CCS Publications - Centre for Civil Society

Publications, blogs and conference presentations for the 2022 / 2023 period.

Brooks, H, Chikane, R and Mottiar, S (eds). 2023. Protest in South Africa: Rejection, Reassertion, Reclamation. Johannesburg: Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).

Brooks, H, Chikane, R and Mottiar, S 2023. The architecture of protest in South Africa: Contexts and underpinnings in Brooks, H. Chikane, R and Mottiar, S (eds). Protest in South Africa: Rejection, Reassertion, Reclamation. Johannesburg: Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).

Brooks, H, Mottiar, S and Chikane, R. 2023 Rejection, reassertion, reclamation: The underpinnings of protest in South Africa in Brooks, H. Chikane, R and Mottiar, S (eds). Protest in South Africa: Rejection, Reassertion, Reclamation. Johannesburg: Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).

Chibvongodze D. 2022. Street Trader as Infrastructure. Working Paper submitted for Bain, A and Podmore, J. (eds). The Cultural Infrastructure of Cities. Agenda Publishing Limited.

Chibvongodze, D. 2023. Contesting territoriality in the context of a “shrinking” civic space: Insights into the Land Access Movement of South Africa’s Land claims advocacy in Rural South Africa. Working Paper presented at the Political Ecology (POLLEN) international conference, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, June 2023.

Dubula, V. Evolution of AIDS movement participation in the struggle for access to medicines in South Africa. Working Paper presented at the International Society for Third Sector Research international conference, Concordia University, Montreal, July 2022.

Dubula, V et al. 2022. If you are uncomfortable in the room then you are in the right place: reflections on anti-racism and decolonising global health from the international AIDS conference in Montreal. PLOS Blogs: Speaking of Medicine & Health.

Fowler, A and Mottiar, S. 2022.Connecting African civil society to its roots, in Biekart, K and Fowler, A. (eds). A research agenda for civil society. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Mottiar, S. 2023. Steering or freeing civil society? Philanthropy towards social justice campaigns in South Africa during Covid-19, in Moyo, B. Qobo, M and Ngwenya, N. (eds). 2023. African philanthropy: Philanthropic responses to Covid-19 and development goals in Africa. Edward Elgar.

Mottiar, S. 2023. Electricity contestations and infrastructural citizenship: Protest in Lamontville, Durban in Brooks, H. Chikane, R and Mottiar, S (eds). Protest in South Africa: Rejection, Reassertion, Reclamation. Johannesburg: Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).

Mottiar, S and Magwaza, T. 2023. Protest in Mpofana, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: Narratives and Strategies. African Identities DOI: 10.1080/14725843.2023.2207765.

Mottiar, S and Motau, A. 2023. Fragmentation, Counter Power and Symbiosis: The Life After Coal Campaign. Working Paper presented at the Political Ecology (POLLEN) international conference, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

Nxumalo, S and Chibvongodze D. 2022. Towards Localised Green Technologies in South Africa. Working Paper submitted for Sokołowski, M. The Routledge Handbook of Energy Communities and Smart Cities. Routledge.

Ong, J. Hui, C. Allan, B. Pulliam, C. Torres, M. Dubula, V. Richman, B. 2023. Global evidence, impact and implementation of U=U. Sexual Health, 20 (3).

Activist praxis for the 2022 / 2023 period includes:

Vuyiseka Dubula-Majola CCS post-doctoral fellow’s critical grassroots work on health access. Dubula is focused on the impact of community activism on the HIV/AIDs global health movement and using activism and advocacy through patient education, community mobilisation, the media and law.

AfroCab treatment optimisation workshop in Johannesburg, November 2022: activist meeting to discuss advocacy plans to address the challenges with access to optimal HIV treatment in South Africa.

Advance HIV disease activist meeting in Nairobi December 2022: 11 countries with the burden of advance HIV disease/AIDS met to discuss a collective advocacy strategy to place the spotlight on continued AIDS related deaths. The meeting aimed to push for targets in Africa to end AIDS.

AIDS Conference Activists Protest ‘Systemic Racism’ Behind Canadian Visa Denials to African Delegates

HIV and AIDS 29/07/2022 Kerry Cullinan

MONTREAL – Activists took over the stage at the opening of the International AIDS conference in Montreal on Friday morning to protest Canada’s denial of visas to hundreds of delegates, primarily from Africa, and the inequality and lack of funding that is driving new HIV infections.

South African activist Vuyiseka Dubula, former head of the Treatment Action Campaign, told the conference that activists needed to speak on behalf of those who were denied access to the conference:

AIDS Conference Activists Protest ‘Systemic Racism’ Behind Canadian Visa Denials to African Delegates – Health Policy Watch (healthpolicy-watch.news)

Publications for the 2020 / 2021 period.

Shawa, B and Mottiar, S. 2020. South African Non-Governmental Development Organisations – organising and coordinating for development effectiveness: A case study of KwaZulu-Natal. African Renaissance, 17(3), 2020, 229-257.
Mottiar, S and Dubula, V. 2020. Shifting consciousness and challenging power: Women activists and the provision of HIV/AIDS services. Law Democracy & Development, Vol 24, 2020, 158-176.
Mottiar, S and Lodge, T. 2020. ‘Living inside the movement’: The Right2Know campaign, South Africa. Transformation, 102, 2020, 95-120.
Zondi, M. 2020. ‘Weak, disorganised and desperate: Civil society in a hard state’. CCS Activist Brief.
Mazibuko, P. 2020. ‘Organisations V Activists: Who needs who?’. CCS Activist Brief.
Caswell, G. Dubula, V. Baptiste, S. Etyaale, H. Syarif, O. Barr, D. 2021. The continuing role of communities affected by HIV in sustained engagement in health and rights. Journal of the International AIDS Society: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jia2.25724
Mottiar, S. 2021. Shaping a township: Self-connecting as counter-conduct in Umlazi, Durban. Journal of the British Academy, 9(11): 93-106.
Chibvongodze, D. 2021. The intersectionality of Youth Activism, Black Radical Tradition and South Africa’s land question. CCS Working Paper.
Chibvongodze, D. 2021. The # Bringbackourland Campaign, Land Expropriation and The Re-emergence of Black Radicalism in South Africa. CCS Working Paper.
Motau, A and Mottiar, S. 2021. The Life After Coal Campaign. CCS Working Paper.

2009 Durban Social Mobilisation and Protests

* January: Qadi people over Inanda dam land claim; Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) v KZN Slums Act; Durban Univ of Technology (DUT) staff and student strike

February: Cosatu v Israeli ship; UKZN and DUT students; Ntuzuma service delivery; Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) v Mugabe; Umlazi police violence

* March: DUT students; bus commuters; South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) v SASOL

* April: KwaMashu housing; Lamontville housing; Warwick Junction Early Morning Market (EMM)

* May: Siyanda housing; Marianhill housing; Lamontville housing; SDCEA v Shell; Warwick EMM

* June: Warwick EMM; electricity disconnections; Qadi land claim; AbM on shack fires; Umlazi hostel conflicts; MDC v Home Affairs; public sector doctors; Lindelani housing; National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) v Mabhida Stadium contractors; Durban bus drivers

* July: Warwick EMM; doctors; NUM v Mabhida contractors; drivers and residents v City bus service; SA Unemployed People’s Movement v shops; SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) v municipality

* August: Warwick EMM; the Communications Workers Union v Post Office; Clairwood and Bluff residents v truckers; SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) v Massmart; Telkom workers v Telkom; social workers v KZN Province; Lamontville housing; IFP youth

* September: AbM attacked; Westcliff Flat Residents’ participation; tow truck drivers v Joburg competition

* October: AbM solidarity and Slums Act court win; Chatsworth v toxic dump; Mangosuthu University of Technology students; Ratepayers Associations v Eskom prices; Warwick EMM

November: Wentworth service delivery; Hammarsdale service delivery; AbM solidarity; Phoenix residents v Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital; Warwick EMM; Mayville service delivery; Marrianridge housing; UKZN workers v labour broking

* December: AbM solidarity; Saccawu n v Pick n Pay

South African Civil Society and Xenophobia

(Johannesburg, July 2010)
This comprehensive 500-page report, coordinated by Strategy & Tactics, was written by some of South Africa’s leading social and political scientists as well as civil society activists. The report analyses the conditions that allowed xenophobic violence to erupt in South Africa in May 2008, leaving 62 people dead.

But its real focus is on civil society organisations, which played a key role in mitigating the worst of the violence and assisting victims, while the state dithered.

The report includes comparative chapters looking at the post-election violence in Kenya and the genocide in the Great Lakes region, and provides the first comprehensive and progressive review of civil society in South Africa for many years.

The study offers a host of recommendations for civil society organisations, both in regard to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers – a chapter specifically written by migrant civil society organisations operating within South Africa is included. The study also comments more generally on what is needed to maintain the strength, visibility and coherence that this critical sector displayed in the transition to democracy, and again in responding to xenophobic violence.

We have posted the first two chapters of the Synthesis Report of the study on the website – Overview & Prospects and Summary of Findings and Recommendations.
However, a wealth of additional information was captured by the report in a series of other chapters and in case studies.

Articles in this issue of Agenda by CCS People

The struggle for water: The river (Umngeni) we have lost to the dam Inanda)
By Dudu Khumalo

A death in Durban Capitalist patriarchy, global warming gimmickry and our responsibility for rubbish.
By Patrick Bond & Rehana Dada

CCS Annual Report & CCS Newsletter January-August 2007

CCS STAFF PUBLICATIONS 2004-06

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The Niger Delta region of Nigeria had a long standing history of crises even before the late Ken Saro-Wiwa helped to bring these crises to the attention of the world. The international community increasingly needs Nigerian oil largely because of the political dislocations and uncertainties in some of the major oil-producing regions of the world. But unfortunately the crises in the Niger Delta, which produces most of Nigeria’s oil, have also been escalating to alarming proportions, often turning the region into a site of seemingly unending uncertainty and conflicts. The book focuses on Ogoniland – one of the oil-producing communities that make up the Niger Delta. It examines the colonial origins of these crises and their links to the dynamics of petroleum exploitation in the region as well as to the structure of Nigeria’s contemporary political economy. It relates the ways in which the crises in Ogoniland are connected to the generalised turmoil in the Niger Delta and argues that they are often exacerbated – rather than attenuated – by the Nigerian federal process and its unique combination of militarism, ethnicity and religion.

Sanya Osha holds a PhD in Philosophy and has held various teaching and research positions in Nigeria, the United States, the Netherlands, and South Africa. From 2004-07 he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His publications include the book, Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa (2005).