Protests In South Africa Research Articles

Counter-conducts in South Africa: Power, Government and Dissent at the World Summit

This article introduces Michel Foucault's concept of ‘counter-conducts’—‘struggles against the processes implemented for conducting others’—in order to rethink the relationship between power and dissent. It proposes an ‘analytics of protest’ to address forms of resistance, through which this article focuses on the mentalities, practices, and subjectivities produced at protests in South Africa at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. These protests were some of the largest public expressions of dissent since the end of apartheid, yet the article illuminates the ways in which power and resistance are mutually reliant and co-constitutive. These summit counter-conducts both contested and reinforced existing power relations, and were disciplined by discourses of civility/violence, partnership/disruption, and local/foreign from state authorities and the media. They were also disciplined by internal discourses of liberal dissent and radical protest from within the movements themselves. The article concludes that, from a Foucauldian perspective on counter-conducts, forms of dissent that are strategic, reversible, and flexible are preferable to those that are sedimented and entrenched. Este artículo presenta el concepto de las ‘contra-conductas’ de Michel Foucault—‘luchas contra los procesos implementados para conducir a otros’—para replantear la relación entre el poder y la disidencia. Propone un ‘análisis de protesta’ para enfrentarse a las formas de resistencia, a través del cual, este artículo se enfoca en las mentalidades, prácticas y subjetividades producidas en las protestas de Sudáfrica, en la Cumbre Mundial de Johannesburgo 2002, sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible. Estas protestas fueron unas de las mayores expresiones públicas de disidencia desde el fin del apartheid, no obstante, el artículo ilumina las maneras como el poder y la resistencia dependen mutuamente entre sí y son co-constitutivas. Esta cumbre contra-conduce las relaciones de poder existentes tanto controvertidas como reforzadas, y fueron disciplinadas por las autoridades estatales y los medios, a través de debates sobre civilidad/violencia, sociedad/disturbio y local/extranjero. De igual manera, fueron disciplinados por debates internos de disidencia liberal y protesta radical desde el interior de los mismos movimientos. El artículo concluye que desde una perspectiva Foucaultiana sobre las contra-conductas, las formas de disidencia que son estratégicas, reversibles y flexibles, son preferibles a aquellas que están sedimentadas y arraigadas. 为了重新思考权力和异议二者间的关系，本文引入了米歇尔•福柯的概念“反抗行为”，即“对控制他人而实施的进程加以抵制和斗争”。本文提出了“抗议分析法”，用来分析反抗的形式。通过该分析法，本文重点研究了在2002年南非约翰内斯堡可持续发展世界峰会上抗议行为所表现出的心态、实践活动和主体意识。这些抗议行为是自种族隔离政策结束以来异议最公开表达的一部分。然而本文阐明的是权力和抗议是如何相互依存和相互建构的。此次峰会上的抗议行为既质疑又加强了现存的权力关系，且被政府当局和媒体的文明与暴力、合作与破坏、本土与外邦等话语所支配。它们也被来自抗议运动本身的自由派异议和激进派抗议的内部话语所规训。本文的结论是：从福柯式反抗行为的视角看，战略性、双向和灵活的异议形式比那些传统的、固步自封的方式更为可取。

4 - Implications of Social Media on Student Activism: The South African Experience in a Digital Age

While the phenomenon of student protest in South Africa is not new, what characterizes the current wave is the successful use of social media to communicate and galvanize students to participate in protests across the country. Recent studies on the use of social media have noted that this form of communication greatly enhances the strength of student movements. However, some scholars have argued that the resulting leadership vacuum, undermines the achievement of their demands and makes it more difficult for the government and higher education authorities to effectively respond to such action. Through the lens of the learning community theory, this article reviews the current literature on social media and student activism in order to establish the effectiveness of its use and the shortcomings thereof. It argues that higher education institutions and the government need to become more conversant with the implications of digital infrastructure. It further suggests that these institutions should create an environment that supports and encourages effective use of social media through provision of the necessary infrastructure. The article provides a deeper understanding of the role that social media can play to galvanize students to advance their causes.

Racial Conflict and Protest in South Africa and the United States

Our analysis of thousands of racial confrontations and protests in South Africa and the United States provides support for the hypothesis that some forms of state-sponsored repression fuel racial unrest. In the United States our results indicate that the number of arrests by police at prior collective events deterred protest but it raised the rate of racial conflict between whites and blacks. In South Africa the situation is more complicated: arrests in the form of detentions raised the rate of and-Apartheid protest, but banning of political activists decreased protest activity and interracial conflict. Consistent with competition and resource-mobilization theories, our results show that declining levels of racial inequality in education for blacks significantly raised rates of black protest in both countries.

The Ambiguities of Protest in South Africa: Rural Politics and the Press during the 1920s

The 1920s were a time of ferment in South Africa, and the African nationalist press played an important role in communicating the issues and events of this decade to their audiences. The images of reality projected by these newspapers and magazines were necessarily contradictory, but they differed substantially from those projected by the established white press a crucial distinction, since African experiences were rarely represented in these publications. The African nationalist press represented the African petty bourgeoisie in South Africa, but as a number of scholars have noted, class boundaries in African society were neither rigid nor clearly defined. The petty bourgeoisie was fragmenting downward at an accelerated pace after Union in 1910, and alliances were frequent between class fractions that might otherwise have been differentially placed in the social relations of capitalist production.1 As discrimination and oppression at all levels intensified, more and more Africans in occupational categories that were on the fringes of the lower middle class descended into the ranks of the proletariat. Salaried white-collar workers fared little better: wage scales were so low that the more educated had little opportunity to emulate the lifestyles of their white counterparts. Hence it is not surprising that especially in periods of hegemonic crisis alienated fractions of the African petty bourgeoisie would find common cause with unorganized industrial workers and peasants in openly defying the status quo. Such a crisis occurred in the years immediately following World War I. Soaring food prices, low wages, and job discrimination temporarily galvanized African workers, especially on the Witwatersrand, where a wave of wildcat strikes and boycotts appeared to threaten civil order. Nationalists within the South African Native National Congress (renamed the African National Congress in 1923) were divided over the most appropriate response to take towards industrial strife, and mobilizing workers briefly radicalized African politics in the Transvaal. In the countryside, fluctuating grain prices, prolonged drought, and plant and animal diseases posed an immediate threat to food and

Protests in South Africa over threatened subsidy cuts

Protests in South Africa over threatened subsidy cuts

COMMUNITY ACTION, URBAN PROTEST AND CHANGE IN ZIMBABWE AND SOUTH AFRICA

Journal Article COMMUNITY ACTION, URBAN PROTEST AND CHANGE IN ZIMBABWE AND SOUTH AFRICA Get access ERIC WOOD ERIC WOOD Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 77, Issue 307, April 1978, Pages 174–196, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096960 Published: 01 April 1978

South Africa: A Wealth of Repression

From June 16 until the end of this year there will be 618 individual moments of silent protest in South Africa. That is the number of people known to have been killed during six months of low-level disruption, which exploded a hundred times into full-scale uprising. There is even a published list: alphabetized, date and cause of death, home address, age.