) contends that ‘postmodern fiction suggests that to re-write or to re-present the past in fiction and in history is, in both cases, to open it up to the present, to prevent it f rom being conclusive and teleological.’ derrida attests to this functionality fulfilled by the spectre in its being a catalyst in this process of opening up. alternative historiographies 16t h e t h i n k e r peer review allow for attempts at ‘conjuration’, a process of ridding the space of the ghost by recalling it. the silent minaret not only does that, but also fashions itself as an alternate historiography with copious footnotes and bibliography. issa, the spectre, leaves behind a thesis as well as scribbling at the margins of books that trace an alternative course of history, one that proposes a subaltern account of the historical events and their significance. issa, through his thesis, is able to pick out the transcultural fusion ‘of both people and ideas, in a historical context that is situated contemporaneously. his historical research delves into the hybridity of south af rican culture, which he uses to comment on the roots of “global cross-pollination”, and how history has been whitewashed to ignore them’ (frenkel, 2011: 131). disrupting the grand narrative of the european historical discourse, issa refashions islam as a religion that played an indispensable role in the anti-colonial uprising at the cape colony. shukri does both to probe the grounds as well as the processes of production of historical knowledge. he blurs the distinctions between history and fiction by imitating the style of a historical narrative for his fictionalised account of history. absences also form a chunk of the narrative. on a visit to the british museum with katinka, issa is quick to note: ‘it (the exhibition) was as much about forgetting as remembering. not a single thought spared for how the exhibits came to be here in the first place’ (shukri, 2004: 143; italics original). the absence of the historical records of violence unleashed by colonial expansion that has lent them the exhibits disturbs issa as much as the exhibits themselves. the absence of the history of dutch settlement at the cape colony, the cosmopolitan cultures of south af rica’s past, and the socio-cultural and intellectual history of islamic expansions, are just some of the other absences that are rendered visible through the alternate historiography. it is the work of mourning that allows for a rewriting of some of these discourses. the ‘traces’ left behind by the protagonists are read as an expression of a mourning of their absences. in these ‘traces’ lie the potentiality for subversion. while the politics of mourning of itself offers subversive potentiality, according to derrida, the ‘traces’ left behind are subversive in their scope, the two protagonists being activists. in an interview, derrida said of death and mourning: ‘in my anticipation of death, in my relation to a death to come, a death that i know will completely annihilate me and leave nothing of me behind, there is just below the surface a testamentary desire, a desire that something survive, get left behind or passed on—an inheritance or something that i myself can lay no claim to, that will not return to me, but that will, perhaps, remain.…’ (quoted in naas, 2015: 113) both of shukri’s protagonists, though not dead but ‘disappeared’, leave their ‘traces’ behind, in the form of words and pictures, which are revived in the wake of their disappearance. though what is mourned is not the protagonists themselves, since as derrida says, death annihilates the self, the subject to whom memories are attached, the ‘traces’, imply the existence of heirs who inherit them and mourn. however, as derrida says, it is not only the work(s) left behind which double up as ‘traces’ but ‘everyday gestures’ as well. hence, the two novels are saturated by instances that build up the everydayness of the protagonists’ lives, which are mourned in the absence of the protagonists themselves. in the silent minaret, issa’s f riends and family often recall and mourn him through their memories of him. the trace, argues derrida ‘must continue to ‘act’ and to be readable even if what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, whether he is provisionally absent, or if he is dead’ (quoted in naas, 2015: 116). it must be readable even in the absence of the producer, the interpretation of the trace must not be contingent upon the presence of the producer, as he further adds ‘a writing [or any trace] that was not structurally readable—iterable—beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing’ (ibid). issa’s writings, 17 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review disrupting the grand narrative of the european historical discourse, issa refashions islam as a religion that played an indispensable role in the anti-colonial uprising at the cape colony. shukri does both to probe the grounds as well as the processes of production of historical knowledge. he blurs the distinctions between history and fiction by imitating the style of a historical narrative for his fictionalised account of history. as well as those of tariq, are read and understood by people, long after they are gone. some of issa’s texts, which were earlier thought of as overstatements, in fact start making sense when he is gone: ‘at the time she thought it might be overstated, but he wouldn’t change it. now she thinks he was right and sends a text message to his mobile number, as she still does f rom time to time: im by da wal@qalqilia. wen jan landd @cape he plantd a hedj 2 sepr8 setlaz f rm locls. da histry of erly urpean setlmnt @da cape is unversly&eternly pertnt x’ (shukri, 2004: 182). the same happens with tariq’s photographs. in his absence, they are widely circulated over the media, along with his writings as a symbolic gesture of public mourning. for derrida, mourning is always caught in a ‘double bind’, it is both ‘within us’ as well as ‘beyond us’. while the absent subjects are incorporated into our psyche, because they must be in order to make mourning possible, their ‘infinite exteriority’ remains, marking them as the other. so, one has to appropriate, in that one has to not leave the dead over to indifference, as well as not appropriate in order to respect their individuality, making mourning always unsuccessful. in the silent minaret, issa is caught in this double bind of mourning just before he disappears. he recognises the precarity of the lives of victims of the war on terror, sees a pattern in their deaths, and thinks immediately of the violence at the cape colony. however, he acknowledges the individuality of the chained men in ‘orange overalls’ and disappears. the aporia of mourning leaves him befuddled. he recognises his own death at the hands of the same power, in his awareness of how power structures operate in the necropolitical regime. in what i call here the moment of successful mourning for issa, the moment of his realisation of his own death while keeping those of others’ distinct, and not entirely incorporated into his psyche, he vanishes. shukri writes: ‘blurred pictures on the giant screen of heavily shackled men in orange overalls behind highsecurity fences, their arms chained behind their backs to their feet, sent an ominous hush through the room […] issa leaned back into his seat and watched as history rose up f rom the open manuscript on his table and came to hover between him and the images on the screen’ (2004: 53). it is immediately after this moment that issa decides to walk into the night and disappear hereafter. derrida argues: ‘the mourning of the other as such … has to be incorporated … but the incorporation should not be total, and in that case, of course, the other remains foreign in myself, it remains other, it doesn’t become part of myself. i cannot appropriate the other in myself so it is a failure in a work of mourning, but it is the only way of respecting the otherness of the other’ (2001: 66). in this aporia, derrida envisages the politics of mourning. aporia, for him, becomes the ‘provocation to think new paths, new ways through apparent impasses’, as issa does, and thus holds subversive power. mourning allows us to engage with the (former) subject and puts one on a trail, as we attempt to remake ourselves, enabling a resistance of ‘totalizing gestures’. mourning gives the other a ‘sort of survivance, a kind of living on’ (derrida, 2001: 23). as the protagonists are surveyed by their survivors, they are in turn surveyed f rom the place of their ‘infinite alterity’ (kirkby, 2006: 471) in their being spectres. the protagonists are offered readings, re-readings, analysis, and questioning of their ‘traces’ that open up space for subversive politics. the mourning does not cease as long as the ‘traces’ are kept open and the engagement with the dead continues. as stated, shukri’s concern for allowing space for a subversive politics to emerge is also located within his characters’ ‘traces’, the works and ‘gestures’ they have left behind. spectrality of certain communities as a political reality is conveyed through his portrayal of the precarity of the lives of muslims in the face of the war on terror in his first novel (including that of the protagonist) and most potently in his second novel through the victims of the kasalia civil war (and through the portrayal of palestinian lives, and lives of people like tariq hasan). both issa and tariq are deeply concerned about visibilising the invisible. issa, as well as shukri, addresses this by fashioning an alternate historiography, while tariq and shukri do this by capturing gaps and silences within their works which imply a depth discernible only when one scratches the surface. as minesh dass writes: ‘tariq’s career as a photojournalist has been driven by his desire to make people see the suffering and humanity of those deemed “beyond the f rame.” what most interests me, however, is how his photographic work is described, as an endeavour that posits the still 18t h e t h i n k e r peer review 19 v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 peer review as a surface that is capable of capturing depth’ (2017: 3). the photograph described by dass is of the kasalia war, which sits at the heart of the novel. photographs are spectral in nature in that they superimpose the past onto the present. this characteristic of photographs elicits a bodily reaction f rom viewers, akin to the enactment of physical violence that the photograph embodies. the picture of a young girl who has been raped looks like ‘at first sight, the kind of idealized depiction of rural privation so indulgently romanticized in banal watercolours and sentimental greeting cards’ (shukri, 2014: 41). the moment, a thing of the past being witnessed in the present and lending meaning to the present, has ‘women cross their legs as the realization of what has befallen the girl dawns’ (shukri, 2014: 42). this spectral potency of the photograph is what gives it power, and makes tariq’s works ‘powerful’, so much so that ‘with one photograph, he did more to stop it [the war] than un did with a hundred toothless resolutions’ (ibid). shukri’s focus on spectral subjectivities, however, extends beyond the war and tariq. he uses the themes of absence, silence, and omissions to further his point. while the silent minaret is saturated with omissions that issa takes upon himself to make apparent, i see you comments more on the former two aspects. recent theorisations of spectrality have seen scholars write about how certain subjects are prone to forms of erasure and hence omitted from the public sphere and discourse. issa sets out to correct this by attempting an alternate historiography of south africa: not through a process of destruction of the current history, one in favour of another, but rather through locating the aporia in the existing narrative and offering radical possibilities. in the silent minaret, issa makes astute and pertinent comments on the totalizing tendency of european historical discourse, and addresses the fissures created by a quite literal ‘whitewashing’ of history. issa is acutely aware that historical discourse is made intelligible by structuring events (which entails omissions) into a coherent narrative, subject to power structures in place at a given time (raza, 2020: 7). issa does not just discreetly maintain an alternative account of history, but also once conf ronts his history teacher at school with another version of the history of the anglo-boer war, only to have the latter retort: ‘history cannot be re-written […] history is, and at st stephen’s we accept only the thorough, rigorous and sanctioned historical versions outlined in the syllabus’ (shukri, 2004: 16; italics original). however, these ‘thorough, rigorous and sanctioned historical versions’ do not account for the omissions presenting a discord between history and memory. kagiso’s grandmother, commenting on the anglo-boer war and the involvement of baden powell (who was painted as a national hero) says: ‘the only reward our people received for their sacrifice, was more death – more than, 1 000 of our people died of starvation. so, your boy scouts’ baden-powell may be a national hero in jo’burg and london, but here, among our people, he’s a lying thief’ (shukri, 2004: 22). this discord between history and memory is highlighted further by the writer’s f requent use of the motif of remembering and forgetting which comes across in his commentary on religions as well. frances, an irish catholic lady enforcing an overlap between islam and christianity portrayed as entirely distinct religious civilizations, argues for the arabic heritage of jesus, which she thinks the bible has forgotten: ‘and don’t you think it peculiar, father, how one religion remembers things another doesn’t?’ (shukri, 2004: 17). while the silent minaret in addressing these omissions fashions itself as a historical text, i see you also presents the novelty of form and fuses it with content in its subversive intertextuality which requires the readers to fill in the absences and silences. as dass puts it, i see you achieves this by enforcing a link between seeing and reading: ‘in fact, the ekphratic aspects of the novel suggest a close link between the processes of looking and of reading. as readers, we are asked to imagine an image that we are not shown, and therefore, reading it “simply for what it says” is very complex, given that “what it says” is heavily mediated’ (2017: 4). absence and silence are referred to time and again in the novel. both are posited as states of being that further trauma. leila is asked to maintain silence after tariq’s disappearance, lest it compromise with his safety. this only makes her more traumatised and she decides to contest the elections to be able to speak. however, this leads to her house arrest. leila’s absence f rom the scene of tariq’s kidnapping also furthers her trauma as she is not able to wrap her head around the fact: ‘and the word ‘kidnap’, an act so alien, so seemingly irrelevant to my life, added yet further to the absurdity of the announcement such that at first i wondered why this man thought the information pertinent to me’ (shukri, 2014: 105). in so far as hauntology is described as a disruption occurring along ontological and temporal axes, the opera scene in i see you is important for its temporal deviations. the opera presents a series of looping scenes, inundated by the ref rain: ‘forget about beginnings. all we have is messy middles confused as twisted guts and eternal as the long intestine’ (shukri, 2014: 128). this reference is furthered by tariq’s kidnapping scene recurring and tariq losing sense of time in the cell, as he says: ‘i look to my body as a measure of time […] but how reliable a measure of time is the male body? a woman would know a month’ (shukri, 2014: 136). this theme recurs in all of tariq’s accounts as he struggles to keep track of minutes, hours, days. spectrality is also foregrounded in shukri’s use of the imagery of mashrabiya screens in both his novels. as yahya explains to leila in i see you, commenting on the spectralised subjects, in this case quite literally through the metaphor: ‘the idea [behind mashrabiya screens] is that the women of the house could look out on to the streets without anyone looking at them – they could see without being seen’ (shukri, 2014: 165). spivak, in her criticism of derrida’s specters of marx, talks about his ‘how-to-mourn-your-father book’ that fashions haunting as an entirely male-driven economy and ignores the exploitation of subaltern women in its commentaries on the new world order. she argues about the disservice done to the women by assimilating all marginalised groups into a mass of spectral entities. mashrabiya screens are also a metaphor in the silent minaret as issa’s favourite spot, linking him with the spectral. issa in the text is fashioned as a spectral subjectivity, shifted out of the political discourse, who turns himself into a spectre for the subversive potential of a bodily disappearance in a necropolitical regime that has built itself on the premise of surveillance. thus, shukri’s works skilfully explore the potentialities of spectrality and offer an astute commentary on it for muslim bodies subjected to surveillance and violence under the neo-colonial us empire. in commenting on the spectral subjects, shukri, unlike derrida, does not portray them as an undifferentiated mass of spectral entities but focuses on each individual subjectivity, and how they are affected in different ways by the same mechanisms of power. therefore, leila, as a woman, has to undergo a different trauma than yahya as a palestinian; like issa as an arab af rican muslim undergoes a very different experience f rom that of frances, an irish catholic woman. however, shukri makes sure to portray how geopolitics and necropolitics affect 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(2012). the indian ocean travels of sheikh yusuf and imam ali ali: literary representations in ishtiyaq shukri’s the silent minaret and achmat dangor’s bitter fruit. social dynamics, 38(2): 172–183. abstract south africa has a history of systemic racial segregation. the ramifications of this history within contemporary south africa, that extend beyond the black south african demographic, are yet to be fully discussed. the idea emerging is that the xenophobic culture prevalent in south africa is a result of internalised colonialism. in discussing internalised colonialism, the notion of citizenship needs to be analysed in order to legitimise who belongs to a state and who has access to a state? the de jure factors that fortified south africa’s apartheid regime indicate that dismantling internalised colonialism and its projection unto other black demographics in south africa requires legal fortification. the idea is that de facto and de jure factors can exist within a cycle that enables the deconstruction of xenophobic behaviour in south africa. in discussing this behaviour, the larger global landscape must be considered as being part of a web that perpetuates new forms of exclusion. emerging is an exposure of the vicious cycle that exists between previously subjugated groupings extending maltreatment towards other groupings within their spheres of influence. the idea is that a socio-totem pole exists in which there will always be an ‘other’ for the historically ‘othered’. defining persistent xenophobic behaviour in south africa as a case of internalised colonialism by tamunodein princewill | opinion 1v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion these notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘access’ are at the core of citizenship discussions and, as such, the genealogy of citizenship in south af rica needs to be assessed as a means of interpreting the roots of xenophobic behaviour in the nation. this paper identifies the detrimental legacy caused by prioritising de jure citizenship during the apartheid regime in modern -day south af rica introduction the term citizenship has different meanings in different contexts. it could either describe who belongs in a space or who has access to a particular nation state. these notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘access’ are at the core of citizenship discussions and, as such, the genealogy of citizenship in south af rica needs to be assessed as a means of interpreting the roots of xenophobic behaviour in the nation. this paper identifies the detrimental legacy caused by prioritising de jure citizenship during the apartheid regime in modern-day south af rica, and how this manifests in the behaviour of black south af ricans towards black immigrant groupings and other nonblack south af ricans. as such, this paper aims to state that xenophobic behaviour in south af rica is simply a case of internalised colonialism on the part of black south af ricans. in meeting the aforementioned aim, this paper will provide an analysis of citizenship in south af rica by linking the embodiments of citizenship during the apartheid regime to a postapartheid definition of citizenship in south af rica. the origins of citizenship citizenship entails two notions: who belongs in a space and who has access to the state (ceuppens and geshierre, 2005). the notion of who belongs in a space is the original and historically correct embodiment of citizenship, as this pre-dated the formation of the modern state, which brought with it the latter notion of citizenship referring to who has access to the state (strozzi and bertocchi, 2006). following f rom this original formation of citizenship was the notion of prioritising males belonging in spaces and, as such, women were barred form attaining citizenship and citizenship became gendered (strozzi and bertocchi, 2006). this was followed by a class-based citizenship: the idea that working males belonged to a space more than non-working males, as the former contributed more to society. with the emergence of the westphalian state in 1648, came the idea that citizens had obligations to the state and did not just claim f rom state. in return, the state would provide rights and privileges to its citizens (strozzi and bertocchi, 2006). the creation of the westphalian state also meant that citizenship shifted f rom being gendered and class-based to being defined on the basis of race and language. this type of citizenship encompassed both notions of citizenship and rested on the idea that the white man both belonged in a space and had access to the nation state. as such, it was this type of citizenship that brought with it the current socio-hierarchical structures of the world: a hierarchy that starts with the white man, followed by the white woman, then the black man and, at the very bottom of the hierarchy, the black woman. in essence, not only did the nation state bring forth an exclusive form of citizenship, but it used this citizenship to produce an idea of who could be ‘rightfully’ subjugated. the 1949 formation of the apartheid regime in south af rica embodied the aforementioned idea of citizenship and enforced this idea of citizenship by legalising it and making the law a tool of coloniality (modiri, 2019). the exclusive and restrictive form of citizenship defined and legalized under the apartheid state created ‘borders within borders’ with the formation of homelands, which enabled the apartheid state to ensure that black people did not have access to the south af rican state and instilled within black people the idea that they did not belong outside of the homelands. it is clear that the origins of citizenship in south af rica had roots in white supremacy and the subjugation of the black south af rican masses, which restricted their belonging and access to the state. this leads to a discussion on the subjugation of black immigrant groupings by black south af rican masses as a means of defining citizenship within their own 2 t h e t h i n k e r opinion black south af rican context. in the same way that the broader socio-hierarchical structure of the world starts with white people and ends with black people, the south af rican socio-hierarchical structure starts with the white south af rican male, followed by the white south af rican female, then the black south af rican male, followed by the black south af rican female and finally, at the end, black immigrant groupings. the idea emerges that the notion of citizenship is an entity reliant on the continuous subjugation of human beings. south af rica’s current-day exclusionary and restrictive citizenship is a legacy of white supremacy, as the subjugation of black immigrant groupings by black south af ricans merely extends the treatment given to them. as such, adequately exploring persistent xenophobic behaviour implies assessing xenophobia’s origins in white supremacy. defining post-apartheid citizenship as previously mentioned, apartheid south af rica’s citizenship was based on exclusion. post-apartheid citizenship is one that has merely changed the manner in which this exclusionary citizenship is manifested. the south af rican state was previously only accessible to white south af ricans, but now is accessible to all south af ricans, meaning that citizenship is now nationalistic as opposed to its previous ethnic stipulations. one form of exclusion was replaced by another form of exclusion with the aims of forming an inclusive basis of citizenship. such neo-exclusion is seen in the recent trending hashtag on twitter by south af ricans calling for #nigeriansmustfall, which saw discussions surrounding having pass documents for black immigrant groupings in order to identify legal immigrants f rom illegal immigrants. this has links to an apartheid legacy, in which the pass system was introduced by the apartheid government to restrict and regulate the movement of black south af ricans. this idea of black south af ricans dealing with an ‘other’ in the way white south af ricans dealt with them as the ‘other’ is a reflection of the deeprooted internalised colonialism present amongst black south af ricans (hall, 1992), as subjecting black immigrant groupings to an internal pass system is a reflection of the internal policing black south af ricans endured under the apartheid state. in mentioning the idea of the ‘other’ becoming the ‘otherer’ and vice versa, one must mention how nigerians (who are being othered by #nigeriansmustfall within south af rica) were themselves once the perpetrators of the othering of another group within their own country. the aforementioned was seen with the ‘ghana must go’ rhetoric used by nigerians in 1983, which ultimately led to the forced removal of ghanaians and other undocumented west af rican immigrants f rom nigeria’s borders by former nigerian leader shehu shagari (lawal, 2020). this legacy of intra-state conflict in deciding who has access to the state and who the state belongs to manifests as inter-state conflicts on the af rican continent, as tensions persisted between ghana and nigeria for many years following the exile of ghanaians f rom nigeria (lawal, 2020). a further probing of the unhumanitarian narratives attached to denied citizenship, particularly in apartheid south af rica and how it manifested into the denied citizenship of refugees and asylum seekers in postapartheid south af rica, will show the large extent to which persistent xenophobic behaviour is rooted in white supremacy. as previously stated, xenophobic behaviour in south af rica is simply a case of internalised colonialism on the part of black south af ricans. this is because the apartheid state denied simple human necessities to black south af ricans, such as access to food and adequate healthcare. the inadequate education offered to black south af ricans and the job restrictions placed on them entrenched many black south af ricans in poverty, which greatly impacted their access to food, and as such many black south af ricans had to go to great lengths to perform the basic task of feeding their families (britannica, 2020). another way in which basic human necessities were denied to black south af ricans by the apartheid state was with the inadequate and segregated healthcare facilities black south af ricans were given (britannica, 2020), which created overcrowding in black hospitals. the underfunding of black hospitals ultimately limited the healthcare treatment that black south af ricans could have access to. as such, living in poor physical health, whether unknowingly or knowingly, was normalised for black south af ricans, as was living with poor mental health, due to the long working hours and long distances created by the migrant labour system. it is by understanding the above that one can 3v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion further probe the xenophobic behaviour shown towards refugees and asylum seekers, who are not inhabiting south af rica for economic reasons but for humanitarian reasons. it can be stated that the reason for xenophobic behaviour towards refugees and asylum seekers is rooted in the manner in which black south af ricans experienced unhumanitarian narratives attached to their denied citizenship during apartheid south af rica. the severity of one’s needs does not equate to one being able to access the state, in the same way that the dire circumstances of black south af ricans did not hasten the apartheid state to grant them access to the state. it is the legacy of this unhumanitarian narrative attached to citizenship, resulting f rom white supremacy, that sees the current exclusionary form of citizenship in south af rica. in contrast, a humanitarian narrative attached to citizenship would see the welcoming of an af rican brotherhood within south af rican borders, limiting the inter-state and intra-state conflict manifested by xenophobic rhetoric. the aforementioned dealt with citizenship in terms of who has access to the state, in doing so assuming that black immigrant groupings are seeking access to the south af rican state as opposed to seeking belonging within a south af rican space. the demarcation between the notions of accessing and belonging is based on the idea that accessing the south af rican state is an economic and educational pursuit, whereas belonging is a personal and psychological pursuit, in which black immigrant groupings aim to fit into black south af rican culture. according to maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety needs such as that of economic security supersede that of belonging. as such, the continued assumption that black immigrant groupings are first and foremost seeking access to the south af rican state can be substantiated. black immigrant groupings aim to assimilate and form their sense of belonging to the state within black south af rican culture, as opposed to within white south af rican culture, because black south af ricans have access to the sector of the state in which black immigrant groupings can operate. this means that the attempts of black immigrant groupings to assimilate into black south af rican culture is also sector-specific, as the majority of black immigrant groupings operate in the informal sector. furthermore, the low-income status of black immigrant groupings means that the majority of this group live in informal areas, townships, and nonsuburbia dwellings – the same areas in which the majority of black south af ricans live (de greef, 2019). as such, belonging becomes intertwined and intensified with speaking a black south af rican language. considering the notions of accessing and belonging within the definition of citizenship, the question is which of these notions do black south af ricans prohibit black immigrant groups f rom having? answering this question will allow for an exploration of the ways in which xenophobia is linked to the successful or unsuccessful assimilation of non-citizens. the aforementioned can be achieved surrounding a discussion on the discourse of xenophobia. in the same way that there is a language of racism, there is also a discourse of xenophobia. the xenophobic discourse developed increasingly since the 1990s by the south af rican department of home affairs and the south af rican media has links to a post-apartheid constitution regarding notions of citizenship and has been internalised by black south af rican citizens to conceptualise their relationship to the nation (modiri, 2019). as a result, the discourse of xenophobia creates positions for black immigrant groupings to occupy as objects and it gives way for the master signifiers in this discourse, black south af rican citizens, to organise the identity of black immigrant groupings. it is in the latter that the power of this discourse lies, as black south af ricans shape the idea of citizenship for non-citizens, in essence dictating their livelihood within the borders of south af rica. as such, decreasing xenophobic rhetoric is linked to the successful assimilation of non-citizens, because the more they strip themselves of the identity of the ‘other’, the less power black south af ricans have to shape them as the ‘other’ (hall, 1992). however, this same notion of assimilation by non-citizens causes increasing xenophobic rhetoric as the naturalisation of non-citizens threatens the existence of black south af ricans as autochthones, thereby resulting in a persistent division between citizens and non-citizens and increasing xenophobic rhetoric. furthermore, one must discuss the manner in which vacuums and voids strengthen the discourse of xenophobia. vacuums in this case relates to the lack of a unified national consciousness in south af rica, 4 t h e t h i n k e r opinion culture, and can be said to be a citizen by de facto measures. as opposed to countries like the united states of america, which naturalises non-citizens after ten years of contributing to american society regardless of their place of birth, south af rica only recognises a non-citizen’s naturalisation if that noncitizen is linked to a south af rican in terms of having a south af rican parent. this micro-division between citizens and non-citizens forms the premise of dictating macro ideas of who belongs within a space and sets the precedent for xenophobic behaviour. an immigrant’s claim to citizenship and naturalisation is linked to their association with an autochthony. as such, a powerful discourse emerges surrounding autochthony and the manner in which a ‘regional minority reinvents itself as a national majority’ (ceuppens and geshierre, 2005: 395). although black south af ricans were never regional minorities population-wise, they were regional minorities in the manner in which they were treated like second-class citizens, which sees their recognized autochthony in democratic south af rica as a way in which they reinvent themselves as a national majority that dictates the entities that can access their nation and to whom their nation can belong to. the proceedings surrounding 1994 legally prohibited any drastic action to bar white south af ricans f rom being stripped of their self-proclaimed autochthony to the south af rican state (modiri, 2019), hence further substantiating the previous claims that south af rican society is held together by legalised citizenship and legalised ideas of belonging, as opposed to a national consciousness. which sees national citizenship as the only unified entity which joins all south af ricans together (modiri, 2019). the idea that the state belongs to a citizen, and that a citizen has access to the state, is the basis upon which south af rican society manages to coexist, meaning that this society is dependent on de jure factors for its functionality (modiri, 2019). it is this fixation on de jure factors that sees the entrance of non-legalised entities posing a threat to the very basis of south af rican society’s harmony. a unified national consciousness would replace the dependence on de jure factors for a functioning society, and this would trickle down to alleviating persistent xenophobic behaviour. as such, the othering of black immigrant groupings would decrease once the vacuum caused by a lack of unified national consciousness is filled (fanon, 1963). the starting point for filling this lack of national consciousness would be for the white bourgeoise within the state to invest back into south af rica, as their wealth is dependent on a legacy of subjugation of black people as an underpaid labour source (fanon, 1963). furthermore, the ‘petty black’ bourgeoise within the state should disassociate f rom colonialist thought with regards to black immigrant groupings being used as a working source (fanon, 1963). as a collective, both the white and black national bourgeoise of south af rica should disassociate f rom wanting to fill the gap of western bourgeoise, an ‘othered’ bourgeoise (fanon, 1963), as such forming an intermediary role that reflects the idea to workingclass south af ricans that foreign citizens should be barred f rom accessing the state. moreover, the aforementioned de jure reliance of south af rican citizens adds to a disregard of individual experiences which essentially shape national existence (fanon, 1963). one group’s individual experience cannot be prioritised over another in order for national consciousness to exist. the de jure and de facto notions surrounding citizenship form the basis of the dha’s nonnaturalisation stance of foreigners. for instance, the child of an immigrant who has lived in south af rica f rom the age of 5 and has made use of the country’s educational institutions while contributing to the country’s economy, by means of working part-time jobs or working within the informal sector, is still not eligible for south af rican citizenship. such a person probably speaks at least one indigenous south af rican language fluently, is likely familiar with south af rican 5v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 this micro-division between citizens and non-citizens forms the premise of dictating macro ideas of who belongs within a space and sets the precedent for xenophobic behaviour. an immigrant’s claim to citizenship and naturalisation is linked to their association with an autochthony. opinion from this idea of the powerful discourse surrounding autochthony comes a discussion surrounding the fluidity of the autochthon in south af rica and the smaller zones in which autochthon discourses emerge. this, in essence, implies that the ideas of citizenship are not just inter-related between national citizens and black immigrant groupings, but are intrarelated within national citizens by means of culture and tribe, which leads to the idea that ‘being south af rican’ is a fluid spectrum. on the lower end of this spectrum, considered to be less indigenous, are those of pedi and venda descent, because of their closer resemblance to the ethnic groupings of inhabitants f rom lesotho and eswatini. this also highlights that the ‘othering’ of non-citizens is one that bears no consideration for neighbouring countries or border proximities, as eswatini and lesotho are nations that share borders with south af rica. furthermore, the smaller zones in which the power of autochthony discourses are felt is within provinces. for instance, those considering themselves autochthones of the western cape are hostile towards the increasing influx of people from the eastern cape. such a hostility is present within the townships in which these opposing groups of people live, thereby fuelling the already present gang violence within and between townships (de greef, 2019). the idea emerging is that being a national citizen is no longer enough to belong in every space within national borders and to be able to access every province (ceuppens and geshierre, 2005). this idea can be extended to the global sphere in which african americans are considered allogenes of america despite their generational presence in the country. proponents of autochthony reflect the idea that the only place they will truly belong is where their ancestors lived (ceuppens and geshierre, 2005). once the discourse of power surrounding autochthony has been broken down, then a paradigm shift will occur, allowing for a decrease in south africa’s fixation on legalised, racialised and ethnicised citizenship. this will allow for the self to be a reflection of the actor’s socialisation, meaning the self will be more inclusive, as such producing a smaller ‘othered’ pool (hopf, 1998). following f rom a discussion surrounding autochthony, one needs to then discuss the former racialised citizenship present in apartheid south af rica and the extent to which present-day south af rica shifted f rom that type of citizenship to a legalised citizenship. during apartheid, white af rikaans speaking south af ricans claimed to be the autochthony, as their ancestors the dutch had settled in south af rica for generations. their citizenship was based on the entitlement that they could fully access the state. similarly, white english-speaking south af ricans laid claim to the nation because their countrymen had colonised the nation; essentially, their citizenship was based on the idea that the state belonged to them. combining the notions of belonging and accessing within citizenship, white af rikaansand english-speaking south af ricans created a racialised citizenship that validated the identity of the white man as a naturalised entity of south af rica. the irony in this racialised citizenship was that neither of these groups of people were autochthones of the south af rican state, and the real indigenes were the ones being subjugated and treated as second-class citizens. in modern-day south af rica, the questioning of who is natural to south af rica has risen within xenophobic discourses, and one could link this questioning to the f rustration caused by legalised citizenship, in that black south af ricans cannot formally prohibit white south af ricans f rom accessing a nation state that was not theirs to begin with. as a result, this inability and f rustration is projected onto black immigrant groupings who do not have the same legal protection regarding citizenship as white south af ricans do. the embodiment of naturalisation that black south af ricans have within the discourse of xenophobia can be said to be a means of redefining their identity to belong to what was once taken away f rom them. however, one can also state that this narrative has been reflected towards the wrong groups of people. factually, white south af ricans resisted a non-racial democracy until it was no longer a viable economic decision, whereas other af rican nations fought alongside black south af ricans in the fight towards liberation. the inhabitants of those af rican nations form the current black immigrant groupings within south af rica. as such, one could question whether citizenship should be formed on the basis of who fought for modern-day democratic south af rica. such an idea would render the claim of white south af ricans to the state as useless. however, given the legacy of apartheid, coupled with the internalised colonialism present in black south af ricans, the 6 t h e t h i n k e r opinion that their home countries helped south africa in the fight for democracy, echoing ideas of the african brotherhood based on nkrumah’s school of thought. in recognising the legal roots that produce an irresolution of citizenship discourses in south af rica, one must also recognise the economic roots and incentives behind the production of certain citizenship discourses which result in persistant xenophobic behaviour. many ‘moderate’ third world governments, such as south af rica’s, aim to link objectives of social growth and social justice, which attempt to use current socio-economic platforms to incorporate marginalised groups (ballard, 2012: 813). in south af rica, such a marginalised group would be black south af ricans. emerging is the idea that postneo-liberalist governments focus on the poor and discourses of citizenship, as opposed to neo-liberalist governments that focus on economic management (ballard, 2012: 813). south af rica is a country that aims to find a middle ground within the motives of post-neo-liberalist and neo-liberalist governments, meaning that the government is often skewed towards narratives surrounding marginalised groups, which allows for this type of narrative to be present during election time, leading to voteseeking behaviour on the basis of incorporating the marginalised into the country. the issue that arises f rom this vote-seeking behaviour occurs when lines are blurred between advocating for the marginalised citizens of south af rica and basing the lack of access of these marginalised citizens on that of black immigrant groupings, as such fuelling existing xenophobic rhetoric as black immigrant groupings are used as the scapegoats of the economic woes facing black south af ricans. this is similar to the historical situation faced by jews, who were treated as second-class citizens within germany and were scapegoated for the economic woes of ‘autochthony germans’, despite having been citizens of germany for generations (ranan, 2020). both situations echo the idea that no level of assimilation by one group into another group is ever truly enough to escape being ‘othered’. the magnitude of vote-seeking behaviour in fuelling xenophobic behaviour is demonstrated in the cycle of a period of harmony, followed by sporadic or episodic violent outbursts within hot zones, such as townships and other impoverished locations (de greef, 2019). historically ‘othered’ unconsciously finds more closure in othering and subjugating another entity. the idea of white south af ricans being excluded f rom the narrative of citizenship forms part of a type of constitutional irresolution of citizenship, in which the politico-historical tensions between black south af ricans and white south af ricans have been ignored and have been blanketed under the pretext of a constitutional citizenship (modiri, 2019), once again building a façade of national unity on de jure pretexts. occurring from this constitutional irresolution is a constitutionalisation of injustice which sees the forced transmission of the injustice of the past into a ‘justice’ of the present (modiri, 2019). as such, xenophobic behaviour in this case stems from the irresolution within south africans caused by the country’s reliance on legalised national unity. the inability of black south africans to deal with this irresolution results in their projection of the south african citizenship crisis onto black immigrant groupings, which in itself echoes tendencies of internalised colonialism, as the historically ‘othered’ becomes the perpetuator of ‘othering’. the idea is that black south africans are now the entitled group within south africa with regards to dictating who has access to south africa, meaning that to a large extent they can justify their othering of certain groups because of their place in the citizenship hierarchical structure of south africa. this idea of entitlement brings to light the equal entitlement that black immigrant groupings should have with regards to accessing the south african state on the grounds 7v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 as such, xenophobic behaviour in this case stems f rom the irresolution within south af ricans caused by the country’s reliance on legalised national unity. the inability of black south af ricans to deal with this irresolution results in their projection of the south af rican citizenship crisis onto black immigrant groupings, which in itself echoes tendencies of internalised colonialism, as the historically ‘othered’ becomes the perpetuator of ‘othering’. opinion unpacking the fallacy surrounding black immigrant groupings’ economic success in south af rica is key to dismantling xenophobic behaviour in the country. the first assertion that needs to be made in relation to the aforementioned is that black immigrant groupings are not stealing the jobs of black south af ricans. the intent behind the use of the word ‘stealing’ in this context implies that certain jobs are reserved for black south af ricans, which echoes the colour bar system of the apartheid era, in which job reservation for white south af ricans was legislated. this once again roots internalised colonialism within the discourse of citizenship. the idea of black immigrant groups ‘stealing’ jobs is one that is false on the basis that the majority of black immigrant groups work within the informal sector as small-scale entrepreneurs, bringing to light the idea that black immigrant groups are merely filling the economic voids left by black south af ricans and the south af rican socio-economy as a whole. one could further substantiate this claim by highlighting the inability of black south af ricans to set up shops and businesses prior to the arrival of somali or nigerian immigrants. in discussing the economic roots of persistent xenophobic behaviour in south af rica, one must also discuss the financial incentives of institutions fuelling citizenship discourses that lead to the formation of illegal immigrants, which fuels existing xenophobic rhetoric. the south af rican dha decreases the channels of direct access that black immigrants have to them. instead, they transfer the legalities of citizenship to external companies like vfs global and other visa application centres. these centres offer the buying of services to their customers, whom are mainly black immigrant groupings, offering them the ability to ‘enjoy a faster, more convenient and more luxurious application’ (vfs global, 2020), in essence treating legal status as if it were a business. the golden rule of thumb in the consumer-business world is that if a consumer cannot afford a product (in this case, obtaining a legal status in south af rica), then that product simply won’t be bought. the capitalisation of acquiring valid visas in south af rica has direct links to the rising numbers of illegal immigrants within the country, as many of these immigrants cannot afford the services offered by these visa application centres. this leads to these immigrants turning to cheap forms of labour in order to sustain their livelihood in the country with their illegal status, thereby lowering the minimum wage as their cheap labour creates competition with black south af ricans, which in turn leads to the idea that black immigrant groups are overflooding the informal job market. black immigrant groups are then associated as those threatening the access of black south af ricans to the state, as the limited job markets available within the state are flooded with these immigrant groups. the economic roots of the citizenship discourse that enables xenophobic behaviour could be used to dismantle these xenophobic behaviours. for instance, the contribution of black immigrant groupings to south af rican society by means of their critical skills and entrepreneurial skills should be remunerated with easier access to gaining south af rican citizenship. this idea of a foreigner’s contribution to their host society being grounds for remuneration in the form of citizenship or permanent residency is seen in many parts of the world. in the usa, for instance, the acquisition of a green card, a permanent resident card which is equated to naturalisation, is achieved after a period of ten consecutive years in the country; this ten-year period is quantified as an immigrant’s contribution to american society. furthermore, countries like the usa make it easier for non-americans to gain citizenship with a form of medical tourism that incentivises pregnant noncitizens to give birth in america, thereby making use of their healthcare system, and in return the american government grants american citizenship to the child born to that individual. south africa has no such form of medical tourism. if you are born in south africa and your parents are not south african citizens, you are only able to contest for citizenship when you are 18 years of age (andani, 2020). the aforementioned medical tourism also forms part of discussions surrounding the assimilation of non-westerners into a westernised citizenship which forms the basis of identity and assimilation discourses. this also propagates the idea of a de jure citizenship in which the only claim these individuals will have to america is based on their passport, and not on de facto reasonings of their lived experience in the country. as such, this inclusive and less restrictive form of acquiring citizenship still rests on the law. this means that the idea of the autochthony being the only entity that can lay claim to a state cannot be upheld, as inherent to the notion of autochthony is the idea that it is natural. 8 t h e t h i n k e r opinion of citizenship, and would introduce a pan af rican pedagogy. conf ronting this language of xenophobia is important in addressing other xenophobic attitudes within the wider context of the af rican continent, as foreigners across the continent are associated with many stereotypical labels. in cameroon, foreigners are named ‘came-no-goes’, which is pidgin for ‘immigrants’ and translates to ‘people that came but refuse to go’, therefore associating foreigners to entities that cause an inconvenience to local citizens (ceuppens and geshierre, 2005: 395). in south af rica, the term ‘kwerekwere’ is used to refer to the sounds made by black immigrant groupings when speaking in their home languages. although there are possibilities in the dismantling of xenophobic behaviour, it is important to discuss the realities involved in doing so. a brief look at citizenship in the wider context of af rica is important. af rican americans and autochthonous af ricans are involved in a discourse of ‘othering’, for instance, in which af rican americans attempting to defend their return to af rica is seen by autochthonous af ricans to be more about accessing the global (ceuppens and geshierre, 2005: 387). the harmful notion that then arises f rom autochthonous af ricans being ‘the self’ and af rican americans being the ‘other’ is one along the lines of ‘not all skin folk are kin folk’. the irony is that autochthonous af ricans are ‘othering’ af rican americans in the same way that these autochthonous af ricans were othered by the west. this western ‘othering’ is the very cause of these large groups of af ricans being in the diaspora in the first place, and once again the historically ‘othered’ becomes the perpetuator of ‘othering’. this intercontinental af ro-pessimism has been acknowledged by ghana, which is looking to combat it with legal aspects and de facto aspects. ghana’s ‘right of abode’ law of 2000 aims to provide documentation for af rican americans and anyone of af rican descent to f reely move between ghana and america at their own leisure (mccormick, 2019). similarly, ghana’s ‘year of return, 2019’ aimed to incentivise af rican americans and af ricans in the diaspora to visit ghana and possibly to resettle in the country (mccormick, 2019). ghana is the pioneer of shifting the harmful ‘othering’ narratives that exist between af rican americans and autochthonous af ricans, and other af rican countries are yet to follow once legalities are intertwined with this, the law dictates who belongs to the state and not the natural origins of the individual. as such, who has access to the state is constantly being redefined against a new ‘other’, as seen with the shift in the ‘othering’ of black south africans to black immigrant groups. dismantling xenophobia in discussing citizenship in its different stages, the idea of digital citizenship needs to be briefly explored. digital citizenship shifts f rom de jure and de facto ideas of citizenship. its basis is the use of technology as a tool for a harmonious society, in which digital content can be created and consumed (digital technologies hub, 2020). the possibilities of such a citizenship in south af rica is unlikely, as the present society would exclude certain demographics, mainly black south af ricans, f rom accessing these digital technologies (modiri, 2019). as such, south af rica needs to redress its de jure citizenship before it can explore the prospects of a harmonious society based on de facto or digital citizenship. the first step to dismantling xenophobic behaviour is reliant on de jure factors. in the same way that citizenship discourses that lead to xenophobic behaviour are shaped by the law, dismantling xenophobic behaviour is also based on the law, and as such a greater role should be placed on international human rights law within the parameters of advocating for the human dignity of the most vulnerable immigrant communities, refugees, and asylum seekers. in addition, xenophobic attitudes should be persecuted as hate crimes in the same way that racist attitudes and speeches are. the fact that xenophobia is not prosecutable as a hate crime shows the irony within south af rica’s citizenship hierarchy, where the victims of hate speech are also the perpetuators of hate speech, a classic case of the ‘othered’ becoming the ‘otherer’. another solution to dismantling xenophobic behaviour would be to dissect internalised colonialism. with this comes the breaking down of af ro-pessimistic behaviour, which is at the very root of the south af rican xenophobic discourse, as black south af ricans do not associate these discriminatory practices and attitudes towards white immigrant groupings. this would allow for a return back to an af rican brotherhood, would conf ront the language of xenophobia present within discourses 9v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 opinion suit. in the same way that internalised colonialism caused by the apartheid state’s subjugation of certain groups became manifested in south af rica’s citizenship discourse, the internalised colonialism caused by the west’s colonialism of af rica causes af ricans in the diaspora to be victims of a misplaced citizenship discourse by autochthonous af ricans. conclusion essentially, this paper has highlighted xenophobic behaviour in south af rica as a case of internalised colonialism on the part of black south af ricans. in doing so, the dual conceptualisations of citizenship were discussed as a means of interpreting the roots of xenophobic behaviour in south af rica. furthermore, the different stages of citizenship discussed within the south af rican context exposed the detrimental legacy caused by prioritising de jure citizenship during the apartheid regime, and its subsequent manifestations in the attitudes and behaviours of black south af ricans towards black immigrant groupings. references andani, a. 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(2020). vfs [online]. available at: https://visa.vfsglobal.com/ zaf/en/can 10 t h e t h i n k e r opinion note from the editor contributors to this edition the university of johannesburg acquired the thinker in april 2019 f rom dr essop pahad. over the last decade, the thinker has gained a reputation as a journal that explores pan-af rican issues across fields and times. ronit frenkel, as the incoming editor, plans on maintaining the pan-af rican scope of the journal while increasing its coverage into fields such as books, art, literature and popular cultures. the thinker is a ‘hybrid’ journal, publishing both journalistic pieces with more academic articles and contributors can now opt to have their submissions peer reviewed. we welcome af rica-centred articles f rom diverse perspectives, in order to enrich both knowledge of the continent and of issues impacting the continent. all contributing analysts write in their personal capacity prof ronit frenkel nathan chapman nathan chapman is a phd sociology student at the university of the west indies, st. augustine campus, trinidad and tobago. his phd and msc thesis focuses on frame case, a notion whereby rogue police officers maliciously charge or accuse residents of a crime by tampering with evidence. his research interests also include coloniality, gender and migration studies. he theoretically positions within a decolonial lens in the pursuit of social justice and disentangling eurocentrism within praxis. samia chasi samia chasi has more than 20 years of experience in higher education internationalisation as practitioner, scholar and facilitator. she currently serves as manager: strategic initiatives, partnership development and research at the international education association of south af rica (ieasa) and is a research fellow at the university of the free state (ufs). her research interests lie in global south perspectives on higher education internationalisation, with a particular focus on north-south collaboration and partnerships. david du toit david du toit is a senior lecturer at the department of sociology at the university of johannesburg. in 2019, he received his phd in sociology f rom the university of stellenbosch. he is currently teaching third-year social science research methodology, honours sociology of work and labour markets and spss for ma students at uj. he has supervised ten successful ma students on topics ranging f rom emotional labour, domestic work and the gig economy. he has published several articles on outsourcing, paid domestic work, the private security sector and emotional labour. steven friedman steven friedman is research professor in the humanities faculty, university of johannesburg. he is a political scientist who specializes in the study of democracy. he has written widely on south af rica’s transition to democracy and on the relationship between democracy , social inequality and economic growth. he has stressed the role of citizen voice in strengthening democracy. he is the author of building tomorrow today, a study of the south af rican trade union movement and its impact on democracy. his study of south af rican radical thought race, class and power: harold wolpe and the radical critique of apartheid was published in 2015, his examination of democratic theory, power in action: democracy, citizenship and social justice in 2018 and his discussion of south af rica as a path dependant democracy, prisoners of the past, in 2021. emmarica houlder emmarica houlder is an msc. sociology student at the university of the west indies, st. augustine campus, trinidad and tobago, her current research for the msc. thesis focuses on the pandemic experiences v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 and realities for marginalised groups in trinidad and tobago. she is passionate about the economic instability and injustice tied to social hierarchies and is determined to change such realities. george hull george hull is a senior lecturer and nrf y1-rated researcher in the philosophy department, university of cape town. he lectures on political philosophy, philosophy of race, business ethics and history of philosophy. together with jimmy winfield and greg fried, he co-authored business ethics and other paradoxes: how philosophy answers questions about the ethics of business (fairest cape press, 2014). he is editor of the equal society: essays on equality in theory and practice (lexington books, 2015) and debating af rican philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial ethics and comparative philosophy (routledge, 2019). he has published essays in academic journals and collections on topics including transitional justice, democracy, reification, social equality, affirmative action, higher education funding and south af rican literature. samuel igba samuel igba is a researcher and phd student of political science at the university of pretoria, and the centre for mediation in af rica. his research focuses on statebuilding, peacebuilding and the use of force by security agencies in af rica. he has a background at undergraduate level in peace and conflict studies, and a masters in diplomatic studies. he also has experiences working at government and intergovernmental organizations across af rica including the united nations (un), and the economic community of west af rican states (ecowas). emmaculate asige liaga emmaculate asige liaga is an associate postdoc researcher at the centre for af rican studies, university of basel, and a visiting researcher at the centre for conflict, development and peacebuilding (ccdp), graduate institute geneva. her work is on the analysis of conflict resolution mechanisms and nexus of local and adaptive approaches in intervention of peacebuilding in af rica. emmaculate is also a senior researcher at the centre for conflict and peace af rica (ccpa), south af rica, where she conducts policy research on peacebuilding in af rica. her research interests include peace and security f rom below, conflict resolution, agency of communities in policymaking, and international relations theories (critical theories and marginalized theories). sangeeta maharaj sangeeta maharaj is an msc. sociology graduate of the university of the west indies, st. augustine campus, trinidad and tobago. her research for the msc. thesis includes issues of sexual violence, where her focus was on exploring how women work through the sociocultural trauma associated with that experience. she is an advocate for domestic violence survivors and intends to pursue ngo work to assist victims. zilibele mtumane zilibele mtumane is professor and head of the department of af rican languages and school of languages at the university of johannesburg. he holds the degree of dlitt et phil f rom the university of south af rica, specialising in af rican languages. he also has the higher education diploma f rom the university of fort hare and diploma in translation f rom the university of south af rica. he has presented a number of academic papers in various national and international conferences, where he chaired sessions as well. he has authored and co-authored over twenty five articles in various accredited journals. he has also authored three books and co-published two. apart f rom publishing, he is a regular adjudicator for various accredited journals and has edited (and evaluated) book manuscripts for various publishing houses. mtumane has supervised a number of postgraduate students, some of whom passed cum laude. he is also external examiner of both undergraduate and postgraduate students for various universities. he is a member of various professional and academic organisations. theo neethling theo neethling obtained a dlitt et phil in international politics f rom the university of south af rica in 1992. he contributors to this edition t h e t h i n k e r has held the position of professor in the department of political studies and governance at the university of the free state since 1 april 2009. he also served as head of department f rom april 2009 to june 2020. he is rated as an ‘established researcher’ by the south af rican national research foundation (since 2009) and his research interests concern af rica’s international relations; south af rica’s foreign relations; security and politics in the af rican context; and af rican futures. anton m. pillay anton m. pillay is a uj humanities pdrf. he completed his ma and phd under the supervision of prof chris landsberg, the south af rican research chair on af rican diplomacy and foreign policy. he is also affiliated with the centre for academic development based at the vaal university of technology. melanie seeberan melanie seeberan is an mphil sociology student at the west indies, st. augustine campus, trinidad and tobago. her research for the msc and mphil thesis include issues of intimate partner violence. additionally, she focuses on bullying among high school students and advocates for policies to reform social issues plaguing the t&t socio-cultural environment. ruth nozibele tabu is the principal of inxiweni primary school at tembisa township, in gauteng. she holds the degree of master of arts in af rican languages, f rom the university of johannesburg. she also has the junior primary teachers’ diploma f rom the former daveyton college of education. her research interests include af rican literature and culture. she has co-authored one other article published in an accredited journal; south af rican journal of af rican languages. buck whaley buck whaley is studying toward an ma in social impact assessment at the university of johannesburg. he completed his honours degree in social anthropology f rom the university of cape town. alongside his ma, buck is a second-year sociology tutor. this would be buck’s first published journal article. with a strong writing background and varied interests, he hopes this will be his first of many to come. tlhabane mokhine ‘dan’ motaung tlhabane mokhine ‘dan’ motaung is a former student and youth activist. he has published articles in the mainstream media and chapters in edited volumes. he currently works as a civil servant. his interests include classical antiquity, history (south af rican, af rican, and world), as well as international political economy, classical and philosophy af rican philosophy. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 contributors to this edition the change which remains the same: 8v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 peer review abstract in his celebrated study of colonisation, the intimate enemy, ashis nandy observes of indian responses to british colonisation: ‘the pressure to be the obverse of the west distorts the traditional priorities in the indian’s total view of the…universe…it in fact binds him (sic) even more irrevocably to the west.’ this problem stems, he adds, from a tendency by both coloniser and anti-colonial thinker to ‘absolutise the relative difference between cultures’. this article will argue that nandy’s observation is an essential element in a south african response to colonisation which does not repeat colonialism’s assumptions in the name of replacing them. in particular, it argues against an essentialism in which a reified ‘western culture’ is replaced by an equally reified ‘african culture’ which is just as constraining and just as likely to be used as a rationale for domination as the colonial ideology it purports to reject. it will further argue that we avoid the trap of which nandy warns if we define intellectual colonisation as an ideology which seeks to suppress or eliminate modes of thought which do not conform to a dominant set of values and its antidote, decolonisation, as the removal of this constraint, not as its replacement by new constraints. this decolonisation does not seek to abolish ‘western culture’ but to integrate it into a world view in which it takes its place alongside african, asian, and latin american cultures. it therefore recognises the syncretic nature of all cultures and views of the world and seeks to enhance, rather than obstruct, conversations between them. the change which remains the same: towards a decolonisation which does not recolonise by steven friedman introduction ‘…the popular modern antonyms are not always the true opposites…in every situation of organized oppression the true antonyms are always the exclusive part versus the inclusive whole – not masculinity versus femininity but either of them versus androgyny, not the past versus the present but either of them versus the timelessness in which the past is the present and the present is the past, not the oppressor versus the oppressed but both of them versus the rationality which turns them into co-victims.’ (nandy, 2005: 99) since the rhodes must fall protests, which began at the university of cape town in march 2015 (newsinger, 2016), the decolonisation of knowledge and its dissemination have become central concerns – at least in theory – of south af rican universities. this has obvious implications beyond the academy, since it is hardly the only south af rican institution in which the values and assumptions of europe have been normative in the two decades since the achievement of majority rule. the political commentator aubrey matshiqi (2011) has observed that, in south af rica’s democracy, the political majority remain a cultural minority. the demand for ‘decolonisation’ is, therefore, not restricted to universities – it speaks to all intellectual and cultural life. the defeat of apartheid removed the legal impediments to citizenship for all – but left many of the hierarchies of the past in place: in effect, the cultural and intellectual underpinnings of af rikaner nationalism were discredited, only for those which had sustained an earlier british colonialism to take over (friedman, 2015). given this, perhaps the only surprise about heightened demands for the decolonisation of thinking, writing, and teaching is that they took so long to appear. there is clearly an urgent need for the intellectual equivalent of the negotiation process which produced the political settlement of 1994 – an exchange on how the society’s thinkers, writers, and teachers should begin to f ree themselves of colonial assumptions and to think about the society and its challenges in ways which do not reflect the view of the coloniser. that this discussion is overdue is underlined by the fact that a paper arguing for a broad negotiation on the nature of the university was written a quarter of a century ago (badat, barends, and wolpe, 1993). but, while calls for decolonisation have been very loud, they have not been very distinct: clear articulations of a decolonised intellectual f ramework have been largely drowned out by rhetorical flourishes. equally important is that a f requent feature of the rhetoric is its essentialism. we are exhorted to adopt af rican modes of thinking in tones which assume both that the continent’s many and varied cultures all see the world in the same way – and that the way in which they see it is so obvious to authentic af ricans that they require no explanation. it is assumed – or stated – that those who do not endorse these alternatives are colonial ideologues, a charge levelled against, among others, a prominent black consciousness intellectual (mangcu, 2017). this is a manifestation of a deeper problem: ‘it is not uncommon to hear testimonies of students positing that they do not feel black enough, given that a singular dominant narrative of what constitutes blackness is rigorously defended often at the cost of f ree expression’ (nymanjoh, 2017: 264). those who take this view are used, no doubt, to hearing f rom their targets angry protestations of their anti-colonial credentials and criticism f rom supporters of the dominant view denouncing their demands as excessively radical. they are not used to challenges to their own credentials – to being told that their militant opposition to the colonial world view is a product of precisely that order’s way of thinking. this is, however, the view of one of india’s most important intellectuals, the psychologist and social critic ashis nandy: his seminal study of colonial and anti-colonial thinking, the intimate enemy, makes precisely this argument. while aspects of nandy’s analysis are specific to indian conditions, much of it speaks to the current south af rican debate: it provides a much-needed perspective which is yet to be heard in discussion here. this paper seeks to fill this gap. it will discuss those aspects of nandy’s diagnosis which are relevant to south af rican realities and seek to spell out their implications for our current condition. it will conclude by proposing an approach to decolonisation in this country which builds on nandy’s insights. central to nandy’s critique of militant ‘decolonisation’ is 9 t h e t h i n k e r peer review a particular understanding of colonialism and its cultural underpinning. an obvious objection to the colonial world view which he analyses is that it is only one way of understanding colonialism, one which south af ricans have experienced but which is not necessarily either the only or even the dominant understanding among colonisers past and present. this objection is important because it enables us to relate nandy’s critique directly to south af rican realities. but the paper will argue that nandy does indeed offer an adequate critique of the kind of intellectual and cultural colonisation which south af ricans currently experience and so points the way to an alternative. the essential colonial nandy builds his critique on a discussion of two contrasting figures – the author rudyard kipling, who was perhaps the most articulate ideologue of the british raj, and the indian nationalist and spiritual leader sri aurobindo. his purpose is to contrast kipling’s cultural essentialism with sri aurobindo’s syncretic and inclusive alternative. kipling serves nandy’s purpose well because, like many ideologues of racial or national power, he does not fully belong to the dominant group whose dominance he justifies and which he initially did not feel particularly at home in. nandy points out that kipling was ‘brought up in india by indian servants in an indian environment. he thought, felt and dreamt in hindustani, mainly communicated with indians, and even looked like an indian boy’ (nandy, 2005: 64). at a very young age, he was sent by his parents to england, where his idyllic life in bombay was replaced by a traumatic period in which he felt deserted by his parents and was reminded repeatedly of his indianness and thus his strangeness. his response was a body of writing which aimed to prove that he belonged as an englishman by offering an essentialist cultural defence of british colonialism. besides his stress on the british right to rule india, kipling ‘absolutise(d) the relative difference between cultures’. kipling’s defence of colonialism is built on creating a strict and unbridgeable divide between ‘british’ and ‘indian’ culture which denies the possibility that either could be influenced by the other, let alone that they could blend: ‘kipling sought to redefine the indian as the antonym of the western man’ (nandy, 2005: 79). he romanticised indians who, in his view, made no attempt to become british and so, in his view, remained true to their identity. his scorn was reserved for the babus, the clerks and bureaucrats who adopted english ways in an attempt to become part of the dominant group. while kipling and other british colonial ideologues who thought like him ‘liked to see colonialism as a moral statement on the superiority of some cultures and the inferiority of others’, they were so wedded to essentialism that they ‘[e]ven accepted that some had the right to talk of indian culture as superior to western. cultural relativism by itself is not incompatible with imperialism, as long as one culture’s categories are backed by political, economic and technological power’ (nandy, 2005: 100). it was not necessary to justify colonialism by claiming cultural superiority, as long as military superiority ensured that the culture of the coloniser dominated that of the colonised. this implicitly recognised that colonisation rested on violence: ‘kipling correctly sensed that the glorification of the victor’s violence was the basis of the doctrine of social evolution and ultimately colonialism, that one could not give up the violence without giving up the concept of colonialism as an instrument of progress’ (nandy, 2005: 69). it was, therefore, perhaps inevitable that kipling admired but greatly exaggerated the military strain in indian culture. he thought that ‘the ideology of ksatriyahood’ – the warrior caste – ‘was true indianness, apart f rom being consistent with the world view of colonialism’. he thus ‘missed the limited role given to ksatriyahood in traditional indian cosmology and the vested interest his kind had in denying these limits in a colonial culture organized around violence and counter-violence, manhood and maximised potency, and a theory of history that saw all civilisations in terms of the high and the low and the justifiably powerful and the deservedly weak’ (nandy, 2005: 78–79). in this colonial ideology, then, essentialism is at the core. judith butler, in her attempt to develop a feminist alternative to essentialism, notes that it enables ‘the regulation of attributes along culturally established lines of coherence’ (1990: 33). essentialisms are ‘hostile to hybridity in that they promote policing the boundaries of identity and acts of exclusion and domination sanctioned by an appeal to an essential 10 introductionpeer review v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 11 t h e t h i n k e r core of an individual’ (butler, 1990: 8). not only does essentialism ignore or suppress differences within identity groups and cultures – it denies the reality that all cultures are influenced by other cultures and that the loudest advocates of cultural authenticity are often promoting practices which are borrowed. to name but one example, the black f rock coats and fur hats worn by orthodox jews as a badge of ‘true’ jewishness is in reality the style of dress adopted by the 18th century polish gentry who adopted it because they were trying to imitate turks (freeman, n.d.; my jewish learning, n.d.) so it is, in reality, a product of hybridity which cultural zealots have turned into a badge of supposed cultural distinctiveness. it is this world view which underpins kipling’s colonial ideology. it is easy to understand why an essentialist response by indian nationalists should be a vindication of that ideology rather than its antithesis. violence is also at its core and so it follows again that a violent response should be understood in the same way. the implicit critique of some ‘militant’ expressions of indian ‘decolonisation’ becomes clear – they mimic the coloniser in their purported resistance. nandy makes this critique explicit by contrasting to it, and to kipling, sri aurobindo. he is chosen because he is, nandy points out, almost the perfect counterpoint to kipling. he was raised in precisely the sort of anglophile indian home which horrified kipling – one of his given names was ackroyd, although he later dropped it. he became a nationalist and a spiritual leader, abandoning the brahmo samaj, the hindu reform movement whose monotheism attracted indians seeking a more ‘western’ identity because it was seen to be more compatible with christianity, for a traditional form of indian spirituality which, in the context of his life, could also have been seen as an anti-colonial choice. but, nandy insists, sri aurobindo did not fall into kipling’s essentialist trap. he searched for ‘a more universal model of emancipation’ – ‘he never thought the west to be outside the reach of god’s grace. even when he spoke of race and evolution… not once did he use the concepts to divide humankind…while other indian nationalists sought the help of germany and japan to remove the british, he always regarded nazism as satanic and abhorred japanese militarism’ (nandy, 2005: 85–86). this response, for nandy, meant more than an expression of inter-cultural tolerance and goodwill. it was also an acknowledgement that aurobindo ‘did not have to disown the west within him to become his version of an indian’ (nandy, 2005: 86). nandy writes that ‘[w]hile the colonial system saw him as an object, he could not see the colonisers as mere objects… as part of his struggle for survival, the west remained for indian victims like aurobindo an internal human reality, in love as well as in hate, in identification as well as in counter-identification’ (2005: 87). this required the acknowledgement of two realities. first, that contact with a dominant culture cannot simply be erased – it leaves indelible marks on the psyche of the colonised and to claim otherwise is to harbour a potentially dangerous pretence. second, that since all cultures are influenced by other cultures, a human shaped only by one culture is extremely rare. a poignant example of the power of cultural influence is offered by anthropologist maurice godelier’s study of the baruya of new guinea who were not subject to ‘western’ influence until 1951 but, within a few years, had been catapulted into a western-inspired modernity. godelier describes that they ‘were transformed into citizens of a new state that was a member of the united nations, furnishing one further proof of the west’s advance in that part of the world’ (1991: 387). being an authentic indian (or af rican, or european, or american) inevitably entails acknowledging the influence on your world view of other cultures – this does not in any way diminish the peer review essentialisms are ‘hostile to hybridity in that they promote policing the boundaries of identity and acts of exclusion and domination sanctioned by an appeal to an essential core of an individual’ (butler, 1990: 8). not only does essentialism ignore or suppress differences within identity groups and cultures – it denies the reality that all cultures are influenced by other cultures and that the loudest advocates of cultural authenticity are often promoting practices which are borrowed. peer review 12 authenticity of a particular cultural identity. these insights into kipling and sri aurobindo are the prism through which nandy develops his diagnosis – that militant indian nationalism, both before and after independence, is in reality an expression of colonial thought because it repeats its essentialism (and its violence). the real threat to colonisation and its world view, he argues, was not the indian nationalist movements which colonialism ‘bred and domesticated’. it was, rather, the india which refused essentialism: ‘this other orient, the orient which was the occident’s double, did not fit the needs of colonialism; it carried intimations of an alternative, cosmopolitan, multicultural living which was… beyond the dreary middle-class horizons of kipling and his english contemporaries’ (nandy, 2005: 72). to construct an essentialised ‘authentic indigenous identity’ in opposition to an equally essentialised ‘colonial identity’ is not, in this view, to antagonise the coloniser – it is, rather, to endorse the coloniser’s world view. it is not to reject colonialism but to accept it. colonialism, nandy argues, could not be complete unless it ‘universalized and enriched its ethnic stereotypes by appropriating the language of defiance of its victims’. it both ‘bred and domesticated’ anticolonial movements and so ‘the cry of the victims of colonialism was ultimately the cry to be heard in another language – unknown to the colonizer and to the anti-colonial movements’ (nandy, 2005: 72–73). this ‘other language’ adopts an instrumental view of colonial culture – it takes that which is of use and discards that which is not. and, if this means, at times, pretending to admire the coloniser, that too is valid if it ensures survival – not only in the sense of continuing to live and breathe, but a psychic survival which enables the coloniser better to be who they really are. to illustrate and expand on this point, nandy recalls being told of a group of fifteenth century aztec priests who, on being forced by their conquerors to hear a christian sermon which proclaimed that the aztec gods were dead, declared that they would rather die. their conquerors promptly obliged. nandy responds: ‘i suspect i know how a group of brahman priests would have behaved under the same circumstances’. they would have embraced christianity and some would have written eulogies in praise of it. in reality, they would have remained devout hindus and, after a while, ‘their christianity would have looked … dangerously like a variation on hinduism’ (nandy, 2005: 107–108). for nandy, ‘the response of the aztec priests has seemed to the westernized world the paragon of courage and cultural pride; the hypothetical response of the brahman priests hypocritical and cowardly’. all imperialist observers, he argues, have loved india’s ‘martial races’ – who are seen as authentically indian – and have felt threatened by indians who are willing to compromise. why do they valorise the priests and reject the brahmans? the simple answer is that the aztec priests oblige their conquerors by dying and leaving the scene – the ‘cowardly’ remain on the scene and may ‘at an opportune moment’ assert their presence. the more complicated one is that submission of this sort is itself deeply embedded in indian culture. (nandy, 2005: 207–211). it is derived not f rom some contemporary western source but f rom ‘non-modern india which rejects most versions of indian nationalism as bound irrevocably to the west’. nandy suggests that ‘[p]robably the uniqueness of indian culture lies not so much in a unique ideology as in the society’s traditional ability to live with cultural ambiguities and to use them to build psychological and even metaphysical defences against cultural invasions’ (2005: 107). the ‘cowardly’ response threatens the coloniser because it expresses the autonomous understanding of the colonised rather than that which is imposed by the coloniser. it would be easy to misinterpret the response of the hypothetical brahman priests as a physical survival strategy in the face of power, an expression of what james scott (1985) has called ‘the weapons of the weak’. scott, who was criticising the notion of ‘false consciousness’ which holds that the dominated often endorse the legitimacy of their domination, argued that the powerless do not accept the morality of domination. they avoid fighting it head on because they believe the power balance is stacked against them and that open resistance will lead to suffering and loss, not change. and so, they find ways of undermining power – by pilfering or feigning ignorance or illness – while loudly endorsing its pretensions when the powerful are listening. if this was all the brahmans were doing they would hardly be a model of decolonisation. for nandy, however, they are challenging colonialism – in a v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 13 t h e t h i n k e r manner unavailable to the militant decolonisers – because they are refusing to buy into the myth of the ‘noble savage’ which insists that they are at their most authentic when they live out the cultural stereotypes of the coloniser. indians who responded in this way were drawing on cultural wellsprings unknown to the british to relate to colonial power on their own terms, not that imposed by its anthropology. in that sense, they, and not those determined to live out an indianness f ramed by the coloniser, are the authentic decolonisers: ‘what looks like westernization is often only a means of domesticating the west, sometimes by reducing the west to the comical and the trivial’ (nandy, 2005: 108). indians who adopt this strategy refuse ‘to fight the victor according to the victor’s values, within his model of dissent. better to be a comical dissenter than to be a powerful, serious but acceptable opponent. better to be a hated enemy, declared unworthy of any respect whatsoever, than to be a proper opponent, constantly making “primary adjustments” to the system’ (nandy, 2005: 111). colonialism, nandy argues, ‘tried to supplant the indian consciousness to erect an indian self-image which, in its opposition to the west, would remain in essence a western construction’. the authentic rebellion against that was not to mimic the kiplings by ‘setting up the east and the west as permanent and natural antipodes’. this endorses and repeats ‘the cultural arrogance of post-enlightenment europe which sought to define not only the “true” west but also the “true” east’ (nandy, 2005: 73–74). the indian ‘has no reason to see himself as a counterplayer or an antithesis of the western man. the imposed burden to be perfectly non-western only constricts his… cultural self, just as the older burden of being perfectly western once narrowed – and still sometimes narrows – his choices in the matter of his and his society’s future. the new responsibility forces him to stress only those parts of his culture which are recessive in the west and to underplay both those which his culture shares with the west and those which remain undefined by (it). the pressure to be the obverse of the west distorts the traditional priorities in the indian’s total view of man and universe and destroys his (sic) culture’s unique gestalt. it in fact binds him even more irrevocably to the west’ (nandy, 2005: 73). two examples underline this point. first ‘a sub-group of kipling’s indian brain-children have set up the martial india as the genuine india which would one day defeat the west at its own game…(they) are quite willing to alter the whole of indian culture to bring that victory a little closer, like the american army officer in vietnam who once destroyed a village to save it f rom its enemies’ (nandy, 2005: 80). the second is ‘hindutva’ or ‘hinduness’, the core principle of the currently dominant strand of nationalism in india and of its current governing party, which illustrates the point particularly well since ‘hinduness’ was unknown in india until colonialism produced it to make sense of indigenous cultural and religious patterns: ‘to use the term hindu to self-define is to flout the traditional self-definition of the hindu, and to assert aggressively one’s hinduism is to very nearly deny one’s hinduness’ (nandy, 2005: 103). nandy’s point, that the loudest devotees of decolonisation are products of that which they decry, was poignantly captured by tagore’s early twentieth century fictional masterpiece gora, in which the eponymous character is a militant hindu essentialist blissfully unaware that he is actually english and was adopted and brought up as indian by his indian foster-parents (tagore, 2002). for nandy, the alternative to colonialism is, therefore, not a cultural essentialism which seeks to replace colonial assumptions with an ‘authentic indianness’ which claims to have no truck with other cultures. it is, rather, a syncretism that draws both on ‘pre-modern’ indian cultural understandings and those aspects of western thought and practice which enhance it. this might entail using western values to criticise western practice. this, he believes, was gandhi’s project: ‘instead of meeting the western criterion of a true antagonist, he endorsed the non-modern indian reading of the modern west as one of the many possible life styles which had, unfortunately for both the west and india, become cancerous by virtue of its disproportionate power and spread’ (nandy, 2005: 102). he saw his task, therefore, as recovering and emphasising those aspects of the western tradition which colonialism ignored. he therefore ‘judged colonialism by christian values and declared it an absolute evil’ (nandy, 2005: 200). in sum, ‘one could perhaps say that in the chaos called india the opposite of thesis is not the antithesis because they exclude each other. the true “enemy” of the thesis is seen to be in the synthesis because it includes the thesis and ends the latter’s reason for being’ (nandy, 2005: 99). nor, in nandy’s view, does the synthesis peer review peer review 14 necessarily need to be created by intellectuals – it is already there. gandhi’s attempt to remind the west of its own moral traditions was deeply embedded in indian cultural understandings: ‘indian society has held in trusteeship aspects of the west which are lost to the west itself’ (nandy, 2005: 74). kipling and other colonisers’ dismay at this response reflected ‘[t]he hostility which the liminal man always arouses as opposed to the proper alien’ (nandy, 2005: note 67, 103). the colonised, for them, is guilty of the ultimate sin – trying to be the coloniser. this destabilisation of the boundaries between the two destroys the safety which the coloniser derives f rom keeping the colonised at a safe distance. a militant nationalist stressing her or his indianness by adopting the outward trappings of indigenous culture is an ironic source of comfort because it remains clearly alien. a cultural syncretist who uses christian ethics to declare colonialism evil refuses to be alien and so erodes the barrier between coloniser and colonised. it is obvious which one breaks more firmly with cultural and mental colonisation. south african applications: from verwoerd to milner if nandy’s understanding of colonial ideology is accepted, his critique of a resistance which mirrors that which it purports to reject is obviously of great relevance to current discussions of decolonisation in south af rica. at its broadest level, it challenges the notion that decolonisation should be understood as the replacement of colonial assumptions by an ‘authentic’ af rican understanding f ree of ‘western’ influence since this would repeat precisely the essentialism which underpinned colonial thinking. it would argue even more obviously against attempts to distinguish between people who are ‘af rican enough’ and those who are not. it would insist that the antidote to colonial thought patterns is the ‘hybridity’ and syncretism which underpins nandy’s proposed antidote. but it could be argued, convincingly, that the strain of colonial thinking which he discusses is one which once dominated in south af rica but no longer does. kipling’s cultural essentialism seems to fit far more closely the colonisation imposed by af rikaner nationalism through apartheid than the current version against which advocates of decolonisation are rebelling. apartheid was founded on an essentialism which claimed, spuriously, that it was giving expression to the diversity of cultures. this ‘diffuse language of cultural essentialism’ was pivotal to apartheid ideology because it enabled it to avoid the ‘crude scientific racism drawn f rom the vocabulary of social darwinism’ while still justifying racial domination (dubow, 1992: 209). races and ethnic groups were held to possess a distinctive culture which would be fatally diluted if mixed with others and this was said to be a rationale for strict racial separation. apartheid ideologues also constructed a rigid and static notion of ethnic identity, extolling those among the colonised who, in their view, fitted the stereotype. according to de wet nel, then minister of bantu administration and development: ‘the zulu is proud to be a zulu, the xhosa is proud to be a xhosa and the venda is proud to be a venda, just as proud as they were a hundred years ago’. these ethnic groups, he added, derived the greatest ‘fulfilment’ f rom their identity (cited in moodie, 1980: 266). the obvious antidote to this form of colonisation was not to accept the stereotype. on the contrary, it was surely to embrace a cultural syncretism which apartheid was, its justifiers insisted, designed to prevent. but apartheid is no longer the dominant form of south af rican colonialism – it was defeated in 1994. as this paper suggested in passing earlier, it has been replaced, in large measure, by a cultural context which revives the pre-1948 form of cultural domination. before the victory of af rikaner nationalism in 1948, south af rica was a british dominion – its prime minister, jan smuts, was a loyal servant of empire who served in the british war cabinet in both the first and second world wars (steyn, 2017). the dominant cultural f ramework was thus british. since 1994, the dominance would perhaps more accurately be described as white and western, rather than exclusively british, but the elements are much the same. the dominant f ramework in the academy, the media, and other sources of cultural influence is that of the liberalism described by richard turner more than four decades ago, whose adherents ‘believe that “western civilisation” is adequate, and superior to other forms, but also that blacks can, through education, attain (its) level’ (turner, 1972: 20). it is no accident that the student protests which became the catalyst for the current attempts to decolonise the academy v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 15 t h e t h i n k e r peer review were aimed at the statue not of an apartheid-era government figure, but of cecil john rhodes, the key figure in britain’s colonisation of southern af rica. while rhodes was certainly not a liberal, he did represent a different form of domination, one which took over when apartheid was ended. this form of mental and cultural colonisation seems to be the polar opposite of kipling’s essentialism. it does not romanticise af rican culture to justify the domination of af rican people. usually by omission rather than commission, it brands that culture inferior and assumes that black people attain ‘civilised’ status only by accepting ‘western’ norms and assumptions. it assumes that political and social thought is the work of westerners and marginalises af rican societies and their ideas and values. in this view, the af rican equivalent of the ‘westernised’ indian babus who kipling despised are showing a desirable interest in thinking and acting out the assumptions of a superior culture. the antidote is then surely not nandy’s hybridity but a clean break with western culture and the unconditional embrace of an af rican alternative. the refutation of this conclusion lies in understanding what the current form of domination is seeking to do. in contrast to kipling’s essentialism and to apartheid ideology, it operates not by imposing a template on society which overtly declares some ways of thinking permitted and demonises or outlaws others. it relies far more in excluding or erasing that which it decrees as contrary to its norms. colonised education of this sort does not triumphantly declare the superiority of the ‘west’ and the inferiority of af rica. it simply excludes af rica except for that version of it which is seen f rom western eyes. black political thinkers are not demonised as cowards or renegades to their ‘true’ cultural self – they are ignored. western f rameworks are not exalted – there is no need, since they are the only ones which are taught. much the same can be said, in myriad ways, of south af rican media which, while proudly proclaiming its cultural and political neutrality, assiduously presents the perspectives of a suburbia which mirrors the attitudes and perspectives of southern california (friedman, 2017). it is also pertinent that, while the dominant way of thinking is in theory open to all who accept its assumptions, the boundaries are very firmly set and there is very little room for pluralism or hybridity within the dominant culture. to cite one topical example: mmusi maimane, then leader of the official opposition democratic alliance, whose white, suburban, ‘old guard’ is one of the key enforcers of this form of domination, regularly ran afoul of the policers of colonial orthodoxy, most notably when he had the temerity to refer to ‘white privilege’ and ‘black poverty’ at a freedom day rally (van onselen, 2018), a remark which may well have cost him the party leadership. so the vast majority of the colonised are never, in reality, integrated into the ‘superior’ culture which they are by implication exhorted to join (given the intolerance of the culture’s policers, it is open to doubt whether any of the colonised are ever fully accepted). the dominant form of colonisation, then, dominates through exclusion and imposition. it assumes, rather than asserts, that a particular way of seeing is the only way and withholds acknowledgement to alternatives and those who adhere to them. it is as concerned as kipling and apartheid to set boundaries – it chooses to use other methods. its understanding of what is permitted and what is not is as rigid as apartheid’s – it too has very little room for hybridity or syncretism. it does not profess or feign admiration for indigenous culture, but it is as committed to imposing a template upon it as the overt essentialists are. given this, an essentialised alternative, which seeks to replace the dominant western culture with an essentialised af rican rival, meets the same objection as kipling’s essentialism. it liberates no-one – it simply replaces one template with another. the term ‘western culture’, used routinely by most participants colonised education of this sort does not triumphantly declare the superiority of the ‘west’ and the inferiority of africa. it simply excludes africa except for that version of it which is seen from western eyes. black political thinkers are not demonised as cowards or renegades to their ‘true’ cultural self – they are ignored. western frameworks are not exalted – there is no need, since they are the only ones which are taught. peer review 16 in the debate, is itself an imposition because it assumes that, in western europe and north america, there is only one way of thinking and seeing, when in reality there are many. similarly, there is no ‘af rican culture’ – there are numerous af rican cultures and to impose on af ricans one cultural understanding as the only one is itself a form of colonisation [1]. in af rica, as in the ‘west’, culture is inevitably contested – claims by the powerful that particular practices are culturally embedded may be challenged by alternative understandings of what a particular culture expects (nomboniso gasa quoted in breytenbach, 2006). india is, of course, no different: nandy argues that an authentic anti-colonial position would need to recognise that ‘culturally, it is a choice neither between the east and the west nor between the north and the south. it is a choice – and a battle – between the apollonian and the dionysian within india and within the west’ (nandy, 2005: 74) [2]. to be indian – or af rican and european – is not to endorse a particular view of the world since, within each, rivals contend and no particular view can claim authentic indigeneity. not only is ideological pluralism a constant feature of cultures – it is essential for their survival and growth: ‘a plurality of ideologies can always be accommodated within a single lifestyle. fittingly so; a living culture has to live and it has an obligation to itself, not to its analysts. even less does it have any obligation to conform to a model’ (nandy, 2005: 82). and so, opposing to the current dominant culture an essentialised ‘af rican culture’ which ignores alternatives or, worse, suppresses them by imposing on (af rican) doubters and dissenters a mandatory way of thinking does not reject the dominant colonial culture – it replaces it with a home-grown culture every bit as inclined to imposition as the dominant variety. hybridity and syncretism are equally impossible under both templates. despite the differences between kipling’s essentialism and the colonial culture which currently dominates south af rica, nandy’s critique applies to both. the core features of both is not that they are western and so the antidote to both is not to be as ‘af rican’ as possible. it is, rather, imposition and exclusion (which is arguably more severe in the current version because indigenous alternatives are not patronised, as they are by apartheid and kipling – they are removed f rom consciousness). the alternative cannot be a new form of imposition and exclusion – it must, rather, be a view which is built on inclusion and in opening cultural and intellectual horizons to all influences in an attempt to build an authentic af ricanness. it means recovering and validating those strains in indigenous understandings which validate hybrid, syncretic, and inclusive ways of seeing, thinking, and doing which – like nandy’s nonmodern indians – take f rom the dominant culture what is useful while rejecting that which is not. decolonisation, not recolonisation by now, the implications of nandy’s argument for current decolonisation debates should be apparent. but it is necessary to expand on them to avoid ambiguity. to state the obvious (which, in the current intellectual climate, needs to be stated), this is not an argument against resisting intellectual and cultural colonisation. on the contrary, it argues that colonisation’s grip on our thinking may well be even more insidious than we imagined because many of the loudest current complaints against it may be deeply influenced by the colonial view of the world. it is, if anything, an argument for a more thorough decolonisation than those currently on offer. it insists that far more is needed than the adoption of ‘af rican’ ways of thinking and doing which may turn out to be as inauthentic as kipling’s or apartheid’s f raudulent vision of the ‘real’ af rican, the cultural equivalents of the zealot’s polish f rock coat mentioned earlier. in essence, it argues that the core of intellectual or cultural colonisation is that it imposes and excludes. its antidote cannot, therefore, be to re-impose and to re-exclude. the problem with the dominant form of south af rican colonisation is not that it sees value in ideas and cultural production which originate in ‘the west’. it is, rather, that it values only the west and robs of legitimacy other ways of seeing and doing (including those within the ‘west’ which do not justify continued cultural colonisation). it rejects hybridity, syncretism and cultural pluralism because they import ‘inferior’ strands into the ‘only and true’ culture. besides imposing mental and emotional burdens on the colonised, it silences their voices not because it is ‘unaf rican’ but because, beneath a veneer of tolerance, it insists that there is only one way of thinking about and seeing the world. to colonise is to close down and to suppress, whatever v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 17 t h e t h i n k e r peer review the identity of the coloniser and the colonised. many of the purported antidotes on offer would perpetuate this practice in the name of offering a radical alternative. a ‘real af rican culture’ which, as it inevitably must if it makes this claim, suppresses the diversity of actual af rican cultures, the differences of perspective included within them, and the inevitable influence of asian and european cultures on them, does not decolonise – it recolonises because it imposes and excludes. it is, therefore, hardly surprising that it prompts the phenomenon noted earlier, in which black voices can be silenced by the charge that they are not black enough. as nandy shows, this ‘decolonisation’ and its claim that we can be ‘truly af rican’ only if we reject all western thought and deny all difference between us does not decolonise at all – it retains the barriers between the ‘west’ and the rest while ostensibly choosing to be on the ‘right’ rather than the ‘wrong’ side of a ghetto which remains firmly in the heart and mind of the rebel. the really radical alternative insists on not being part of any ghetto at all. it rejects essentialism, imposition, and exclusion. it seeks not to rid our minds of all that is ‘western’ but to open them to all that is af rican (and asian and european and latin american). it seeks not to create a new essentialism but to open our minds to the full range of alternatives and so to allow the emergence of a plural, syncretic, and hybrid understanding which is the real antithesis of colonisation. fortunately, there are in the current south af rican debate voices which recognise this. thus, one advocate of intellectual decolonisation observes that: ‘western modes and forms of knowledge are important, but they are not the only valid or viable kinds; other forms of modern knowledge and thought, just as advanced and even ground-breaking, are available in cultures and civilisations the world over’ (omoyele, 2017). this is clearly a non-essentialist understanding which seeks to broaden, not narrow, horizons and which opens the way to hybrid understandings. a more systematic account of what may be possible is offered by this description of the af ricanisation programme of the johannesburg alternative education centre, khanya college. ‘in contrast to some proponents of af ricanisation today’, the authors observe, ‘khanya college did not disregard so-called western knowledge. instead it drew the best f rom critical thinkers worldwide to develop students’ own critical insights. some students were political activists who were accepted on the basis of their community involvement rather than strictly academic results. at khanya, their political work was linked to more formal modes of critical analysis’. it also ‘taught students the curriculum they needed to know how to succeed in a white, elite university. the students were introduced to the dominant discourses and practices within elite universities; they were taught to understand and evaluate these practices. then they were supported in finding the tools to challenge such practices’. this, they add, ‘shows how a curriculum can be af ricanised without essentialising what it means to be af rican and what af rican knowledge is’  (adriansen, madsen, and naidoo, 2017). it is significant that khanya sees its approach as one which explicitly ‘af ricanises’ rather than decolonises. for it, intellectual pluralism and hybridity are essentially af rican and to maintain a curriculum which includes insights f rom all cultural traditions is a form of af ricanisation. just as nandy suggests that hybridity is essentially indian and offers a textured account of indian cultural themes which demonstrate this, so khanya insists that it is entirely af rican. this invites the retrieval of those themes in af rican cultural understandings which seek to break down walls rather than to erect them. it is equally significant that khanya’s approach highlights two reasons why cultural essentialism imposes new controls over the colonised rather than eliminating control. the first is the perhaps trite but sometimes forgotten point that alternatives to dominant thinking are impossible without an engagement with that thinking. anti-colonial thinkers have, of course, developed their alternates through a careful critical reading of colonial writing, a task they would have been unable to undertake had they been persuaded that a truly anti-colonial mode of thinking requires no engagement with ‘western’ thought. the second is that one of the many flaws in the essentialist understanding of decolonisation is that it ignores the power which is wielded within cultures. khanya’s commitment to including political activists without the required formal qualifications indicates a desire to challenge the use of power to dominate and to create educational models which allow that challenge. thorough decolonisation is, as khanya shows, not peer review 18 only about rejecting imposition by engaging with all thought. it is also about engaging with power to ensure that new patterns of domination do not replace the old. in these understandings lies a decolonisation which expands rather than narrows boundaries and which recognises nandy’s warning against a purported alternative which merely mimics the imposition and the essentialism of that which it claims to replace. the task of fleshing out a detailed decolonisation strategy which recognises this is an urgent priority. notes [1] see, for example, the heated debate on whether consensus decision-making is inherent to af rican political culture (wiredu, 1997; hountondji, 2009: 6) [2] for the distinction between apollonian and dionysian cultures see benedict, 1932 references adriansen, h.k., madsen, l.m. and naidoo, r. (2017). ‘khanya college: a south af rican story of  decolonisation’. [online] the conversation. available at: https://theconversation.com/khanya-college-a-southaf rican-story-of-decolonisation-85005 badat, s., barends, z. and wolpe, h. (1993). the post-secondary education system: towards policy formulation for equality and development. education policy unit, university of the western cape benedict, r. (1932). ‘configurations of culture in north america’. american anthropologist, 34: 1–27 breytenbach, k. (2006). ‘zuma case “highlights misogynistic culture”’. [online] independent online (iol). available at: https:// www.iol.co.za/news/south-af rica/zuma-case-highlights-misogynisticculture-274707 butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. new york: routledge dubow, s. (1992). ‘af rikaner nationalism, apartheid and the conceptualization of “race”’ the journal of af rican history. 33(2): 209–237 freeman, t. (n.d.) ‘why do the chassidim dress in the manner of 18th century russian non-jewish gentry?’ [online] chabad.org. available at: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/494846/jewish/ why-do-the-chassidim-dress-in-the-manner-of-russian-gentry.htm friedman, s. (2015). ‘the janus face of the past: preserving and resisting south af rican path dependence’. in: xolela mangcu (ed), the colour of our future: does race matter in post-apartheid south af rica? johannesburg: wits university press, 45–63 friedman, s. (2017). ‘speaking power’s truth: south af rican media in the service of the suburbs’. in: anthea garman and herman wasserman (eds), media and citizenship: between marginalisation and participation. pretoria: hsrc press godelier, m. (1991). ‘is the west the model for humankind? the baruya of new guinea between change and decay’. international social science journal, vol 43, no 2: 387–399 hountondji, p. (2009). ‘knowledge of af rica, knowledge by af ricans: two perspectives on af rican studies’. rccs annual review, 1, september mangcu, x. (2017). ‘decolonisation that assaults af rican values is not worth its salt’, sunday independent, 19 march matshiqi, a. (2011). ‘why manuel is right and wrong about manyi’s “racism”’. [online] business day. available at: http://www.businessday. co.za/articles/content.aspx?id=136509 moodie, t. d. (1980). the rise of af rikanerdom: power, apartheid and af rikaner civil religion. berkeley: university of california press nandy, a. (2005). the intimate enemy: loss and recovery of self under colonialism in exiled at home. new delhi: oxford university press newsinger, j. (2016). ‘why rhodes must fall’. race and class, volume 58, issue 2: 70–78 nymanjoh, a. (2017). ‘the phenomenology of rhodes must fall: student activism and the experience of alienation at the university of cape town’. strategic review for southern af rica, volume 39, no 1, may: 256–277 omoyele, i. (2017).  ‘arrested decolonisation, season 4’. [online] mail and guardian. available at: https://mg.co.za/article/2017-07-14-00arrested-decolonisation-season-4/ scott, j. c. (1985) weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. new haven: yale university press steyn, r. (2017). churchill and smuts: the friendship. johannesburg: jonathan ball tagore, r. (2002). gora. new delhi: rupa turner, r. (1972). ‘black consciousness and white liberals’. reality: a journal of liberal opinion, july: 20–22 van onselen, g. (2018). ‘mmusi maimane presses the self-destruct button’, business day, may 9 wiredu, k. (1997). ‘democracy and consensus in af rican traditional politics: a plea for a non-party polity’. in: emmanuel chukwudi  eze (ed). postcolonial af rican philosophy: a critical reader. oxford: blackwell, 303–304 v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 by marcus hollington | peer review 47v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 abstract this article takes stock of the state of intra-continental trade in africa by reviewing trends in the continent’s five sub-regional trading blocs in terms of their strengths and shortcomings, in order to assess the continent’s trade efficiency on an intraregional level ahead of the rollout of a continent-wide free trade area. thereafter, the article assesses trade indicators seen over the past decade to illustrate the amount of goods traded to prognosticate the future of intra-continental trade on the continent in the wake of discussing the african continental free trade area (afcfta). implications for youth are cast in the wider imperatives of the continent’s developmental agenda and post-covid-19 economic recovery. the afcfta and the promise of intra-continental trade in africa peer review 48 t h e t h i n k e r introduction af rica is the second largest continent in the world after asia, with a land mass of 30,37 million km² and a population of just over 1.2 billion and growing. its economic output, however, is amongst the lowest in the world. over the past few decades, the continent has in good faith been working towards rectifying its poor economic performance by developing five notable fully-functional sub-regional trading blocs, namely: southern af rican development community (sadc), common market for eastern and southern af rica (comesa), economic community of west af rican states (ecowas), east af rican community (eac) and central af rican economic and monetary community (cemac). the rationale herein has been to increase af rican trade on an intra-regional level. however, though positive, this proliferation of exclusive trading blocs has not been efficient in creating meaningful trade gains for af rica as the continent registers the lowest intra-continental trade globally at 18%, behind the likes of europe which registers at 70%, north america at 55%, asia at 45%, and latin america at 35%. globally, the continent accounts 3% of total world trade. this under-performance can largely be attributed to the f ragmented nature of the continent’s trading system. nonetheless, the continent’s trajectory towards a path of intra-continental trade is promising, as highlighted in the recently enacted (operational as of 1 january 2021) af rica continental free trade area (afcfta), projected to be the largest trade area in the world with significant economic potential once in effect. this article seeks to synthesise the state of intracontinental trade in af rica by discussing the aforementioned five sub-regional trading blocs and their strengths and shortcomings, in an effort to assess the continent’s trade efficiency on an intraregional level to gauge the efficiency of the continent’s intra-trade. where possible, it will provide trade statistics to illustrate the amount of goods traded in monetary terms. thereafter, it will discuss the future of intra-continental trade in af rica by discussing the afcfta and its implications on af rica’s intracontinental trade and overall development agenda. strengths and shortcomings of intra-regional trade in africa sadc sadc consists of 15 member states, namely: angola, botswana, comoros the democratic republic of congo (drc), eswatini, lesotho, madagascar, malawi, mauritius, mozambique, namibia, seychelles, south af rica, tanzania, zambia, and zimbabwe. the trading bloc has been driven by the need to enhance trade and economic development in southern af rica. to this end, the intra-regional trading bloc has implemented several policies and programmes to advance its course. among these is the regional indicative strategic development plan (risdp), approved in 2003 and implemented in 2005, to run over a 15-year time period. the development plan has managed to develop a free trade area (fta) in the region with two of its 15 member states being exempt f rom the fta, namely the drc and angola, which recently announced the decision to join the fta by 2019 (angola press, 2018; uneca, 2018). the main intra-trade items include agricultural products, energy, clothing, textiles, and petroleum. among its shortcomings has been a failure to establish a custom union with blanket external tariffs by 2010, the establishment of a common market by 2015, and the creation of a monetary union by 2016, due to capacity constraints by the sadc secretariat. additional constraints include the overlapping of intraregional trading bloc memberships wherein states such as zambia, swaziland, seychelles, mauritius, madagascar, malawi, drc, angola, and zimbabwe have memberships in comesa which makes it difficult for them to simultaneously meet their multiple intraregional trading bloc commitments, subsequently curbing trade in sadc. intra-regional trade in sadc is currently 10%, an insignificant figure as it shows that trade integration in the region has been gradual and far from impressive as 90% of its trade is external to the intra-regional trading bloc (chidede, 2017). contributing to this intra-regional gradual growth in trade is the presence of non-tariff barriers (ntbs) such as import and export quotas that restrict trade among member states which conflicts with sadc’s protocol on trade that requires beneficiary states to put in peer reviewpeer review 49v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 place measures that eliminate ntbs and to desist from adding new ones (protocol of trade 1996, article 3). however, promising is the region’s efforts to promote enhanced trade in africa by signing the tripartite free trade area (tfta), a trade agreement launched in 2015 and set to amalgamate sadc, comesa, and eac into a singular trading bloc. unfortunately, the tfta has not yet come into effect due to the complexities of uniformly liberalising tariffs across three distinct intraregional trade groups that are attempting to integrate themselves into a singular trading entity, as well as the difficultly of acquiring 14 ratifications to make the agreement enter into force. currently, only three countries have ratified the agreement, namely: kenya, which quite recently ratified the treaty in june 2018, egypt, and uganda. south africa has stated that its parliament has approved the agreement for ratification, but that the actual ratification has not transpired as of yet (oruko, 2018; dti, 2018: 2). the gradual ratification of the aforementioned trade agreements signals both hesitation and an unwillingness by prospective beneficiaries to liberalise their borders for trade, contradicting their agenda to maximise trade intraregionally. nonetheless, the agreement is most likely to be replaced by the earlier mentioned afcfta as it shows much potential and has sparked the interest of a significant number of african states, as shall be discussed later in the article. table 1 below illustrates contemporary intra-sadc trade variations. table 1 shows an upward export trend in intrasadc trade. in 2012 and 2013, export growth in the region was 8% and 4% respectively, followed by a decline of 12% and 14% in 2014 and 2015 respectively. conversely, import growth rates in the region followed suit with an upward trend: in 2012 and 2013, imports registered growths of 4% and 5% respectively, followed by a decline of 13% and 16% in 2014 and 2015 respectively. the balance of trade (bot) throughout the time period of analysis reveals a trade surplus, implying a somewhat even trade playing f ield, as the sadc region boasts relatively good and even levels of development. 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 aggregate growth rate (%)exports (billions)year imports (billions) bot (billions)growth rate (%) $38.29 $41.51 $43.16 $37.97 $32.52 $193.45 0 8 4 -12 -14 n/a $38.23 $39.72 $41.74 $36.47 $30.60 $186.76 $0.06 $1.79 $1.42 $1.50 $1.92 $6.69 0 4 5 -13 -16 n/a (source: tralac & sadc) table 1: intra-sadc trade 2011–2015 [n.b. it should be noted that the 2015 statistics exclude intra-trade data f rom drc and lesotho which are not available in the 2015 sadc statistics yearbook suggesting integration flaws within the trading bloc as such official intra-regional organs should be in possession of such statistics.] since its entry into force in 1994, comesa has grown into a robust economic network of states unified in their goal of enhancing the trade of goods and services and facilitating investment. the intra-regional trading bloc consists of 19 member states, namely: burundi, the comoros, the drc, djibouti, egypt, eritrea, ethiopia, kenya, libya, madagascar, malawi, mauritius, rwanda, sudan, swaziland, seychelles, uganda, zambia, and zimbabwe. peer review comesa since its entry into force in 1994, comesa has grown into a robust economic network of states unified in their goal of enhancing the trade of goods and services and facilitating investment. the intra-regional trading bloc consists of 19 member states, namely: burundi, the comoros, the drc, djibouti, egypt, eritrea, ethiopia, kenya, libya, madagascar, malawi, mauritius, rwanda, sudan, swaziland, seychelles, uganda, zambia, and zimbabwe. it has managed to increase its internal trade output from $1.5 billion in 2000 to $20 billion in 2017 with researchers stating that with greater capacity and integration the trading bloc could more than quadruple its output in trade, identifying capacity constraints as a limiting factor of intra-regional trade enhancement in africa, a trend that has also been identified under sadc (comesa, 2017: 13). it has been proactive in its approach to solving ntbs having managed to eliminate 199 of 204 ntbs since 2008 facilitated by the tripartite ntb online reporting mechanism implemented in 2008 and the recent short messaging system used to report ntbs in the tfta equating to a 98% ntb resolution success rate in comesa (tralac, 2018). additionally, comesa has an intra-regional trade of 8%, meaning that some 92% of trade is external to the trading bloc, signalling a deficit in trade integration. similar to sadc, comesa has an fta that grants a 0 to 10% tariff preference to members with 4 of 19 of its member states being exempt from the area, namely: eswatini, which is highly unlikely to join due to its south african customs union membership; the drc, a sadc member; eritrea; and ethiopia, notorious for its exorbitantly high customs duties, which range from 0 to 35% and average at 17%, which has vocalised its interest to become a full fta member in comesa in the future (export.gov, 2017). this fragmentation in fta membership hinders intra-trade growth within the trading bloc as members do not operate with a uniform trade agenda, hence its failure to create a holistically functional custom union and common market. the trade fluctuations presented in table 2 below attest to the aforementioned. 50 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 aggregate growth rate (%) exports (billions)year imports (billions) bot (billions) growth rate (%) $9.23 $9.75 $10.78 $7.72 $7.57 $45.05 0 6 11 -28 -2 n/a $14.82 $15.68 $18.14 $17.48 $8.23 $74.35 -$5.59 -$5.93 -$7.36 -$9.76 -$0.66 -$29.30 0 6 16 -4 -53 n/a (source: itc & comstat database) table 2: intra-comesa trade 2011–2015 table 2 shows a positive upward trend in intra-comesa exports, with export growth rates of 6% and 11% in 2012 and 2013 respectively, followed by a downward trend in subsequent years, with export growth declines of 28% and 2% in 2014 and 2015 respectively. conversely, intra-comesa imports also show a positive upward trend: in 2012 and 2013, import growth in the region rose 6% and 16% respectively, followed by a decline of 4 and 53% respectively in 2014 and 2015. the bot throughout the time period of analysis reveals a trade deficit within the intra-regional trading bloc, implying an uneven trade playing field linked to the levels of development of member states, with better developed states such as kenya and egypt enjoying high levels of trade due to their availability of resources and less capacity constraints in contrast to their counterparts in the trading bloc. peer reviewpeer review 51v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 aggregate growth rate (%)exports (billions)year $15.35 $13.62 $13.97 $12.72 $9.81 $12.02 $77.49 0 -11 3 -9 -23 23 n/a (source: tralac, 2017) table 3: intra-ecowas trade exports 2011–2016 ecowas similar to sadc, ecowas consists of 15 member states, namely: benin, burkina faso, cabo verde, cote d’ivoire, gambia, ghana, guinea, guinea bissau, liberia, mali, niger, nigeria, senegal, sierra leone, and togo. it was established with the purpose of creating a common trade market as well as to facilitate investment and industrialisation in the region to fast-track development. to this end, it adopted the ecowas trade liberalization scheme (etls) as a f ramework to address the liberalised movement of goods under an fta, in conjunction with the customs and connectivity programme, which seeks to facilitate the aforementioned movement of goods within the region (etls, n.d). yet, despite these trade boosting mechanisms, intra-ecowas trade stands at 12%, a statistic that is highly insignificant and insinuates that a bulk of ecowas trade, 88%, transpires external of the trading bloc, meaning that it has not been fully successful in increasing trade within its membership. contributing to this low intra-trade output is the presence of tariffs and ntbs that presents financial burdens to members and increases customs clearing times and the dis-harmonization of customs practices (ayamgha, 2016; xu and choi, 2015: 3–4). for example, many countries in the region generally impose seasonal import restrictions to protect local producers (mostly farmers) and industries conflicting with ecowas’ custom external tariffs (cets) and overall attempts to liberalise trade (amadala, 2018). other ntbs revolve around public health concerns such as bird flu, although they often remain in force long after the threat has been neutralised, suggesting trade protectionism within the region (torres and seters, 2016: 34). bribes, unofficial customs practices and road harassments also characterise the nature of trade in ecowas and curb the movement of goods in the region resulting in costly delays and undocumented merchandise data curbing efforts to register up-to-date intra-regional trade statistics (torres and seters, 2016: 35–41). table 3 shows an 11% decline in intra-ecowas exports in 2012, followed by a 3% increase in 2013, and a downward trend in exports in 2014 and 2015, with export growth declines of 9% and 23% respectively. in 2016, exports within the region increase by 23%. eac eac compromises of six member states, namely: rwanda, kenya, burundi, uganda, tanzania, and south sudan that joined the trading bloc in 2016. the treaty that facilitated its establishment was ratified in 2000 with the purpose of deepening integration in the region by enhancing the customs union into a common market by liberalising intra-regional trade to boost trade and investment in the region in a mutually beneficially manner (eac, n.d; simukoko, 2017). to this end, the trading bloc has not found much success in its trade agenda as its overall trade has been relatively low with annual trade figures of less than $6 billion though some improvement has been identified over the past few years with trade increasing f rom $4.48 billion in 2011 to $5.80 billion in 2013, followed by continuous decline in subsequent years leading up to 2016 as illustrated by table 3. contributing to these fluctuations and overall poor trade output has been a failure by member states to reach a consensus on trade liberalisation and integration (a factor that has stalled the establishment of eac’s monetary union since 2012) resulting in the erosion of custom union and common market benefits (simukoko, 2017). for example, kenya and tanzania have over the years been involved in trade disputes that have seen kenya ban wheat flour and liquefied petroleum gas f rom tanzania, while the latter has retaliated by banning cigarettes and dairy products f rom kenya (anyanzwa, 2017). the two trade partners only quite recently peer review settled their long-running trade dispute in a bilateral meeting, though the ramifications of the dispute were felt far and wide as tanzania is kenya’s second largest market and cost both parties much needed trade. such disputes are not unique to the aforementioned countries, but also among other member states that choose to operate independent of eac’s customs union protocol by imposing ntbs and trade protectionist measures such as double taxation for firms operating in two or more eac states hindering not only the movement of goods but business development as well as identified by the kenya private sector alliance (anyanzwa, 2016). in the context of capital flow, tanzania and burundi have been identified as the most difficult countries in the region to move capital, a factor that has also hindered intra-trade growth in the region (the east af rican, 2017). it is due to these trade obstacles that intraregional trade in the region is 9.4%, suggesting that the majority of eac trade is carried out external of the trading bloc, a trend identified throughout the article and driven by the dis-harmonisation of trade policies by intra-regional trading blocs (anyanzwa, 2017). intra-regional trade, not only in eac but in the rest of the continent’s trading blocs, could easily be boosted should uniformity be practiced by all member states per trading bloc. table 4 shows an overall disappointing intra-eac export performance with export growth recorded only in 2012 at 11%, followed by export growth declines of 2% and 53% respectively in 2013 and 2014. conversely, intra-eac imports follow a similar trend with the only growth recorded being in 2012 at 31%, followed by declines of 28 and 31% respectively in 2013 and 2014. the bot, throughout the time period of analyses, reveals a trade surplus illustrating a healthy intra-regional trade relationship, however, the intra-trade output is disheartening as total trade (exports plus imports) is the lowest at $17.54 billion in contrast to the earlier assessed intra-regional trading blocs statistics suggesting inefficiency caused by the earlier-mentioned ntbs which need to be addressed immediately to enhance trade in the region and foster trade induced development. cemac cemac is an intra-regional trade bloc consisting of six countries, namely: cameroon, chad, the central af rican republic (car), equatorial guinea, gabon, and the drc. cemac came into effect in 1999 with the purpose of enhancing integration within its membership, particularly in areas of trade. to this end, the trading bloc has not fully succeeded in facilitating and increasing trade among its members despite setting up several institutions and bodies to establish itself into a fully functional customs union and fta. among these is the central af rican economic union, central af rican monetary union, conference of cemac heads of state, council of ministers, bank of central af rican states, and the development bank of central af rican states to mention a few (wto, 2013: 7). its most notable success has been the adoption of the cfa f ranc pegged to the euro which makes trade among states somewhat fluid as there is no need for currency conversations. unfortunately, nothing more worth noting can be said in the context of its success, as intra-regional trade has been recorded to be less than 5%, making it the most disintegrated trading bloc in af rica, with some 95% of its trade being carried out external of the bloc (mcallister, 2016). contributing to these low levels of intra-trade is a poor capacity by the aforementioned banks and broader financial sector to foster industrial development in cemac member states to boost trade due to risk factors aligned to geopolitical tensions and a decline in commodity prices. moreover, as with trends among intra-regional trade blocs in af rica, factors impeding intra-trade in cemac are ntbs such as the over taxation of commodities, arbitrary checkpoints along the highway and corridors deteriorating in condition, 52 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 2011 2012 2013 2014 agg. gr (%) gr (%) exports (billions) imports (billions) botyear $2.59 $2.88 $2.81 $1.33 $9.61 $2.03 $2.65 $1.92 $1.33 $7.93 $0.56 $0.23 $0.89 $0.00 $1.68 0 11 -2 -53 n/a 0 31 -28 -31 n/a table 4: intra-eac trade 2011–2014 (source: eac, 2015 and nakaweesi, 2017) peer reviewpeer review as well as a distortion in common external tariffs. in the context of tariffs, it should be noted that in theory, all cemac tariffs have been removed though they have not been fully implemented as member states still pay tariffs when they trade among themselves (nchinda, 2017; wto, 2013: 7–8). however, almost exclusive to the bloc is the presence of boko haram in the lake chad region and civil unrest in the car that has impaired not only intra-trade in the region but external trade as a significant amount of cemac trade revolves around the external exportation of crude petroleum, a resource abundant in the region and constituting approximately 84% of merchandise exports implying a resource curse due to the relatively poor nature of the member states, despite their abundant oil resources which has not improved as a result of the security threat posed by the aforementioned (meyer, 2015: 3–4; imf, 2018: 3). the future of intra-continental trade under afcfta the future of intra-continental trade in af rica is undoubtedly embedded in the ambitious afcfta, a supra-regional trade agreement which, once in effect, will liberalise and integrate not only the trade of goods and services but also intellectual property rights, competition policy, and the facilitation of investment in af rica (afcfta, 2018, article 4). it does not seek to do away with the current intra-regional trading blocs, but rather to improve and facilitate trade where shortcomings may be present: ‘state parties that are members of other regional economic communities, regional trading arrangements and custom unions, which have attained among themselves higher levels of regional integration than under this agreement, shall maintain such higher levels among themselves’ (afcfta, 2018, article 19: 2) currently, 54 af rican union member states have signed the afcfta treaty to develop the globe’s most robust single market and fta since the development of the world trade organisation (apa news, 2018; af rican union, 2018, 1; infomineo, 2018). it has been ratified by 36 countries and has been in effect since 1 january 2021. moreover, its ratification by over 15 countries has enabled the protocol on human migration, right of residence, and establishment to come into effect (afcfta, 2018, article 23; apa news, 2018). benefits the afcfta wields within it an array of benefits. however, the majority of these can only be realised long term. a study carried out by saygili, peters, and knebel (2017: 12–13) utilised the global trade analysis project computable general equilibrium model to estimate the quantitative effects of the trade agreement with a two-scenario approach, one in which the agreement would eliminate all tariffs under an fta, and the other wherein tariffs would be eliminated on a special product category (spc) basis. the findings are summarised in figure 1 below. figure 1: quantitative impact estimates for the afcfta (source: unctad, 2017) in the first category, the model revealed estimated welfare gains of $16.1 billion long-term with a loss of $4.1 billion in tariff revenues, an amount gained over threefold in welfare gains. this would result in a continental gdp increase of 0.97% and an employment increase of 1.17% upon fully eradicating tariffs. intra-continental trade would grow at an estimated 33% and af rica’s trade deficit would decline by 50.9%. in contrast, the spc scenario revealed welfare gains of $10.7 billion long-term with expected tariff revenue losses of $3.2 billion and continental gdp and employment increases of 0.3% and 0.35% respectively. intra-continental trade is predicted to grow to less than the first scenario at 24%, while the continent’s trade deficit is expected to decline by a mere 3.8%. in the context of the earlier mentioned protocol on human migration, right of residence and establishment, the trade agreement will facilitate ease of doing business for af rican citizens and prospectively boost the continent’s economy and curb unemployment. 53v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 welfare gains (billions $) 15 0 30 45 60 intra-continental trade increase (%) gdp growth (%) peer review additionally, in the context of boosting economic performance in the continent, the trade agreement will boost intra-continental trade by making available a market of 1.2 billion consumers to beneficiaries and a cumulative gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion, which will enhance exports and industry competitiveness through scale production facilitated by continental market access. another benefit of the afcfta is that it will result in the diversification of the continent’s trade portfolio and subsequent reduction of extractive resource trade, that is the trade of commodities such as oil, timber and minerals which have predominantly accounted for most of the continent’s exports (see figure 2), promoting a more sustainable trade profile. 54 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 (source: cia world factbook, 2014) however, trade liberalisation will occur on a reciprocal basis, to help eliminate unfair trade practices such as dis-uniformity in tariffs and arbitrary road blocks among other trade hindrances that impede on the continent’s trade performance as identified earlier in the article (afcfta, 2018, article 18: 1). additionally, given the numerous levels of development among af rican states, the afcfta will act as a catalyst for technology and skills transfer among af rican states and facilitate the structural transformation of lesser developed states into knowledge-based economies whose trade portfolios are diverse and not resourcedependent for growth. lastly, the afcfta can act as a stimulus recovery package and drive much needed economic growth across the continent following the disastrous economic impact of covid-19. disadvantages in order for beneficiaries to enjoy the aforementioned benefits, certain adjustments will have to be made and losses incurred during the transition period which could transpire over a short-term period depending on the economic capacity of participating economies and their will to see the transition through for the greater good of their economies. given that the agreement will require compromises to be made in tariff eliminations, beneficiaries will experience tariff revenue losses, though countered by revenues incurred in the short to medium term or longer term through enhanced market access and exports, depending on participants’ level of development, industrialisation, competitive, and comparative advantages among other determinants. these determinants will decide the level at which peer reviewpeer review 55v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 beneficiaries will be able to exploit trade opportunities presented by the trade agreement. additionally, vulnerable industries and sectors – such as agriculture, which employs a majority of the continent’s populace, textiles, and other overall underdeveloped sectors in af rica – run the risk of enduring financial shortfalls and, in a worst-case scenario, the possibility of becoming obsolete in the presence of fierce competition f rom better equipped/ industrialised economies if they do not have the appropriate mechanisms in place to improve their competitive advantages. as such, not all countries will benefit equally f rom the trade agreement. according to estimates by saygili, peters, and knebel (2017: 15), some economies are expected to grow at over 3% at both a full fta and spc basis, while others are expected to regress. however, this is to be expected as af rican economies vary in levels of development determining their capacity to exploit as mentioned earlier. in order to adjust, beneficiaries will have to reallocate their resources to sectors with the highest prospects for efficiency, which may take time depending on the aforementioned determinants, as well as on the political will to make such resources available and the strategic allocation thereof. in sum, though the afcfta presents several noteworthy disadvantages, these do not outweigh its benefits as the disadvantages are only short term and are manageable with the politicaleconomic determination of participating countries. impact on youth it is important to realise that the single amalgamated intra-af rican market under the guise of the afcfta will address many of the continent’s challenges if implemented well. it has been asserted that the fta has the potential to lift 30 million people out of poverty and raise the income of 68 million af ricans currently living on less than $5,5 per day (ayieko, 2021). additionally, the earlier-mentioned protocol on human migration, right of residence and establishment will facilitate ease of doing business and intra-af rica migration for many of the continent’s youth and prospectively boost the continent’s economy and further curb unemployment which currently stands at 60% . the fta might see the development of innovative financing solutions for aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly in areas of exports, e-commerce and fintech to satisfy orders. this can be achieved by launching cross-border crowdfunding hubs to fund youth. however, to attain this, af rica has to enhance youth access to education as that will equip them with the necessary skills to thrive in a single af rican market. moreover, information pertaining to what the afcfta is must be marketed to the youth, enabling them to take full advantage of the intra-af rica export opportunities embedded therein. this comes after a study by chepkwony and vuuren (2019) revealed that many of af rica’s youth are still unaware of the existence of the afcfta. potential overlaps and conflict of interests between the tfta and afcfta as noted earlier, the tfta seeks to amalgamate sadc, comesa, and eac into a singular trading bloc of members who are also participating in the afcfta and have ratified it. the repercussion thereof is an overlap in memberships. to better understand the relationship between the two trade agreements one has to assess article 19 of the afcfta which posits that: ‘state parties that are members of other regional economic communities, regional trading arrangements and custom unions, which have attained among themselves higher levels of regional integration than under this agreement, shall maintain such higher levels among themselves’. to date, only eight countries, namely: namibia, egypt, uganda, kenya, south af rica, rwanda, botswana, and burundi have ratified the tfta of the 14 countries needed to implement the agreement. seven countries, namely: malawi, zimbabwe, tanzania, comoros, sudan, zambia, and eswatini are in the advanced stages of their ratification processes. it is projected that these will be finalised by 2022 (gakunga, 2021). once in force, these will fall under the regional trade agreements discussed in the article. in theory, the tfta will co-exist with the afcfta and the latter should be able to advance its interests. however, the practical co-existence of the aforementioned trade agreements could prove complicated. this is because trade agreements of any nature revolve around preferences and benefits which mainly revolve around preference for exported goods and services peer review 56 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 f rom member states which are remunerated through reciprocal trade exchanges with partner states. the downside of overlapping memberships comes with the exorbitant costs associated with implementation. moreover, each trade agreement comes with its own unique set of rules and regulations. thus, overlapping memberships in the tfta and the afcfta could witness a duplication in compliancy and potential conflicts of interests embedded in rules of origin. for example, merchandise that is transshipped f rom a third-party as predetermined by a trade agreement will be barred f rom accessing any preferential treatment. article 3 of the afcfta alludes to the resolution of overlapping memberships by encouraging states to: ‘[r]esolve the challenges of multiple and overlapping memberships and expedite the regional and continental integration processes.’ however, the article fails to elucidate how the aforementioned will be achieved and could potentially drive conflicts of interests due to deficits in explanations. nonetheless, the launch of the afcfta is a tremendous fit for intra-trade in af rica, even though certain factors are still not clearly defined, such as overlapping intra-af rica trading bloc memberships. these will remain in place and continue to implement and govern their respective agendas and arguably prolong the low-levels of intra-af rica trade until the issue of overlapping memberships and other outstanding areas are resolved (afcfta, article 5 (b)). this is highlighted in article 7 of the afcfta’s rendezvous clause in which member states are to continue negotiating to address outstanding areas. conclusion it is clear that af rica has made commendable efforts in its attempt to boost intra-continental trade by creating intra-regional trading blocs such as sadc, ecowas, comesa, eac, and cemac. however, it has not been able to create meaningful trade gains as it registers the lowest intra-continental trade globally at 18%. several factors contributing to this intra-trade inefficiency were identified, including: the presence of ntbs such as import and export tariffs, arbitrary road checks, increases in customs clearing times, the dis-harmonisation of custom practices which curb the fluidity of trade, unnecessary public health regulations, post threat containment, and complex/discriminatory rules of origin. the inability by member states within their respective intra-regional trading blocs to adhere to the recommended blanket tariffs curbs trade and sometimes results in trade disputes among states. additionally, the article identified the overlap of intraregional trading bloc memberships by af rican states which makes it difficult for them to simultaneously meet multiple intra-regional trading bloc obligations, subsequently curbing intra-continental trade on an intra-regional trading bloc level. nonetheless, promising is the realisation of the aforementioned trade and integration shortcomings by the continent that has driven it to finally launch supra-regional trade under the banner of the afcfta to boost intra-continental trade by amalgamating the continent’s numerous markets into one singular entity that seeks to promote the fluidity of trade with minimal to zero barriers. to gauge the implications of the agreement, the article carried out a prospective benefit and disadvantage analysis wherein the benefits were found to outweigh the disadvantages which are transition-related and short term should beneficiaries garner enough political will and resources to facilitate a smooth trade transition. among the benefits identified by the article were access to a continental consumer base of over 1.2 billion people and a cumulative gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion projected to enhance exports and competitiveness among states. moreover, the analysis found the trade agreement to be quantitatively beneficial on both a full fta and spc basis though more on the former than the latter. it also found the trade agreement to be a catalyst for technology and skills transfer among af rican states, facilitating the structural transformation of lesser developed states into knowledge-based economies whose trade portfolios are diverse and not resourcedependent for growth. in sum, though current intra-regional trade in af rica has not near reached its full potential and efficiency, the continent’s current trajectory towards intracontinental trade under the afcfta is promising and could soon see af rica’s intra-trade increase and its developmental agenda advanced, as illustrated in the article. however, this can only be realised should an additional 16 af rican countries ratify the trade agreement enabling it to come into effect as af rican countries are known to be hesitant and gradual peer reviewpeer review 57v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 in ratifying intra-af rica trade agreements despite their need to enhance intra-continental trade. it is advisable that the trade agreement be ratified with haste to 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(2013). trade policy review: countries of the central af rican economic and monetary community. geneva: world trade organization. xu, y. and choi, e. (2015). ‘market integration process in the economic community of west af rican states (ecowas).’ [online] subsahara peer review 58 v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 af rika (blog). available at: https://www.subsahara-af rika-ihk.de/blog/ zamaroczy, m., fleuriet, v., and gijon, j. (2018). central af rican economic and monetary community: a new medium-term approach international reserve 1management. washington, d.c: international monetary fund. peer reviewpeer review by gift sonkqayi | peer review abstract the quest for a just education has, since the existence of education systems, been a part of humanity’s central concerns. the impetus for this is due to the fact that schools and many other institutions of learning exist as miniature societies which mirror that which happens in broader communities. educationists have, in many ways, been preoccupied with the question of whether institutions of learning are engaged in the ‘undesirable’ process of reproducing inequalities. this has further resulted in the question of whether such inequalities are a by-product of systemic injustices or are mandated by our natural abilities (i.e. how the world is in and of itself). in this article, i provide a historical account of education in the context of apartheid and its legacies. i further argue that attempts to address distributive injustices are not subject to ‘extreme’ contestations, while attempts to unravel epistemic injustices are dominated by innumerable incongruities. thus, i maintain that only knowledge that is rooted in mind-independent truth stands to liberate future citizens. the state of south the state of south african education:african education: a critical exploration of distributive and epistemic injustices 30 t h e t h i n k e r peer reviewpeer review 31v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 introduction ‘the crisis in south af rican schooling is not new. it predates the achievement of democracy in 1994 and has been an ongoing ref rain in public discourse since 1994. what is new is the emerging consensus on its dimensions and causes. since the 1990s, both the government and donors have invested substantial resources in understanding what exactly the problems may be.’ (chisolm, 2011: 50) it is well encapsulated in this extract that it remains a fundamental conundrum to divorce the education defies faced by the post-apartheid south af rican government f rom the effects of colonial and apartheid edifices, despite their official wrap-ups. the impetus for this is that both colonisation and apartheid are to blame for setting up black people for failure, as this article will later elaborate. this also brings us to the question of not only distributive but epistemic injustice, as often argued against by the proponents of indigenous knowledge systems (e.g. odora-hoppers, 2005; green, 2008; le grange, 2018; ndlovu-gatsheni, 2018). since the beginning of democracy, a number of debates on whether knowledge depends on who is in power have surfaced in different academic disciplines. this has led to knowledge being perceived as a social construct, resulting in questions such as: ‘how much of knowledge can be ascribed to sociological influences and whether this applies to all disciplines equally: are mathematics and science ‘human constructs in the same sense as the legal apparatus is a human construct?’… not everything can be ascribed to the ‘social distribution of power’ since reality places constraints on the human f reedom to construct an explanation.’ (wrigley, 2017: 6) this delineation conspicuously depicts that not all knowledge can be assumed to be a by-product of social factors. in essence, true knowledge is capable of emancipating the knower since it describes the world as it is and not necessarily how it is thought to be. simply put, true knowledge or knowledge that is rooted in the mind-independent reality allows the knower to not conflate ontological entities (i.e. the world as it is) with how human beings have come to epistemologically conceptualise such entities. thus, universal knowledge, secular knowledge, or scientific knowledge is necessary in cultivating democratic citizens who ought to shape democratic processes (see gutmann, 1987). furthermore, universal and/ or propositional knowledge allows individuals to be critical thinkers and meaningfully participate in their respective capacities as constituents. it is against this backdrop that this paper contends that, outside of distributive justice, there needs to be a strict focus on how knowledge in the context of education is decolonised. the impetus for this is because some forms of epistemic decolonisation are not redemptive and are potentially damaging since they tend to turn indigenous people/communities into immutable localities. therefore, education that is not rooted in the universal conception of knowledge should be deemed oppressive since its recipients would be indoctrinated into thinking that the world is as it is thought to be as opposed to it being what it is independent of our thinking of it. in addressing both distributive (resources) and epistemic injustices, this paper is structured as follows. first, i recapture the south af rican education f rom the apartheid era as well as in post-apartheid south af rica. then, i locate the crisis in south af rican education within kuhn’s notion of paradigm shift. last, i set out an argument on what should constitute knowledge for decolonisation (i.e. epistemic injustice). south african education in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras in his article entitled bantu education, hartshorne (1974) articulates that education exists to serve the social, political, and economic structures of different regimes. in the context of bantu education, education was driven by the aim of politically separate governments (hartshorne, 1974). further, there are seven pivotal axioms f raming hartshorne’s explication of the state of bantu education between 1955 and 1973, namely: primary education, secondary education, teacher training, trade, technical and vocational education, population growth, compulsory education, and finance. in noting many ways in which bantu education can be beheld, three points are worth reiterating in hartshorne’s argument: • first, in its conservative component, education is rooted in that which makes up the broader community and this includes the traditions and cultures of the population it serves. a practical peer review 32 t h e t h i n k e r example was the use of mother-tongue, social studies, the study of the environment, etc; • then, education needs to be progressive by aiming to address the needs and desires of people to aid in preparing them to take up their place in the contemporary world. thus, in its imaginative component, education is principally occupied with opportunity, training, adaptation. in concrete terms, this comprises the teaching of subjects such as commerce, mathematics, science, and technical education; • last, education is ethically obliged to provide a platform for self-actualisation. the impetus for this is to allow the individual to make use of their potential and become a ‘whole man’. hartshorne further used the aforementioned seven axioms to show that, when the bantu education act came into effect, the apartheid government took charge of what was a dual mission/provincially controlled system in 1955. this means that the apartheid government was in charge of 5,700 schools, 21,000 teachers, and 86,9000 pupils. hartshorne posits that their initial target was that all children should have access to four years of education. however, this proved to be infeasible despite the fact that enrolment increased to almost 3–4 million. the failure to reach their target was due to population growth. hartshorne further noted that in secondary schools in 1965 onwards ‘successful candidates qualifying for university entrance increased f rom 1 013 in 1970 to nearly 1 800 in 1972 – a further 1 100 gained senior certificate passes’ (1974: 2518). in addition, there was also an increase in terms of the number of teachers: ‘about 4 100 primary school teachers qualified at the end of 1972, over 4 500 at the end of 1973, and 5 500 will qualify at the end of 1974. the long-term target for 1980 is 8 000 per year’ (hartshorne, 1974: 2518). there was also an increase in the number of applications for trade, technical and vocational education. compulsory attendance was deferred particularly because of the view that countries with compulsory education were mostly those who were able to manage their population and this is something that south af rica was grappling with. in terms of literacy rate, it was stated that ‘our statistics show that ± 60% of the black population below the age of 45 years is literate…as schooling increases, therefore, problems with the younger workers in this field should be very limited’ (hartshorne, 1974: 2519). additionally, ‘in the 1973/4 financial year a total of r109 million is being spent by the state on the education of the blacks: an average of r32 per year for every black child in school, and twice the figure for 1969’ (hartshorne, 1974: 2519). despite some of the aforesaid positives, i will later highlight some of the challenges which are historically traceable to the advent of apartheid (or even before) and the enactment of the divisive bantu education act. hence, according to the bantu education act: the minister may f rom time to time make regulations — (d) prescribing courses of training or instruction in government bantu schools and the fees, if any payable in respect of such courses or any examination held by or under the supervision or control of the department; (e) prescribing the medium of instruction in government bantu schools; (g) relating to the admission of pupils or students to, the control, and the treatment of pupils or students at, and the discharge of pupils or students f rom, any government bantu school (bantu education act of 1953: 272). it was in light of the detailed bantu education act commanding guidelines that the apartheid regime took it upon itself to ensure that people of colour received an inferior education which placed them at the bottom of the ladder (christies and collins, respondents interviewed for the case studies discussed how the storytelling process had increased their levels of empathy and supported greater levels of understanding, which helped to resolve negative emotions and even improve relationships at work. church members observed that wys was an ‘eyeopener’ in changing their perceptions about other people. peer reviewpeer review v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 1986). according to naicker (2000) education during the apartheid era was designed to reproduce racial, class, gender and ethnic inequalities. i note that this was done at the expense of perceiving the individual as a sovereign being or a centre for suffering and responsibility. in a way, people suffered and prospered not because of their capabilities but because of their identification with a certain race, gender, or class. furthermore, it is important to highlight ‘the fiscal allocation in terms of race, where ‘white’ education enjoyed more funding...this included: quality of teacher training, level of teacher training, resources at schools, location of schools, support materials and almost every aspect of educational service delivery’ (naicker, 2000: 1). it is worth putting it forward that the bantu education act was an aspect of many other apartheid laws of which some are mentioned in the following table. table 1.1: timeline of apartheid legislation as with many other forms of injustices, the apartheid laws and regulations did not manage to create a complete generation of docile citizens within the black community. consequently, marginalised students and their communities were engaged in countless protests rejecting the imposed colonialapartheid education which aimed at nothing but cultivating them into menial labourers (christies and collins, 1986). in tertiary education, the apartheid government created separate institutions of learning. the impetus for this was to cement its ideology of racial segregation with white people at the very top while af ricans had to battle for the crumbs at the bottom (christies and collins, 1986). this was done through the 1959 extension of university education act which, in many ways, paved the way for the apartheid government to unequally distribute resources and content (beale, 1992). indubitably, these disparities amongst universities had severe consequences and some, if not most, of these are still evident even in the post-apartheid era. as keswell (2005: 1–2) succinctly puts it: ‘the social engineering via race and language that occurred in the sphere of public education, with the introduction of the bantu education act of 1953… sought to prescribe differential access to education based on race’. i now turn to education in post-apartheid south af rica. notwithstanding character wars through the enactment of the bantu education act of 1953 and the extension of university education act of 1959, the ramifications of apartheid policies and laws are yet to be overhauled. for instance, more than 50% of south af ricans are yet to have access to clean water – the majority of whom continue to languish in the unbearable conditions of informal settlements (world bank, 2018). in a 2018 world bank report titled overcoming poverty and inequality in south af rica: an assessment of drivers, constraints and opportunities, it was detailed that: ‘black south af ricans consistently exhibit the highest poverty rates. in 2015, 47 percent of the households headed by black south af ricans were poor. this was very high compared to 23 percent for those in households headed by a person of mixed race (colored), a little more than one percent for the population in households headed by an indian/asian south af rican, and less than one percent among those in households headed by white south af ricans’ (2018: 13). these numbers depict a structural puzzle which is yet to be solved by existing forces of power or, in extreme avant-garde cases, the marginalised majority themselves. such unorthodox methods of inequality would, as already pointed out, be mandated by the mind-independent reality of a high rate of inequality. 1950: the immorality amendment act: extends 1927 immorality act, this act made it illegal for people of all races to have sexual relations with other races, especially with white people. 1950: population registration act: a central register was developed which separated the population into white, native or coloured (subdivided into indian, griqua, cape malay and chinese). 1959: extension of university act: which segregated tertiary education. repealed 1988. 1970: bantu homelands citizenship act: africans were not regarded as citizens of south africa since their citizenship was legally tied to their homelands. 1953: separate amenities act: separation of whites and non-whites in all public places and vehicles – which need not be equal. 1950: the group areas act: the entire population had to live in separate residential areas (source: glücksmann, 2010) 33 peer review 34 t h e t h i n k e r the said inequalities and legacies of apartheid laws and policies are mirrored in the post-apartheid education system, which is imbued with inequalities. a comprehensive report on the discontents of postapartheid education by amnesty international (2020) highlights the following: • corruption, as evidenced through the zondo commission on state capture and corruption, affected the availability of resources in government. • communities and their relationship continue to suffer f rom political and economic hindsight of decisions made during the apartheid era. • it was put to the fore that not less than 60% of teachers work in schools that have more than 10% of learners whose first language is not that of instruction, compared to 21% whose mothertongue is english. • learners in the top 200 schools attain more distinctions in mathematics than children in the last 6,600 schools combined. • more than 75% of children who are in the 4th grade (9-year-olds) cannot read for meaning. in provinces such as limpopo this is as high as 91% while this is just about 85% in the eastern cape. • more than 9 million learners (77%) benefit f rom school-based feeding-schemes. • out of 100 learners who start school, 50–60 will make it to the 12th grade, while 40–50 will pass, and only 14 will further their studies in university. what explains such tragically unequal educational outcomes? there is a multitude of underlying reasons that serve as the impetus for inequalities in education. most schools lack the necessary inf rastructure and this, unfortunately, impacts negatively on educational outcomes. for instance, according to the amnesty international report (2020), south af rica has about 23,471 public schools: 86% of these schools did not have any laboratory; more than 77% did not have a library; 72% were with no internet access; 42% did not have sports facilities; 19% were still using or had illegal pit latrines for sanitation; and at least 37 schools did not have sanitation facilities. the amnesty international report (2020) further noted that, in south af rica, most learners tend to walk longer distances and this impacts negatively on their studies (not less than 230 000 in kwazulu natal alone). therefore, some learners may be too tired to study or even concentrate. correspondingly, 239 did not have electricity. there is also an increase of violence (e.g. gangsterism and burglary) within and outside the schooling context (amnesty international, 2020). this was further compounded by teacher absenteeism, as well as unfilled teaching posts in provinces such as the eastern cape and limpopo (amnesty international, 2020). such failures by the south af rican government do not only impede the immediately realisable right to basic education under section 29 (1) of the south af rican post-apartheid constitution, but also the right to life, equality, a safe and clean environment, as well as section 28 (2) which stipulates that the interests of the child are of paramount importance. it is against this backdrop of legal imperatives (and many others, such as the south af rican act of 1996), that the issues of distributive injustice become less contentious when compared to epistemological deliberations. in tertiary institutions, due to historical injustices, a large number of black students leave immediately after their first degree, since they need to provide for their families. as a result, this leads to a shortage of black south af rican academics and even those who are left behind are poorly remunerated as compared with their white counterparts (see higher education south af rica, 2014). the number of learners f rom public schools reaching institutions of higher education has increased since the advent of the democratic government. nevertheless, the ratio of success is still a cause for concern when compared to those who matriculated in affluent private schools, as this paper will later show. i now turn to kuhn’s notion of paradigm shift. i will now focus on indigenous knowledge. this is not to ignore the distributive injustice question, as it has been fairly addressed in the subsequent sections and by a number of scholars (e.g. fleisch, 1995; chisolm, 2011; ramdass, 2009). locating the crisis in south african education within kuhn’s notion of paradigm shift in the context of decolonisation, it is worth locating the crisis of south af rican education within thomas peer reviewpeer review 35v o l u m e 8 6 / 2 0 2 1 kuhn’s (1962) notion of paradigm shift. kuhn, an american philosopher of science, argued that there are two conflicting segments in the history of science: normal science and the scientific revolution. this already suggests the idea that science always goes through different phases. moreover, kuhn believed that normal science refers to a form of knowledge that is initiated for the purpose of supporting certain theories. kuhn further highlighted that anomalies may arise within normal science, leading to a challenge in the paradigm and thus leading to the emergence of new ideas, propositions, and theoretical f rameworks. what this means is that: ‘in the course of normal new phenomena may be discovered that cannot be explained using resources of the paradigm such problems are anomalies’ (kuhn cited in bird, 2000: 24). bird noted that this process is known as a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. kuhn contended that science is not a stable acquisition of knowledge; instead, it is a sequence of passive intervals interrupted by violent revolutions whereby one conceptual f ramework is defeated by another. kuhn refers to these views as ‘paradigms’ which can be demarcated as theoretical f rameworks of any type. irez and han (2011: 253) highlight that ‘one important aspect of kuhn’s paradigms is that the paradigms are incommensurable—that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual f ramework and terminology of another rival paradigm’. what can be inferred f rom this quote is that as one worldview is overthrown, it then becomes impossible for anyone to use that particular paradigm at the same time with a new paradigm. in short, opposing paradigms describe the world inversely. kuhn maintains that ‘normal scientists’ are often faced with confusion when the internalised paradigm gets dethroned. thus, they decide to lean on what they have learned despite evidence pointing otherwise. it can also be argued that educational reforms that are often introduced at a larger scale can be perceived to resemble scientific revolution (irez and han, 2011). in this case, the proposed change in af rican education by dei (2008) will be interrogated. dei contends that af rican education is experiencing challenges due to it being stuck in a colonial paradigm of what constitutes education. in other words, af rican education has failed to redefine itself on its own terms. challenges in the current paradigm of education can then be referred to as anomalies according to the kuhnian lexicon. what this means is that, due to the colonial foundation, af rican education is unable to meet the needs of its own people. in line with this, dei believes that: ‘education is about equipping learners with knowledge, skill, and resources that allow them to improve their own conditions and to contribute to building healthy, sustainable communities. as a community we are successful in these undertakings because we believe in the existence of quality education’ (2008: 230). it is clear that dei is of the view that education should serve the needs of af ricans in order to sustain af rican communities. dei further posits that af rican education and western education seem to be in disagreement. in simple terms, af rican education struggles to achieve its goals while it remains stuck in a western paradigm of defining education. this can be summed according to kuhn’s notion of incommensurability: one paradigm cannot coexist with the other since they are underpinned by different conceptual understandings. thus, dei is of the view that af rican education cannot coexist with western education. in short, kuhn’s notion of incommensurability shows that reconciling af rican education with western education is an impossible task, as argued by dei. the two education systems differ significantly in terms of understandings of what constitutes education or makes schooling. to further drive this discussion, in line with kuhn’s notion of paradigm shift, dei is of the view that there is necessity to move f rom the system of education (paradigm shift) that is eurocentric since it tyrannises, eliminates, and marginalises af rican children in education. dei believes that the prevalent eurocentric education system is responsible for societal inequalities. additionally, dei believes that the educational crisis is due to being in an education system that creates racial and class separations which aid the marginalisation of local people. to put this into context, progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) (howie, combrinck, roux, tshele, mokoena, and palane, 2016) showed that literacy tests of about 13,000 south af rican leaners displayed that almost 78% of leaners in the fourth grade were unable to read for comprehension in any language tested. peer review 36 t h e t h i n k e r thus, south af rica was the lowest out of 50 countries that were part of the test. in addition, it was reported in 2015 by the department of higher education (2015) that 47.7% of students in universities dropped out and that black students were leading in terms of dropping out. only 5% of af rican and coloured youth in south af rica completed tertiary education (with af ricans having the lowest success rate) (department of higher education, 2013). this implies that the south af rican education system is in crisis, as pointed out by dei. what this means is that the colonial paradigm fails to bridge the gap between race and class. dei articulated that the colonial paradigm of education is not in line with the experiences of af rican people and thus it portrays an incorrect and inconsistent image of the af rican identity. dei clearly demonstrated that af rican education is trapped in a paradigm shift, since learners are taught in one paradigm only to live another. dei believes that ‘transforming’ or ‘reforming’ education will not solve the crisis – rather, a paradigm shift needs to occur. however, dei highlights that: • there is a need to think and theorize first. • we need to look deep into our own forms of education as af ricans in line with our lived experiences. • indigenous knowledge promotes valid af rican experience by validating af rican ways of knowing. • there is the need to recognise the plurality of human experience. it is not clear whether dei is only using kuhnian language or subscribes to the kuhnian ideas as well. nevertheless, i do not agree with his line of argument. therefore, it is noteworthy that as in a paradigm shift, education reforms that are done at larger scale are often accompanied by new objectives and views on how individuals acquire knowledge, which demands the adaption to new teaching and learning strategies, materials, etc. (see irez and han, 2011). this means that a new paradigm, as proposed by dei, will mean that teachers will have to forsake all that they already know and embrace af rican education. irez and han (2011) further noted that in implementing any educational reform, it would be expected that teachers understand and reflect the new prerequisites of the reformed education. however, numerous teachers who are educated within the theoretical f rameworks and standards of the defeated paradigm would, like a normal scientist who worked with an old paradigm, debunk the paradigm shift. this ‘cannot be expected f rom an experienced teacher, just as the normal scientist experiencing a paradigm shift, to comprehend and adapt himself/herself to the new world that is introduced by the educational reform’ (irez and han, 2011: 253). gage notes that: ‘in the natural sciences, because the results of research in those sciences were unambiguous enough, consistent enough, and stable enough to compel the surrender of one paradigm community to another. but in the human sciences the results were not that unambiguous, consistent, and stable.’ (1989: 9) here, gage acknowledges that in the social sciences we are directly dealing with people’s attitudes. consequently, it becomes a challenge to have a paradigm shift. in addition, kuhn’s (in stemhagen, 2014) notion has been critiqued for the failure to acknowledge the fact that science can converge on the truth. for the purpose of this paper, the reconciliation of what is assumed to be a different paradigm is attempted in the curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) (department of basic education, 2011) whereby both what is presumed to be western scientific and indigenous knowledges are assumed to be working together to enhance learner understanding. nonetheless, sonkqayi (2020) rejects such presumptions on the basis that it confuses indigenous knowledge with knowledge that is true only to indigenous people. i will return to this discussion of western or indigenous knowledge in the following section. the argument made by dei which assumes that western scientific education leads to racial and class segregation actually falls into the trap of ethnophilosophy (see hountondji, 1983). in essence, dei regards af ricans as a collective singular, undermining the fact that differences are also evident in af rican communities too. in other words, af rican education as proposed by dei will not lead to equality as he had thought. le grange (2007), horsthemke (2015) and horsthemke and enslin (2008) have continuously peer reviewpeer review 37v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 argued that universal knowledge (true knowledge) that includes some elements of what is assumed to be indigenous knowledge is possible. due to enormous debates on epistemic decolonisation, it therefore becomes necessary for the following section to engage with the notion of indigenous knowledge as a tool for the decolonisation of education in south af rica. additionally, i will critically explore how this would take place, provided that it is underpinned by the ideals of democratic education. indigenous knowledge (everyday knowledge) vs western/scientific knowledge horsthemke (2004) posits that indigenous knowledge is often perceived as knowledge that is local and the opposite of western knowledge, which is assumed to dominate south af rican and af rican education in general. horsthemke (2004: 21) further mapped out a distinction between three kinds of ‘knowledge’: • knowledge-that or factual knowledge, • knowledge-how or practical knowledge; and • knowledge of persons, places, or things or knowledge by acquaintance. on the basis of the above, horsthemke argues that indigenous knowledge cannot be indigenous and factual at the same time. more to the point, he contends that it can only make sense if it aligns itself with the second and third tenets of knowledge. knowledge is underpinned by: ‘justification, knowledge is necessarily valid, legitimate, warranted. there simply could be no other knowledge, i.e. knowledge that is invalid, illegitimate or unwarranted. it would not be knowledge then’ (horsthemke, 2004: 25). by contrast, green (2008) acknowledges that it is difficult to define what makes indigenous knowledge indigenous. she does not concur with horsthemke’s (2010) universalistic approach to knowledge; rather, she opts for knowledge diversity in order to advance understanding. green (2008) is of the view that the failure of scholarship to provide clarity on what makes indigenous knowledge indigenous does not mean it does not exist. more to this, she argues that people differ in how they see the world depending on the purpose at hand and indigenous knowledge should not be looked at f rom a strictly realist position, since it can help advance understanding. for example, how an astronaut and solar scientist look at the sun is not the same since their purposes differ. furthermore, green contends that there should not be a line drawn between knowledge and beliefs when it comes to indigenous knowledge since it is not dependent on western knowledge. horsthemke (2010) argues that it is almost impossible for anyone to gain an understanding of anything without the necessary evidence of truth. he further suggests that knowledge cannot exist without truth. he rejects the idea of diverse knowledge systems since it insinuates that there is a diversity of ‘truths’: ‘according to green, ‘all knowledge, including newtonian physics and palikur astronomy, is produced with relevance to specific contexts and questions, and it is within those contexts of use that knowledge, along with the cognitive devices such as models, laws, narratives and metaphors, must be evaluated’ (horsthemke, 2010: 329). horsthemke (2010: 329) counters the above avowal by green by arguing that ‘all knowledge claims are made within specific contexts. truth itself is not context-dependent’. what this means is that knowledge is underpinned by facts which are backed up with evidence and scope (elgin, 2004: 12; cited in horsthemke, 2010). it is against this backdrop that i argue that multiple forms of factually true knowledge systems as explained previously are not liberating. simply put, any education that suppresses the voices of the learner or knowledge that is produced by indigenous communities (not referring to mere beliefs about the world) is not redemptive or liberating. this includes both formal and informal education. i maintain that for any education to be considered emancipatory, it be borne into universal knowledge which is rooted in the mind-independent truth. the idea of a mind-independent truth can be summed up as follows: ‘although the relevant notion of mindindependence is tricky to make out, i shall suppose that it comes to something like this: objects or properties of objects are mind-independent just in case they are what they are independently of how we take them to be. alternatively, a truth, t, is mind-independent just in case t is logically (or peer review 38 t h e t h i n k e r conceptually) independent of our believing (or more generally, taking) to be the case’ (heil, 1998: 69). in this case, the truth about the world is not a matter of our construct or how we come to think or believe about such a world. instead, it is that which is the case independent of our thinking of it. thus, for heil (1998: 69) the view that there is a mind-independent reality also means that ‘truths about minds and their contents are to count as mind-independent: there being a mind, m, need not depend logically or conceptually on anyone’s taking it to be the case that there is a mind, m’. therefore, the existence of the assumed mind-independent world is not mandated by our thinking of it. this is because our thinking of or about such a world can be wrong. consequently, it makes logical sense to assume that the mind and its content are mind-independent since it is not only the content of the mind that can be wrong, but the mind itself can be incorrect about its ontological existence and presuppositions. it is for this reason that i argue that universal knowledge is necessary in intellectually capacitating future citizens. moreover, according to charlot (2009), schools do not exist to teach learners about their reality as it is experienced. instead, schools exist in order to cultivate the learner’s intellectual capacity. for this reason, dwelling only on practical knowledge in the context of education can be detrimental to the intellectual development of future citizens since such knowledge does not guarantee cognitive development. conclusion this article first provided a synopsis of how education was (in terms of distributive justice) during the apartheid regime. i also highlighted the intended ramifications of structuring of education on the basis of race. the severe racial disparities in south af rica, as postulated in the first section, were inherited by the af rican national congress which continues to grapple with them even today. in short, inequalities in education predate the current democratic dispensation. i further showed, explicitly and implicitly, that the south af rican education system which was once imbued by racialised philosophies of education is yet to solve such pervasive distributive and epistemic enigmas. hence, i also engaged with kuhn’s notion of paradigm shift. the author contended that the paradigm (epistemic) shift (as proposed by dei, 2008) is not ideal since it is founded on a false dichotomy and sense of identity. it is intellectually detrimental to the development of future citizens. the assumed false dichotomy stands to obfuscate the fundamental aim or existence of schools. lastly, i also engaged with the question of knowledge and how the decolonisation of education in south af rica would take place provided that it is underpinned by the ideals of the mindindependent truth. references amnesty international, (2020). ‘broken and unequal: the state of education in south af rica’. amnesty international [online]. available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/af r53/1705/2020/en/ beale, m. a. (1992). ‘the evolution of the policy of university apartheid,’ in  collected seminar papers. institute of commonwealth studies, 44(1): 82–98. bird, a. (2000). thomas kuhn. chesham: acumen publishing. charlot, b. (2009). ‘school and the pupils’ work,’ educational sciences journal, 10(1): 87–94. chisholm, l. (2011). ‘review: the challenge of south af rican schooling: dimensions, targets and initiatives,’ transformation audit, 50–57. christie, p. and collins, c. (1986). ‘bantu education: apartheid ideology and labour reproduction’. in: kallaway, p. (ed.), apartheid and education. braamfontein: ravan press, pp. 160–183 dei, g. (2008). ‘possibilities in af rican schooling and education’. in s. nombuso dlamini (ed.), new directions in af rican education: challenges and possibilities. calgary, ca: university of calgary press. department of basic education. (2011). curriculum and assessment policy statement. pretoria: government printers. department of higher education. (2015). ‘statistics on post-school education and training in south af rica,’ department of higher education. fleisch, b.d. (1995). the teachers college club: american educational discourse and the origins of bantu education in south af rica, 1914– 1951. phd dissertation: columbia university. gage, n.l. (1989). ‘the paradigm wars and their aftermath: a “historical” sketch of research on teaching since 1989,’ educational researcher, 18(7): 4–10. glücksmann, r. (2010). ‘apartheid legislation in south af rica,’ hamburg [online]. available at: http://ra.smixx.de/media/files/apartheidlegislation-in-south-af rica-2010-2.pdf. government of the republic of south af rica, (1996). constitution of the republic of south af rica [online]. available at: http://www.gov.za/ documents/ constitution/constitution-republic-south-af rica-1996-1. government of the republic of south af rica, (1996). south af rican schools act 84 of 1996. pretoria: government printer. green, l.j. (2008). ‘‘indigenous knowledge’ and ‘science’: ref raming the debate on knowledge diversity,’ archaeologies, 4(1): 144–163. gutmann, a. (1987). democratic education. princeton, nj: princeton university press. hartshorne, k.b. (1974). ‘bantu education’.  south af rican medical journal, 47(12): 2517–2519. heil, j. (1998). ‘skepticism and realism’. american philosophical quarterly, 35(1): 57–72. peer reviewpeer review 39v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 higher education south af rica, (2014). ‘remuneration of academic staff at south af rican universities: a summary report of the hesa statistical study of academic remuneration,’ hesa education south af rica. horsthemke, k. (2004). ‘indigenous knowledge: conceptions and misconceptions.’ journal of education, 32(1): 31–48. horsthemke, k. (2010). ‘‘diverse epistemologies’, truth and archaeology: in defence of realism.’ science and engineering ethics, 17(2): 321–334. horsthemke, k. (2015). animals and af rican ethics. new york: palgrave macmillan. horsthemke, k. and enslin, p. (2008). ‘af rican philosophy of education: the price of unchallengeability,’ studies in philosophy of education, 28(1): 209–222. hountondji, p. j. (1983). af rican philosophy: myth and reality. london, england: hutchinson. howie, s., combrinck, c., roux, k., tshele, m., mokoena, g., and palane, n. (2016). progress in international reading literacy study, 2016. university of pretoria: centre for evaluation and assessment. irez, s., and han, c. (2011). ‘educational reforms as paradigm shifts: utilizing kuhnian lenses for a better understanding of the meaning of, and resistance to, educational change,’ international journal of environmental and science education, 6(3): 251–266. keswell, m. (2004) (february). ‘education and racial inequality in postapartheid south af rica,’ in dpru/fes second annual conference on labour markets. kuhn, t. s. (1962). the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago, il: university of chicago press. le grange, l. (2018). ‘decolonising, af ricanising, indigenising, and internationalising curriculum studies: opportunities to (re) imagine the field’. journal of education (university of kwazulu-natal), 74(1): 4–18. le grange, l. (2007). ‘integrating western and indigenous knowledge systems: the basics for effective science education in south af rica?’ international review of education, 53(1): 577–591. naicker, s. m. (2000). ‘from apartheid education to inclusive education: the challenges of transformation,’  international education summit for a democratic society, 26–28. wayne state university detroit, michigan. ndlovu-gatsheni, s. j. (2018). ‘the dynamics of epistemological decolonisation in the 21st century: towards epistemic f reedom,’ strategic review for southern af rica, 40(1): 16. odora-hoppers, c.a. (2005). ‘culture, indigenous knowledge and development: the role of the university,’ occasional paper no. 5: 1–50. johannesburg, rsa: centre for education policy development (cepd). padayachee, v. (ed.). (2006).  the development decade? economic and social change in south af rica, 1994–2004. hsrc press. ramdass, k. (2009) (october). ‘the challenges facing education in south af rica,’ pp. 7–9 in higher education conference on the impact of mergers on the south af rican higher education system. tshwane university of technology. republic of south af rica. (2011). ‘curriculum assessment policy statement (caps), grades 4-6 natural sciences and technology,’ department of basic education. sonkqayi, g.s. (2020).  democratic education and indigenous knowledge systems in south af rican schools: convergence or divergence. masters dissertation: wits university. statutes of the union of south af rica. (1953). the bantu education act number 47 of 1953. stemhagen, k. (2014). encyclopedia of educational theory and philosophy. kuhn, t, s. in d.c. phillips (ed.), los angeles: sage. world bank group. (2018).  overcoming poverty and inequality in south af rica: an assessment of drivers, constraints and opportunities. washington, d.c.: world bank. wrigley, t. (2017). ‘‘knowledge’, curriculum and social justice,’ the curriculum journal, 29(1): 4–24. peer review peer review 30 abstract this article critically discusses the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south af rica, as adopted by the south af rican government in late 2020. using a decolonial lens, it adds a critical voice to public discourse on the country’s first national policy for higher education internationalisation. the article argues that the policy framework needs to engage more vigorously with decolonisation as one of the most pertinent issues affecting higher education in south af rica today. it offers perspectives on what shifting the geography and biography of knowledge means in the context of the policy framework, thus opening up the possibility of moving south af rica f rom being primarily a receiver to a creator of internationalisation knowledge and practice. south africa’s policy framework for higher education internationalisation: a decolonial perspective by samia chasi v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 31 t h e t h i n k e r peer review introduction in november 2020, the south af rican minister of higher education, science and innovation formally announced that the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south af rica had been ratified. up to that point, the country’s higher education institutions (heis) had dealt with internationalisation mostly in their individual institutional capacities since the end of apartheid in 1994 (chasi and quinlan, 2021). the international education association of south af rica (ieasa) recognised the need for a national internationalisation policy as early as 2003 (jooste and hagenmeier, 2018) and was a major driving force in its development. more recently, universities south af rica (usaf) identified lobbying the south af rican government ‘to develop and implement an internationalisation policy f ramework’ as a priority area in its strategic framework, 2015–2019, (usaf, 2014: 11), noting that ‘[a]lthough south af rica’s universities are internationalising to improve their scholarship, research and innovation efforts; the absence of a national macro policy f ramework limits their growth potential in this regard’ (ibid.). not surprisingly under these circumstances, the adoption of the first national internationalisation policy represents an important milestone for the advancement of higher education internationalisation in south af rica. as such, it is an opportune moment to reflect on internationalisation f rom a south af rican perspective, particularly in the context of other significant issues affecting higher education in the country, key among them decolonisation. before discussing decolonisation in more detail, it is important to note that it is inextricably linked to the concepts of coloniality and decoloniality. on the one hand, coloniality ‘refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 13). on the other hand, decoloniality is concerned with the ‘dismantling of relations of power and conceptions of knowledge that foment the reproduction of racial, gender, and the geo-political hierarchies’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 14). at its core, a decolonial approach is concerned with the ‘agenda of shifting the geography and biography of knowledge’, addressing the question of ‘who generates knowledge and f rom where’ (ndlovugatsheni, 2013: 15). this involves the idea that rigorous knowledge is not generated by ‘adhering to questions, concepts, and standards on the basis of the views or needs of only one region of the world, and even less of a region that has been characterized by either colonizing or ignoring other regions’ (maldonadotorres, 2011: 10). using a decolonial lens, this article adds a critical voice to public discourse on the policy framework. it explores what shifting the geography and biography of knowledge could mean in the context of south af rica’s policy framework on higher education internationalisation. it argues that the policy missed an opportunity to systematically and overtly address internationalisation in the context of decolonisation and that future iterations need to engage much more vigorously with decolonisation as an opportunity to not only reflect critically on dominant trends of higher education internationalisation in south af rica, but also to imagine internationalisation differently f rom the perspective of the global south. doing so will open up the possibility for south af rica to be an active and self-determined contributor and partner in the global field of internationalisation of higher education. south africa’s internationalisation policy framework the objective of the policy framework of the department of higher education and training (dhet) was, fundamentally, to understand why south af rica should internationalise its higher education sector (stacey, 2020). in this context, internationalisation is defined as ‘an intentional or steered process to incorporate intercultural, international and/or global dimensions into higher education in order to advance the goals, functions and delivery of higher education and thus to enhance the quality of education and research’ (dhet, 2019: 9). adopting a comprehensive approach to higher education internationalisation in south af rica, the policy specifically addresses key internationalisation dimensions such as student and staff mobility, research collaboration, crossborder and collaborative programmes, as well as internationalisation at home (iah) initiatives (dhet, 2019). it notes that rationales for internationalisation include the positioning of south af rica’s higher peer review 32 education sector to be competitive in a globalised world, the advancing of higher education quality as well as the benefiting of society at large and enhancing opportunities for higher education to contribute to the public good (dhet, 2019). overall, the dhet’s policy framework, which was developed through a process of consultations with local and international stakeholders, has been well received by the south af rican higher education community. it is generally considered an important milestone for higher education internationalisation in the country (jooste and hagenmeier, 2020; stacey, 2020). as a first of its kind, the policy provides legitimacy for and guidance on internationalisation of higher education, including for those universities that had been forging ahead with internationalisation activities in the absence of national guidance (stacey, 2020). it has been noted that ‘the south af rican system can have a sigh of relief that the policy is now available’ (jooste and hagenmeier, 2020), particularly because more than three years had passed since the policy framework was initially published as a draft in april 2017. in terms of more specific sector responses, the policy framework has, on the one hand, been praised as an innovative document that is ‘conceptually on the cutting edge of international discourse and integrates the thinking of several leading experts in the field’ (jooste and hagenmeier, 2020). as such, it is also understood as having ‘the potential to elevate south af rica’s higher education system to a leading position when it comes to advancing internationalisation in the developing world’ (ibid.). on the other hand, the policy framework has been criticised for not explicitly linking internationalisation to developments relating to the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), information and communication technology (ict), and virtualisation in the higher education environment (rodny-gumede, 2020). what is missing, for example, are ‘guidelines for ict in advancing internationalisation and support for the development of new collaborative platforms for research, teaching and learning’ (rodny-gumede, 2020). in that sense, the policy could have done more to highlight opportunities and provide national guidance on ict-related innovation and virtual internationalisation strategies, which are specifically important in resource constrained environments such as the south af rican higher education sector (rodny-gumede, 2020). the importance of and need for such focus and guidance is arguably even more relevant in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, which has seen the rise of virtual internationalisation activities, including virtual conferences, virtual student and staff exchanges as well as collaborative online international learning (coil). this article addresses another significant shortcoming of the policy framework, focusing on if and how it responds to issues of decolonisation of higher education, a question which arises poignantly in the context of the main process of the policy’s development. while lobbying for a national internationalisation policy began in the early 2000s, the dhet only formally initiated the development process of the policy in 2015 (jooste and hagenmeier, 2020). in the same year, a decolonial student movement was formed in south af rica, petitioning that ‘the statue of cecil john rhodes be removed f rom the campus of the university of cape town, as the first step towards decolonisation of the university as a whole’ (the rhodes must fall movement, n.d.). in the coming years, decolonisation of higher education gained prominence in academic and public domains. when the dhet published its draft policy framework for public comment in 2017, south af rican heis had lived through a period of considerable instability in the wake of national student protests, which peaked in 2015 and 2016. under the banners using a decolonial lens, this article adds a critical voice to public discourse on the policy framework. it explores what shifting the geography and biography of knowledge could mean in the context of south africa’s policy framework on higher education internationalisation. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 33 t h e t h i n k e r peer review of ‘rhodes must fall’ and ‘fees must fall’, students around the country called higher education in south af rica into question, most notably regarding issues of relevance, quality and affordability, f ramed more broadly in a decolonisation discourse. the student protest movements, which gathered momentum in south af rica and elsewhere, highlighted the complexities of colonial legacies in higher education. in south af rica, they spoke specifically to a variety of dimensions that ‘urgently require transformation, including statues, symbols and names but also, more broadly, issues of access, financing and relevance, with a particular focus on institutional racism, white privilege and black pain’ (chasi, 2021: 43). such issues received increasing attention at the same time as work on the development of the policy framework was ongoing. it therefore seems reasonable to ask how decolonisation, which has arguably become one of the most pertinent issues affecting higher education in south af rica today, is being addressed in the policy. the policy framework and decolonisation the dhet’s policy framework does not appear to make a direct and obvious link between internationalisation and decolonisation of higher education in so far as the term decolonisation has not entered its vocabulary. it is neither mentioned in the draft version of 2017 nor in the final version adopted in 2020. this does not mean, however, that the policy is totally void of issues that are relevant to a discussion of decolonisation. in the sections that follow, two such issues are elaborated in more detail, pertaining to transformation, which provides the broader context in which decolonisation is embedded, and af ricanisation, which is at the heart of decolonisation on the af rican continent. as far as south af rica’s transformation agenda is concerned, the policy framework recognises, referring to the country’s education white paper 3 of 1997, the important role that higher education plays in contributing to national growth and social transformation through human capital development. it acknowledges past legacies of an ‘unequally differentiated higher education system’ (dhet, 2019: 21), which manifest in an uneven advancement of internationalisation across the sector and translate into the need to focus internationalisation efforts specifically on historically disadvantaged institutions (hdis). as noted in that regard, more than 20 years after the end of apartheid, hdis need to be prioritised, as they ‘still have very low levels of international relations and are not yet, therefore, benefiting f rom internationalisation to the degree that they could’ (dhet, 2019: 21). the policy framework further recognises that both transformation and internationalisation are key objectives for south af rican heis. regarding their interconnectedness, it is pointed out, for example, that ‘internationalisation of the curriculum must not negate curriculum transformation imperatives that higher education institutions in south af rica have an obligation to fulfil; the two can be carried out together successfully’ (dhet, 2019: 45). generally, transformation and internationalisation goals need to be balanced against each other. to illustrate this, while it is in the country’s interest ‘to appoint the best possible people in academic positions in its higher education institutions, including talented and qualified scientists and scholars f rom elsewhere in the world’, such recruitment ‘must be balanced with addressing race and gender transformation through creating opportunities for black and women south af rican citizens’ (dhet, 2019: 33). in cases of conflict, it is suggested that transformation goals should prevail. for example, recruitment of international talent must not be to the ‘detriment of job opportunities for equally qualified and experienced south af rican citizens’ (dhet, 2019: 25). in other words, there can be ‘no justification for any south af rican institution prioritising and preferring foreign nationals to south af ricans who qualify equally for the same post’ (dhet, 2019: 33). as far as students are concerned, international enrolments must not be ‘at the expense of access to higher education for south af rican citizens’ (dhet, 2019: 30). apart f rom such illustration of how internationalisation and transformation intertwine, the policy framework embeds internationalisation in south af rica in a broader continental context, with reference to af rican development, the af rican renaissance and intra-af rica collaboration (dhet, 2019). more specifically, it gives expression to ‘an af ro-centric preferential approach to the sadc region students and staff’ (stacey, 2020), particularly regarding the sadc protocol on education and training of 1997, which is considered ‘an early position on the internationalisation of higher peer review 34 education by the south af rican government’ (dhet, 2019: 13). a regional and continental orientation is particularly evident in the policy’s priority focus, which states that south af rican heis must design internationalisation activities relating to all their core functions in such a way that priority is, first and foremost, given to south af rica’s interests. following that, ‘where possible and relevant, the following order of priority focus should be observed in terms of interests: the sadc states; the rest of the af rican continent; brics; the global south and emerging economies; and the world beyond’ (dhet, 2019: 22). putting south af rica’s interests first might be considered an implicit way of expressing a core theme of decolonisation, which focuses on centring af rica. for the policy framework, this implies moving the centre, which is generally understood as a synonym for euro-america or the west, to south af rica. to illustrate this further, it is worth noting that there is a strong correlation between the dhet’s priority focus for higher education internationalisation and the organising principle used for the restructuring of the literature department at the university of nairobi in the late 1960s. as described in his book decolonising the mind, wa thiong’o notes that this new organising principle revolved around moving away f rom a focus on english literature to ‘a study of kenyan and east af rican literature, af rican literature, third world literature and literature f rom the rest of the world’ (1987: 94). in doing so, it expressed a determination to ‘establish the centrality of af rica in the department’, based on education being ‘a means of knowledge about ourselves. therefore, after we have examined ourselves, we radiate outwards and discover peoples and worlds around us’ (ibid.). the university of nairobi’s organising principle, as described here, cannot be easily and directly compared to the dhet’s policy framework, as the former is a matter of ideology, while the latter is an example of a national policy. however, it is interesting to note that the two are underpinned by a shared motivation to centre af rica, in so far as both start by bringing attention to the local dimension first, represented by kenya and south af rica, respectively. from there, they move outwards, starting with the regions that are closest to home, represented by east af rica and southern af rica, respectively. after that, their spheres of engagement broadly overlap, extending to the af rican continent, the global south and, ultimately, the world beyond. while it is not mentioned as an explicit example, the dhet’s priority focus for higher education internationalisation in south af rica gives some expression to the centrality of af rica as a key theme of decolonisation of higher education on the continent. as wa thiong’o points out, there is a ‘need to move the centre f rom its assumed location in the west to a multiplicity of spheres in all the cultures of the world’ (1993: 16). moving south af rica to the centre of attention and engagement, highlighting that its interests need to be prioritised, is very meaningful in the context of international higher education, where universities’ internationalisation efforts tend to benefit northern institutions more than their southern counterparts, particularly regarding such dimensions as student mobility and research partnerships. what the policy framework does not do, however, is to engage with decolonisation more deliberately, openly, systematically and deeply f rom the perspective of south af rica as a postcolonial, post-apartheid society in transformation. the following sections address this shortcoming and offer some critical reflections on what shifting the geography and biography of reason could mean in the context of south af rica’s policy framework on higher education internationalisation. taking a deeper look as mentioned earlier, a key objective of decolonisation is to shift the ‘geography and biography of knowledge’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 15). to illustrate how this relates to south af rica’s national internationalisation policy, three key concepts will be briefly referred to: criticality, positionality, and pluriversality. in the first instance, shifting the geography and biography of knowledge entails criticality. it provides an opportunity to question ‘methodologies as well as the present asymmetrical world order’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 11). in that sense, a critical engagement with higher education internationalisation must recognise that current internationalisation practices are predominantly informed by ‘hegemonic/neoliberal/ capitalist/commercial globalisation’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 35 t h e t h i n k e r peer review 2021: 93). furthermore, internationalisation is ‘a global phenomenon, but one that is dominated by northern perspectives in terms of its definitions, concepts and practices’ (chasi, 2020: 8). the importance and relevance of such definitions, concepts and practices in a global south context needs to be deliberately interrogated and contextualised in response to local needs and realities. secondly, shifting the geography and biography of knowledge requires a careful positioning of south af rica as an ‘ex-colonised epistemic site’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 13), which must entail an explicit acknowledgement of the significance of decolonisation in south af rican higher education, as it continues to be shaped by colonial legacies. this includes, for example, a critical engagement with the role of colonial languages in af rica, which forms an integral part of the decolonisation project. in that regard, a policy statement on the ‘globalisation of english as the lingua f ranca [original emphasis] of higher education, which has opened up national higher education systems to globally mobile students and academics’ (dhet, 2019: 36) cannot be simply accepted as a fact. when adopting a decolonial approach, the dominance of english as a medium of instruction and scholarship in universities across the continent must be critically discussed, and such a discussion must be linked to efforts to counteract the marginalisation of local and indigenous languages and knowledge systems in universities in (south) af rica. thirdly, decolonisation allows for a pluriversal approach to internationalisation, as it is premised on the ‘recognition of the diverse ways through which different people view and make sense of the world’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2021: 79). to illustrate all this with an example, internationalisation of the curriculum (ioc), a key dimension of higher education internationalisation, is defined in the policy framework as ‘the incorporation of intercultural, international and/or global dimensions into the content of the curriculum as well as into learning outcomes, assessment tasks, teaching methods and support services of a programme of study’ (dhet, 2019: 9). this definition reflects well-known definitions developed by northern scholars and an understanding of internationalisation that is essentially euro-american. however, accepting such a definition as universally valid and applying it uncritically to the south af rican context bears the risk of falling victim to ‘externally generated knowledges that are not informed by geoand biographical contextual understanding of the af rican condition’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 14). for a contextual understanding of ioc in south af rica, it is important to recognise that the country’s heis have colonial origins and that university curricula remain, in the main, euro-centric in orientation and character (heleta, 2016). however, when applying a decolonial lens, curriculum internationalisation can be approached differently, f rom an af rican perspective. in this regard, an internationalised curriculum can be understood as a curriculum that centres af rica and ‘situates the notion of af ricanness as a key lever for engaging with the global world in solving its developmental challenges and in seeking to position itself as a competitive entity in the globally competitive higher education context’ (wits, 2014: 11). this meaning of ioc is af ro-centric and highlights the importance of the notion of af ricanness. it is rooted in a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of internationalisation, which includes ‘[p]rocesses which seek to embed and elevate an af ro-global scholarship as an authentic global episteme equal and competing with other globally recognised epistemes’ (wits, 2014: 8). having highlighted the relevance of criticality, positionality and pluriversality for a decolonial perspective on internationalisation, it is important to note that shifting the geography and biography in this regard, an internationalised curriculum can be understood as a curriculum that centres africa and ‘situates the notion of africanness as a key lever for engaging with the global world in solving its developmental challenges and in seeking to position itself as a competitive entity in the globally competitive higher education context’ peer review 36 of knowledge also relates to an appreciation for decoloniality ‘as a liberatory thought that gestures towards the possibility of another world and knowledge’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 15). in this regard, decolonisation creates opportunities to re-imagine higher education internationalisation from the vantage point of south africa. such re-imagining must further elaborate on and give substance to one of the main rationales for internationalisation of higher education included in the policy framework, which is ‘to benefit society and enhance opportunities for higher education to contribute to the public good’ (dhet, 2019: 20). as highlighted by ieasa in the context of lessons learnt from the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, ‘internationalisation efforts of universities should be permeated by an agenda that focuses on inclusion and social justice’ (ieasa, 2020: 4). in the broader context of higher education internationalisation, this is linked to how international engagements can contribute to the ‘creation of a better world by addressing its challenges’ (dhet, 2019: 23). ultimately, internationalisation must be a ‘liberatory and rehumanising project engaging with colonialism and dislocating it’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2021: 94). this is relevant for higher education as much as for other spheres, for south africa as much as for other countries and regions of the world. conclusions with the development and adoption of the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south africa the south african government has, for the first time, addressed higher education internationalisation formally and substantively at the national level. the first edition of the national internationalisation policy is therefore undoubtedly a landmark for higher education in south africa and, more specifically, for the advancement of internationalisation in the sector. while the policy framework implicitly speaks to decolonisation, one of the most pertinent issues affecting higher education in south africa today, it does not engage with decolonisation systematically and deeply. in that sense, the policy missed an important opportunity to be truly reflective of and responsive to its location in place and time. in the immediate term, this gap can be addressed through robust sector engagement at the institutional level. the flexibility and autonomy provided for in the policy allows south african heis, where internationalisation primarily happens, to take pertinent issues such as decolonisation into account when developing their institutional internationalisation policies and strategies or aligning existing ones to the new national framework. however, as an issue of national importance, decolonisation should also be discussed collectively across the sector. for example, it could be addressed in the form of a national dialogue facilitated by the dhet in collaboration with key national stakeholders such as ieasa and usaf. a collective engagement should touch on a variety of issues emerging from this reflection on the relevance of decolonisation in the context of higher education internationalisation. it should aim to develop much more explicit guidance on how universities can bring decolonisation and internationalisation agendas into conversation, based on the recognition that using a decolonial lens presents an opportunity to shape a uniquely south african approach to internationalisation. such an approach must include a critical discussion of currently dominant internationalisation concepts and practices, particularly regarding power and knowledge dependencies, as well as an assessment of their relevance in and value to south african higher education. as a starting point, the very definition of internationalisation, as cited earlier, should be carefully critiqued and adapted to the specific south african context, with consideration for its philosophical underpinnings and lived socio-economic realities. a contextualised understanding of internationalisation – one that is responsive to local needs, interests, and aspirations – opens up the possibility of re-imagining internationalisation of higher education in south africa in fundamental ways. it creates spaces for south african heis to explore how they can deliberately and confidently participate in and contribute to the global higher education environment from an african base. ultimately, in this way, decolonisation can help bring about positive change in the dominant internationalisation narrative, focusing on how southern institutions can be active creators and players in this field rather than being seen primarily as receivers of internationalisation knowledge and practices. references chasi, s. (2020). ‘decolonisation – a chance to reimagine north-south partnerships’, university world news (af rica edition). 27 august v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 37 t h e t h i n k e r peer review [online]. available at: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post. php?story=20200826111105105 chasi, s. (2021). ‘colonisation – past, present, future?’, forum: europe and the global south, (spring edition). amsterdam: european association for international education. 42–43. chasi, s. and quinlan, o. (2021). ‘inclusion in times of covid‑19: the case of international students in south af rica’, journal of student affairs in af rica, 9(1): 205–221. department of higher education and training [dhet]. (2019). policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south af rica. [online] available at: https://www.dhet.gov.za/policy%20 and%20development%20support/policy%20framework%20for%20 internationalisation% 20of % 20higher% 20education% 20in% 20 south%20af rica.pdf heleta, s. (2016). decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south af rica. transformation in higher education, 1(1): 1–8. international education association of south af rica [ieasa]. (2020). higher education internationalisation in south af rica in the context of the covid-19 pandemic – impact on international students. (position paper). [online] available at: https://ieasa.studysa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/05/ieasa-position-paper_covid-19_may2020_ final.pdf jooste, n. and hagenmeier, c. (2018). ‘draft policy framework for the internationalisation of higher education in south af rica: an ieasa perspective’, the guide to south af rican higher education: advancing internationalisation in an era of transformation (17th ed.). pretoria: ieasa. jooste, n. and hagenmeier, c. (2020). ‘ihe policy that could be a model for developing countries’, university world news (global edition). 14 november [online]. available at: https://www.universityworldnews. com/post.php?story=20201113114234338 maldonado-torres, n. (2011). ‘thinking through the decolonial turn: post-continental intervention in theory, philosophy, and critique – an introduction’, transmodernity: journal of peripheral cultural production of luso-hispanic world, 1(2): 1–15. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j. (2013). ‘why decoloniality in the 21st century?’, the thinker, 48, 10–15. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j. (2021). ‘internationalisation of higher education for pluriversity: a decolonial reflection’, journal of the british academy, 9(s1): 77–98. rodny-gumede, y. (2020). ‘virtual world left out of policy on universities’ international collaboration’, mail & guardian, 22 november [online]. available at: https://mg.co.za/opinion/2020-1122-virtual-world-left-out-of-policy-on-universities-internationalcollaboration/ stacey, v. (2020). ‘south af rican f ramework gives guidance on heis global strategies’, the pie news, 20 november [online]. available at: https://thepienews.com/news/south-af rican-f ramework-givesguidance-on-heis-global-strategies/ the rhodes must fall movement. (n.d.). change.org [online]. available at: https://www.change.org/p/the-south-af rican-publicand-the-world-at-large-we-demand-that-the-statue-of-ceciljohn-rhodes-be-removed-f rom-the-campus-of-the-university-ofcape-town-as-the-first-step-towards-the-decolonisation-of-theuniversity-as-a-whole universities south af rica [usaf]. strategic framework, 2015 – 2019. [online] available at: http://www.usaf.ac.za/wp-content/ uploads/2016 / 11/strategic-framework-for-universities-southaf rica-2015-2019.pdf university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg [wits]. (2014). faculty of humanities – draft framed guidance for curriculum internationalisation. scholarship for af ro-global excellence (sage). johannesburg: wits. wa thiong’o, n. (1987). decolonising the mind: the politics of language in af rican literature. harare: zimbabwe publishing house. wa thiong’o, n. (1993). moving the centre. the struggle for cultural freedoms. nairobi: east af rican educational publishers. 66 t h e t h i n k e r abstract the covid-19 pandemic has aggravated pre-existing vulnerabilities faced by asylum seekers, refugees, and forcibly displaced persons. the topic of international migration has long been at the centre of global attention because of the extreme loss of life while crossing borders and the diff iculty of managing large numbers of asylum seekers. international migration is arguably one of the most pressing issues of our time because of its transnational characteristic, which affects all countries across the world. despite some concerted efforts, the international community has largely failed to provide solidarity and collective action to address the protracted global migration crisis. this article explores how the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent health and safety measures have complicated an already vulnerable refugee system. the article also considers where some windows of opportunity for progress in the multilateral refugee protection system may lie as the international community designs efforts to build back better in a post-covid-19 world. by nadine hakizimana | peer review peer reviewpeer review addressing the global migration crisis in the context of the covid-19 pandemic 67v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 introduction the global migration crisis has been intensified by the ongoing global health crisis and now governments are faced with the challenge of finding a balance between protecting their citizens and the humanitarian imperative of protecting asylum seekers and refugees. this article explores some of the vulnerabilities that asylum seekers and refugees face, which have been worsened by the health and safety measures imposed to limit the spread of the virus. it then considers the varied responses f rom the international community on the compounded crises. thereafter, the article discusses what ‘building back better’ after covid-19 may entail and how the refugee protection system may be better enhanced to address the protracted global migration crisis. c’est la galère: no escape from harm’s way due to covid-19 restrictions in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, migration routes have reduced considerably due to restrictions on travel in countries across the world. as countries take drastic measures to fight covid-19, the restrictions have challenged the most foundational principles for refugee protection, like the right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement. these principles recognise that asylum seekers have a right to seek protection at international borders and cannot be sent back to a country where they are facing danger (un general assembly, 1951). these and other provisions in the convention relating to the status of refugees, the universal declaration of human rights, and the unhcr charter are widely accepted international human rights, humanitarian, and customary laws. unfortunately, over the years, these internationally accepted principles have started to unravel. even before the pandemic, as asylum seekers arrived in boats on mediterranean shores, they have many times not been allowed to disembark, and ports have been closed on them. since the recent onset of the pandemic, such deviations f rom international norms persist. in 2020, for instance, roughly 400 rohingya asylum seekers were denied access at a port in malaysia (médecins sans frontières, 2020). the boat was left to drift in the indian sea for a very long time; many died of starvation, and were unable to exercise their right to seek asylum. some countries have been externalising their legal protection, opting to spend large sums of money to send refugees off to other countries that are often already financially strained and have poor legal and health systems, putting asylum seekers in an even more vulnerable position than they already were. these countries deliberately violate the principle of non-refoulement on deportation and forced returns. further exacerbating the situation is the fact that lawyers and legal aids have been obliged to work f rom home as a health and safety measure against covid-19. because of this, refugees and asylum seekers have been unable to access trustworthy legal representation and may now seek help f rom smugglers and traffickers as their desperation increases. at the end of 2019, unhcr reported that there were 79.5 million asylum seekers, refugees, internally displaced and stateless persons (unhcr, 2020). these people are particularly vulnerable, as they face the threat of covid-19 infection in addition to their struggles to seek refuge. the crowded environments they are forced to be in, whether while fleeing danger or while in detention, undermine their ability to follow health and safety measures like social distancing, curfews, and proper sanitation, putting them at greater risk of contracting and spreading the virus. the restrictions that countries impose have been justified by governments as emergency measures that will stop once a sustainable solution is found. however, based on past examples of temporary solutions, there is the possibility that some countries may seek to maintain these restrictive measures and that they could be mainstreamed even after the pandemic has ended. for this reason, it is important to closely watch national responses to the pandemic and call for flexibilities where needed in order to ensure the protection of refugees. while covid-19 has indiscriminately affected both rich and poor in a devastating way, the impacts on those seeking asylum are most concerning and may be long lasting. below, i identify a number of geopolitical events in past years that can provide some context to the responses to migration seen today and that may persist in the future, depending on the progression of the covid-19 pandemic. peer review 68 t h e t h i n k e r how did migration become an international crisis?   a number of key events have been identified as an answer to the question of how migration became an international crisis. these events served as catalysts to the migration crisis that has been compounded by the covid-19 pandemic today.  firstly, while the influx of migrants into europe through the mediterranean had been a challenge to european countries for many years, it is only after the disaster in 2015, where roughly 700 migrants were involved in a tragic accident in the mediterranean, that european countries started to address the issue with a sense of urgency and seriousness (kingsley, bonomolo and kirchgaessner, 2015). the year 2015 is argued to be the point where migration became a crisis.  secondly, referring to the prediction made by former libyan leader, muammar gaddafi, that the collapse of libya would create a migration crisis in europe (davidson, 2017), the weakening institutions in north af rican states that have corrupted border patrols between af rican borders can be identified as a contributor to the crisis. this has made it easy for organised crime groups and terrorists to cross their borders (zogg, 2018). the sahel region is also a strategic area as it is a bridge between subsaharan af rica and north af rica. in this region, libya is said to be the site through which many migrants enter europe illegally (bialasiewicz, 2012: 843). weak state institutions make it easy for people to pass through these countries without proper documentation. the lack of documentation of migrants presents a major threat to global security because it allows those who commit crimes to avoid culpability (weiner, 2018: 95). more and more people are becoming stateless as they are displaced and are unwanted by the countries they flee to. the sahel region is a good example of what can go wrong when there are large numbers of uncaptured people. countries like mali, mauritania, niger, and chad all have large geographical spaces (raleigh, 2010: 68–98). in these countries, politics are largely constrained around the capital cities and there is an absence of state institutions in the majority of the sahel, even though there are small functioning communities. uncaptured territories often become sites of organised crime and terrorism. additionally, the consequences of the 2011 arab spring uprisings in north af rica also contributed to the extreme influx of migrants into europe, which is now regarded as an international crisis (joffe, 2011: 507). food riots in heavily populated urban societies were an important element and indicator of extreme famine, which resulted in the forced migration of north af rican populations (joffe, 2011: 514). the ongoing conflict in the middle east, most notably in syria, has also become part of the global migration crisis. the conflict that led to the refugee issue in syria started with the uprisings against oppressive regimes known as the arab spring in 2011 (joffe, 2011: 514) but has since deteriorated into disaster. the syrian refugee crisis is important to the international community because it has overflowed into numerous neighbouring countries. lastly, the presence of migrants in host countries became viewed as a global crisis after violent events in europe were characterised as terrorist attacks in paris, london, manchester, brussels, berlin, copenhagen, and stockholm. the event that managed to get largescale global attention was the charlie hebdo shootings in january 2015 (silva, 2018: 838–850). as a result of these terrorist attacks, the discourses around migration shifted towards a focus on extremism that warrants a securitized rather than a humanitarian or developmental approach to migrants. new policy and legislative changes were made to further restrict entry for migrants and to also complicate citizenship requirements, making it more difficult for migrants, whether refugees or economic migrants, to obtain citizenship (princen, 2018: 535–551). these terrorist attacks also heightened prejudices against muslim communities (princen, 2018: 535). all these events and several others f rom across the world have contributed to migration being perceived a number of key events have been identified as an answer to the question of how migration became an international crisis. these events served as catalysts to the migration crisis that has been compounded by the covid-19 pandemic today. peer reviewpeer review 69v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 as an international crisis. now with the onset of a new crisis, which united nations secretary-general antonio guterres declared as a global health crisis unlike any other in the 75-year history of the un (guterres, 2020), a major cause for concern is that the global migration crisis could become less of a global priority as the world struggles to address the covid-19 pandemic. the next section will consider how the pandemic has impacted vulnerabilities that asylum seekers, refugees, and forcibly displaced persons already experienced. new crisis, same old vulnerabilities since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, relief workers and governments have been conf ronted with the responsibility of developing procurement strategies to provide items like personal protective equipment, access to sanitation, and basic public health – but none of these essential items needed for refugees, asylum seekers, and forcefully displaced persons are new. as the covid-19 crisis develops, a lot of pre-existing trends have become reinforced and old vulnerabilities faced by people on the move persist. border governance is something that has been discussed internationally for quite some time, long before international borders ever closed. the 2018 un agreement of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, for instance, is premised on facilitating migration but also has the objective of monitoring borders, mobility, and cooperation between states over the movement of people to better manage migration flows (global compact for migration, 2018). two clearly distinct approaches can be seen in this document – one to open borders and the other to tighten borders, which reflects the different aspirations of member states and their stance on migration. today, these opposing stances persist and there are big questions about how countries will respond going forward. the transnational nature of migration, which obliges some form of international cooperation, raises concern about whether the idea of state sovereignty is diminishing (milliken and krause, 2002: 753–774). with the fear of people on the move spreading covid-19 in the present day, this is not the case at all. in fact, during the global pandemic, there has been a general tilt towards a desire to protect the state. regardless of any organisational agreements, nation states have the ultimate authority over the status of migrants in their country. thus, the current global migration crisis in the context of covid-19 is a good example of how the idea of the nation state as a sovereign governing entity has been reasserted, and this assertion of statehood may render certain categories of people stateless. under the 1948 universal declaration of human rights, statelessness is prohibited in article 15 (united nations, 1948). it is specified that all people have the right to nationality. thus far, the enforcement of these laws is weak as they are not binding and there is no entity that has the authority to hold states to account when they fail to offer asylum, refugee, and citizenship status (edwards, 2005: 330). also, the use of detention for asylum seekers during this time has become more and more common and thought of as a temporary condition while administrative processes get sorted out and while solutions to covid-19 are developed. this idea of refugee situations being temporary is problematic since the average duration refugees spend in refugee camps across the world today is between 10 to 20 years (unhcr, 2018). for many, this means the majority of their lives will be spent in a protracted situation waiting for their status to be determined. this issue predates the pandemic as large numbers of migrants over several years have ended up in detention centres in different countries across the world. the existence of detention centres for asylum seekers and the increased military presence at borders suggests a shift in the normative, humanitarian united nations approach to forced migration. this shift is best articulated in a study conducted by howard adelman (2001: 7–32) which provides an analysis of the unhcr and finds that refugees are no longer treated as victims of oppression but rather as threats to one’s security. adelman emphasises that approaches to migration have shifted towards a security dimension. the unhcr is more involved in procedural operations in refugee camps, like determining who can stay and who should be deported, rather than undertaking humanitarian actions like creating humane environments for asylum seekers to be housed (adelman, 2001: 7–32). the major shortcoming of the unhcr is that it does not have the jurisdiction to legally punish those found to be responsible for refugee crises, nor does it have the ability to sufficiently rescue all refugees. australia has had an offshore detention policy which sees them paying off neighbouring countries and peer review 70 t h e t h i n k e r islands to house asylum seekers, preventing them f rom entering australia (dickson, 2015: 437–454). one such detention centre is in the south pacific island of nauru and is called the nauru regional processing centre. another is found on the manus island and is known as the manus regional processing centre (dickson, 2015: 437–454). such detention centres are managed as criminal facilities (dickson, 2015: 437– 454). this criminalised detention of undocumented persons is becoming more and more common despite it being illegal under international law. in greece and italy, for example, hotspot detention camps were used to hold asylum seekers, who were then forced to live in sub-standard conditions and under constant watch (kaniadakis, 2021). such highly securitised conditions and restrictions that are meant to be temporary for asylum seekers and refugees may become long-lasting given international responses to the pandemic. there are already examples of how ‘temporary’ treatment for asylum seekers has become the status quo and threatens to continue post-pandemic. both the unhcr and iom suspended their resettlement programs in 2020 due to the closing of international borders, creating extended delays in the processing of refugee status and leaving many stranded (oecd, 2020). thereafter, some countries like hungary and poland have simply refused to accept asylum seekers and have rather offered to contribute financially towards the upkeep of detention centres and repatriation back to home countries (human rights watch, 2020). the problem with this is that the process of repatriation can be rather complex and take a lot of time and there is a risk that people may end up staying in detention centres for extended periods of time. the willingness of eu countries to assist asylum seekers has not been high for several years and countries like italy, greece, and malta have been in the f rontline bearing the brunt of this responsibility to protect. however, these countries may become increasingly reluctant to continue if there is no political will to support this endeavour f rom other eu countries. another concern that predates the pandemic is the issue of gender-based violence (gbv) which has worsened during the pandemic. according to un women, there has been a rise in the number of cases of gbv around the world as families face strain when their breadwinner loses their job due to the global economic downturn and imposed lockdowns as a measure to combat the pandemic (mlambo-ngcuka, 2020). this issue has been particularly concerning for refugees who are on the move while facing the same challenges. refugee screening data f rom the bangladesh district of cox’s bazar revealed that one in four rohingya women and girls were victims of gbv and that 80% of them did not seek help (cone, 2020). this creates a helpless situation for relief workers who are unaware of the severity of the danger these female refugees are in. responses to this issue require innovative approaches to encourage victims to speak up. ultimately, past and present trends have demonstrated the failure of the international community to address longstanding vulnerabilities. in times of crisis like the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the international community is given an opportunity to rethink previous responses and start designing ways to build back better. the following section explores some of these international responses to the global migration crisis in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. international responses to the global migration crisis international migration, compounded by the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, is changing the way that countries behave, but states are not responding unilaterally. some countries have used the pandemic as an opportunity to tighten their borders, while others are attempting to create systems of inclusion for asylum seekers. these responses can be narrowed down to a dichotomy of criminalisation versus assimilation or integration, which each offer different realities. this is the tension that will be discussed below while drawing on several examples of how different states and nonstate actors have responded to the global migration crisis before and during the covid-19 pandemic. in 1995, following the signing of the barcelona process, the european union’s response to migrant influxes was based on principles of inclusion and integration (attina, 2003: 181). this agreement involved 28 eu member states and 15 non-eu states. this agreement provides european countries with trade links in the middle east in exchange for entrance into the european market and the possibility to migrate to european countries (attina, 2003: 181). the barcelona peer reviewpeer review 71v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 process took effect in 2010 when boats filled with middle eastern and north af rican migrants started to enter european territory in large numbers (pace, 2012: 4–24). subsequently, in 2015, the immediate response to the loss of lives in the mediterranean sea was a robust determination by european countries to save lives. this humanitarian sentiment was evident on 23 april 2015, when a special meeting of the european council was held (carrera, blockmans, gros, and guild, 2015). donald tusk, president of the european council, was reported to say: ‘saving the lives of innocent people is the number one priority for us. the discussions in the meeting will be about readiness to sacrifice some national interests for the common good’ (aamann, 2015). thereafter, attention shifted towards how to manage the people who find themselves on european territory. according to the 1951 refugee convention, the responsibility of processing and accepting asylum seekers lies with the country in which the asylum seeker first arrived – known as the concept of ‘first safe country’ (unhcr, 1991). however, in the european response to the asylum influx, a joint distribution or burden sharing strategy was forged on a voluntary basis. refugee camps known as ‘hot spots’ were set up across the different european countries who accepted the burden of the migrant influx (carrera et al., 2015). at these hot spots, undocumented migrants would be required to register for asylum and eventual refugee status and, if their claim was deemed unfounded, they would risk being sent back to their country of origin where they may face danger (carrera et al., 2015: 7). not all countries have taken such a harsh stance on migration. among the scandinavian countries, sweden has been the most open to accepting large numbers of refugees and even offering citizenship by naturalization (stokes-dupass, 2017: 40–60). sweden’s open-door policy ultimately affects all nordic countries. this is because of the nordic crossborder cooperation which allows citizens f rom sweden, denmark, norway, finland, and iceland to move f reely across the region’s borders (nordic council, 2015: 19). therefore, once a migrant is granted swedish citizenship, they are allowed entry into other nordic countries based on the nordic regional agreements, despite their decision to abstain f rom accepting large numbers of refugees. in this way, sweden acts as a backdoor entry point for migrants and asylum seekers into scandinavia. for this reason, there has been increased pressure on sweden to tighten its immigration policy (stokes-dupass, 2017: 40–60). there has also been pressure f rom other nordic countries and nordic civil society for sweden to focus its immigration policy on assimilation, rather than integration, in order to preserve nordic identity and culture (stokes-dupass, 2017: 40). this is a good example of the intolerance of nordic countries to accept plurality of culture and identity. in recent times, the covid-19 pandemic has been used by some countries to justify inaction for asylum seeker protection. while recognising the seriousness of the covid-19 pandemic, it is irresponsible to neglect the international principle to protect those facing threat to their lives. in late 2020, the eu proposed a migration pact which requires countries who do not wish to accept refugees to contribute financially to the upkeep of reception centres or to take on the responsibility of deporting people whose asylum claims were rejected to their home countries (dempster and anita, 2020: 1). this migration pact demonstrates that the eu is reasserting its tough stance on migration and leaving a major gap in the system of multilateralism in which europe is a dominant region which millions of asylum seekers risk their lives to reach. during the pandemic, malta returned people to libyan refugee detention centres – which have been known to have extremely harsh conditions. this kind of approach has undermined the fundamental principles of human rights and the principle of non-refoulement which was mentioned earlier. greece is another country that started to harden its borders – strengthening in recent times, the covid-19 pandemic has been used by some countries to justify inaction for asylum seeker protection. while recognising the seriousness of the covid-19 pandemic, it is irresponsible to neglect the international principle to protect those facing threat to their lives. in late 2020, the eu proposed a migration pact which requires countries who do not wish to accept refugees to contribute financially. peer review 72 t h e t h i n k e r border security patrols and building fences to prevent refugees in turkey f rom entering the country. now, in 2021, turkey has been under great pressure to support these refugees (mckernan, 2021). while the un supports the temporary closing of borders by countries to contain the spread of coronavirus and protect their citizens, those measures ought to be non-discriminatory, necessary, proportionate, and reasonable in all instances – which is not the case in greece. conversely, canada provides some hope as the minister of immigration has provided pathways to citizenship for a selected few asylum seekers and refugees, in exchange for their essential work during the pandemic – particularly in health-care facilities (immigration, refugees and citizenship canada, 2020). similarly, some countries have made efforts to include refugees in their national programs – granting temporary work permits, resident permits, and fasttracked access to citizenship. france is an example as the minister of agriculture called for incentives to attract seasonal workers and mitigate shortages in their agricultural work force when roughly 2,000 of them – mostly refugees and migrants f rom tunisia, morocco, poland, and romania – were forced to remain in their countries as part of national efforts to contain the spread of covid-19 (ilo, 2020). this approach allows people who are already in the country to be documented in order to gain access to basic needs but also to vaccinations and other health and safety measures necessary to combat the pandemic. it seems as though countries are more inclined to include refugees in their health programs as a way of minimizing the risk of spreading the virus. in this regard, perhaps the pandemic could provide a greater opportunity to make progress on longstanding migration challenges if the imperative to protect refugees is presented to developed countries as an issue of the global commons that affects all people and all countries. paving a way forward as countries start to think about post-covid-19 recovery, there is a need to draw on pertinent lessons f rom the past but also to design new pathways of international response to mitigate risks, optimise opportunities, and enable societies to build back better as the crisis regresses. the international community must reconcile the role that they can play to steer progress in the right direction. addressing the global migration crisis in the context of covid-19 requires a ‘whole of society’ approach where governments work with different stakeholders f rom civil society, the private sector, academia, or technical communities to create a safe migration system. to do this, there needs to be a more rigorous effort to address the root causes of migration, rather than responding to the outcomes when people are already in harm’s way. this means that humanitarian responses need to go hand-inhand with social and economic development. in trying to imagine and prepare for what the international system of refugee protection will look like in the post-covid-19 period, one can draw inspiration f rom refugees themselves. long before the pandemic, refugees have been forced to be selfreliant and resourceful – as a result, there is a large body of knowledge and innovations that can be leveraged by the multilateral system to address the global migration crisis, especially when relief workers have limited mobility to access those in need. also, as a way of respecting covid-19 safety measures, legal representatives, humanitarian workers, and gbv counsellors could continue their activities in person while being careful to do so in small groups and maintaining social distance. there are also some promising prospects of research and innovation, especially in biotechnology with the development of vaccines and the roll-out of vaccination programs in some countries around the world. with this advancement, showing proof of vaccination could become a way to screen migrants in the near future. currently there are talks in some countries about the possibility of having vaccine passports for international travel: for instance, denmark in early 2021 reported that they are working on their own vaccine passport for danish travellers (murray, 2021). while this could eliminate the excuse that many developed countries have used to tighten borders based on the need to protect citizens f rom covid-19, it may also create new challenges if people cannot access vaccinations, especially those on the move. for this reason, there is a need to strongly advocate for a waiver on restrictive intellectual property rights enshrined in the wto trips agreement in order to ensure inclusivity for new essential scientific developments, particularly during the current health crisis which is compounding peer reviewpeer review 73v o l u m e 8 8 / 2 0 2 1 other vulnerabilities faced by asylum seekers and refugees. developing countries like south af rica and india have taken leadership on this ip waiver issue in collaboration with other developing countries. going forward, more leaders f rom developing countries need to be present at negotiation tables where governance issues around intellectual property and access to essential innovations like vaccines are being discussed. if a more robust approach to ip policy had been taken before the pandemic, developing countries would be in a much better position to secure the waiver much faster. as we have seen during the pandemic, time is really of the essence. the sooner the world’s populations can get access to vaccines, the sooner we can reach herd immunity and reduce the number of deaths f rom covid-19 globally. since the proposed waiver would only be temporary, developing countries need to take a longterm view and consider how to secure vaccines even after herd immunity has been reached. government subsidies, patent pools, or increased assistance to enhance production capacity and knowledge commercialization could help to secure access not only to covid-19 vaccines but also to other life-saving treatment for future infectious disease outbreaks, not only for citizens but also for undocumented asylum seekers and other marginalised people. moreover, with the increased reliance on the internet as a result of working and studying at home in the era of covid-19, digital technology also offers some promising prospects for the future. the innovative use of digital technology has managed to find its way into migration governance as there has been a trend towards a smart-border approach in which contactless and multi-sensory biometric scanners assist in identification and are used to manage migration flows in an orderly way (jones, 2020). another example of technology being harnessed for refugee protection can be seen in syria, where caseworkers are unable to physically reach refugees but are now using textmessaging, video-conferencing, and call centre lines to service refugees (cone, 2020). going forward, digital technology and icts could offer opportunities to avoid keeping asylum seekers detained for long periods of time. instead, administrative case processing and interviewing can be done virtually – which would make the process faster and safer too. overall, paving a way forward in a sustainable and just way would require countries to find a balance between protecting citizens f rom the pandemic while also fulfilling their obligation to protect refugees. what is needed more than ever is international solidarity and political will to share the responsibility to protect those in need.  there is a window of opportunity to demonstrate the power of the multilateral system if the international community successfully harnesses collective action to address the ongoing migration and health crises. if done properly, the lessons learnt could also encourage the demand for collective response for future crises. conclusion in conclusion, the covid-19 pandemic has driven the international community to act fast in their efforts to combat the spread of the virus. some of these fast responses have led to decisions that deviate f rom the international principle of non-refoulement and the right to seek asylum. responses to migration have shifted towards more securitised measures like increasing militarized border patrols, refusals to disembark boats carrying refugees, and deportation back to unsafe countries. we have also seen that in some developed countries, there seems to be a greater willingness to spend money on keeping people outside of their borders. while these decisions in recent times have been justified as exceptional cases to quickly combat an international health emergency, it is important to recognise that harsh short-term solutions can have long-lasting impacts and may persist for many years to come. this was demonstrated by the temporary solutions to house refugees in sub-standard conditions while waiting for administrative processes to determine their status, which end up taking an average of 20 years to be done. we have highlighted here the need to establish a more inclusive and sustainable approach to addressing the international migration crisis. this will require increased multi-lateral and multistakeholder cooperation and the political will to share the responsibility to protect. new and innovative approaches are emerging that could change longstanding vulnerabilities. the increased reliance on technology during the covid-19 pandemic has offered new opportunities for innovative uses of technology to expedite the administrative processes peer review 74 t h e t h i n k e r of refugee status determination where international relief workers are constrained by limitations on their mobility. if properly managed, the next generation could be able to use advanced technology and other innovative systems to effectively respond to the security threats caused by forced migration. in a post-covid-19 world, there are a number of developments we can expect related to the mobility of people. we may anticipate increased monitoring of movement, not only that of asylum seekers but of all people – especially if vaccination passports become mandatory for travel. 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(2018). ‘organized crime: fuelling corruption and mali’s desert war. the global observatory.’ [online] the global observatory. available at: https://theglobalobservatory.org/2018/02/organizedcrime-corruption-mali/ peer review 45 t h e t h i n k e r peer review abstract in africa, legitimation and claims to the legitimate use of force are often challenged by the problematic nature of ethnic diversity, amongst other things. although ethnicity and diversity are not the problems in themselves, the politicisation of ethnicity is. in this paper, we link this to a history of colonisation which clustered multiple ethnic groups together within single sovereign entities around the continent, as well as the current realities of coloniality which has prevented states within the continent from imagining and transcending the european artefact and design of the modern state in africa. we link the exploratory term coloniality in statebuilding to the failure of african states to overcome the politicisation of ethnicity and ethnic diversity in order to mitigate the problematic nature of democracy in modern african states. this failure leads to challenges of legitimacy in any given state, and ultimately the states’ claim to the legitimate use of force. the resultant symptoms and indicators of such challenges are manifest in the rise of various insurgencies, separatism, and other forms of insecurity. the cases of kenya, south sudan, nigeria, and somalia are briefly discussed in this article, highlighting the problematic nature of the claims to the legitimate use of force, legitimacy, and the resultant political ethnicity with all its consequences for these states. coloniality, legitimacy in statebuilding, and the use of force in africa by samuel ajogwu igba and emmaculate asige liaga peer review 46 introduction discussions about the use of force and claims to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force became prominent in 16th century political philosophy in europe (van der lijn, 2017: 1). in discussions about the modern state, the conversation about the role of force and its legitimacy cannot be overlooked. according to van der lijn (2017: 1) the core of a state’s monopoly of force is that the state is the guarantor of both internal and external security. van der lijn (2017) further argues that although this concept has functioned in some states, in practice its realisation has generally been more the exception than the rule. it still remains, however, the ideal type of security governance chosen by states around the world. moreover, scholars such as tilly (1985), weber (1919: 1), and van der lijn (2017) have argued that the role of the use of force and the monopoly on the legitimate use of force are central components in statebuilding, as they emphasize the importance of a ‘legitimate claim to the use of force.’ in this article, two sources of legitimisation for modern states are discussed: international legitimacy and internal legitimacy. the first connotes a situation whereby a state gets its legitimacy f rom the international community (engelbert, 2007); in this sense, recognition by the international community of the state as an entity that governs a designated polity is a form of legitimacy. the second refers to legitimacy given by the governed (armin, 2005: 593); here, state governments are legitimate because the authority of the elected/appointed governing body is acknowledged and recognised by the polity/ constituency it governs. it should be noted that this paper will not provide an analysis of the relations between the two types of legitimacy, nor an analysis of a better one, but provide an analysis of each of them in relation to a state and its legitimate use of force. challenges to the use of force will emerge if the legitimacy of a state’s monopoly on the use of force is in question (tilly, 1985; weber, 1919). these challenges can range f rom individual crimes such as armed robberies or kidnappings, to outright conf rontations f rom militia, secessionist and terrorist groups. in af rica, challenges to legitimation and claims to the legitimate use of force are further exacerbated by the problematic nature of ethnic diversity. ake (1993) contends that ethnicity is not the problem, but the politicisation of ethnicity is. at this point, a distinction should be made between ethnicity, political ethnicity, and tribalism. while ethnicity is defined as ‘a social group or category of the population, set apart and bound together by common ties of race, language, nationality or culture’ (sanders, 2007: 21), tribalism has a more negative connotation as ‘the attitude and practice of harboring such a strong feeling of loyalty or bonds to one’s tribe that one excludes or even demonizes those ‘others’ who do not belong to that group’ (nothwehr, 2008: 5). political ethnicity is a closer term to tribalism, but is specific to politics, as ake (1993) describes it as ‘the politicization and transformation of ethnic exclusivity into major political cleavages.’ in this paper, we link the phenomenon of political ethnicity to a history of colonisation which clustered multiple ethnic groups together within single sovereign entities around the continent, as well as the current realities of coloniality which have prevented states within the continent f rom imagining and transcending the modern state in af rica (grosfoguel, 2013; ndlovu-gatsheni, 2016; quijano, 1993). we link the exploratory term coloniality in statebuilding to the failure of af rican states to overcome political ethnicity in order to mitigate the problematic nature of democracy, which is a form that connotes legitimacy, in the modern states in af rica. this failure leads to challenges to the state’s legitimacy, and ultimately the state’s claim to the legitimate use of force. the symptoms of the challenges are manifested in the rise of various insurgencies, separatism, and other forms of insecurity. the cases of kenya, south sudan, nigeria, and somalia highlight some of the problematic areas in claims of acceptance and legitimacy in a state and consequently in its claims to the legitimate use of force. the paper concludes that although international recognition is important, the nature of internal legitimacy can determine how a modern state will perform in terms of statebuilding (armin et al., 2005; englebert, 2009; leander, 2004: 7). in countries such as south sudan and somalia, both governance and security oversight institutions within the state remain weak to deal with traditional and emergent security threats in the region. these states mostly exercise only tenuous control over the means v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 47 t h e t h i n k e r peer review of violence. while international recognition of a state (and by extension its government) is important in global governance, domestic acceptance, recognition, acknowledgement of the governed polity, and ultimately ‘internal legitimacy’ provide more relevance to the authority of governing actors with the liberalisation of peace and conflict resolution efforts in af rica (englebert, 2009). most statebuilding efforts on the continent have prioritised capacitating political entities, in turn repairing relations between political actors involved in a warring situation at the expense of the larger political community f rom which the legitimacy of government is derived. given that the state’s legitimate authority is guaranteed and sustained by positive and mutual relations between the governing and the governed, reimagining statebuilding processes in af rica requires strengthening domestic relations between state actors and the citizenry (civil-state relations), which has the potential to supersede ethnic orientation. this highlights the need for legitimacy, as a key aspect for establishing democratic societies, to be imagined as an inclusive process that caters for the interests of both the majority and the minority, and not the zerosum game that it continues to be in many af rican countries, fuelling tension along political/ethnic lines. coloniality in statebuilding and the legitimate use of force in africa walter mignolo (2006) provides an encapsulating definition of coloniality as ‘long standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, which still continue to define culture, labour, intersubjectivity relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administration.’ these patterns of power control the way individuals all over the world perceive realities and knowledge creation. as mignolo (2006: 6) writes: ‘thus, coloniality survives colonialism. it is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. in a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and every day.’ there are three essential concepts that explain colonialities. these concepts were initially addressed by quijano (2000), and further explored by decolonial thinkers such as grosfoguel (2013), mignolo (2006), ndlovu-gatsheni (2016), and many others. they include the coloniality of power, the coloniality of knowledge, and the coloniality of being. the coloniality of power describes how the current global political order was constructed and constituted into asymmetrical and modern power structures. the coloniality of knowledge focuses on teasing out epistemological issues, the politics of knowledge generation, as well as questions of who generates which knowledge, and for what purpose. the coloniality of being simply delves into questions of how ‘whiteness gained ontological density far above blackness as well as how the notions of ‘i think, therefore i am’ mutated into ‘i conquer, therefore, i am’ and its production of ‘colonizer and colonized’ articulation of subjectivity and being’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2016: 10). in af rica, colonialities can be identified across several aspects of society, f rom religion, to education, to governance and statebuilding, which forms the discussion in this paper. mamdani (2015) argues that, for the contemporary af rican society, the colonial era formed the f ramework that is used in many policies today. this has led madlingozi (2015) to point out the transposing of practices that are generally valued by global north actors through their former colonies, thus pacifying the global south communities. this has resulted in the re-capturing of af ricans into the global matrix of coloniality, which refers to longstanding patterns of power that emanate f rom the colonial era, which continue to preserve the colonial culture, power relations, and production of knowledge beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations, as described by ndlovu-gatsheni (2013). sharp (2014: 179) regards this transfer of western norms, values, and practices as the modern-day mission civilisatrice that asserts the global north as the power holders and knowledge producers of concepts and practices in statehood. coloniality in statebuilding is an exploratory concept born out of decolonial literature and previous findings of peacebuilding and statebuilding research (grosfoguel, 2013; mignolo, 2006; ndlovu-gatsheni, 2016). we define coloniality in statebuilding as patterns of power embedded in statebuilding theories and practice, which developed as a result of the superiorization of european culture, knowledge production, as well as socio-politico and peer review 48 economic practices carried over f rom the colonial past. having identified coloniality of statebuilding (born out of global coloniality) as a problematic area in the modern state in sub-saharan af rica, there is a need for a decolonised theorisation of sub-saharan af rica’s reality that transcends the inherited ‘sovereign nation state’ concept in subsaharan af rica (zondi, 2017). our argument in this paper is in line with decolonial scholars such as grosfoguel (2011: 19), ndlovu-gatsheni (2016: 38), and quijano (1993) who propose that decolonisation requires a heterarchical view of social structures, different f rom that which dominates the legacy of liberalism which sorts to separate the economic, the political, the cultural, and the social as autonomous arenas. the heterarchical view is closely related to ‘the colonial matrix of power’ where ethnicity and culture cannot be separated f rom other arenas in society (quijano, 1993). ethnicity and culture have in themselves played roles in the colonial and postcolonial history of af rican states, as ethnic and cultural differences have failed to be overcome in all arenas of af rican intra-state relations. this point will be discussed further in the sections on internal and external legitimacy as it informs the identification of diversity, in this paper, as a problematic area for claims on the legitimate use of force in sub-saharan af rican modern states. the problem is not diversity, cultural difference, or ethnicity. the problem stems f rom what ake (1993: 2) described as ‘political ethnicity’, that is, ‘the politicization and transformation of ethnic exclusivity into major political cleavages’. we will tease out this term in relation to this paper in the sections that follow. the modern state is theoretically based on a ‘social contract between the “people” and the “sovereign”’ (baker, 2005: 2), where sovereignty belongs to the state but originates f rom the people who make up that state. there are five essential elements present in the modern state today: a centralised government, territory, sovereignty, population, and a claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force (mazrui, 1983; pierson, 1995: 17). this paper particularly focuses on the claims to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in af rica, connecting the failure to legitimately claim a monopoly on the use of force by af rican states to a history of colonisation, and the reality of coloniality that has led to the proliferation of political ethnicity and, consequently, to insecurity. states and the legitimate use of force armin et al. (2005: 593) describe statebuilding as activities by governments to establish, re-establish and/or strengthen public structures in a given territory capable of delivering public goods. the goal of statebuilding is to provide and deliver public goods such as security, healthcare, education, and inf rastructure. in politics as a vocation, weber (1919: 1) describes the concept of the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in statebuilding, contending that the role of the use of force is central to statebuilding, as states need to claim a monopoly on the use of force in order to be recognised as states. here, weber assumes that states are essentially defined as states because they are able to assert that they own (by rights, law, acceptance, as well as other connotations of legitimacy) the right to use and delegate force. state institutions need legitimacy to function effectively and to develop over time. van der lijn (2017: 1) presents a similar argument, noting that the core of a state’s monopoly of force is that the state is the guarantor of both internal and external security. he argues that the concept has worked in some states around the world, but remains largely problematic, albeit remaining the ideal type of security governance adopted by most states. armin et al. (2005) argue that though it is of central importance, the use of physical force is not the main aim of statebuilding, but is ideally a concentration and expression of power without the need to exercise coercion for the fact that state power the problem is not diversity, cultural dif ference, or ethnicity. the problem stems from what ake (1993: 2) described as ‘political ethnicity’, that is, ‘the politicization and transformation of ethnic exclusivity into major political cleavages’. we will tease out this term in relation to this paper in the sections that follow. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 49 t h e t h i n k e r peer review must be widely accepted by the people. the claim on the legitimate use of force is then deployed by states in their efforts to provide public goods such as security to protect their territory. these services are often carried out through the state’s security institutions such as the police and the military. charles tilly (1985) expands on weber’s (1919) work on the central importance of the use of force, describing four activities that state agents carry out as organised violence. the first is war making, which entails eliminating or neutralising rivals outside the territories on which they have clear and continuous priority as wielders of force. the second is state making, which entails eliminating and neutralising their rivals inside their own territories. the third is protection, which involves eliminating or neutralising the enemies of their clients. the fourth is extraction, which is related to acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities – war making, state making, and protection. tilly (1985) criticises this reality of state making, comparing it to racketeering and piracy, noting that the distinction between ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ force makes no difference to the fact that it is violence. what distinguishes a state’s use of force f rom other organisations or individuals is the ability to monopolise violence. monopolising violence, as mentioned earlier, involves states being able to assert that they own (by rights, law, acceptance, as well as other connotations of legitimacy) the right to use and delegate force (tilly, 1985; weber, 1919). tilly writes that: ‘if we take legitimacy to depend on conformity to an abstract principle or on the assent of the governed (or both at once), these conditions may serve to justify, perhaps even to explain, the tendency to monopolize force; they do not contradict the fact’ (1985: 171). these broad definitions of state legitimacy are not to be conflated with police legitimacy but are emphasised in this paper to show that state legitimacy is a necessary condition for the justifiable use of force by the police or military in any given state (bradford and jackson, 2010: 1). legitimacy and how it is defined has implications on statebuilding and the use of force, as tilly (1985) notes. in this paper, two distinct sources of legitimacy are discussed: international legitimacy and internal legitimacy. international legitimacy the post-colonial state in af rica is argued to have been deprived of internal legitimacy because it was not an outcome of the consent of citizens and this led to de jure statehood on the continent (bereketeab, 2020: 52; englebert, 2009). in de jure statehood, sovereignty is a provision of international laws and functions. englebert (2009) discusses why in af rica, despite the diversity within sovereign entities and differences, there is a shortage of secession around the continent. englebert cites many examples, including nigeria and somalia, where ethnic and clan diversity have led to civil wars in the past but the countries still remain sovereign states. englebert suggests that this is a result of the nature of sovereignty in af rica; that is, that sovereignty is de jure, getting its legitimacy f rom the international community as opposed to being given by the people. in this sense, recognition f rom the international community gives states the legal rights to perform statebuilding essentials such as claiming a monopoly on the use of force. this can be seen in the case of south sudan in their civil war with sudan. in 2005, the government of sudan and the sudan people’s liberation movement/army (splm/a) after almost half a decade of conflict, signed the comprehensive peace agreement (cpa), which ended the civil war that lasted f rom 1955, after their election, with a brief interlude of a peaceful period in 1972, which sparked again in 1983. this was quickly followed by the formation of the government of southern sudan (goss) for the southern region of the country and the government of national unity was formed in khartoum, the national capital. as agreed in the cpa, there was a vote for a referendum on the independence of their region, which was overwhelmingly supported, and six months later southern sudan seceded (moro et al., 2017). the cpa, which later led to a referendum and to independence, was a child born of the efforts of international mediation by elections, and the integration of northern and southern troops. the agreement was brokered by several international actors, including the united states, norway, and britain; several af rican mediators peer review 50 also pressured the parties to resolve the conflict (moro et al., 2017). in south sudan, international developments and pressures beyond the region added the political weight needed to pressure the parties into deal-making mode. of particular importance was the united states’ involvement as part of the troika, alongside the uk and norway. the  united states  played a key role in helping to create the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, laying ground to the 2011 referendum on self-determination. compared to the previous head of state in the us, george w. bush’s administration had a more pragmatic policy on sudan and a determination to facilitate a settlement (cockett, 2010). with this as a precursor, the external influence has not relented. in the 2018 arcss peace deal, many political parties which did not sign for the deal were strong armed by the external players towards signing, leading to the harsh reality of implementation challenges. another similar case is that of somalia, whose civil war lasted between 1991 and 2013. the civil war began as former dictator, siyad barre, was overthrown with none of the competing factions being strong enough to replace him. the country then fell into chaos, gradually forming a stateless society where various clans who had been marginalised during siyad barre’s regime clashed with each other, led by warlords for over 22 years. heavily armed factions controlled various parts of the country, with hostilities causing widespread death and destruction around the country, and with civilians needing emergency humanitarian assistance (united nations, n.d). the deteriorating and appalling situation in somalia led the united nations secretarygeneral, in cooperation with the organization of af rican unity (oau), the league of arab states (las), and the organization of the islamic conference (oic), to become actively involved with the political aspects of the crisis and to press for a peaceful solution to the conflict (united nations, n.d; møller, 2009). peace talks had broken down repeatedly during the course of the fighting as a result of clan members’ resistance of the peace processes led by the international community, referring to the processes as unrepresentative and foreign. a somalia federal government backed by and recognised by the international community was finally established in somalia in 2013. the above cases represent the power of the international community in the state formation of south sudan and somalia’s governments, which both had subsequently spent many years in war. although the international community played a part in relatively fathering a solution in both countries, the danger was in the high-level process which needed the buy in of the communities over time. internal legitimacy a second source of legitimacy is given by the governed to the government of a state, termed ‘internal legitimacy’ in this paper. according to armin (2005), for a modern state to function effectively, it must be accepted widely as legitimate, and legitimacy is given by ‘the people’ in today’s modern state. in sharp contrast to how somalia’s federal government and state was backed by the international community, and established in 2013, somaliland with little to no international backing has been able to develop state structures since the late 1990s during the somalia civil war. somaliland declared independence f rom somalia, and with local legitimacy, through local processes, has been able to establish a more stable state in comparison with greater somalia. this feat notwithstanding, somaliland is yet to be recognised as a state by the international community. the above suggests that legitimacy involves popular acceptance through democracies. it is worth noting at this stage that af rican societies, states, and legitimacy were configured and conceptualised differently in precolonial times (mazui, 1983). the plurality of forms of traditional legitimate government and legitimation processes in af rica presents a crisis of legitimacy for modern states created f rom colonial territories (cappelen and sorens, 2018; mazui, 1983; poncian and mgaya, 2015). a discussion of the many forms of legitimate governments that existed in precolonial times, and might still exist parallel to the modern state today, goes beyond the scope of this paper. moreover, the current realities of af rican states and legitimacy is directed at building modern states in the post 1648 westphalia treaty sense of the term, and this has proven problematic for statebuilding in af rica due to the unsettled issues of internal legitimacy (bereketeab, 2020: 52; englebert, 2009). rosanvallon (2008: 9) argues that, although it is widely accepted as the procedure for legitimate government, majority legitimacy is flawed in that it conflates the majority with the whole, consequently proliferating the v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 51 t h e t h i n k e r peer review marginalisation of minority groups. this pegs some unanswered questions in this article: having identified two forms of state legitimacy i.e. international legitimacy and internal legitimacy through assent of the governed, how then can legitimacy be defined so that it incorporates minorities? in essence, legitimacy is central to statebuilding, but there are complexities in properly defining legitimacy and this presents a challenge for statebuilding in terms of the use of force, a challenge that emanates f rom the fact that a legitimate claim to the use of force is central to statebuilding in a modern state. af rican states have clear international legitimacy (engelbart, 2007). however, most internal legitimacies of af rican states can be questioned as a result of ethnic and clan diversities and, as one consequence, weak claims on the monopoly on the use of force and the proliferation of insecurity. the following section elaborates on this point, linking it to the continent’s colonial past, colonialities in the present, and political ethnicities. political ethnicity, legitimacy, and claims to the legitimate use of force in africa for the sake of clarity in this paper, political ethnicity significantly differs f rom ethnicity and tribalism as has been discussed by many anthropologists and political scientists, including the likes of archie mafeje (1971: 254) who argues that in ‘many instances the colonial authorities helped to create the things called ‘tribes’, in the sense of political communities; this process coincided with and was helped along by the anthropologists’ preoccupation with tribes. this provided the material as well as the ideological base of what is now called ‘tribalism’.’ mafeje (1971: 258), argues that this ‘transgression’ comes f rom the definition of what constitutes a tribe and the inconsistencies with the definition of tribe. he contends that an undifferentiated society, practicing a primitive subsistence economy and enjoying local autonomy can legitimately be designated as a tribe. such a society striving to maintain its basic structure and local autonomy, even under changed economic and political conditions, exhibits tribalism. it is, however, a transgression to impose the same concept on societies that have been effectively penetrated by european colonialism and that have been successfully drawn into a capitalist money economy and a world market. moreover, many social scientists – including cohen (1978), jenkins (2008), mafeje (1971), sharp (1988), weber (1921) – have come to acknowledge ethnicity as a socially constructed phenomenon. the reality of ethnic groups cannot be neglected, however, as ake (1993) argues that ‘ethnic groups are, to be sure, inventions and constructions in some measure, but they are also real, even in the sense that states are said to be. nonetheless, ethnicity is not a fossilized determination but a living presence produced and driven by material and historical forces. it begins, becomes and passes away.’ this paper focuses on political ethnicity, which is described by ake (1993: 2) as the ‘politicization and transformation of ethnic exclusivity into major political cleavages.’ in this sense, while ethnicity simply emphasises the glorification of one’s ethnic group, and tribalism emphasises the demonization and exclusion of others, political ethnicity specifically talks about the actions of political actors in statebuilding which are influenced by ethnicity and tribalism. ake (1993: 2) argues that political ethnicity creates a challenge for practically achieving some of the aspired to, and ideal, characteristics of a modern state, such as a sense of a unified national identity within the population. this has an effect on the political stability of any given modern state. political ethnicity is a historical as well as a current reality in the modern state in af rica. the effects of clustering significantly different ethnic groups into a single territory as a state is, among other things, what for the sake of clarity in this paper, political ethnicity significantly differs from ethnicity and tribalism as has been discussed by many anthropologists and political scientists, including the likes of archie mafeje (1971: 254) who argues that in ‘many instances the colonial authorities helped to create the things called ‘tribes’, in the sense of political communities; this process coincided with and was helped along by the anthropologists’ preoccupation with tribes. peer review 52 ake (1993: 2) describes as political ethnicity. ethnicity is now popularly conceived as something constructed, invented, or created (anderson, 1983; barm, 1969; cohen, 1978; saul, 1979; sharp, 1988). ake (1993: 1) does not dispute the fact that ethnic groups are constructed, but argues that this view is inextricably linked to reality as it appears within colonial situations. the fact that ethnic groups are constructed does not make them less real than states themselves, according to ake. colonial rule, which amalgamated disparate ethnicities into the chaos called the colonial state, largely created the fluid abstract ethnicity which is evident today by dissociating ethnicity f rom autonomous polity and territoriality. in this article, political ethnicity is linked to the weakness of legitimate claims on the use of force in af rican states, and the resultant insecurity. this follows the unanswered question: if legitimacy is taken to mean popular acceptance through democracy and majority votes, how does the system cater for minorities? gathering f rom bereketeab (2020) and englebert (2009), de jure legitimacy – as is it practiced in many af rican states – gives the state the legal right to use force to uphold the constitutional laws. in these instances, when governments are elected, they are presented with the imperative by the international communities’ recognition to forge a state based on democratic principles of majority rules. but in most cases with af rican states, the views of the minorities remain silenced and oppositions to the elected government are oppressed by the threat of or use of force by government security apparatus. the monopoly on the use of force comes into play here, through various security agencies. the crushing and silencing of dissenting voices fuels division in the country that can push some of the minorities to retaliate and in some instances demand their rights to self-government (drawing authority f rom their constituency). the case of biaf ra, and the nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970, as well as secessionist threats f rom the indigenous people of biaf ra (ipob), currently presents perfect examples of this phenomenon. in this case, the latter – the ipob consisting of predominantly ibo people of nigeria – cite marginalisation as a reason for secession and request a referendum to vote on whether to stay or secede, a request that has been ignored by the federal government of nigeria (gaffey, 2015). in september 2017, the federal high court of nigeria labelled ipob a terrorist organisation, and the group has been met with force ever since (office of the high commissioner for human rights, 2020: 1; o joye, 2018). how can states build legitimacy that is not only derived f rom international recognition of the appointed government but is domestically grown? what contribution would this have to sustainable conflict resolution and statebuilding? what does legitimacy even mean, especially at the domestic level? trust? recognition? respect? the link between political ethnicity and the legitimate claims on the use of force also follows the assumption in this paper that political ethnicity in any given system of government results in the marginalisation of minorities. without a consensus on a definition of legitimacy that takes minorities into consideration, legitimacy is undermined in democratic systems. moreover, in terms of claims to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, connotations of legitimacy as democratic legitimacy result in contestations over the use of force, thereby challenging the state’s claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (englebert, 2009; rosanvalon, 2008; tilly, 1985; weber, 1965). without a legitimate claim on the monopoly on the use of force, groups within the state may challenge the state. this phenomenon can be identified throughout the history of the world, and particularly in af rica where states are diverse and often divided along tribal and ethnic lines (ake, 1993; englebert, 2009: 62–63). to analyse the implications of an absence of a legitimate claim to the use of force, we briefly discuss nigeria’s civil war, as well as current insecurity. mazrui (1983) and a handful of other political science scholars contend that ethnic diversity, coupled with the indirect rule of the british, led to a post-colonial modern state that is dysfunctional (jackson, 1986). indirect rule aggravated the problems of creating a modern nation state after independence (mazrui, 1983). the different groups in the country, by being ruled in part through their own native institutions, maintained their own separate ethnic identities. northern nigeria became particularly distinctive in its fusion of islam and af ricanity. the missionaries were kept out and missionary education (which had helped to westernise the south fairly rapidly) was relatively inaccessible to large parts of the territory. different sections of the population perceived each other as strangers, sometimes as aliens, increasingly as rivals and, ominously, as potential enemies. as it v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 53 t h e t h i n k e r peer review happens, the stage was being set for the events which ultimately led first to the military coup in nigeria in january 1966, then to the slaughter of the ibo in northern nigeria in the same year, then ultimately to the outbreak of a civil war f rom 1967 to 1970. traces of the legitimacy question in nigeria’s governance, with regard to the use of force, can be identified f rom the colonial period where the northern and southern protectorates were amalgamated in a union that merged 250 diverse ethnic groups. there is no assumption here that entities within the area currently known as nigeria lived peacefully before colonisation. with othman dan fodio’s jihadist movements encroaching f rom the north, and conquering territory towards the south in the 1800s, and the old oyo empire, in what is currently south west nigeria resisting the jihadist’s encroachment (akinjogbin, 1966; ibiloye, 2012: 107), both entities were engaged in war shortly before colonisation began in the early 1900s, (otunola, 2021; akinjogbin, 1966). perhaps what is left to ponder on is whether or not these separate entities, without the amalgamation, would have fared better as modern states bound by modern international laws that prevent such war. moreover, it should be noted that during nigeria’s socio-political development, in the colonial period, the two protectorates were culturally apart: the northern protectorate was poor, and the southern protectorate had an abundance of exportation of its agricultural products but was in need of revenue to develop its railway lines and improve social inf rastructure (berger, 2009; home, 1983). the forced union was a convenient way to assist the northern protectorate, albeit without funding of proper structure. this has developed into a nigeria that displays her disunity in tribes, religions, and natural endowments hinging on the politics of resource control. according to oyewo (2019), the amalgamation brought about a considerable popular feeling of exclusion and a perceived sense of injustice among the various units of the nigerian federation, leading to alienation, suspicion, and apprehension among various groups in the country. the first military coup in nigeria and the subsequent declaration of the state of biaf ra can be linked to these events. according to oyewo (2019), the forceful merger of ethnic groups was not the only problematic aspect of the amalgamation, there was also a clash of religions and political systems which varies f rom north to south. there was tension between ethnic groups in the form of politicised ethnicity and competition over scarce resources before, during, and shortly after independence in 1960, leading to rampant nepotism and tribalism which undermined nationhood. oyewo (2019) notes that this peaked eventually in 1966 when the first republic finally collapsed, leading to the nigerian civil war f rom 1967 to 1970. these phenomena continue to occur today, as is evident in the upspring of insurgencies, separatists, and terrorist organisations with ethnic bases. for example, while the boko haram insurgency is predominantly northern muslim and hausa ethnic groups, groups in the south-south are predominantly made up of ethnic groups of that region. in an article discussing the influence of ethnicity and religion in nigerian elections, oboh (2017: 80) argues that the leaders of the international community spend more time addressing conflicts that arise f rom ethnicity and religion in af rica, asia and the east european states. he notes that every state in the west af rican sub-region, including nigeria, has passed through the tunnel of crisis emanating f rom ethnic and religious conflicts. oboh (2017: 81) contends that ethnicity does have an effect on elections and politics in nigeria, as no politician can win an election without the support of his/her ethnic nationality. as a consequence, politicians elected into office tend to give priority to the needs of their ethnic nations. another consequence noted by oboh (2017: 81) is the fact that ethnic minorities are excluded f rom attaining the highest office (president), because they don’t have the numbers to support political aspirations due to political ethnicity. furthermore, in countries like kenya, the country has been divided into various inter-communal groups, with conflict between groups often centred around elections. these conflicts have not yet matured into levels of secessions, as this does not lead to a mutually desired political outcome. with the closest election (inter-communal) violence being in 2017, it remained an election dispute that was arguably political play and theatrics (oduor, 2019). the structure of elections and the resultant violence has thus been politically structured, leading to division within inter-communal groups due to the political rivalry of principal groups and people. for instance, the 2007 post-election violence was mainly initiated by two key principals peer review 54 who belonged to two major and different ethnic communities in kenya. as a consequence, the ethnic groups which were fighting fell largely in these groups ethnically or in support of them. in the kenyan case, internal legitimacy is mostly contested through interethnic disagreements and arrangements, which are largely influenced by their political principal. mati (2019) argues that instrumentalised ethnic identity has played a key role in mobilising and modelling politics in kenya as a consequence of the british colonial divide and rule policies that imposed ethnic dualism and emphasised differences. these structures were left functional after independence; therefore, ethnic identities remain the bases for mobilisation and the structuring of politics in contemporary kenya. mati (2019) argues that this dominance of ethnic-based politics is a product of the conflation of political economy-induced interests where elites instrumentalise ethnicity in political mobilisation to ensure their own survival and reproduction. according to ogechi (2019), political elites in kenya mobilise along ethnic lines to solidify their political bases whenever there is competition to either retain or change the status quo. ogechi (2019: 130) discusses a variety of identities which are negotiated in kenya’s multi-lingual and multi-ethnic politics, demonstrating that identity in kenya is dynamic and constantly being negotiated by various players in bids to win political office. weak claims to the use of force also results in weak security sectors in some cases. this is an apparent trend in the horn of af rica. it indicates an increasing erosion of states’ monopoly on the legitimate use of force, leaving states of the region unable to provide effective security to maintain a monopoly on the use of force. an example can be drawn f rom somalia’s security sector where, since the official end of the civil war in 2013, the sector has failed to develop its capacity to secure the country and consequently, today, the legitimacy of the somali government, and its claims to the monopoly on the use of force, has been questioned by scholars such as çanci and medugu (2015) and graveline (2016). the weakness of the somali government’s claim on the legitimate use of force is also apparent in the fact that the af rican union mission in somalia (amisom) is the major security force preventing militia forces f rom taking over the capital (graveline, 2016). it is uncertain whether the somalia federal government (sfg) can retain its authority if the af rica union mission, which provides it with security, should withdraw f rom the country (çanci and medugu, 2015). amisom has been in somalia f rom february 2007 until the present day in 2021. conflicts between the various clans, marginalisation, and inequalities that followed independence in the 1960s, as well as the merging of two former colonies of british somalia (present day somaliland) and italian somalia (present-day southcentral somalia), culminated in the events that led to the outbreak of the somalia civil war that lasted for 22 years, between 1990 and 2013 (elmi and barise, 2006: 33; paul et al., 2014: 154). conclusion in linking the above narrative to legitimacy and the use of force, we argue that separatists, insurgencies, and terrorist organisations spring up to challenge the legitimacy of governments, even democratically elected governments, as a result of the loophole in democratic systems that assumes the majority is the whole (rosanvallon, 2008: 9). if we take legitimacy to mean popular acceptance by the governed, which is assumed to be attainable in today’s modern state only through a democracy where the majority determines legitimacy, how are minorities catered for in this system to avoid marginalisation and conflict-causing injustices? we conclude that part of the challenge in answering this question, at least in af rica, lies in the existence of colonialities in statebuilding mentioned earlier in this article. coloniality in statebuilding places europeangenerated knowledge about statebuilding, such as the definitions of legitimacy and what is legitimate, far above knowledge generated f rom other places around the world (grosfoguel, 2011; ndlovu-gatsheni, 2016; mignolo, 2006). the coloniality in statebuilding is accompanied by epistemological issues, politics of knowledge generation, as well as questions of who generates which knowledge about statebuilding, and for what purpose. as argued by grosfoguel (2011: 38), the advent of colonialism did not only result in colonial administration. colonisers also brought with them a culture, knowledge, and belief systems that were superimposed on colonies, and continue to affect intersubjectivity relations between europe and the rest of the world today. it is our conclusion v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 55 t h e t h i n k e r peer review that this coloniality of knowledge generation about statebuilding has resulted in a lack of imagination to present a less problematic system of legitimation that caters for the whole, as opposed to the majority alone. this kind of system would address political ethnicity and the resultant insecurity within states around the continent. references ake, c. 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(1965). politics as a vocation. philadelphia: fortress press. 63 t h e t h i n k e r peer review abstract decoloniality theory, with its signature concepts coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge, initially emerged in latin america. it has been developed further in southern africa, where it now has significant influence in some universities. decoloniality theory has to be distinguished from the broader endeavour of intellectual decolonization. the latter includes all intellectual efforts to free theory and ideology from distorting bias which is the effect of colonial or neocolonial power relations. intellectual decolonization in this broader sense (e.g., in the writings of anthony appiah and kwasi wiredu) is truth-oriented: it aims to expose incorrect claims which are the result of bias, replacing them with correct theoretical conclusions. by contrast, contemporary decoloniality theory (e.g., in the writings of walter mignolo and sabelo ndlovugatsheni) embraces several contentious metaphysical ideas, among which is rejection of the very possibility of universal truth. when decoloniality theory first emerged (in aníbal quijano’s innovative writings) out of the discipline of political economy, however, it exemplified the broader, truthoriented sense of intellectual decolonization. quijano, and later ramón grosfoguel, were concerned to expose several false theoretical claims in social science which are a legacy of eurocentric bias. here i argue that tracing the steps by which contemporary decoloniality theory developed from this starting point can reveal some of its principal shortcomings. i seek to show that several of the distinctive metaphysical ideas in contemporary decoloniality theory are founded on drastically undermotivated, hyperphilosophising inferences from empirical premises. even considered purely on its own terms, i argue, contemporary decoloniality theory exhibits a number of weaknesses and contradictions. some pitfalls of decoloniality theory by george hull peer review 64 the idea that, following political decolonisation (which in af rica took place f rom the 1950s onwards), a process of ideological or intellectual decolonisation is also necessary, especially in formerly colonised countries, is not a new one [1]. it is plausible to think that eurocentric bias, when not counteracted, could distort certain academic disciplines. take, for example, political theory. if theorists seeking historical models of political association repeatedly turned to ancient athens, while ignoring precolonial af rican, asian and american social formations, they might end up with unduly limited notions of what is practicable [2]. in the discipline of philosophy, the ghanaian thinker kwasi wiredu has argued since the 1980s that not only colonial-era political and religious doctrines, but also the european languages in which colonial education was conducted, have bequeathed to contemporary practitioners a certain amount of ‘philosophical deadwood’ (2007: 76). translation into an indigenous af rican language, wiredu has suggested, can be a useful tool for identifying philosophical problems which are ‘[t]ongue-dependent’ (2004: 49)—which, that is to say, are not genuine philosophical problems at all, but merely artefacts of a particular european language’s idiosyncrasies [3]. similarly, k. anthony appiah has argued that an ‘archaeology of panaf ricanism’s idea of race’ (1992: 28) can help guard against false assumptions of cultural homogeneity, thus furthering ‘ideological decolonization’ (op. cit.: x). these examples illustrate intellectual decolonisation in a broad sense which encompasses all intellectual efforts to remove or undo the effects of colonial, neo-colonial or other international power relations where, and to the extent that, these have hindered the attainment of knowledge and other worthwhile intellectual goals. intellectual decolonisation in this broad sense is part of intellectual hygiene: it enables researchers to detect and address distortive effects of bias. decoloniality theory, on the other hand, is something narrower and more specific: a distinctive body of work that has grown up since the 1990s, at first in latin america, later more widely. its most recognisable claim is that a ‘colonial matrix of power’ has existed globally for at least four centuries, outlasting political decolonisation (see, for example, mignolo, 2011: 8). this matrix is constituted by hierarchical forms of domination and exclusion operating worldwide, which include economic exploitation, sex, race and sexualorientation hierarchies, and, crucially, an epistemic hierarchy—the ‘coloniality of knowledge’ (see, for example, mignolo, 2018: 136). appiah and wiredu’s approaches to intellectual decolonisation are truthoriented, aiming to eliminate errors and maximise correct conclusions in theoretical work; contemporary practitioners of decoloniality theory, by contrast, are deeply uncomfortable with the notion that any substantial theory or body of cultural assumptions could be outright untrue—untrue no matter where or by whom it is believed. this makes for two features of contemporary decoloniality theorists’ writings which are disorientating to the uninitiated. first, any set of beliefs or assumptions, or at least any set large enough to constitute a ‘worldview’, automatically earns the title ‘knowledge’; any two or more are ‘knowledges’ (see, for example, ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 21). second, when two ‘knowledges’ are compared, it is not the rational and epistemic relations between them—for example, whether one evidentially supports or contradicts the other—which come under scrutiny, but instead the political relations—for example, whether they are ‘non-dominant and equal’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020: 150) or whether one is in a ‘dominant’ or ‘hegemonic’ position (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: xi). decoloniality theory has become extremely influential in some southern af rican universities over the past six or seven years. the zimbabwean professor sabelo j. ndlovu-gatsheni, based until recently at the university of south af rica, is a prominent decoloniality theorist. decoloniality theory, on the other hand, is something narrower and more specific: a distinctive body of work that has grown up since the 1990s, at first in latin america, later more widely. its most recognisable claim is that a ‘colonial matrix of power’ has existed globally for at least four centuries, outlasting political decolonisation (see, for example, mignolo, 2011: 8). v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 65 t h e t h i n k e r peer review during the student-led rhodes must fall protests of 2015, mastering decoloniality theory’s sometimes abstruse lexicon was a way for students to ‘gain currency’ and ‘influence’ in the movement—with one ancien combattant describing the argentinian decoloniality theorist walter d. mignolo’s writings as an ‘opioid’ (chikane, 2018: 222–23). rather unusually, the university of cape town in south af rica has since 2018 had in place a central ‘curriculum change framework’ applying to all faculties; instead of being inclusive of various intellectual approaches, this document views curriculum change narrowly, often dogmatically, through a ‘decolonial lens’— more specifically, ‘the latin-american perspective on coloniality’ [4]. evidently, a critical discussion of decoloniality theory has relevance far beyond its latin american birthplace. decoloniality theory emerged f rom the discipline of political economy. in the peruvian theorist aníbal quijano’s initial writings about coloniality, it is essentially a branch of dependency theory or worldsystems analysis [5]. the continuing influence of these intellectual beginnings explains, to a degree, why decoloniality theory has held itself apart f rom postcolonial theory in its various guises. if decoloniality theorists have accused postcolonial theorists such as dipesh chakrabarty and achille mbembe of operating ‘within a euro-north american-centric modernist discursive […] terrain’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020: 38) [6], they have also distanced themselves f rom postcolonial theory’s war on ‘grand/meta-narratives’. in ndlovugatsheni’s estimation, postcolonialism marks a ‘cultural turn’, while decoloniality theory ‘underscores […] the transhistoric expansion of colonial domination and the perpetuation of its effects in contemporary times’ (op. cit.: 25): while the former is preoccupied with culture, the latter is focused ‘on questions of power’ (37). decoloniality theory, with its emphatic exposition of the centuries-long domination wrought worldwide by a ‘colonial matrix of power’, cannot dispense with grand narratives any more than classic world-systems analysis can. here i seek to show that tracing the steps by which contemporary decoloniality theory developed f rom its starting point in the discipline of political economy can reveal some of its principal shortcomings. my intention is not to provide a full overview of decoloniality theory, or to itemise its flaws comprehensively. focusing on quijano, mignolo, ndlovu-gatsheni and the puerto rican writer ramón grosfoguel’s discussions of the coloniality of power and the coloniality of knowledge, i argue that some of the distinctive metaphysical ideas in contemporary decoloniality theory are founded on undermotivated inferences f rom empirical claims about political economy and human biology. in the final section, i argue that, even considered purely on its own terms, contemporary decoloniality theory exhibits several weaknesses and contradictions. latin american exceptions in their writings in decoloniality theory f rom the turn of the twenty-first century, ramón grosfoguel and aníbal quijano start out f rom the observation that certain general statements about national development, thought in some quarters to be universally true, in fact fail to apply across the board, because there are latin american countries of which they are not true. take, first, what i will call the f ree trade thesis: ftt: countries increase their national wealth more through f ree trade policies than through protectionist policies already in the nineteenth century, as grosfoguel relates, latin american policymakers were voicing a suspicion that while the f ree trade thesis was true of great britain, it was not true of argentina, chile or paraguay. established large-scale industry, like that in england, could hold its own against imported manufactured goods. latin america’s small-scale fledgling industry, in contrast, needed to be shielded behind import tariffs, at least for a time, if it was not to be strangled in the nest (grosfoguel, 2000: 351–53). just as the german economist friedrich list had earlier in the nineteenth century [7], in the 1870s argentinian economic nationalists such as vicente f. lópez and carlos pellegrini argued that when the f ree trade thesis is straightforwardly given universal scope— fttu1: all countries increase their national wealth more through f ree trade policies than through protectionist policies —it is false. on the other hand, lópez and pellegrini peer review 66 (again like list) thought that there are facts about the industrial circumstances of different countries which enable one to explain and predict which countries will benefit more f rom f ree trade policies, and which more f rom protectionist policies. lópez thought that whether the f ree trade thesis applies ‘depends on the particular conditions of each country’; specifically, ‘[i]n the first phase of industrial development, industries need protection f rom foreign competition’ (grosfoguel, 2000: 351). the f ree trade thesis (ftt) is thus not entirely incorrect; it does apply to some countries, and perhaps applies to all countries at some time in their history. but if it is to be worked up into a principle with universal scope, the straightforward universal principle (fttu1) will not do. what is needed is a universal principle containing conditionals whose antecedent clauses capture relevant variation in countries’ industrial circumstances at a given time: fttu2: all countries increase their national wealth more through f ree trade policies than through protectionist policies if they exhibit industrial circumstances c1, and more through protectionist policies than through f ree trade policies if they exhibit industrial circumstances c2 (c1 and c2 can include comparative circumstances— for example, having larger-scale and/or longer established industry than the global mean.) the economic nationalists’ scepticism of f ree trade saw a reprise, f rom the 1960s onwards, in latin america’s so-called dependency school: this included fernando henrique cardoso, andré gunder frank, aníbal quijano and other political economists. but the dependency theorists took aim at a second general statement about national development, which their nineteenth-century precursors would probably have endorsed. call it the developmental stages thesis: dst: as they develop economically, countries pass through one sequence s of successive developmental stages orthodox marxists hold that s includes feudalism, capitalism, socialism and finally communism. for modernisation theorists (for example, bert f. hoselitz and w. w. rostow), on the other hand, s fundamentally involves a transition f rom traditionalism to modernity via some intermediate stages (grosfoguel, 2000: 358–59). the dependency school believed that both modernisation theorists and orthodox marxists go wrong by focusing on individual societies in isolation. the global economy, its theorists argued, is an integrated whole complete with an international division of labour. the economic condition of any given country is in large part a function of its position and role within this global system. while it may be true that the core industrialised countries which benefit most f rom the global economy have passed through a specific sequence of developmental stages, one should not expect countries in the periphery of the global economy, whose imposed role in that economy is very different, to follow the same path (grosfoguel, 2000: 360). for example, quijano has claimed that the existence in peru until well into the twentieth century of compulsory unpaid labour by peónes for a padrón, no less than the existence of slavery throughout the americas into the nineteenth century, ‘serve[d] the purposes and needs’ of global capitalism (quijano, 2000a: 550). it would thus be wrong, in quijano’s opinion, to conclude that peru was passing through the same sequence of developmental stages as european countries, only lagging behind—still bogged down in feudalism or traditionalism—due to internal problems. on the contrary, peru, just like west germany or france, was following the path required of it and imposed upon it by the global economic system as a whole. after the fifteenth century, the world economy employed ‘all forms of control and exploitation of labor’, including ‘slavery, serfdom, petty-commodity production, reciprocity, and wages’, to ‘produce commodities for the world market’ (op. cit.: 535). by the mid-twentieth-century, global capitalism depended on a fully f ree labour regime in the core industrialised countries, but it equally depended on peripheral countries’ labour regimes being a mix of f ree and compulsory (op. cit.: 538, 575n8). so, if the developmental stages thesis is straightforwardly given universal scope— dstu1: as they develop economically, all v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 67 t h e t h i n k e r peer review countries pass through one sequence s of successive developmental stages —it is false. but the explanation the dependency school provides for why different countries pass through different sequences of developmental stages indicates that, while this straightforward universal principle (dstu1) is incorrect, the developmental stages thesis (dst) can be worked up, albeit schematically, into a universal principle which is correct: dstu2: as they develop economically, all countries pass through sequence s1, s2, s3, … or sn of successive developmental stages, depending on whether they occupy position p1, p2, p3, … or pn in the global economic system this more sophisticated universal principle (dstu2) can be true, even if we do not yet know all the possible sequences of developmental stages and all the possible positions in the global economic system—or, indeed, all the different shapes that global economic system could take. grosfoguel and quijano argue not only that the f ree trade thesis and the developmental stages thesis in their straightforwardly universalised versions (fttu1, dstu1) are false, but also that they are eurocentric. under the heading ‘eurocentrism’ they identify three kinds of bias, which are worth separating out. in the first place, the two theses about national development exhibit sample bias. they are, in grosfoguel’s words, ‘an attempt to produce a universal theory f rom the experience […] of the core of the world economy’ (2000: 359). what was observed in the case of industrialised west european national economies has simply been asserted of all other national economies, regardless of their level of industrialisation or position in the global economy. the problem here is that the theses were arrived at by a faulty inductive inference f rom a small, unrepresentative sample. in the second place, they exhibit prediction bias. on the basis of the two theses about national development, grosfoguel and quijano believe, true predictions can be made about industrialised west european countries, but not about most of the rest of the world. quijano writes that when people f rom latin american societies ‘look in our eurocentric mirror, the image that we see is […] partial and distorted’ (2000a: 556). the sample bias active in the process of formulating the two theses has generated an end product which is reliable in its predictions about national economies relevantly similar to those in the sample, but otherwise highly unreliable. in the third place, the two theses exhibit interest bias. whether they were arrived at through an innocent mistake or not, once they had been formulated it was generally in the interests of industrialised west european societies that people worldwide should believe the f ree trade thesis and the developmental stages thesis in their straightforwardly universalised versions (fttu1, dstu1). argentina’s nineteenthcentury economic nationalists recognised that if all countries believed and acted on the f ree trade thesis, this would make ‘a country that does not possess [england’s level of] industry a tributary country’ (grosfoguel, 2000: 352). similarly, a century later the dependistas observed that accepting the developmental stages thesis could be disadvantageous to latin american countries, as it could lead societal actors to think certain events— such as a bourgeois-led revolution—were inevitable, when they were not (quijano, 2000a: 571). aníbal quijano is best known in the field of worldsystems analysis for his articulation of the concept coloniality. the phenomenon of ‘coloniality’, or ‘coloniality of power’, involves (i) ‘the codification of the differences between conquerors and conquered in the idea of “race,” a supposedly different biological structure that placed some in a natural situation of inferiority to the others’ (quijano, 2000a: 533). coloniality thus involves pervasive acceptance as common sense of a third general statement, which we can call the race hierarchy thesis: rht: the human species is biologically divided into races which differ significantly in their abilities and constitute a natural hierarchy of human beings but coloniality is not only a matter of beliefs or assumptions in people’s heads. it also involves (ii) a systematic division of forms of labour, both within nations and internationally, on the basis of this putative race hierarchy (quijano, 2000a: 536). it was, quijano argues, widespread acceptance of the race hierarchy thesis as a basis for labour control which made societally possible the co-existence of f ree peer review 68 and compulsory forms of labour throughout most of the modern period: ‘each form of labor control was associated with a particular race’ (2000a: 537). in the americas, slave labour came to be assigned to ‘the “black” population brought f rom af rica’, ‘serfdom’ was largely reserved for the indigenous ‘american indians’, and ‘paid labor was the whites’ privilege’ (op. cit.: 538–39). coloniality, as quijano understands this phenomenon, outlasted the formal political relations of colonialism (2007: 171), and provides the explanation for why industrial waged labour was concentrated for so long in predominantly white europe and north america (2000a: 538). there is thus, in quijano’s view, no adequate purely economic characterisation of the modern world-system (2000a: 540); rather, the modern world-system is constituted by an economic structure and a racialised social order which are ‘mutually reinforcing’ (quijano, 2000b: 216). unlike the f ree trade thesis and the developmental stages thesis, the race hierarchy thesis (rht) is true of no one and of nowhere. ‘the idea of race is literally an invention,’ quijano affirms; ‘[i]t has nothing to do with the biological structure of the human species’ (quijano, 2000a: 575n6). if latin america is an exception to rht, so is every other region of the world. therefore, rht cannot be eurocentric either in the sense that it exhibits sample bias or in the sense that it exhibits prediction bias. it is true of no sample, has no predictive accuracy, can form the basis of no universal principle. yet rht can be, and is, eurocentric in the sense that it exhibits interest bias. pervasive belief in a hierarchy of socalled races which ascribes the greatest abilities to white people evidently could contribute to entrenching europeans’ power and privilege. according to quijano, it was one of the key factors which cemented west europe’s position as the core of the modern world-system (2000a: 541). what distinguishes quijano, grosfoguel and other decoloniality theorists f rom the mainstream of dependency theory and world-systems analysis is their emphatic insistence that economic ‘delinking’ [8]—whether by individual countries or by the global south en bloc—is not sufficient, and is not even the primary thing needful, to overcome a peripheral position in the global economy. what is required is, in quijano’s words, ‘[f]irst of all, epistemological decolonization, as decoloniality’ (2007: 177). the first step of a country in the global periphery should be to jettison those false ideas about national development which systematically work to the advantage of the countries of the core and to the disadvantage of countries in the global south. in the main, the works by quijano and grosfoguel discussed in this section, which inaugurated decoloniality theory, exemplify intellectual decolonisation in the broad sense which i specified at the outset. they are chiefly concerned to root out pervasive false beliefs—about trade, industrialisation or human biology—which not only arose due to a bias in favour of europe and the west, but also contribute to entrenching european and western wealth and dominance. the task of the next section will be to describe the process whereby decoloniality theory acquired the narrower and more metaphysical character which sets it apart today. hyperphilosophism by hyperphilosophism i mean a faulty, unjustified inference f rom an empirical fact (a contingent truth, discovered by observation, about the world we live in) to a metaphysical theory (a general philosophical view about the fundamental structure of reality). hyperphilosophism includes, by extension, unjustifiably attributing to somebody belief in a metaphysical theory on the basis that they believe some empirical fact. let me begin with two examples coloniality, as quijano understands this phenomenon, outlasted the formal political relations of colonialism (2007: 171), and provides the explanation for why industrial waged labour was concentrated for so long in predominantly white europe and north america (2000a: 538). there is thus, in quijano’s view, no adequate purely economic characterisation of the modern worldsystem (2000a: 540); rather, the modern worldsystem is constituted by an economic structure and a racialised social order which are ‘mutually reinforcing’ (quijano, 2000b: 216). v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 69 t h e t h i n k e r peer review to make clear the sort of faulty inference i have in mind. i am under the impression that, years ago, you and i heard günter wand conduct bruckner in hamburg. you prove to me that we did not. now convinced that this never happened, i draw a further conclusion: that the past does not exist. here, the empirical fact—that we never heard wand conduct bruckner in hamburg—provides no motivation whatsoever for my conclusion about the nature of time. the past could perfectly well exist without this particular event having occurred. after all, other things might have happened, and a real, existent past might be constituted by them. you assert that there is no such person as prester john. i infer that you are a solipsist—that you believe you are the only person and centre of consciousness there is. once again, my conclusion is radically undermotivated. you believe that there is no self which is prester john’s. that does not mean you think there are no selves apart f rom yourself. you may well think selves exist which are neither you nor prester john: myself, for instance. in one respect, the flaw in the inferences above is the same as that in the eurocentric inferences grosfoguel and quijano exposed and critiqued [9]; in each case, the scope of the conclusion is unwarranted by the sample which forms the basis for the inference. but the examples above are more extreme. they are inferences not just to universalscope principles in an empirical discipline, but to something in a different register: metaphysical claims about the fundamental structure of reality (such as time and consciousness)—claims of a kind which empirical observation and inductive argument alone would normally be insufficient to justify. in the remainder of this section, i argue that two important components of contemporary decoloniality theory have been arrived at via inferences of this hyperphilosophising form. hyperphilosophism, i believe, explains (at least in part) how decoloniality theory evolved f rom being an instance of intellectual decolonisation in the broad, truth-oriented sense i specified at the outset to being the narrower, metaphysically contentious body of theory it is today. time some versions of the developmental stages thesis (dst) have been invoked as a convenient rationalisation for colonialism, ‘trusteeship’, or other relations of political domination. if every society, ‘race’ or people must pass through one fixed sequence of developmental stages—each stage representing an improvement, a broadening and deepening of capacities, including economic capacities—then countries which consider themselves further along in this fixed sequence might claim the right, even the obligation, to step in and help less developed societies, ‘races’ or peoples progress to the next stage. ‘denial of coevalness’ is the label aníbal quijano, following the german anthropologist johannes fabian, gives to the stance people f rom europe or north america adopt when they regard people in af rica, asia or south america as belonging to societies in an earlier and inferior stage of development, one which their own society passed through centuries ago. there is an innocent ambiguity in the phrase ‘denial of coevalness’, which both fabian and quijano sometimes exploit, perhaps mainly for rhetorical purposes. when fabian writes of anthropologists’ ‘tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse’ [10] (1983: 31), and when quijano writes that ‘the europeans […] relocated the colonized population, along with their […] cultures, in the past of a historical trajectory whose culmination was europe’ (2000a: 541), they do not, of course, mean that anthropologists or europeans literally viewed the people they were interacting with as living in the distant past, such that no encounter with them was possible except by time travel. they viewed them as belonging to societies of a different developmental age, not in a different age of the universe. the relevant kind of denial of coevalness is similar to a 12-year-old’s denial that his 5-year-old brother is the same age as him (and his consequent insistence that he hold his hand when they cross the road). however, the argentinian decoloniality theorist walter mignolo has seized on this ambiguity and run with it. mignolo dedicates a chapter of his book the darker peer review 70 side of western modernity (2011) to the topic of time. after introducing the modernisation theorists’ version of dstu1, and attributing to fabian the view that time itself is ‘a conceptual and colonizing strategy’ (2011: 151–52), mignolo makes several ambitious claims. at his boldest, he is willing to assert that it was not until ‘the sixteenth century’ that the ‘distinction between space and time emerged’ (op. cit.: 163), that ‘“space and time” […] were inventions of western imperial modernity’ (176–77), and that in the ‘western discourse on time […], events are ordered one after another’ (169). in these passages, not only are the colonisers credited with inventing time, but their denial of coevalness to the colonised is transfigured into an exotic metaphysical thesis: the denial of the very possibility of simultaneity, the view that events occur only ever in single file. mignolo is clearly tempted by what would be the ultimate hyperphilosophising reading of fabian’s phrase. in his more cautious moments, mignolo is willing to concede that indigenous americans had a concept of time long before the sixteenth century, albeit one different f rom that of westerners: he contrasts ‘christian and andean time’ (2011: 169). he claims that ‘the spaniards managed to impose their concept of time’ (156), effecting a ‘colonization of time’ (178). describing the concept of time that they imposed, he calls it ‘the linear concept of time’ (154) and specifies that according to this concept, ‘there is only one line of time’ (162) which has a definite ‘point of arrival’ (164). if you adopt this concept of time, says mignolo, ‘you may end up believing that you are behind in time’ and ‘are more likely to want to catch up with modernity’ (161). but this concept of time is not the only one. mignolo contrasts it with ‘cyclical time’ (159). though somewhat less tendentious, this is also a case of hyperphilosophism. the contrast between a vision of human history as inexorably getting better and better until it reaches a final plateau (a ‘point of arrival’) and a vision of human history as going through cycles of improvement and decay (‘cyclical time’) is not a contrast between two concepts of time, but rather a contrast between two visions of time’s contents, which presupposes the concept of time if it is even to be articulated. the former sees the human condition at the present time t0 as inevitably superior to the human condition at any past time t-1 and inferior to the human condition at any future time t1; whereas the latter sees the human condition at the present time t0 as inevitably roughly equivalent both to the human condition at some past time t-1 and to the human condition at some future time t1. here mignolo’s hyperphilosophism about time consists in presenting contrasting empirical views about the contents of time, and the ordering of those contents in time, as though they were two different concepts of time itself. universal truth considered as a branch of world-systems analysis, decoloniality theory’s distinguishing mark is its claim that the primary determinants of peripheralization in the world-system are not economic, but epistemic— meaning, here, in the realm of ideas and beliefs. to overcome peripheralization, according to decoloniality theory, a country or region must in the first place change its ideas. no southern af rican scholar has pursued this line of argument more prolifically than sabelo ndlovugatsheni. in his recent book decolonization, development and knowledge in af rica, he writes that ‘eurocentric epistemology actively worked and continues to work as the primary and active enabler of planetary european hegemony’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020: 2). he goes on to claim that ‘what appears on the surface as the problem of political economy and as development challenges in af rica are rooted in the epistemic domain’ (op. cit.: 91). in a nutshell, ‘[t]he predicament of af rica is fundamentally an epistemic one: that of trying to use eurocentric epistemology […] and thus failing to liberate itself f rom classical economic and conventional thinking’ (ibid.). these conclusions chime with those of the writings by grosfoguel and quijano examined in the previous section. if false universal-scope principles about national development or human biology come to be prevalent assumptions which guide policymaking in countries of the global south, belief in those principles could itself become an obstacle to prosperity and a cause of economic dependency. but in the intervening two decades, a shift in the background f ramework of decoloniality theory has radically altered these conclusions’ emphasis and character. though i will examine this shift mainly as it features in ndlovu-gatsheni’s writings, the same shift is evident v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 71 t h e t h i n k e r peer review in the work of mignolo (a major influence on ndlovugatsheni) and other contemporary decoloniality theorists. in the writings by grosfoguel and quijano we have already examined, their primary criticism of the general statements about national development which they critique is that they are false. the f ree trade thesis and the developmental stages thesis are not true of all, or even most, countries; the racial hierarchy thesis is not true of anywhere. by contrast, ndlovu-gatsheni’s primary criticism of ideas such as these is that they occupy a privileged and oppressive position in a hierarchy of knowledge established when ‘euro-american hegemonic knowledge banished alternative epistemologies f rom af rica and other parts of the global south to the barbarian margins of society’ (2013: 4). in ndlovu-gatsheni’s writings, quijano’s model of the ‘coloniality of power’ features not only as an unjust social ordering of persons, but also as a template for understanding how ‘western epistemology’ has interacted with ‘af rican modes of knowing’ (2013: 8). ‘coloniality of power,’ writes ndlovu-gatsheni, ‘is closely linked with coloniality of knowledge’ (op. cit.: 20). the latter ‘took the form of repression of existing af rican beliefs, ideas, images, symbols and forms of knowledge’; ‘[h]aving done this, westerners then imposed their own forms of knowledge’ (ibid.). in ndlovu-gatsheni’s vision, there exist ‘knowledges and worldviews’ (2013: 21) which correlate more or less with positions in the global hierarchy created by coloniality of power. just as quijano holds that the coloniality of power needs to be overcome ‘through a radical and global process of the democratization of society’ by which all people come to be recognised as equals (2000a: 568), so ndlovu-gatsheni advocates ‘not a total rejection of euro-american knowledge but a democratization of this hegemonic knowledge so that it recognizes other knowledges f rom the excolonized world as equally important and relevant’ (2013: 60). ndlovu-gatsheni’s application of political concepts like equality, domination and democracy, not to persons or groups, but to ‘knowledges and worldviews’ immediately raises some concerns. first, it is problematic to label as  euro-american  the ideas about political economy and human biology which, in ndlovu-gatsheni’s writings as much as in those of quijano and grosfoguel, are the paradigm cases of ideas belief in which keeps the global south dependent. if some europeans and americans have thought f ree trade a universal good, others have advocated protection, and governments have f requently acted on their recommendation [11]. the marxist theory of history has probably been repudiated more than it has been accepted in europe and north america. and many fierce critics of the concept of race have been european or north american. quijano and grosfoguel’s critique of these ideas as eurocentric is precise and reasonably plausible; it makes specific claims about the methodological origins and predictive power of these ideas, and about the effects of pervasive belief in them. by contrast, ndlovugatsheni’s characterisation of these ideas as euroamerican, implying that they in some sense belong to or are characteristic of a region, is loose and, given any more precise cast, looks likely to be incorrect. second, ideas or beliefs do, in one familiar way, form a hierarchy: they are not all equal. some are true, or at least supported by the available evidence; others are false, or at least not supported by the available evidence. if i base relevant life decisions on the belief that smoking increases my risk of cancer, because that is what the available evidence indicates, i ought not to be condemned for dismissing the alternative belief, disconfirmed by the available evidence, that smoking decreases my risk of cancer. on the contrary, i am giving these two beliefs just the treatment they deserve. in his writings on the coloniality of power f rom two decades ago, quijano adopts exactly this approach to the race hierarchy thesis (rht), coloniality’s ideological strut: it is ‘a mental construction’ (2000a: 533), ‘literally an invention’ (575n6), a false belief that needs to be overcome. likewise, the straightforwardly universalised version of the developmental stages thesis (dstu1) is, in view of the latin american exceptions to it, ‘wrong’ (quijano, 2000b: 218). both are beliefs that deserve to be set aside and replaced with others which better reflect the way the world is. ndlovu-gatsheni, determined to treat any ranking of beliefs as objectionable in just the same way as an invented race hierarchy, adopts the position that ‘all human beings were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems’ (2020: 154). ‘the ultimate goal,’ t h e t h i n k e r peer review 72 he consequently affirms, ‘is to put all onto-epistemic traditions in a non-dominant and equal position’ (op. cit.: 150). but if all theoretical approaches or sets of assumptions are to be treated as equals, principles like rht, fttu1 and dstu1 can no longer be dismissed for being false or evidentially unjustified, as they were by quijano and grosfoguel. accordingly, ndlovugatsheni makes a quite different complaint about them: they are instances of ‘universalizing western particularism’ (2013: 38) [12]. in ndlovu-gatsheni’s eyes, principles like rht, fttu1 and dstu1 are ‘western particularistic ideas’ (op. cit.: 12), meaning that their truth or validity is relativized to a particular context or culture—the west. while quijano and grosfoguel hold that some particular empirical principles, rht, fttu1 and dstu1, are not true of anywhere, ndlovugatsheni’s line of attack is of a different stripe. he asserts that principles and beliefs are, across the board, not the kinds of thing which can be true everywhere (relative to all contexts or cultures). ndlovu-gatsheni’s move is a hyperphilosophising one. quijano and grosfoguel argued, using the method of counterexample, that certain empirical theses in political economy and biology are false—false no matter where they are uttered or by whom. however, as we saw in the previous section, their explanations of why these theses are false in two cases provide the basis for a repair: one that delivers revised empirical theses which stand a chance of being true—true no matter where they are uttered or by whom. ndlovugatsheni, taking the same flaws in the same theses as his starting point, leaps to a conclusion of a quite different order: that there is no universal truth, that the error is to think that any thesis could be other than ‘particularistic’—true or valid only relative to a particular culture or context of utterance [13]. ndlovugatsheni’s embrace of this metaphysical conclusion, and his celebration of a ‘harmonious pluriversal’ alternative (2020: 65), are drastically undermotivated by the counterexamples to empirical theses which are his—as they are grosfoguel and quijano’s—point of departure. what is the meaning of ‘where’? the transfiguration of central claims in decoloniality theory f rom empirically grounded criticisms of social-scientific theses into a metaphysical denial of the possibility of universal truth, which we followed in ndlovu-gatsheni’s writings [14], is by no means unique to him. grosfoguel’s thinking has moved in the same direction. like ndlovu-gatsheni, he now claims that accompanying the coloniality of power is ‘an epistemic hierarchy that privileges western knowledge and cosmology’ (grosfoguel, 2007: 217), and criticises the latter for ‘hid[ing] its local and particular perspective under an abstract universalism’ (214). mignolo, a strong influence on ndlovu-gatsheni, also believes decoloniality theory should ‘dispel the myth of universality’ and embrace the ‘pluriversal’ alternative (2011: xv–xvi). the slogan ‘i am where i think’ is mignolo’s label for a ‘basic epistemic principle that legitimizes all ways of thinking and delegitimizes the pretense of a singular and particular epistemology, geo-historical and bio-graphically located, to be universal’ (op. cit.: 81). but the slogan ‘i am where i think’ immediately raises the question of what mignolo means by ‘where’. more to the point, all contemporary decoloniality theorists owe us an answer to the following question: to what sorts of location or context of utterance does decoloniality theory say the truth or validity of propositions is to be relativized? two answers to this question can be found in the work of contemporary decoloniality theorists, both of which face difficulties, and neither of which sits easily alongside the other. in closing, i will briefly explore both. the first answer to be found is that the salient context of utterance is one’s ‘epistemic location in the mignolo, a strong influence on ndlovu-gatsheni, also believes decoloniality theory should ‘dispel the myth of universality’ and embrace the ‘pluriversal’ alternative (2011: xv–xvi). the slogan ‘i am where i think’ is mignolo’s label for a ‘basic epistemic principle that legitimizes all ways of thinking and de-legitimizes the pretense of a singular and particular epistemology, geo-historical and bio-graphically located, to be universal’ (op. cit.: 81). v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 73 t h e t h i n k e r peer review structures of colonial power/knowledge’ (grosfoguel, 2007: 213). according to this answer, ‘where’ would mean one’s position in the imposed race hierarchy and the corresponding hierarchy of ‘worldviews’ or ‘knowledges’ which decoloniality theorists believe structure the contemporary world. mignolo writes that there is ‘a kind of subjectivity emerging f rom the lived experience of white and christian males’ (2011: 111), which he contrasts with the kinds of subjectivity emerging in those who occupy other positions in the colonial hierarchy. discussing the work of the indian political scientist partha chatterjee, mignolo writes that ‘what foucault did not have was the colonial experience and political interest propelled by the colonial wound that allowed chatterjee to “feel” and “see” beyond both kant and foucault’ (2011: 133). similarly, grosfoguel asserts that ‘if we move the locus of enunciation f rom the european man to an indigenous women [sic] in the americas’, the result will be ‘radical critique’ (2007: 215–16). the idea that people on the receiving end of oppression have the greatest insight into a society’s true character is a coherent one. but it sits in some tension with decoloniality theorists’ relativism—their repeated assertions that there is no truth except ‘particularistic’ truth, truth ‘in parenthesis’ [15], ‘pluriversal’ truth. for, in the passages quoted above, grosfoguel and mignolo’s contention appears to be that those on the receiving end of colonial oppression have greater insight into what is true of the worldsystem for all of us. quite apart f rom its tension with relativism, this contention generates some complications of its own. mignolo, a professor at duke university, admits that he is writing his book ‘at my house in north carolina’ (2011: 93), where presumably he is taken to be racially ‘white’. is mignolo not, by his own lights, on the wrong end of the relevant hierarchies to have the necessary insight into coloniality? the same question can be asked of other decoloniality theorists. the obverse problem also arises: some people in the right hierarchical position have the wrong views. or, as grosfoguel puts it, ‘[t]he fact that one is socially located in the oppressed side of power relations, does not automatically mean that he/she is epistemically thinking f rom a subaltern epistemic location’ (2007: 213). mignolo and grosfoguel owe us a statement of the conditions under which views of people in the right social position cannot be trusted (and those under which views of people in the wrong social position can be trusted). this had better not be: when they agree with decoloniality theory! if there is ‘an epistemic hierarchy that privileges western knowledge and cosmology over nonwestern knowledge and cosmologies’ (grosfoguel, 2007: 217), then there must be several different identifiable human systems of belief or ‘cosmologies’. these systems of belief—what ndlovu-gatsheni calls ‘knowledges and worldviews’ (2013: 21)—provide a second possible answer to the question at the head of this section. this answer says that the context of utterance for assessing the validity of a belief or assertion is the system of belief within which it is situated. examples of such systems include the ‘western’ (grosfoguel, 2007: 217) or ‘euro-american’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 60), the ‘andean’ (mignolo, 2011: 169), and the ‘af rican’ (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2013: 20). theories which relativize truth to cultures or belief systems face many problems. here i will mention only one central problem, which concerns the status of a relativist’s own theory. if the truth of propositions is to be relativized to regional or cultural contexts of utterance, what does this mean for decoloniality theory itself? unlike some varieties of postcolonialism and postmodernism [16], decoloniality theory cannot dispense with grand narratives. its signature claim, after all, is that a ‘colonial matrix of power’ exists worldwide, has endured for centuries, and affects all our lives. mignolo is the decoloniality theorist most conscious of this reflexivity problem. in response to it, he restricts the ambition of his theorising with a concession which is perhaps greater than he realises. mignolo tells his readers he is putting forward his decoloniality theory not as ‘the option’, but as ‘just an option’ (2011: 21). he does not wish to argue for decoloniality theory over other theories, because ‘[t]o argue for one or the other […] would be a modern/colonial way of f raming the issue’ (xxvii). mignolo cannot consistently allow himself any more ambitious conclusion, given his view that ‘there is no reason (other than epistemic racism) to believe that, among all forms of creative thinking […], one mode of being where one thinks is better or preferable to the other’ (101). i have argued that decoloniality theory took on peer review 74 the shape it has today via a series of drastically undermotivated inferences f rom empirical propositions to contentious philosophical conclusions. quijano and grosfoguel’s initial critique of eurocentrism in social science advances intellectual decolonisation in the broad, truth-oriented sense: it aims to strip away false theoretical conclusions which are the result of bias. by contrast, contemporary decoloniality theory is wedded to a set of controversial metaphysical claims, including rejection of the very idea of universal truth. in this final section, i have argued that, quite apart f rom being radically undermotivated, decoloniality theory’s relativism is hard to reconcile with its grand narrative about the colonial matrix of power, and tends to undermine decoloniality theorists’ ability to claim that their own theory is correct. if, as mignolo insists, decoloniality theory is ‘just an option’, i hope i have made the case that it is an option we should decline [17]. notes [1] see, for example, ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, 1986. [2] in this paragraph and the two following, i draw on hull, 2019a. for a fuller discussion of different approaches to the decolonisation of philosophy, see hull, 2019b: 6–11. [3] wiredu’s ‘conceptual decolonisation’ agenda is not uncontested. sanya osha (2005) believes it does not go far enough, while bernhard weiss (2019: 235–39) doubts that wiredu’s case studies take him as far as he thinks they do. [4] the ‘curriculum change framework’ is available at http://www.news.uct. ac.za/images/userfiles/downloads/reports/ccwg/uct-curriculum-changeframework.pdf. quotations are from p. 18 and p. 30. [5] quijano co-authored an article with the doyen of world-systems analysis, immanuel wallerstein (1992), which prefigures some themes of his subsequent writings in decoloniality theory. [6] see also mignolo, 2011: 57–58. [7] see levi-faur, 1997. [8] for a discussion of this concept in the context of political economy, see amin, 1990. [9] see previous section. [10] emphasis in original. [11] see levi-faur, 1997. [12] mignolo likewise deplores ‘the universalization of western nativism/ localism’ (2011: 330). [13] see, for example, ndlovu-gatsheni, 2020: 94–95, where he slides between endorsement of samir amin’s view that some putatively universal economic laws are not true of all social and economic systems, and advocacy of the view that the validity of economic statements is relative to cultural structures, without noting the significant difference between the two. [14] see previous section. [15] ‘truth in parenthesis’ is mignolo’s label for truth or validity which is restricted to a particular context of utterance (see, for example, mignolo, 2011: 44). [16] see, for example, lyotard, 1984. [17] most elements of this critique of decoloniality theory were first explored and discussed in meetings of the beyond decoloniality reading group, observatory, cape town. i am indebted to kavish chetty and gabriele tealejames for their hospitality and intellectual companionship. i also profited from discussion with participants from brazil and south africa in the uctpernambuco joint online workshop entitled ‘intellectual decolonization: critical perspectives’ (9 september 2021), at which i presented some of this material. finally, i am grateful to veeran naicker and anye nyamnjoh for written comments on a draft. references amin, s. (1990). delinking: towards a polycentric world (trans. m. wolfers), london: zed books. appiah, k. (1992). in my father’s house: africa in the philosophy of culture, new york: oxford university press. chikane, r. (2018). breaking a rainbow, building a nation: the politics behind #mustfall movements, johannesburg: picador africa. fabian, j. (1983). time and the other: how anthropology makes its object, new york: columbia university press. grosfoguel, r. (2000). ‘developmentalism, modernity, and dependency theory in latin america’. nepantla: views from south, 1(2): 347–74. grosfoguel, r. (2007). ‘the epistemic decolonial turn: beyond politicaleconomy paradigms’. cultural studies, 21(2–3): 211–23. hull, g. (2019a). ‘contesting the narrow approach to intellectual decolonisation, or how martin heidegger captured an african university’. new agenda: south african journal of social and economic policy, 73: 29–33. hull, g. (2019b). ‘introduction’, in g. hull (ed.), debating african philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial ethics and comparative philosophy, london: routledge, 1–22. levi-faur, d. (1997). ‘friedrich list and the political economy of the nationstate’. review of international political economy, 4(1): 154–78. lyotard, j.-f. (1984). the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge (trans. g. bennington & b. massumi), manchester: manchester university press. mignolo, w. (2011). the darker side of western modernity: global futures, decolonial options, durham: duke university press. mignolo, w. (2018). ‘part two: the decolonial option’, in w. mignolo & c. walsh, on decoloniality: concepts, analytics, praxis, durham: duke university press, 103–244. ndlovu-gatsheni, s. (2013). coloniality of power in postcolonial africa: myths of decolonization, dakar: council for the development of social science research in africa. ndlovu-gatsheni, s. (2020). decolonization, development and knowledge in africa: turning over a new leaf, london: routledge. ngũgĩ wa thiong’o (1986). decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature, oxford: james currey. osha, s. (2005). kwasi wiredu and beyond: the text, writing and thought in africa, dakar: council for the development of social science research in africa. quijano, a. (2000a). ‘coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and latin america’ (trans. m. ennis). nepantla: views from south, 1(3): 533–80. quijano, a. (2000b). ‘coloniality of power and eurocentrism in latin america’. international sociology, 15(2): 215–32. quijano, a. (2007). ‘coloniality and modernity/rationality’ (trans. s. therborn). cultural studies, 21(2–3): 168–78. quijano, a. & wallerstein, i. (1992) ‘americanity as a concept, or the americas in the modern world-system’. international social science journal, 44(134): 549–57. weiss, b. (2019). ‘is philosophy bound by language? some case studies from african philosophy’, in g. hull (ed.), debating african philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial ethics and comparative philosophy, london: routledge, 228–47. wiredu, k. (2004). ‘truth and an african language’, in l. brown (ed.), african philosophy: new and traditional perspectives, new york: oxford university press, 35–50. wiredu, k. (2007). ‘the need for conceptual decolonization in african philosophy’, in b. mosupyoe & m. ramose (eds.), the development of thought in pan africanism, dubuque: kendall/hunt, 76–82. v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 85 t h e t h i n k e r peer review abstract the cabo delgado province in the northernmost portion of the long mozambican seaboard is now home to africa’s three largest liquefied natural gas (lng) projects, and these projects have attracted many of the world’s major multinational energy companies, accompanied by massive lng investments. there can be little doubt that the discovery of rich gas reserves is a potential game changer for the mozambican economy and development agenda. it is potentially an opportunity for the rapid advancement of a country that currently ranks close to the bottom of the united nation’s human development index. however, despite the billions in investments from major multinational energy companies, the people of cabo delgado are yet to see the material benefit from these projects. one of the biggest risks to investors in the lng industry is the many unknowns pertaining to the threat posed by the militant islamic movement, ansar alsunna, which has especially been active since 2017 in the cabo delgado province. in view of this, this article assesses mozambique’s lng industry and the political risks associated with the insurgent movement’s intention to establish an islamic caliphate in the cabo delgado area. natural gas production in mozambique and the political risk of islamic militancy by theodor neethling peer review 86 introduction in mozambique, two very different but interacting domains are currently of major importance to the prosperity and future economic development of the country, namely the country’s lng projects and the militant movement, ansar al-sunna. the lng projects in the northern cabo delgado area, with major gas reserves attracting an estimated total investment of more than $50 billion, represent a silver lining of hope for this impoverished country in terms of major international investment and revenue generation. observers often assert that this could pave the way for the country to become af rica’s qatar or even dubai f rom 2024 onwards (dos santos, 2020: 1–2). however, this silver lining may vanish and turn into a mirage as a result of the expanding armed activities of islamist insurgents in cabo delgado, which the mozambican government and its security forces have not been able to contain since 2017. combatting the armed activities of the islamist insurgents, commonly referred to as ansar al-sunna or ahlu sunnah wajama, and locally known as mozambique’s al shabaab, has exacted a high toll on both the government and the investors’ energy and budgets (dos santos, 2020: 1–2). an agreement between the major players in the lng business and the former minister of the interior made the mozambican government responsible for supplying military and security services for the protection of the lng workforces. this, however, has proved to be no guarantee to ‘discard a scenario which has, at its core, a growing alliance of local armed islamists with isis [the islamic state of iraq and syria] and adf [allied democratic forces in the democratic republic of congo]’ which is moving towards ‘a jihadist war in cabo delgado’ (dos santos, 2020: 9). the underlying thesis of this article is that the lng industry in mozambique could revolutionise the economy of the country. however, if the dynamics relating to the activities of ansar al-sunna in cabo delgado are escalating and if they are not carefully managed by the mozambican government and its security forces, liquefied gas production will become a lost opportunity for development and could even turn into a source of conflict. in view of this, the pressing question is: does the mozambican government have the political will and institutional capacity to provide a stable and predictable investment climate where the political risks associated with the islamist insurgency in cabo delgado would not jeopardise or threaten the promising lng projects? as far as political risk is concerned, it is defined by chen (2020) as: ‘[t]he risk that an investment’s returns could suffer as a result of political changes or instability in a country.’ such changes or instability affecting returns on investment could stem f rom a change in government, legislative institutions, foreign policymakers, or a military takeover. this article assesses mozambique’s evolving lng industry, specifically against the background of ansar al-sunna’s insurgency in cabo delgado and the movement’s intention to establish an islamic caliphate in the cabo delgado area. several political variables will have a crucial bearing on the viability and profitability of the lng projects, such as key political trends influencing the exploration process, the evolving oil and gas policy regime, and operational and governance challenges conf ronting project developers (frühauf, 2014: 2). most important, however, are the political challenges associated with the activities of ansar al-sunna. cursory notes on risk analysis mckellar (2010: 6) states that political risk is relevant for businesses because it is important for businesses to understand the dynamics of the markets in which they function and the policies and legal f rameworks that have an impact on them. barnard and croucamp (2015: 1) likewise explain that political, social, and economic stability and growth are among the key determinants affecting or determining the political risk profile of a country. political risk thus concerns the functioning of two very different but interacting domains, namely business and politics. the raison d’être of business is to create profits for itself and its stakeholders, and business leaders or managers share a mind-set around the ideas of market share, growth margins, and return on investment. business is affected by the laws of the country, and business furthermore takes place in a f ramework ultimately set by political authority and social relations. in developed states, business can afford to take this f ramework for granted, but v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 87 t h e t h i n k e r peer review in developing states, business needs to adapt to changing and often volatile political landscapes (mckellar, 2010: 6–7). in view of the above, political risk can be defined as a potential harm to a business operation arising f rom political behaviour. political actors and their behaviour are concerned with social organisation and the underlying ideals of society. the basis of political actors and their behaviour relates to issues pertaining to authority, ideology, political culture, social identity, social good, and the levers of power to influence these (mckellar, 2010: 6). defining and understanding political risk in a scholarly context is largely a case of disciplinary perspective or approach. for students of international business, for example, political risk relates to a concern with the management of those factors that could influence market conditions. for political scientists, definitions of political risk tend to rest with the exercise of power and the harm that could stem f rom this to individuals, nation states, and even the international system. generally, scholars in various fields or disciplines – such as politics, political economy, economics, trade, investment, and international business – all grapple with the problem or challenge of political risk in one way or another (jarvis, 2008: 3–5). the point of departure in this article is that political risk concerns the interface between business and politics in a particular country as two different but interacting domains in countries across the world (mckellar, 2010: 6). in the case of mozambique, the government, civil society, and international donors recognise the natural gas discoveries as a potential ‘game changer’ for mozambique (frühauf, 2014: 1). however, a high level of political risk in mozambique means that investors will fear some form of harm or damage to their (potential) investments and thus be reserved or conservative in their investment decisions and operations – even keeping investments on hold. at government level, the mozambican head of state, president filipe nyusi, plays a key role in the country’s lng sector. in fact, he was elected 2020 person of the year by af rica oil & power, the af rican continent’s leading investment platform for the energy sector. this prestigious award is presented to individuals who are considered exceptional and who display true leadership and innovative thinking in the steering of their countries or organisations to the foref ront of the global energy sector. thus, a lack of political commitment to the lng sector does not seem to be an issue or risk in the development of the lng sector in mozambique. leaders in government realise that lng projects, once fully actualised, will represent more than three times the country’s current gross domestic product (gdp) (hirst, 2020). moreover, the 20-year mozambican national development strategy, developed by the ministry of planning and development in 2013, regards the exploration of natural gas as ‘a starting point to effect a shift away f rom poverty reduction towards industrialization’ (frühauf, 2014: 16). yet, as already suggested, one of the biggest risks to investors in the lng industry is the many unknowns pertaining to the threat posed by ansar al-sunna since 2017 in the cabo delgado province. mozambique is a developing country, and given the country’s political dynamics and related turbulence over many years, political risk in mozambique has always been of relevance to potential investors. moreover, the mozambican government has been facing dwindling domestic and international support, as the president and his ruling frelimo party face major difficulties to deliver on promises to combat widespread corruption, to boost food production, and to consolidate peace, among others. these challenges are exacerbated by the impact of covid-19 and related measures on the in view of the above, political risk can be defined as a potential harm to a business operation arising from political behaviour. political actors and their behaviour are concerned with social organisation and the underlying ideals of society. the basis of political actors and their behaviour relates to issues pertaining to authority, ideology, political culture, social identity, social good, and the levers of power to influence these (mckellar, 2010: 6). peer review 88 country (dos santos, 2020: 2). in addition to the above, risk in the mozambican context is of even greater importance in view of the fact that gigantic multinational lng projects are now under construction offshore and onshore in the northern parts of the country. in view of the above, the world bank (2021) rightly pointed out: ‘[t]he government is grappling with another so-called islamic insurgency in parts of the gas-rich province of cabo-delgado. initially circumscribed to one locality, the indiscriminate killing of civilians perpetrated by the insurgents has now spread to other districts and towns in the province. recently [march 2020] the rebels attacked and occupied successively the transport hub rural town of mocímboa da praia and the town of quissinga. recent estimates show the conflict has killed more than 1,000 people and forced 100,000 f rom their homes. the risk that violence can spread to other areas of the country should not be underestimated.’ these dynamics and challenges will be further discussed in the sections below with the discussion focusing on the dynamics relating to the discovery of offshore gas reserves and then turning to the current insurgency dynamics and related political risk. discovery of offshore gas reserves, investments, and societal impact since 2011, with the discovery of major offshore gas fields, many observers have been driven to suggest that mozambique, one of the poorest nations in the world, has ‘hit the jackpot’. however, akwagyiram (2013) almost prophetically opined that ‘turning those resources into riches is not straightforward’ and suggested that the lng industry in mozambique might follow one of two diverse experiences or possible pathways: the norwegian experience or the nigerian experience. the norwegian experience was essentially one where the country would manage to export six times more energy than it consumed and thus become one of the richest countries in the world in per capita terms. nigeria, however, despite its oil wealth, imported energy and it was estimated in 2013 that at least $400 billion of oil revenue had been stolen or misspent since independence in 1960 (akwagyiram, 2013). comparing norway and nigeria might not be fair in many respects, as the two countries are vastly different in population size and political challenges. still, the contrasting fortunes of these two countries – like so many other cases of resource abundance internationally – clearly illustrate the fact that a wealth of natural resources does not necessarily translate into economic progression and prosperity. world bank data f rom 2017 ranked mozambique as the seventh poorest country internationally. the country has recorded an average annual gross national income of $1  200 per person and although positive trends were recorded since 2000 in poverty reduction, the northern regions – especially zambezia, nampula, niassa, and cabo delgado – have largely been excluded f rom the levels of poverty reduction recorded in the central and southern regions. this is clear f rom data revealing that f rom 1996 to 2015, poverty rates in the capital maputo and maputo province decreased by approximately 70%, as opposed to approximately 20% poverty reduction in most of the northern areas, including cabo delgado (intelyse llc, 2019). as the northernmost province, cabo delgado has been neglected over many years and thus finds itself in a situation of political marginalisation and underdevelopment. the province has the highest illiteracy rate in mozambique – at more or less 60% – with approximately 35% of children not attending school. the figure for postsecondary school education stands at 0.3% and in this context, thousands of youths are unemployed. in fact, youth unemployment is estimated to be close to 90%. on the positive side, cabo delgado is the province with the country’s most important deposits of natural resources. the largest deposits of rubies in the world are located there, as well as large stocks of timber. most significantly, large gas reserves are located in the rovuma basin area, south of the town of palma (intelyse llc, 2019). after independence in 1975, exploration efforts in mozambique during the 1970s and 1980s did not deliver substantial results. the first lng production only came online in inhambane province at the temane field within the mozambique basin in february 2004 (frühauf, 2014: 1). at that point, the discovery of gas reserves largely served south af rican interests. south af rican petrochemical giant sasol made a swift entrance into upstream activity in the mozambique v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 89 t h e t h i n k e r peer review basin and dominated production for some time. the discoveries and related projects have been considered lucrative for sasol and its partners, such as igas. a price differential between sales prices in mozambique and south af rica, as well as favourable fiscal terms in mozambique, left south af rican stakeholders in a position to benefit considerably f rom the projects. south af rican involvement in lng production was to be but a preamble to massive gas discoveries in the northern rovuma basin, which attracted entities ranging f rom supermajors to emerging-market national oil companies. in this regard, the us energy company, anadarko, and the italian multinational oil and gas company, eni, have spearheaded exploration activities in the northern rovuma basin and, since 2009, exploration has yielded major discoveries and sparked much excitement in the international lng industry. not only western supermajors, such as total, exxon mobil, chevron, and bp entered the mozambique lng industry, but also japan’s mitsui, malaysia’s petronas, and china’s cnpc (frühauf, 2014: 3–4). in 2012, anadarko discovered additional gas reserves off the coast of cabo delgado in the rovuma basin. many role players inside and outside mozambique hoped that this would bring much-needed development and prosperity to the region. shortly after this discovery, eni also discovered a massive gas field in the area. currently, cabo delgado is the province where several multinational energy giants are at work in mozambique’s promising offshore lng projects. eight lng projects are in the process of development in mozambique, containing a total liquefaction capacity of 44 million tons. it was accordingly anticipated that by the mid-2020s mozambique could become one of the top ten lng producers globally (goodrich, 2020). in 2020, offshore exploration in the cabo delgado area was among af rica’s three largest lng projects (craig, 2020), namely – • the mozambique lng project (involving total and previously anadarko) worth $20 billion; • the coral flng project (involving eni and exxon mobil) worth $4.7 billion; and • the rovuma lng project (involving exxon mobil, eni, and cnpc) worth $30 billion (rawoot, 2020). in 2014, a report f rom the oxford institute for energy studies stated that, with the costs of the lng projects estimated at us$40 billion, investment in lngrelated projects alone would constitute about 2,7 times the size of mozambique’s 2012 gdp. whereas it was anticipated that revenue, especially f rom lng production, would only start to have an impact on the economy f rom 2020 onwards, it was also expected that there would additionally be substantial economic benefits f rom foreign direct investment (fdi) linked to exploration and construction (frühauf, 2014: 10), including professional training, employment, and contracts for the supply of goods and services. in a more recent report of the af rican development bank group, it was claimed that the lng industry could transform the mozambican economy and that the country could become a global leading lngexporting country (af rican development bank group, 2019). as suggested above, these projects could indeed be of major importance to poverty alleviation in indebted mozambique. as a country in ‘debt distress’, mozambique would have received $14,9 billion in debt financing f rom total. together, the gas projects are estimated to be worth $60 billion, and this could revolutionise the mozambican economy of $15 billion (mackinnon, 2020). it should also be noted that the geographic location of the current lng projects is well positioned to meet atlantic and asia-pacific market needs. it is further well positioned to tap into the growing energy demands of the middle east and the indian sub-continent (total, 2020). in march 2021, total suspended all works while exxon mobil pushed its final investment decision further into the long grass. total also declared a force majeure which followed the occupation of the port of mocímboa da praia and disruptions to its construction of inf rastructure (louw-vaudran, 2020; vreÿ, 2021). however, the escalation of violence since early 2020 has raised some pressing questions over the future of these investments and even put them at high risk (craig, 2020). in september 2020, the chief executive officer of total, patrick pouyanné, as the largest investor in mozambique lng projects, met with mozambican president, filipe nyusi, to discuss the risks posed by the intensifying radical islamic insurgency. although exploration and operations are taking place offshore, facilities in support of the gas industry are onshore and most vulnerable to attacks. obviously, the foreign companies, with their peer review 90 considerable investments, feel threatened, especially at the current stage where final investment decisions have to be taken (world oil, 2020). it should also be noted that many locals feel deeply aggrieved. soon after the discovery of gas in the cabo delgado area, many locals were evicted and had to relocate to facilitate lng inf rastructure development, especially for onshore facilities to be used by anadarkototal and eni. a report by anadarko indicated that more than 550 families had to be relocated and close to 1  000 people were estimated to have lost access to their cultivated land. furthermore, more than 3 000 individuals stood to lose their access to fishing grounds as a result of lng operations. this resulted in many locals feeling marginalised and aggrieved. many of them also complained about agreements regarding compensation, as well as the fact that they had been resettled inshore and away f rom the coastal fishing areas (rawoot, 2020). at the time of writing, the insurgency has not directly targeted the project sites, but attacks were coming closer. total’s projects remain in suspension, while exxon mobil’s final decision on investment is undecided. it is always said that the town of palma should be kept safe f rom attacks, as this is supposed to become the manufacturing hub where hundreds of skilled workers will be located. unfortunately, the bloodshed by the islamic insurgents extended to palma on 25 march 2021 when dozens of people were killed during an armed attack after hundreds of militants stormed the town (bbc news, 2021). in view of this, the biggest investor, total, has apparently lost its faith in the mozambican authorities (af rica intelligence, 2021) and (temporarily) withdrew much of its workforce. in brief, a continuation of the insurgency could hamper further investments, with a detrimental effect on the development of the northern parts of mozambique (louw-vaudran, 2020). in other words, what is clear is that after much initial excitement about the massive potential of the lng industry in mozambique, the realities of the conflict dynamics relating to muslim extremism in northern mozambique have brought a halt to the exploration work undertaken by total and exxon mobil as the major investors. towards an islamist state in cabo delgado? in recent years, ansar al-sunna’s insurgency campaign has expanded geographically closer to the areas where the lng projects are located and where ruby deposits are concentrated, as well as towards the provincial capital of pemba. as major foreign petroleum companies have increased their investment and operations in cabo delgado, it is obviously of importance to have a good understanding of the cabo delgado insurgency as a significant and growing threat and risk (intelyse llc, 2019). the history and communal life of cabo delgado have been crafted by indian ocean trade networks developed by arab traders over many centuries. this led to the spread of islam along the east af rican coast, dating as far back as historical knowledge goes (pavliková-vilhanová, 2010: 135–136). today, cabo delgado has a population of more or less 2,5 million and is a muslim-majority province. overall, muslims comprise about 18% of the mozambican population of more than 27 million (the new humanitarian, 2007; u.s. embassy in mozambique, 2018). for centuries, the dominant form of islam among muslims in cabo delgado has been a form of moderate sufi islam, intertwined with local traditions and practices (intelyse llc, 2019). research based on fieldwork in mozambique (see morier-genoud, 2020: 400) suggests that the roots of at the time of writing, the insurgency has not directly targeted the project sites, but attacks were coming closer. total’s projects remain in suspension, while exxon mobil’s final decision on investment is undecided. it is always said that the town of palma should be kept safe from attacks, as this is supposed to become the manufacturing hub where hundreds of skilled workers will be located. unfortunately, the bloodshed by the islamic insurgents extended to palma on 25 march 2021 when dozens of people were killed during an armed attack after hundreds of militants stormed the town v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 91 t h e t h i n k e r peer review ansar al-sunna can be traced to dynamics in 2007, in the district of balama of cabo delgado, although it might have been earlier. in 2007, a young man of makua ethnicity, sualehe rafayel, returned f rom tanzania to the village of his birth, nhacole, after several years on foreign soil. he joined a newly built mosque, which was built by the af rica muslim agency, and followed a distinctly different approach to the islamic faith than other believers in the district. he rejected several existing practices and ideas, which he considered haram (forbidden) and tried to convince muslims of this mosque and others to follow his thinking and ways, while also building his own praying site. this led to tensions between sheik sualehe (sualehe rafayel) and other muslims in nhacole, as well as the islamic council of mozambique after the latter got involved in the intra-muslim tensions in the district (moriergenoud, 2020: 401). in brief, f rom this point, the new ‘sect’ expanded across cabo delgado through the 2010s, and in 2016 the national islamic conference hosted in nampula concluded that the new movement was prevalent in four districts of cabo delgado, namely palma, nangade, mocímboa da praia, and montepuez, while signs were also prevalent in macomia and quissanga (morier-genoud, 2020: 401). until 2015, ansar al-sunna maintained and projected itself as a non-violent islamist organisation, but eventually, they turned more militant and launched their first attack in october 2017. while the mozambican government has long been grappling with renamo as the most serious security threat in the country, ansar al-sunna now poses the most significant threat to peace and security. since the october 2017 attacks, the mozambican authorities, who opted to ignore warning signals for some time, scrambled to regain control of the situation. a series of battles between government security forces and the insurgent groups followed, but the security forces were too weak and could not stop a chronology of carnage f rom unfolding over the next years (bukarti and munasinghe, 2020). whereas the militants initially focused on civilian targets, they eventually turned to military targets – a clear indication that the group has been growing in resilience, operational capacity, and confidence. in addition, at first, a few attacks were launched on targets in the town of mocíimboa de praia in late 2017. these extended to more than 20 attacks every month in an insurgency that covered nine major towns and districts along the cabo delgado coastal areas. at the end of may 2020, a battle for the town of macomia demonstrated the organisational strength and capacity of the insurgents, but also elicited a renewed effort in the government’s counteroffensive efforts. this eventually led to one of the largest counter-terrorism operations to date f rom the mozambican security forces, resulting in the deaths of 78 insurgents, including two of the group’s leaders (bukarti and munasinghe, 2020). whereas ansar al-sunna initially advocated for the establishment of an islamist counter-society in contrast to other muslims, particularly the movements of salafism and wahhabism, who were allegedly not following the prophet’s tradition (habibe, forquila and pereira, 2019: 11–12), the movement eventually made it clear that its goal was to impose sharia law (islamic law) in cabo delgado. they rejected the state’s schooling, health, and legal systems – which resulted in political turbulence in the province (morier-genoud, 2020: 400; global initiative against transnational organized crime, 2020). many members and supporters of the movement are socio-economically marginalised and unemployed young people without a proper education (matsinhe and valoi, 2019). they have been joined by young immigrants f rom nearby countries in a similarly marginalised position, and the members of the movement managed to organise themselves in numerous small cells along the coastal areas of northern mozambique. in this context, morier-genoud (2020: 397) indicates that some analysts link the origins of ansar al-sunna to local poverty, inequality, and marginalisation. others, however, believe the origins of the movement should be primarily linked to the outside players or are the result of a foreign influence. this article maintains that both factors might have played a role. lastly, it could be argued that ansar al-sunna exploits islam and local grievances to recruit members. there is no doubt that the message of the movement and its hard-line narrative around the idea of puritanical islam especially resonate with disgruntled youth in the northern parts of mozambique. all of this is playing out in a political landscape of exclusion, unemployment, and poverty – which are especially prevalent in the peer review 92 muslim-majority areas of the northern areas. this makes the jihadi rhetoric of ansar al-sunna appealing, as many northern mozambicans see sufi leaders as too passive and further believe that government policies are negatively affecting muslims (bukarti and munasinghe, 2020). against this background, the next section will reflect on the growing threat posed by islamic militancy to the exploration of natural gas projects. growing risks for mozambique lng projects as stated in the introduction, the pressing question guiding this article is: does the government in maputo have the political will and institutional capacity to provide a stable and predictable investment climate where the political risks associated with the islamist insurgency in cabo delgado would not jeopardise or threaten the promising lng projects? as much as internal factors are key to a proper analysis of this question, one should be mindful that risks to and challenges of the lng projects in mozambique are not only posed by the internal dynamics in the country. externally, the european union (eu) is actively working on plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and if its new emission standards are implemented, there will be a strong signal to markets across the globe. a carbon border tariff mechanism is likely to be introduced by the eu, and that may pose a challenge or even a threat to further fossil investments everywhere. major investments in the lng industry, such as those in mozambique, are dependent on international petroleum prices, and eventually alternative renewable energy options could become cheaper by comparison. internally, apart f rom risks relating to ongoing tensions between frelimo and the largest mozambican opposition party, renamo, and the centralisation of decision-making power around lng projects in the presidential office (frühauf, 2014: 19–21), forced displacement and the loss of livelihoods in the northern-based communities who have faced increasing violence f rom ansar al-sunna in recent times especially pose significant political risks (rawoot, 2020). thus far, neither military action by the mozambican government nor the assistance f rom foreign mercenaries has stopped the attacks f rom ansar al-sunna (institute for security studies, 2020). in fact, the situation has gone f rom bad to worse. in november 2020, ‘dozens of people’ were reportedly beheaded by islamist militants in northern mozambique (schlein, 2020). amid developments of an increasingly alarming human rights situation, including the killings of civilians by insurgents, the united nations high commissioner for human rights (hchr), michelle bachelet, appealed for urgent measures to protect civilians in what she described as a ‘desperate’ situation and one of ‘grave human rights abuses’. she also stated that more than 350 000 people have been displaced since 2018, and pointed out that since 16 october 2020, more than 14  000 people have fled by sea in an effort to get to the provincial capital, pemba (un high commissioner for human rights, 2020). lastly, it should also be noted that some of the big multinational petroleum companies are hiring foreign security firms to mitigate the risk and threat posed by the insurgents. the biggest investor, total, for instance, decided to hire the services of former french foreign legion officer, frederic marbot, to oversee the security arrangements for its project on the afungi peninsula in palma. he is supported by another french foreign legion officer, charles stroeng. otherwise, total has concluded contracts with three british security companies, namely blue mountain, control risks and g4s, as well as arkhe risk solutions f rom south af rica and mauritius, and gardaworld f rom canada (hanlon, 2020). in january 2021, islamist militants staged attacks increasingly closer to total’s $20 billion lng projects, which prompted total to ask some of its staff to vacate their projects. the company explained that this was a case of temporarily reducing ‘its workforce on site in response to the prevailing environment’ as the situation ‘is being reviewed continuously’ (hill and de beaupuy, 2021). this happened after members of ansar al-sunna raided a town less than 5 kilometres f rom the construction camp of what is af rica’s largest private investment. obviously, this raised concerns about risks, especially with regard to a planned lng export terminal on the northern coastline of mozambique. although the heavily guarded site has not been attacked yet, militants have threatened to carry out attacks (hill and de beaupuy, 2021). the worsening security situation has definitely raised the risk level and played a role v o l u m e 8 9 / 2 0 2 1 93 t h e t h i n k e r peer review in the delayed decision. in the final analysis, cotterill (2020) strikingly points out that ‘[a]n escalating islamist insurgency in mozambique’s far north-east is intensifying the risks facing the country’s vast new offshore gas developments at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is decimating demand.’ on the positive side, an agreement was reached in june 2021 by the leaders of the southern af rican development community (sadc) to deploy forces f rom the regional organisation in cabo delgado to assist the government of mozambique in its fight against the insurgents. moreover, following an agreement between president nyusi and rwandan president paul kagame, a 1 000-strong rwandan force has been deployed to mozambique in august 2021 to join the mozambican security forces in their operations in the far north of the country. at the time of writing, notable military successes by the joint forces of the two countries have been recorded (dw, 2021). however, as much as this is a positive development, the major challenge in mozambique remains the issue of marginalisation and exclusion, and thus a need for good governance throughout the country. after all, marginalisation and exclusion coincide with decades of neglect in cabo delgado by the central government. a major factor in mozambique is the inability of the state to protect and care for the citizenry in all provinces. in such a landscape, extremism can emerge and thrive, and in mozambique, this is what has been witnessed in relation to ansar al-sunna’s emergence in recent years. in view of the above, matsinhe and valoi (2019) rightly argue: ‘a lasting solution to the extremist violence in cabo delgado cannot be brought about by hard power and military might. there is a need for soft power whereby the government addresses regional asymmetries which could be part of the complex of motivations for extremism.’ all in all, the problems in mozambique primarily relate to what matsinhe and valoi (2019) describe as ‘four decades of half-mast sovereignty’ in mozambique, which is evident f rom the fact that, since the country’s independence in 1975, the central government in maputo has lacked a monopoly over the means of violence in its territory and its long coastline. in this context, renamo regularly clashed with the central government in a 16-year civil war that claimed over a million lives. fast forward into the future, ansar al-sunna now poses the main security threat to the mozambican government. conclusion in mozambique, the developmental challenges are considerable and the country faces the grim reality that ansar al-sunna’s activities have until recently followed an upward trajectory of violence across cabo delgado. the movement is undoubtedly a threat in the sense that it jeopardises the successful unlocking of the resource wealth of the country. if not properly addressed, mozambique might not be reaping the f ruits of the very promising lng projects. at the time of writing, the main gas installations and sites have not been targeted, but lng companies looking to operate in 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