CCS Events-Seminars

AIDS, Rape and Climate Change, 13 December

Speakers: Faith Manzi and Oliver Meth
Date: Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: The 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign closed on December 10 with insufficient attention to SA's rape epidemic - including of males - and a worsening financial crisis both affecting AIDS medicines access and the lead advocacy group, the Treatment Action Campaign. And with disastrous climate change now certain because of the COP17 Durban Mandate's failure to assure emissions cuts, we will witness climate-AIDS links spread: higher levels of air particulates as energy prices become prohibitive and households with HIV+ members turn in desperation to paraffin or coal/wood, worsening food insecurity, more extreme weather events such as the rains that recently wrecked 1400 Durban houses, more climate refugees, and an increase in water-borne diseases, malaria and other immune-lowering illnesses. Activists have long made links between domestic violence, the scourge of rape, AIDS and a degraded environment, but now the stakes are as high as they have ever been. What analysis, narratives, strategies and tactics will need to be deployed in coming months and years?

Presenters:
Faith Manzi has been as associate of CCS for years, and worked as a journalist for leading local and national periodicals. Her community work throughout Durban includes AIDS education and social advocacy.
Oliver Meth is a former CCS Community Scholar, is a social advocacy journalist, anti-rape activist and survivor of male rape. His story can be read at: mg.co.za/article/2009-11-24-not-all-rape-survivors-are-women

Immigrants in the United states, 18 November

U.S. 'Migrant Management' & Grassroots Resistance to Criminalization of Immigrant Life

Speaker: Janis Rosheuvel
Date: Friday 18 November 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
In this seminar I will discuss the transformation of immigrant policy and practice in the U.S. since 1996 and how people at the grassroots are organizing against the resulting meteoric increase in deportations and state sponsored terror against migrants in all areas of their lives. Also, building on my community organizing (and non academic) background I will discuss and seek robust feedback on my research question for my time in Durban: Can migrants' and poor people's movements in Durban organize collectively around key economic justice concerns to (1) build lasting alliances and (2) mitigate future xenophobic violence?

Speaker:
Janis Rosheuvel was born in Georgetown, Guyana, South America. She has worked in the fields of international development and gender rights at the Tahirih Justice Centre, Women for Women International and Episcopal Relief and Development. From 2007-2011 Janis served as the Executive Director/Lead Organizer at Families for Freedom (FFF) a New York City-based defense network nationally renowned for its anti-deportation work. She has also taught a course on migration and crime at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the Department of Sociology. She is currently working as a Fulbright Scholar in Durban, South Africa where her project is investigating the solidarity work happening between migrants and South Africans seeking to increase economic justice and mitigate xenophobic hostilities. She is based at the University of KwaZulu Natal's Centre for Civil Society. Janis has a BA in International Studies from American University in Washington, DC and an MA in Conflict Resolution at the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England.

What Durban COP17 must deliver! , 11 November

The African Peoples Petition: What Durban COP17 must deliver!

Speaker: Michele Maynard
Date: Friday 11 November 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: With COP17 just around the corner and the world's eyes and attention on South Africa we will look at some of the preparations made and expectations of those most affected by climate change. The PanAfrican Climate Justice Alliance assisted in generating the African Peoples Petition which is being publicised through the Trans African Climate Caravan of Hope towards Durban, a bus convoy through eastern and southern Africa. The seminar addresses the outcomes PACJA deamnds: increasing ambition on a science-based global goal of emission reduction commitments with all loopholes closed, through a renewed and continuous legally binding second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. We will also discuss mitigation, adaptation, climate finance, technology transfer and capacity building under the Convention, upholding the Bali principles of equity, historical responsibility and common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities.

Bio: Michele Maynard is the Pan African Climate Justice (PACJA) Policy and Advocacy Coordinator with the Continental Secretariat.

Ecology and the Economic Crisis, 10 November 2011

Slide Show

The Enviromental Side of the Current Economic Crisis.
Speaker: Emanuele Leonardi
Date: Thursday 10 November 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: It has often been noted that the recent financial crisis is fundamentally marked by an artificial production of scarcity through the exploitation of the General Intellect. On a different theoretical level, the ecological crisis is usually interpreted as the growing contradiction between the capitalist need for endless accumulation and the irrepressible materiality represented by the physical limits of nature. In this context, the main aim of my paper is a critique of this dichotomous reading of the interrelation between the economic and environmental sides of the current crisis of capitalism. Following an intuition advanced by Foucault in his lectures titled The Birth of Biopolitics, and adding some elements of Marx's critique of political economy, I will argue for the existence of two distinctive phases of capitalist governmentality. The first is the liberal one (whose apex is the Fordist modality of labour organization), based on a perfect congruence between natural and economic laws and, furthermore, on a resolute preference for small government. The second phase is configured as neoliberalism (or, with a different terminology, Post-Fordism), a recent shift in political economy whose peculiar features are a profound inclination for multi-level state interventionism and a resolute refusal of naturalistic naïveté: to put it crudely, according to neoliberal thinkers, nature does not exist as a monolithic entity but, rather, has to be created according to the formal structure of economic competition. This neoliberal creation of the environment makes politically practicable a specific articulation of artificiality and naturality that, in turn, opens up the possibility to unprecedentedly join biology and political economy within the realm of power exercise. Accordingly, I suggest that it is necessary to investigate this inextricable link between nature and artifact from a twofold perspective concerned with both finance and ecology. In fact, a political intervention on the complex interplay between these features is a necessary condition for the formulation of an antagonistically effective ecological critique of capitalism in its neoliberal phase.

Speaker: Emanuele Leonardi is a 4th year PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism - University of Western Ontario. His academic research mainly concerns Marxian and Foucauldian accounts of the current environmental crisis. As an activist, he is a member of the IWW - Canada, Toronto branch; and of Insurgent City - Collective of Urban Transformation, Parma, Italy.

The One Million Climate Jobs Campaign, 4 November 2011

Speaker: Rehana Dada
Date: Friday 4 November 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: The Million Climate Jobs Campaign is a coalition of labour, social movements and other civil society organisations in South Africa which recognise the need to jointly tackle unemployment and climate change. The campaign is based on sound research on transcending the current crisis, based on immediate progress towards a low-carbon economy. Given that climate change will exacerbate inequality and poverty in South Africa as it reduces access to adequate food, water, energy and housing, the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign is mobilising South Africans to demand and implement real solutions to stop climate change. These solutions will also protect and enhance the human quality of life and the natural environment, and create the jobs our society so desperately needs. Amongst major countries, South Africa has by far the highest rate of unemployment, and is also one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. These catastrophes can be simultaneously addressed. Reducing carbon emissions by shifting to renewable energy, developing a public transport system, promoting small scale agriculture, and retrofitting buildings and houses to be energy efficient, together with other measures, will create millions of jobs, improve the lives of impoverished South Africans, and serve as a model for other countries.

Speaker: Rehana Dada is Coordinator of the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign. She is a science and environmental journalist.

Bolivia at the Crossroads, 3 November 2011

Speaker: Lars Gausdal
Date: Thursday 3 November 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: The Bolivian government is facing its greatest political challenge since taking office in 2005. The recent protest against the government's plans to construct a highway through the TIPNIS area and continue hydrocarbon extraction illustrates these political tensions and gives rise to questions surrounding the workings of social movements and challenges to climate justice.

Bio: Lars Gausdal is currently a Masters student at SDS, UKZN. He worked in La Paz, Bolivia between 2009-2010 in the national office of the indigenous peasant organisation, Bartolina Sisa.

Seen And Unseen: Windows On The ICC-Kenya Trials 18 October

CCS Seminar: Seen And Unseen: Windows On The ICC-Kenya Trials
Speaker: Shailja Patel
Date: Tuesday 18 October 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
The most important story in Kenya's history is playing out now, in real time, in the chambers and corridors of the International Criminal Court. This story encompasses all the other narratives, of land, ethnicity, power, dynastic politics, going back to the formation of the Kenyan state. Kenya's future as a nation hangs in the balance. Will the cycle of impunity finally be broken?

Speaker Bio:
Shailja Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, the civil society coalition that pulled Kenya back from the brink of civil war in 2008. Her poems have won awards on 3 continents, and been translated into 15 languages. Her 2010 publishing debut, Migritude, was described by the late Howard Zinn as a work which illuminates with compelling artistry the shameful secrets of Empire's history. In 2011, she was named one of Fifty Inspirational African Feminists by the African Women’s Development Fund, and selected by Poetry Africa as the 2011 Letters To Dennis Brutus poet. Her website is www.shailja.com

THE STUFF OF EPIC POETRY: ICC-KENYA TRIALS
OP-ED, DURBAN MERCURY, MONDAY OCTOBER 17TH
“No one can compensate you for rape. No one can compensate you for infection with HIV. But there is a certain amount of peace only justice can bring. There are those of us who meet our perpetrators every day. Those who raped us are our neighbours. It’s tough knowing that they are still very safe from the arm of the law.” Survivor of Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence

The most important story in Kenya’s history is currently playing out in the chambers and corridors of the International Criminal Court. This story encompasses all the other stories that have ripped great tears into our national fabric, going all the way back to British colonial rule. The stories of land – who gets it, who gets kicked off it. The story of ethnicity as destiny. The story of political dynasties – imperial monarchies in all but name. The overarching story of impunity for the rich and powerful.

The ICC-Kenya trials are the stuff of epic poetry. There are heroes – the witnesses who have defied every kind of threat and intimidation to tell their stories of dispossession, rape, violence, loss of entire families, during Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence.

There are villains. The previously untouchable politicians and generals who planned and executed chilling campaigns of terror against vulnerable communities. Why? To protect what they consider their inalienable right to the spoils of political office.

In the past year, Kenyans have been treated to the ironic spectacle of our ruling elite displaying a newfound enthusiasm for local manufacturing. The millionaire ministers and MPs who travel in US-made Hummers and helicopters, wear shirts custom-made in London, smoke Cuban cigars, import their furniture from Sweden and their entertainment systems from Japan, holiday in Paris and New York, came out as fervent devotees of the Made In Kenya label – but only when it came to justice.

The Kenyan government spent over 90 million Kenyan shillings on campaigns to convince Kenyans that trying the architects of the post-election violence at the Hague was somehow deplorable. Justice for the victims, they said, could only be delivered at home. Kenya should not shame itself before the world by seeking an international resolution.

Europeans may consume daily gallons of coffee and tea grown in the Kenyan highlands, eat fresh garden vegetables flown from the Rift Valley, on tables decorated with roses and carnations from the shores of Lake Naivasha. But the workers who pick the coffee, plant the vegetables, bear the rashes and sores on their skins from the toxic pesticides used on Kenya’s flower farms, must not be sullied by a foreign justice. These essential human cogs in the machinery of global consumerism could not possibly be served by anything but homegrown courts and legal processes.

Fortunately, Kenyans saw through the mendacity of this argument. Over a million signatures were collected in support of the ICC trials. Perhaps even more crucially, it became clear that Kenya’s government lacked the political will to set up the required tribunal in Kenya.

The stage was set for the Hague. One one side – six suspects, accused of “crimes against humanity.” Six of the most powerful men in Kenya, alleged to have financed, trained and mobilized militia to terrorize communities from their homes, to burn and loot and rape.

On the other side – 350,000 Kenyans displaced from their homes and livelihoods. Over 3,500 Kenyans seriously injured. The families of 1,220 murdered victims.

It is a David and Goliath story. The Kenyan government anointed the six suspects as Goliath, by opening the national coffers to pay for their legal and PR teams. Planeloads of MPs flew to the Hague and threw lavish parties to ‘support’ the accused.

There were no entertainment budgets for David – the prosecution’s witnesses who were survivors of the post-election violence. These brave Kenyans, who had already endured great loss and pain, were now subjected to a battery of intimidation designed to silence them. Kenya has no witness protection program, and every witness has chosen to remain anonymous. But they still live with the daily fear of being ‘outed’ – with terrible consequences to themselves, their families and their communities.

The quest for justice in international arenas is not new in Kenya. During the state of emergency imposed by the British colonial regime from 1952 - 1960, imprisoned Mau Mau freedom fighters had the temerity to speak out about crimes committed against them. They wrote letters to the United Nations, to British MPs, to the British Foreign Office, even to the British monarch, outlining the tortures and abuses they suffered. “Where does custration (sic) come from?” demanded one such letter. “Is this the British law or the Nazi law?”

Freedom fighter Wambui Otieno, raped in detention by a colonial officer, famously demanded of the British regime that her rapist be brought to trial. He was forced to return to England.

Before we were a country, we knew ourselves to be part of global movements for justice. Now we have come full circle – the poorest Kenyan can claim the gold standard of international justice that her own government has not afforded her. Can turn to the international statutes and conventions that Kenya is signatory to, and under them, seek redress for crimes committed against her.

What can the victims hope to gain in return for reliving the horrors, and risking their lives all over again?

In an interview with journalist Tom Maliti, on the ICC Kenya Monitor, the lawyer to the victims, Sureta Chana, said they seek, obviously, reparations. While stolen lives cannot be returned, compensation can be calculated for lost homes, land and property. However, there is no ICC protocol for awarding reparations to victims of crimes against humanity. Kenya may well be the test case that sets the precedent for future cases.

Equally important, and perhaps much more achievable, the survivors want an apology. They want to be seen as human beings. Human beings who matter enough to their country to merit recognition of violations against them. The import of this apparently simple longing is enormous, when we consider that to date, not a single politician or elected representative has expressed any remorse or regret to ordinary Kenyans for the post-election violence. The simple words: “I am sorry”, from a member of Kenya’s political class, would fundamentally alter our national DNA coding.

In 2009, I narrated a documentary, Burden Of Peace, that gave voice to Kenyan women survivors of the post-election violence. One testimony in particular left me lost for words.

“Rosemary Akinyi is a forty-year-old widowed mother of five. When police broke down her door in Kibera, She begged them to spare her teen daughter, and rape her instead. So they did. Rosemary knew that if she got medical help in 72 hours, she could avert tragedy. But at the time, there was no way out of Nairobi’s slums of death, ringed by police and paramilitaries. Today, Rosemary is infected with HIV .”

Major Gen Hussein Ali, one of the ICC Kenya suspects, head of Kenya’s police force at the time, is alleged to have given the police free rein to go on rampage against vulnerable Kenyans like Rosemary Akinyi. His testimony to the Waki Commission, the precursor to the ICC trials:

My lords, I would do everything exactly the same ... I would not change a thing.
END

Shailja Patel is a Kenyan activist, playwright and poet, who is the 2011 Letters To Dennis Brutus Poet for Poetry Africa. www.shailja.com

Climate Change, Poverty & Public Policy, 11 October

CCS Seminar: Climate Change, Poverty and Public Policy in Nigeria's Niger Delta

Speaker: Fidelis Allen
Date: Tuesday 11 October 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
Climate change has adverse implications for low-income communities. Like most of Africa, Nigeria does not seem prepared to deal with either adaptation or mitigation (even from notorious gas flaring in the Niger Delta). This paper highlights the relationship between climate change and poverty, and identifies how communities are contributing to public policy.

Speaker Bio:
Fidelis Allen, a post-doctoral scholar of the UKZN School of Development Studies, has taught in the University of Port Harcourt Department of Political and Administrative Studies. He obtained his doctorate in Politics at UKZN in 2010. He was a recipient of a doctoral research award from the International Development Research Centre to study implementation of oil-related environmental policy, and government inertia and conflict in the Niger Delta. He is also a member of the Board of Ethnicity and Politics Research Committee at the International Political Science Association and has been active in the Nigerian Political Science Association.

Latin America’s third left, 6 October

Topic: Latin America’s third left: Autonomy and participation in the new political landscape
Speakers: Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly (University of California-Los Angeles)
Date: Thursday, 6 October 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
We argue that a particularly important component of Latin America’s current radical resurgence is what we call the “third left .” The easiest way to identify the third left may be to contrast it with the “old” left approaches that have dominated the region for the last five decades. One such approach was the armed guerilla movements, inspired by the Cuban revolution, but now largely extinct (with Colombia as the chief, now waning, exception). The other was the mass populist movements linked by patronage or party discipline to left or center-left electoral parties. While the guerrilleros have declined, left political parties much like the traditional ones, far from disappearing, have surged in the last several years across much of Latin America. Both of these lefts have helped make progressive changes in Latin America—challenging inequality, attacking illiteracy, improving services to the poor, redistributing land, and mobilizing ordinary people to defend their rights. But neither has had a strong tradition of bottom-up organizing. The military model at the core of the guerilla insurgencies and the model of charismatic leadership at the core of electoral leftism are centralized, top-down models—structures that can represent the interests of poor majorities, but usually without directly involving them in the decisions that affect their lives. The third left takes a different direction.

Speakers:
Marie Kennedy was educated at Berkeley and Harvard and is Professor Emerita of Community Planning at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She combines the roles of activist and scholar, teaching, working in and writing about community development, planning education, participatory action research and Latin American social movements. Over the years, Marie has supervised numerous collaborative projects, through which students earn academic credit while providing professional assistance and research to community organizations, focusing on a wide range of issues, including housing, anti-displacement, anti-racism and community empowerment. Marie serves on the board of directors of Grassroots International, is the co-chair of the steering committee of Planners Network and is an editor of Progressive Planning.

Chris Tilly is a professor in the urban planning department and director of UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. His research interests include labor markets, inequality, urban development, part-time and contingent work, gender and racial disparities, job mobility and public policies that engender better jobs. While most of his research has been in the U.S., he has also traveled to South and Central American nations and written about their development issues and social movements. Tilly spent 20 years as editor of Dollars and Sense, a popular economics magazine. Tilly earned his bachelor's degree in biochemistry and master's from Harvard and his doctorate in economics and urban studies and planning from MIT.

Emancipatory Global Labour Studies & Social Movements, 5 October

Topic: Emancipatory Global Labour Studies and Social Movements
Speaker: Peter Waterman (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague)
Date: Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
Organised labour and social movements have not seen eye to eye in the struggles that logically should unite them. Is there a strategy that might generate more fusion based on social emancipation? Waterman's current work - 'An Emancipatory Global Labour Studies is Necessary!' - critiques incrementalist 'New Global Labour Studies' for accepting the political and discourse limits of capital and state, argues for the necessity of surpassing such, and demonstrates that such a new paradigm is not only necessary but possible.

Speaker:
Peter Waterman was born in London (Great Britain) in 1936. He qualified as a journalist in 1955 and worked as such in Prague 1955-1958 for the International Union of Students (IUS) and in London 1960-1961. He studied and specialised on labour history at Ruskin College (Social and Economic Studies) and Oxford University (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) 1961-1965. From 1965 to 1969 he worked for the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Prague as a labour education officer for and in English-speaking Africa, ran a national trade union course in Nigeria in 1968 for the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC), and did a Master's degree in West African Studies at the University of Birmingham. He was a lecturer on world contemporary history at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (Nigeria), 1970-1972. In 1972 Waterman became a researcher and senior lecturer at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague (The Netherlands) on unions, social movements and internationalism, first in Labour Studies Programmes, then until 1998 in the Politics of Alternative Development Strategies Programme. His Ph.D. (Non-Western Studies, Nijmegen 1983) was on the political and theoretical significance of portworker and dockworker relations in Lagos (Nigeria) until the 1970s. He did studies on union and labour rights strategies by Spanish dockworkers in European context in the 1980s and has also worked in and on labour, national and international social movements in India, South Africa and Latin America. In the 1990s Waterman was involved in a number of experimental websites, to be found by searching the web for Global Solidarity Dialogue (GSD, GloSoDia) and relating to new global social and solidarity movements seeking alternatives to capitalist and neo-liberal globalization. He became a scholar-activist and contributed to the activities of the progressive research and educational centre International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE) in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and, since opting for early retirement in 1998, he increased his academic and political involvement in activities for the World Social Forum (WSF) and the global justice and solidarity movement more generally.

Ideology and agency in protest politics, 30 September

CCS Seminar: Ideology and agency in protest politics
Speaker: Trevor Ngwane
Date: Friday, 30 September 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30‑14:00

Topic:
The aim is to explore the manner in which protest leaders in the
post‑apartheid context understand themselves and their actions against
the backdrop of the political, economic and social conditions within
which protests take place. This is done as a contribution to the debate
around the nature of the challenge posed by protest action to the
post‑apartheid neoliberal order. The study uses an actor‑oriented
ethnographic methodology to examine at close range the nature of the
protest movement in working class South African townships focusing on
the so‑called service delivery protests. In the quest to understand the
action, forms of organization and ideologies characteristic of the
protests, and their significance for post‑apartheid society, I use some
concepts and insights from the literature on social movements, discourse
theory and, in particular, Gramsci’s ideas on hegemony. The latter helps
me to define and assess the threat posed by the protests to the dominant
order which I characterize as neoliberalism or neoliberal capitalism.
The conclusion that I come to is that the protests are best understood
in the context of the transition from apartheid to democracy: its
dynamics and its unmet expectations. They represent a fragmented and
inchoate challenge to the post‑apartheid neoliberal order. Their
weakness, I argue, partly derives from the effects of the demobilization
of the working class movement during the transition to democracy. It
will take broader societal developments, including the emergence of a
particular kind of leadership and organization, for the protests to pose
a serious challenge to the present order. The experience of the struggle
against apartheid suggests the necessity of a vision or visions of
alternatives to inspire, shape and cohere struggles around everyday
issues and concerns into struggles for radical society‑wide
alternatives. Protest action must be linked to imagination of a
different ways of doing things and organising society. Without this
link, it is likely that the protest movement will be increasingly
isolated and contained, and some of its energy might be used negatively,
for example, in populist chauvinism, xenophobic attacks, mob justice,
and other forms of anti‑social individual behavior that are becoming a
worrisome feature of post‑apartheid society.

Speaker Bio:
Trevor Ngwane is national organiser of the Million Climate Jobs campaign
and is a masters student at the Centre for Civil Society. He was
formerly a trade union organiser and led the Anti‑Privatisation Forum
and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee.

The Challenge of Academic Publishing in SA, 16 September

CCS Seminar: Challenges facing scholarly publishers in South Africa:
Towards a turnaround strategy or tilting at windmills
Speaker: Solani Ngobeni
Date: Cancelled
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
The seminar presentation will examine the impact of neoliberalism on the
politics and practices of scholarly publishing in South Africa. It will
further seek to investigate the relationship between the dominant
economic mode, and the production and dissemination of scholarly ideas
in South Africa. It will use historical materialism to critique global
neoliberalism and examine the generation of ideas from other contexts
such as the US and UK. It will also examine the gains and losses in
South Africa’s current orientation to publishing as influenced by market
forces within the SA academic environment. The objective is to
understand the politics and practice of scholarly publishing within the
university presses; including considerations behind the choice to
publish or not to publish certain titles and the impact of lack of
financial support from the parent university on the university press.

Speaker Bio:
Mr Solani Ngobeni is the Director of Publications at the Africa
Institute of South Africa (AISA) where he is responsible for publishing
scholarly books, monographs, conference proceedings, occasional papers
as well as the peer-reviewed and Department of Higher Education and
Training accredited journal Africa Insight. He is also a Research
Associate in the Department of Languages and Literature in the Faculty
of Arts at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University where he is
currently pursuing a DPhil in the Department of Political Sciences. He
holds a Masters degree in publishing from the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In 2007 he was named South Africa’s
International Young Publisher of the Year under the auspices of the
British Council. Solani is a published author and has presented papers
at both local and international conferences. He is the editor of a
recently published book titled Scholarly Publishing in Africa:
Opportunities and impediments, Africa Institute, 2010. His research
interests include the politics of race in knowledge production, the
state of research and scholarly publishing in Africa in general and
South Africa in particular and issues around book distribution in Africa.

Investors and the the environment, 13 September

CCS Seminar: How do investors value the environment? Why a pile of stones is not a house
Speaker: Sarah Bracking
Date: Tuesday 13 September 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
There has been a recent growth in the scope of foreign investment in Africa, and the consequent greater financialisation of resource-based economies. Some of this investment has been speculative and based on perceived high value ‘futures’ in biodiversity, bio-fuels and land, carbon capture or finite minerals. However, the financialisation of the various economic sectors which extract wealth from Nature includes older markets in agribusiness, agriculture, mining and infrastructure, and these are the principle subject here. This article explores how financial networks in Africa (and tax havens) link natural assets to international private equity funds, and donor development finance, serving as a political technology over the future of non-human resources. To do this, it reviews how ‘impact investing’ or ‘developmental’ private equity funds build in concern for the ‘environment’ into their investment decision-making. The argument here is at three levels: 1) that private equity currently employs a thin, partial, and pseudo mathematical method of assessing environmental impact and worth; 2) that environmental and developmental impact ‘science’ is a performative political technology which adds legitimacy to the authority of financiers, but does little or nothing of benefit to the ‘environment’; and finally, that 3) private equity has lead to the financialisation of the non-human world through a power relationship which favours financiers. This is facilitated by the wider dissembling of sovereignty and national economic space in the global economy over the last 30 years, the growth of secrecy jurisdictions, the consequent making of spaces of exception from law and regulation, which together challenge the future of democratic management of environmental resources. Thus this paper asserts financialisation as a political relationship, which (de)values the non-human world. The Jubilee South network, the Climate Justice movement, Tax Justice, Counter Balance, Cornerhouse, the Bretton Woods Project (UK) and many other civil society groups have been concerned about how to rearrange international finance and investment in the interests of people traditionally oppressed by the global economic system. What can they add to policy debates, and what can they learn from theories of 'neoliberalised nature'? Should activists engage with the authority of the 'expert' on environmental impact assessments, or reject outright efforts to produce financialised 'concern' for the environment?

Speaker:
Dr Sarah Bracking attended first York University in the UK (BA Hons Politics), then Leeds University (MA International Resources and Development; PhD on Business and the State in Zimbabwe 1991-7), and then worked as a Researcher at the Centre for Democratisation Studies at Leeds University, principally on the International IDEA State of Democracy Project. She then moved to the University of Manchester where she is currently a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Development at the Institute for Development Policy & Management. Sarah teaches Politics and Development and the Political Economy of Development, particularly with regard to southern African states. She is editor of Corruption and Development (Palgrave, 2007) and author of Money and Power (Pluto, 2009) which is about development finance institutions and the financialisation of power as ‘aid’. Sarah is also a member of the Democratic Audit of the UK, the International-IDEA state of democracy network, the Review of African Political Economy Editorial Board and the Britain Zimbabwe Society. She has also worked with the Zimbabwe Coalitino on Debt and Development on debt write-off; Counter Balance on reform of the European Investment Bank; A4ID in their training programme; and most recently with Norad on reform of European development finance institutions (DFIs) and tax haven use and Norwegian Church Aid on how DFIs represent their developmental impact. Sarah is currently working on a book on the financialisation of power.

World Conference Against Racism & 911, 8 September

CCS Seminar: The World Conference Against Racism and 9/11 ten years after
Speakers: Ashwin Desai and Patrick Bond
Date: Thursday, 8 September, 12:30-2
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
In the first week of September, 2001, the World Conference Against Racism was marred by intense power politics, including a walkout by the US and Israel. More than 15,000 civil society activists marched against WCAR, demanding that both Israel's occupation of Palestine and reparations for slavery, colonialism and apartheid be tabled. Although the conference ended in failure, in South Africa it proved to be a crucial turning point in local politics, marking the rise of an independent critical civil society. In the second week of September, the attacks by Islamic militants on the World Trade Center and Pentagon heralded the rise of the 'war on terror' and the imminent decline of what had been a hopeful global movement for justice.

Speakers:
Ashwin Desai is a sociologist and the author of numerous books, including We are the Poors (Monthly Review, 2002) which sees WCAR through the eyes of activist leadership. Patrick Bond directs the Centre for Civil Society and authored the book Talk Left Walk Right (UKZN Press, 2006), whose chapter on WCAR focuses on its implications for global-scale race and reparations politics.

Service delivery protests in Durban, 1 September

CCS Seminar: Contention in response to neoliberal policies in post-apartheid South Africa: The case of basic services delivery in Durban
Speaker: Tehmina Brohi
Date: Thursday 1 September 2011
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic:
The end of apartheid in South Africa was contemporaneous with the roll-out phase of neoliberalism in the international arena. As the effects of market-oriented policies began to be felt by poorer communities, citizens throughout Durban began to mobilize against lack of basic services. Keeping in mind Durban’s international reputation as one of the best urban water and sanitation systems in Africa, it is crucial to examine the disconnect between the image and the reality. The presentation will provide a brief overview of the water policies implemented by the Durban municipality in an effort to promote improved access to water services. The research focuses on how citizens began to see participatory democratic mechanisms in post-apartheid South Africa as tools to organize and mobilize against the government’s inability to deliver on promises of access to basic utilities as a result of neo-liberal policies. Questions are raised about whether legal venues of protest have indeed been more efficient for achieving significant gains. Theories of political opportunity structure, mobilization theories and framework theories are employed to gain a better understanding of South African social movements.

Bio:
Tehmina Brohi is an undergraduate student at the City College of New York. She is studying International Studies with a concentration in Development Studies. She has previously conducted research on water privatization and the rise of the French water multi-nationals while studying in Paris. Tehmina is currently a visiting scholar at CCS conducting research for her bachelors degree thesis.

Climate change and water adaptation, 26 August

CCS Seminar: In Hot Water - Climate change and water adaptation in Nairobi and Durban

Presenters: Stephen Otieno, Elizabeth Wamuchiru, Alex Todd and Beth Lorimer
Date: Friday, 26 August 2011
Time: 12.30 – 14.00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, Memorial Tower Building 602, Howard College, UKZN

Topic: Rising temperatures, increased severity of drought, more frequent
flooding and storms are all threatening water availability and quality
and posing significant challenges on communities and cities in the face
of climate change. Four visiting students from Nairobi, Kenya and
Toronto, Canada will share research findings and insights on climate
change impacts and water resources in Nairobi and Durban. The students
are working with CCS on an IDRC-DFID Climate Change Adaptation in Africa
project, which aims to link university researchers with community-based
NGOs conducting environmental education and participatory workshops in
vulnerable areas of Nairobi, Maputo and Durban, with pressing climate
change and water-related problems.

Bios: Otieno and Wamuchiru are masters students in geography and in
urban/regional planning at the University of Nairobi, respectively; Todd
and Lorimer are MA candidate at York University, Canada, in Geography
and Environmental Studies, respectively.

Kate Skinner seminar on media democracy, 22 August

The Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu‑Natal presents:

CCS Seminar: Campaigning for South African media democracy
Presenter: Kate Skinner
Date: Monday 22 August 2011
Time: 12:30‑14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic:
South Africa is burdened by a state broadcaster with debilitating
political and economic biases. The Save our SABC coalition and its
successor SOS: Support Public Broadcasting have been joined by the
Right2Know campaign to mobilise ordinary people for reform of media and
information. The South African government has recognised the power of
these civil society initiatives but a great deal more watchdogging is
required. What is the state of the struggle for genuine rights of
speech, information and access when it comes to the SABC? How do we move
further, to democratise a print media driven by the profit motive and
mainly controlled by foreign multinational corporations?

Bio:
Kate Skinner has been involved in media, advocacy and development issues
since 1994. She has worked for trade unions, NGOs and briefly for
government. She headed the communications department for the South
African Democratic Teachers Union, SADTU where she launched the monthly
union publication – the Educator’s Voice – with a monthly circulation of
120 000 newspapers. She headed the communications department of the
rural water and sanitation NGO, the Mvula Trust. She advised the
Minister of Provincial and Local Government on media strategies post the
2000 local government elections and worked for a number of independent
TV production houses including Kagiso Education Television and Traffic
on new project development and research. Most recently she has been
co‑ordinating the civil society coalition “SOS: Support Public
Broadcasting”, previously the “Save our SABC” Coalition. For the last
ten years Kate has sat on the board of the Freedom of Expression
Institute (FXI).

Translocal Climate Justice Solidarities 5 August

Presenter: Paul Routledge
Date: Friday 5 August 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic:
This paper will argue that climate justice involves firstly, an antagonistic framing of climate politics, secondly the formation of pre-figurative logics of political activity, especially in relation to communing, and thirdly, the creation of solidarities between differently located struggles. The paper will consider the experiences of the Bangladesh Krishok Federation (Landless people's movement) in order to raise questions concerning the forging of sustainable translocal climate justice solidarities.

Bio:
Paul Routledge is a Reader in Human Geography at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research interests include climate Justice, climate change; global justice networks; social movements; activism and geopolitics. He is co-editor (with Gearoid O Tuathail and Simon Dalby) of The Geopolitics Reader (Routledge, 2006), and co-author (with Andrew Cumbers) of Global Justice Networks: geographies of transnational solidarity (MUP, 2009).

Leave the Oil in the Soil, 2 August

Topic: Lessons for Durban from Ecuador's 'leave the oil in the
soil' eco/indigenous movement
Presenter: Patrick Bond
Date: Tuesday 2 August 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic:
Leave the Oil in the Soil! has become one of the main campaigning
slogans linking local and global activism, and linking energy justice to
climate justice. The Ecuadoran Amazon has become the main battleground
on two fronts: reparations for oil damages ($19 billion owed by Texaco
after a February 2011 court judgment); and halting oil extraction from
the Yasuni National Park. The logic of non-exploitation of oil is
applicable to Durban in four ways: the offshore exploration being
undertaken by a Burmese tycoon; the ongoing degradation of South Durban
because of oil refining; the doubling of the Durban-Johannesburg oil
pipeline (and suspicious tripling of construction costs); and the Durban
COP17 climate summit. The Oilwatch network stitches together a variety
of arguments against oil, and with many new sites in Africa discovering
petroleum reserves, civil society advocacy will become more important so
as to avoid yet more Resource Curses and contributions to climate change.

Bio:
In late July, CCS director Patrick Bond spent a week in Ecuador courtesy
of the groups Oilwatch, Accion Ecologica and the Rosa Luxemburg
Foundation. He is author of the forthcoming book Politics of Climate
Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below

Leaving oil in the soil, from Durban’s coast to Ecuador’s Amazon
By Patrick Bond

There’s no way around it: to solve the worsening climate crisis requires we must accept both that the vast majority of fossil fuels must now be left underground, and that through democratic planning, we must collectively reboot our energy, transport, agricultural, production, consumption and disposal systems so that by 2050 we experience good living with less than a quarter of our current levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s what science tells our species, and here in South Africa a punctuation mark was just provided by a near-disaster in Durban – host of the world climate summit, four months from now – during intense storms with six-meter waves last week. A decrepit 40-year old oil tanker, MT Phoenix, lost its anchor mooring on July 26 and was pushed to the rocky shoreline in Christmas Bay, 25km north of the city.

The shipwreck is in the heart of a beautiful albeit class-segregated tourist and retirement site, Durban’s North Coast, that just two weeks earlier held an Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) world competition, Mr Price Pro. That event boasted some of the best waves ever seen in ASP history, said contestants.

But cold winter swells from marine hell reemerged just when MT Phoenix was being towed into Durban harbour for confiscation, having lost its engines a few hundred miles down the coast. According to Cathleen Jacka of the maritimematters.net website, the incident confounded the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA), what “with hints at a deliberate beaching; the possibility of a mystery stowaway still hiding onboard; uncertainty as to the true identity of the owners and even that the vessel was scrapped in India last year.” A SAMSA official observed that the 15-member crew “seemed inexperienced in the basic actions required to stabilise the vessel’s position” and remarked, “It would not be the first time that an unscrupulous ship owner was prepared to sacrifice a vessel in attempt to realise the insured value.”

Except that there was apparently no insurance for the MT Phoenix, since Lloyds took it off the books late last year, and allegedly it was on its final trip, from West Africa to India’s ghastly ship breaking graveyard. The owner, Suhair Khan of Dubai, stopped taking calls, leaving South Africans to bear the risk of 400 tons of oil spilling if the ship broke on the rocks. Estimates of the heroic rescue operation’s cost to the taxpayer easily run into the millions of dollars, but thankfully the crew was saved and oil was laboriously pumped ashore.

Offshore drilling in the ‘remarkably stable’ (sic) Agulhas Current
However another potential oil disaster looms in this very location, thanks to South African government energy bureaucrats. On May 5, the Petroleum Agency of SA began authorizing seismic oil surveying by a dubious Singapore-registered company, Silver Wave Energy, in water depths ranging from 30 meters to two kilometers. By comparison, BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform in the much calmer Gulf of Mexico drilled 1.5 km down to the seafloor surface.

Silver Wave Energy’s primary owner is Burmese businessman Min Min Aung, who is tight with the junta that still rules there, according to reliable reports. Exploitation of oil and gas in Burma’s Andaman Sea has long been controversial (my grandfather was deputy warden there during brutal colonial times), and when Unocal – now Chevron – built a pipeline to Thailand, it did such enormous damage to people and the environment that local villagers, supported by Earthrights International, successfully sued the firm for $30 million.

Since 2007 the Arakan islands on Burma’s Bay of Bengal coast have been the main site of intense conflict, as Jockai Khaing from Arakan Oil Watch told me last week, and again Aung is a key player. Silver Wave has also been exploring dubious extraction projects in Russia, Sudan, Guinea-Conakry, Indonesia and Iraq, but in spite of sanctions against Burma (supposedly supported by South Africa), Aung received PetroSA’s endorsement to explore 8000 square km stretching from Durban to SA’s main aluminum-smelting city, Richards Bay.

Source: PetroSA, July 2011

Silver Wave simultaneously announced a $100 million oil search in the fragile Hukaung Valley in northeastern Burma, and if the company carries out its initial plans, this will threaten local villagers as well as endangered tigers, Himalayan bears, elephants and leopards. Although the area contains the world’s largest tiger reserve, according to reporter Thomas Maung Shwe of Mizzima news service, “the Burmese regime has encouraged logging, gold mining, large scale farms and the building of factories inside.” As the scandal grew, Silver Wave denied what its own press release had announced, but conceded it would drill near the reserve.

A company this dastardly is a high risk, and to prove the point, Silver Wave’s environmental impact document includes a description of the notorious Agulhas Current, which begins at the Mozambique border: “Compared to other western boundary currents the Agulhas Current adjacent to southern Africa’s East Coast exhibits a remarkable stability.” Huh? In reality, the Natal Pulse races down the Agulhas a half-dozen times each year, pushing 20km per day. It is one reason Durban’s coastline hosts more than 50 major ship carcasses. Creating havoc further south on the Wild Coast, the Pulse contributes to the rouge waves that have sunk 1000 more vessels in what is considered one of the world’s most dangerous shipping corridors.

Susan Casey’s book The Wave pays Agulhas this respect: “Crude, diesel, jet fuel, liquefied natural gas: oil in all its forms was heartbreaking, infuriating and all-too-common sight in the ocean. Supertankers, behemoths that couldn’t make it through the Suez Canal, swung down from the Middle East, took their chances hopping a ride in the Agulhas, and met their share of disasters. Salvagers used every tool at their disposal to prevent the damaged tankers from gushing out their contents, especially in fragile near-shore environments, but sometimes the battle was lost.”

Source: Silver Wave submission to PetroSA

South Africa’s petrochem armpit
If, thankfully, the beaches at Christmas Bay were saved from a spill this week, others have not been so fortunate. Just offshore South Durban’s Cuttings Beach, a few kilometers from where I’m writing, we witnessed a significant 2004 oil spill of five tons at the Single Buoy Mooring, the 50-meter deep intake pump that feeds the refineries with 80 percent of SA’s crude oil imports. Onshore, corporate pollution standards are so lax that the rust-bucket structures regularly spring disastrous leaks and explode.

Source: Southen Durban Community Enviromental Alliance photos of 2007 incidents

Daily, poisons are flared onto thousands of neighbouring residents. The Indian, coloured and African communities suffer the world’s highest-ever recorded asthma rate in a school (52 percent of kids), as Settlers Primary sits next to the country’s largest paper mill (Mondi) and between two refineries: one run by Engen, Chevron and Total; and the other, called Sapref, by BP, Shell and Thebe Investments. Sapref’s worst leak so far was 1.5 million liters into the Bluff Nature Reserve and adjoining residences in 2001.

Source: SDCEA

Together these refineries can process 300,000 barrels of oil a day, more than any other single site in Africa aside from an Algerian mega-refinery. A new 705km pipeline from the Durban refineries to Johannesburg will double the existing pumping capacity, an invitation for much more damage here. Delayed two years, the government pipeline project’s cost overrun went from $1.4 billion announced in 2005 to $3.4 bn today. Our petrochemical armpit gets smellier, as soaring financial costs add to the social and environmental calamaties.

Amazonian oil soils our forest lungs
Because of flying so much, I am feeling an acute need to identify and contest the full petroleum commodity chain up to the point it not only poisons my South Durban neighbours but generates catastrophic climate change. And regrettably, this search must include Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador (and from last week Peru as well), for even South America’s most progressive governments are currently extracting and exporting as much oil and gas as they possibly can. We may even be recipients in South Africa, if government’s plans to build a massive $15 billion heavy oil refinery near Port Elizabeth come to fruition. A $300 million downpayment was announced in the last budget, and full capacity will be 400,000 barrels per day.

From where would this dirty crude come? Two weeks before he was booted from office in September 2008, disgraced SA president Thabo Mbeki signed a heavy oil deal with Hugo Chavez. It appeared a last-gasp effort by Mbeki to restore a shred of credibility with the core group to his left – the Congress of SA Trade Unions and SA Communist Party – who successfully conspired to replace him with their own candidate, Jacob Zuma, as ruling party leader nine months earlier. In those last moments of power, Mbeki fancifully claimed he wanted to pursue Bolivarian-type trade deals, and Chavez told Mbeki, “It is justice ... it will be a wonderful day when the first Venezuelan tanker stops by to leave oil for South Africa.” The harsh reality is that the preferred refinery site, Port Elizabeth’s Coega, will probably retain its nickname, the “Ghost on the Coast”, and Durban will continue to suffer the bulk of oil imports, as BP now actively campaigns against a new state refinery.

Venezuelan dirty crude is akin to Canadian tar sands, and hopefully sense will prevail in Caracas. There is a fierce battle, however, for hearts and minds in both Bolivia – where movements fighting ‘extractivism’ have held demonstrations against the first indigenous president, Evo Morales, even at the same time his former UN ambassador Pablo Solon bravely led the world climate justice fight within the hopeless arena of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations – and Ecuador where Rafael Correa regularly speaks of replacing capitalism with socialism. Both have ‘rights of Mother Earth’ in their constitutions – so far untested.

In Quito and Neuva Rocafuerte deep in the Amazon last week, I witnessed the most advanced eco-social battle for a nation’s hearts-and-minds underway anywhere, with the extraordinary NGO Accion Ecologica insisting that Correa’s grudging government leaves the oil in Yasuni National Park’s soil. Because he was trained in neoclassical economics and hasn’t quite recovered, Correa favours selling Yasuni forests on the carbon markets, which progressive ecologists reject in principle.

Accion Ecologica assembled forty members of the civil society network Oilwatch – including four others from Africa led by Friends of the Earth International chairperson Nnimmo Bassey from the Niger Delta – first to witness the mess left by Chevron after a quarter century’s operations. Six months ago, local courts found the firm responsible for $8.6 billion in damages: cultural destruction including extinction of two indigenous nations, and water and soil pollution and deforestation in the earth’s greatest lung – but Chevron’s California headquarters refuses to cough up.

Oil spots from Texaco’s operations already encroach into Yasuni – where Bassey feels at home

The really hopeful part of the visit, however, was Accion Ecologica’s proposal at Yasuni, on the Peruvian border, that $7-10 billion worth of oil in the block known as ITT not be drilled. Part of the North’s debt for overuse of the planet’s CO2 carrying capacity must be to compensate Ecuador’s people the $3.5 billion that they would otherwise earn from extracting the oil. Leaving it unexploited in the Amazon is the most reasonable way that industrial and post-industrial countries can make a downpayment on their climate debt.

If the UN’s Green Climate Fund design team, co-chaired by South African planning minister Trevor Manuel, were serious about spending its promised $100 billion a year by 2020, this project is where they would start, with an announcement on November 28 to put the Durban COP17 climate summit on the right footing.

Don’t count on it. Instead, as usual, civil society must push this argument, in the process insisting on leaving oil in the soil everywhere so that other tankers share what we pray will be the final fate of the wretched ship MT Phoenix: a graceful not rocky retirement.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban

Threatened lagoons at Yasuni National Park

Yekelani amafutha emhlabathini – noma nibhekane nokuchitheka kwayo olwandle lwaseNyakatho neTheku, ningcolise umoya waseNingizimu neTheku futhi nicekele phansi nehlathi iAmazon?
NguPatrick Bond
Yahunyushwa nguFaith ka-Manzi

Ayikho futhi enye indlela esingakhuluma nagyo: ukuxazulula ukuqhubeka nokushuba kwesimo sezulu esidinga ukuthi samukele ukuthi izindlela okokubasa kwemvelo kudingeka ukuthi manje kuyekelwe emhlabathini, futhi nangokuhlela okunokubuswa kwentando yeningi kufanele sonke siqale kabusha izindlela zamandla okubasa, ezokuthutha, ezolimo, ezokukhiqiza, ezokuthenga kanye nezokuchitha ukuze kuthi mgomyaka ka2050 sikwazi ukuphila izimpilo ezinhle lapho ingxenye enkulu yezisizi ezingcolisa umoya wasemkhathathini uzobe ungasafani nowamanje.

Ilokho ososayensi abasitshela khona, kodwa okunesihibana uma sesibheka imbedumehlwana ecishe yenzeka olwandle lwaseSheffiled ngenkathi kuneziphepho ezinkulu kulamasonto adlule, ngenkathi umkhumbi omdala onemimyaka engamashumi amane othwala amafutha,MT Phoenix isuka emgqeni wemikhumbi ebilindele ukungena emtateni weTheku futhi wabusujama endaweni enamatshe amakhilomitha angamashumi amabili nanhlanu kusukela edolobheni.

Ngokusho kukaCathleen Jacka wewebsite imaritimematters.net, lengozi yaxaka abaphathi beSouth African Maritime Safety Authority, “engath into eyenzeka ngamabomu; futhi kucatshangwa ukuthi kungase kube khona ababecashe emkhumbini; ukungazi kahle abanikazi bomkhumbi nokuthi lomkhumbi ubungasavunyelwa ukuba sebamanzini ngokwaseIndia kusukela ngonyaka odlule.

Esinye sezikhulu saqaphelisisa ukuthi ithimba labasebenzi abayishumi nanhlanu bomkhumbi “babebonakala bengenalo ulwazi olwanele mayelana nendlela yokumisa umkhumbi” futhi waphawula ukuthi kobe kungekona okokuqala ukuba umnikazi womkhumbi onobuqili wayezimisele ukunikela ngomkhumbi ukuze athole unzuzo yomshuwalense.”

Kwakunengcephe yamathani angamakhulu amane amafutha ayethwelwe umkhumbi kuloluhambo lwayo lokugcina, kusukela eNtshonalanga Afrika kuya eIndia lapho kuphahlazwa khona imikhumbi. Ukuba achitheka lamafutha ngenkathi uhluleka ukuqhubekela phambili, amafutha athwelwe ilowa mkhumbi ayezokona amakhilomitha ayishumi echweba.

IMT Phoenix kakade yayisidinga ukusizwa ngankathi izinjini zayo zifa eMpulanga Kap ngenyanga edlule, futhi abasemthethethweni behlela ukuwubopha bawuthatha kulabanikazi abangaziwa kahle abazibhlaise ngokuthi iPanama A&K Shipping. Kodwa ngokuqagela ungathi ukuhlengwa ngobuqhawe balomkhumbi obize abakhokhi bentela izigidi zamaRandi, sibonga ubuchwepheshe babasebenzi bezimo eziphuthumayo beNational Sea Rescue Institute abasindisa ithaimba labasebenzi bomkhumbi kanye nabanye abasiza ukuthi lamafutha afinyelele kahle ngale kolwandle.

Kodwa-ke enye imbedumehlwana elokhu isijeqeza kuyoyona lendawo; okunokungakholeki, njengoba sizobe singabaphathi bengqungqthela yomhlaba emayela nesimo sezulu ezinyangeni ezine kusukela manje. Iziphathimandla ezinganalwazi futhi ezingenandaba zasePitoli zibeka iTheku enkingeni ukuthi kubuye kuchitheke amafutha, engazuthi asinayo ngokwanele lenkinga njengalapho ngibhala khona eNingizimu neTheku, lapho kuhleli khona umnotho wezwe lwethu wezamafutha.

Mhlaziyisihlanu ngenyanga kaMeyi, iPetroleum Agency of SA taqala yagunyaza iSilver Wave Energy ukuthu yenze ucwaningo kokuzamazama komhlaba ngamafutha, kusukela eAmanzimtoti kuya eRichards Bay, kumanzi ngadephile kakhulu abanzi ngamakhilomitha angamashumi amathathu nashona ngamakhilomitha amabili. Ngokuqhathanisa, Ibp Deepwater Horizon indawo ethule kakhulu kuneGulf yaseMexico embiwe ikhilomitha nohafu ukushona phansi olwandle.

ISilver Wave Energy izinze eSingapore kodwa umnikazi wayo umhwebi waseBurma uMin Min Aung, futhi ngaphandle kwezixwayiso (engazuthi ezivela ePitoli) ezaziqonde ukujezisa ubudlelwane obujululi buka Aung nejunta esabusa eBurma, wathola ukuxhaswa iPetroSA ukuhlola amasquare khilomitha ayizinkulungwane eziyisishagalombili.

Emva kwezinsukwana, iSilver Wave yamemezela u$100 wezigidi zokuhlola amafutha eHukaung Valley enyakatho nempumalanga yaseBurma. Nokubika kwentantheli uThomas Maung Shwe wezindaba zeMizzima, uma iSilver Wave iqhubela nalezizinhlelo, lokhu kuyobeka engcupheni izimpilo zabantu abahlala kulendawo futhi kubeke engcupheni impilo yezingwe, amabhele aseHimalaya, kanye nezindlovu. Noma lendawo inezingwe eziningi kanye nendawo yemvelo, “umbuso waseBurma uyakunxenxa ukugawulwa kwezihlahla, ukumbiwa kwegolida, amafamu amakhulu kanye nokwakhiwa kwezimboni ngaphakathi.” ISilver Wave yashesha yaphika okwakuhiwo incwadi ababeyithumelele kwabezindaba, kodwa bathi bazomba kulendawo yezemvelo.

Inkampani enonya kangaka iyingcuohe kakhulu, futhi ukuze sikubonise lokhu, umbhalo weSilver Wave mayelana nezemvelo ukuthi zizomosheka kanjani iPetroSA yachaza ngesimo seAgulhas Current edume kabi, eqala emgceleni waseMozambiqueneNingizimu Afrika: “Uma siqhathanisa kanye neminye imingcele yasentshonalanga iAgulhas Current encike neningizimu yeAfrica yechweba laseMpumalanga ikhombisa ukuthoba okumangalisayo.”

Ngempela? Eqinisweni, iNatal Pulse igijima phansi neAgulhas izikhathi eziyisithupha ngonyaka, isunduza amakhilomitha angamashumi amabili ngosuku. Kungesinye sezizathu iTheku lugcwele izidumbi zemikhumbi ezingaphezulu kwamashumi amahlanu. Lokhu okudala inking eWild Coas, iPulse inomthelela kumagagasi ayizigcwelegcwele asezike amakhulu emikhumbi emikhulu endaweni eyaziwa njengephaseji eliyingozi kakhulu kwezokuthutha ngolwandle.

Ngaphandle-nje kancanekwebhishi laseCuttings eNingizimu neThekhu, sabona ukuchitheka okukhulu ngenkathi eyodwa ngo2004 eSingle Buoy Mooring, futhi ngaphandle kolwandle, izixazululo zezimboni aziqinile ngokwanele kangangokuthi izindawo ezigcina amafutha zezindala zivuza kakhulu okuholela ekugqmukeni komlilo kubantu abakhelene nazo. IMerebank inesibalo esikhulu umhlaba wonke sezingane eziphathwa ufuba esikoleni (amaphesenti anamashumi amahlanu nambili ezinganeni), njengoba iSettlers Primary ihlala ngaphezu kwembono yphepha iMondo futhi phakathi kwendawo egcina amafutha: enye ephethwe iBP, uShell kanye neThebe Investments, futhi siseduze nesikhulumo sezindiza esidala, bese kuthi futhi ngasenyakatho imboni yokuhlanganyela iEnref eshayelwa nguEngen, neChevron kanye neTotal.

Ngokuhlanganyela bakhiqiza amabharel ayi300 000 amafutha ngelanga, ukudlula zonke ezinye izindawo eAfrika ngaphandle kwenye imboni eAlgeria. Ulayini weTransnet omusha wamakhilomitha nagu705 asuka kulezizimboni oya eGoli uzokwenza kuphindwe kabili ukumpompwa kwamafutha. Njengoba lolayini usudlule ngaphezu kweminyaka emibili ukutba uphele ukwakhiwa kwakudae kubikwe ukuthi uzobiza uR9.5 wamabhiliyoni njengoba kwashiwo ngo2005 kodwa usufike kuR23.4 wamabhiliyoni.

Kulamasonto adlule iEcuadoran Amazon, ngahlanganyela kanye namanye amalunga angamashumi amane avela emiphakathini enhlangano iOilwatch – kuhlanganisa nezinye zaseAfrika ziholwa ngusihlalo weFriends of the Earth International uNnimmo Bassey waseNiger Delta – ukuba ngufakazi wemfukucu eshiywe ngemuva ukumba kwemboni iChevron kuleyandawo. Ezinyangeni eziyisithupha ezedlule, izinkantolo zakuleyandawo zathola lemboni inecala lomonakalo obalelwa ku$19 bhiliyono wokona ezemvelo(izizwe ezimbili zokudabuka sezanyamalala), amanzi kanye nokona amanzi kanye nokugenca kakhulu amahlathi – kodwa ikomkhulu leChevron eCalifornia leyenqaba ukukhokha lamademeshe.

Into eyathembisa ngaloluyahambo, kodwa, kwaba ukuthi esasibavakashele ihlangano ezomele iAccion Ecologica yaveza ukuthi eYasuni National Park emgceleni wasePeru, bathi ‘akuyekelweni amafutha emhlabathini’. Esinye isikweletu saseNyakatho ukuthi isebenzise kakhulu insizi C02 kakhulu okufanele ikhokhele abantu baseEcuador u$3,5 wamabhiliyono ongabe imali abayithola ngokumba amfutha. Ukuyekela amafutha emhlabathini eAmazon iyona kuphela indlela enomqondo lapho abezimboni namazwe acebile angakhokhela ngayo isikweletu sesimo sezulu.

Umangabe ithimba leUN Green Climate Fund, lapho uTrevor Manuel engomuye wosihlalo bayo, bezimisele ukusebenzisa lesisethembiso esingu$100 wamabhiliyoni kuze kufike kunyaka ka2020, iyona into yokuqala lena abayoyenza, ngokumemezela ngoNovemba 28 ukuze I COP17 ibe nomphumela omuhle.

Asingathembeli kakhulu kulokho. Esikhundleni, njengokwejwayelekile izinhlangano zemiphakathi kufanele ziqhubeke nalomnyakazo, bese futhi kuthi imikhumbi emidala yamafutha ingabi nohambo olufana neMT Phoenix: kodwa iguge ngesizotha.

uPatrick Bond ungumqondisi weCentre for Civil Society, eUKZN

Labour and Precarious Liberation 20 July

Presenter: Franco Barchiesi
Date: Wednesday 20 July 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: Millions of black South African workers struggled against apartheid to redeem employment and production from a history of abuse, insecurity, and racial despotism. Almost two decades later, however, the prospects of a dignified life of wage-earning work remain unattainable for most South Africans. Through extensive archival and ethnographic research, Franco Barchiesi documents and interrogates this important dilemma in the country’s democratic transition: economic participation has gained centrality in the government’s definition of virtuous citizenship, and yet for most workers, employment remains an elusive and insecure experience. In a context of market liberalization and persistent social and racial inequalities, as jobs in South Africa become increasingly flexible, fragmented, and unprotected, they depart from the promise of work with dignity and citizenship rights that once inspired opposition to apartheid. Barchiesi traces how the employment crisis and the responses of workers to it challenge the state’s normative imagination of work, and raise decisive questions for the social foundations and prospects of South Africa’s democratic experiment.

Bio: Franco Barchiesi is Associate Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University. From 1994 to 2002 he lived in Johannesburg, where he was teaching in the Department of Sociology at Wits and was a founding editor of the now defunct magazine Debate: Voices from the South African Left. His new book is Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa (State University of New York Press and UKZN Press). His work has been published in, among others, African Studies Review, Journal of Southern African Studies, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Urban Forum, International Labor and Working Class History, Review. Fernand Braudel Center, Historical Materialism, Antipode, Rethinking Marxism, Review of African Political Economy, Critical Sociology, Monthly Review, and Labour, Capital and Society.

“Rooibos land is high sentiment, low potential: 18 July

Preliminary Reflections on a Year in Rooibos Country
Presenter: Sarah Ives
Date: Monday 18 July 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: The goal of my dissertation research was to examine the considerable social and semiotic work that goes into conferring value upon niche commodities in a global capitalist system. I explored how the stories, meanings, and rumors surrounding rooibos tea are entangled with the political and economic struggles over land, labor, production, and social belonging. Through a preliminary discussion of a selection of these rumors, I will consider how farm owners, workers, and community members negotiate, make sense of, and attempt to control a shifting agrarian landscape.

Bio: Sarah Ives is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University, USA. Sarah received her Masters degree in Geography from the University of Washington and her BA in Geography with Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College. She has just completed a year of dissertation research in Clanwilliam, Western Cape – the “Heart of Rooibos Country.”

Citizen Media Advocacy 15 July

Presenter: Danny Schechter
Date: Friday 15 July 2011
Time: 13:30-15:00 (NOTE NEW TIME)
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: How have progressive social change advocates used the media over the past fifty years? The seminar will include personal reflections by one of the masters of the craft, Danny Schechter.

Speaker: Danny Schechter graduated from Cornell University in 1964, where he wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun and was a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He later received his Master's degree from the London School of Economics and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg State University. He was a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, where he also taught in 1969. He was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism. During the 1960s, in addition to briefly coming to Durban on an underground ANC mission, Schechter worked as a civil rights worker and communications director of the Northern Student Movement, and worked as a community organizer in a War on Poverty program. Schechter also served as an assistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966. Schechter's career began as the News Dissector at Boston radio station WBCN. Later, Schechter was a producer for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 where he produced 50 segments for ABC and won two national Emmy Awards and was nominated for two others. Schechter joined the start-up staff at CNN as a producer based in Atlanta. Schechter helped found, and serve as the executive producer of, Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company. He founded and executive-produced the 156-part series South Africa Now, directed six films about Nelson Mandela, and co-produced Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television. His work specializes in investigative journalism and producing programming about the interface between human rights, journalism, popular music and society.

Voices of the Subaltern 14 July

Music within community struggles against environmental degradation in South Durban

Presenter: Chene Redwood
Date: Thursday 14 July 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: South Durban is a major industrial center with a large residential population in close proximity to major petrochemical refineries, several hazardous waste dumps and other polluting industries. The communities within South Durban have fiercely contested environmental impacts that threaten their health, habitat and livelihood. The extent and forms of resident environmental activism have intensified over the years from confrontational marches and boycotts to the formation of community and non-governmental organizations such as the South Durban Environmental Alliance. One of the mediums heavily utilized in the struggle by the masses has been music. The employment of music, as a medium of protest, by the masses is not a novel practice in the South African context. Indeed, this was the case during the independent struggle against apartheid where Amilcar Cabral’s concept of ‘culture as resistance’ played a role in rebuffing the physical and psychological oppression and exploitation of the masses. The presentation operates from the premise that music forms part of the continuing effort of the masses to create community in the face of exploitive hegemonic structures that deny their humanity. The presentation seeks to locate the role of music within community activism against environmental degradation.

Speaker: Chene Redwood is a Pan African Studies graduate student within the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. He is the Graduate Assistant for the Africa Initiative of Syracuse University, a campus-wide project geared towards revitalizing interest in Africa as a site of knowledge. Chene is also a researcher and activist for the Syracuse Peace Council, a long-standing grassroots peace and social justice organization. His research interests include civil society, Pan- Africanism, social movements in the Global South, African musicology, and development in central and southern Africa. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Civil Society, UKZN

Critiquing the Nation State: The Gaza Strip 8 July

Presenter: Philip Rizk
Date: Friday 8 July 2011
Time: 13:30-15:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: Following the Zionist ethnic cleansing of hundreds of Palestinian villages in the summer of 1948 the Gaza Strip became a geographical marking a colonial map. This moment of nakba (catastrophe) that razed the landscape and uprooted plant, animal and human continues today. In my research I use the Gaza Strip as a case study to assess and critique the idea of nation-state. This geographic marker- not unlike the categories of Israel or Palestine- is an invented category that serves a particular modern, colonial imaginary. In my analysis the Gaza Strip acts as the sign of the nation-state- though it is not one, its coming about would be just as constructed as any other such imagined entity in its vicinity. Hereby I attempt to question the processes of state-making.

Speaker: Philip Rizk is an independent writer and film-maker currently based in Cairo, Egypt. From 2005- 2007 he lived in the Gaza Strip where he worked with a development agency and then wrote for independent news outlets and worked as a producer for Swiss TV and German Radio ARD. In the summer of 2008 Rizk directed his first documentary entitled This Palestinian Life which premiered at the London International Documentary Festival (www.thispalestinianlife.org). In June 2009 Rizk released the short documentary “Rami: A Story from Nile Delta” about the victim of torture at the hands of the Egyptian security apparatus. The upcoming Cairo International Documentary Festival will feature two short works of Rizk’s in a series entitled “Sturm” about water shortages and a labour protest movement in Cairo, Egypt. Later this month Rizk’s documentary “Pity the Nation,” produced by Egypt’s leading independent daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm will be released. “Pity The Nation” addresses the ongoing Food Price Crisis in Egypt. Rizk is currently working on a book that critiques the idea of the nation-state focusing on the Gaza Strip. He is also carrying out an archiving project on Egypt’s growing labour movement.

“The hard hit is still to come”- An Intifada Imaginary 7 July

Presenter: Philip Rizk
Date: Thursday 7 July 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: On 11 February 2011, Egyptian protestors across the country forced Hosni Mubarak, their long-time president, out of power. There are several misconceptions surrounding recent events in Egypt. For the concerns of this presentation I would like to challenge first the notion of a finite, completed revolution, and second the popular notion of spontaneous revolutionary combustion--revolution does not happen in a vacuum.

Speaker: Philip Rizk is an independent writer and film-maker currently based in Cairo, Egypt. From 2005- 2007 he lived in the Gaza Strip where he worked with a development agency and then wrote for independent news outlets and worked as a producer for Swiss TV and German Radio ARD. In the summer of 2008 Rizk directed his first documentary entitled This Palestinian Life which premiered at the London International Documentary Festival (www.thispalestinianlife.org). In June 2009 Rizk released the short documentary “Rami: A Story from Nile Delta” about the victim of torture at the hands of the Egyptian security apparatus. The upcoming Cairo International Documentary Festival will feature two short works of Rizk’s in a series entitled “Sturm” about water shortages and a labour protest movement in Cairo, Egypt. Later this month Rizk’s documentary “Pity the Nation,” produced by Egypt’s leading independent daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm will be released. “Pity The Nation” addresses the ongoing Food Price Crisis in Egypt. Rizk is currently working on a book that critiques the idea of the nation-state focusing on the Gaza Strip. He is also carrying out an archiving project on Egypt’s growing labour movement.

Organic intellectuals and AIDS social movements: jumping scales 6 July

Presenter: Ida Susser
Date: postponed
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Ida Susser is Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center and adjunct professor of Socio-Medical Sciences at the HIV Center, Columbia University. She is a founding member of Athena: Advancing Gender Equity and Human Rights in the Global Response to HIV/AIDS. Her most recent books are Norman Street Revisited: Claiming a Right to New York City , New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; and AIDS, Sex and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in a Southern Africa, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publications, 2009.

People in Spaces Make Places 28 June

Presenters: Peter McKenzie & Doung Jahangeer
Date: Tuesday 28 June 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College

Topic: Dala is an interdisciplinary non profit organization which focuses on devising initiatives which engage art / architecture for social justice. The presentation is in two parts. Doung Jahangeer will talk to the myth of multiculturism and the ‘illusive pot of gold’ at the end of the Rainbow Nation through his ‘City Walk’ from Cato Manor to the Early Morning Market. The walk explores the in between spaces rather than the binaries. ‘We recognize and believe that in these interstitial spaces negotiation, dialogue, relationships and experimentation can become tools to develop strategies for understanding cultural differences.’ Peter McKenzie continues this walk in his visual presentation titled ‘Keep on the Pavement’ recognizing that we live in the landscape of apartheid, both part and apart - the urban and the rural. This work attempts to describe the demeanor and disposition of the ‘new’ urbanites tentatively, cautiously, circumspectly negotiating their way along urban spaces which were not built for them - human streams of consequence.

Presenter Bios:
Peter McKenzie is Durban based Dala collective's newest member and brings his commitment to the 'politics of space' in this initiative. McKenzie is chief photographer, SADC region for the Pan African press agency Panapress. He directed the documentary film ‘What Kind?’ about his home township of Wentworth, Durban. His most recent exhibition was 'Homing' at the KZNSA Gallery in Durban. McKenzie works with several NGOs and international publications, has recently photo edited the book ‘District 6 Revisited’. He also teaches at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) and the Market Photo Workshop. He has served on the board of the Market Theatre Foundation since 2008 and presently lives and works between Marseilles, France and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Doung Jahangeer is a Mauritian-born, Creole of Indian decent living in Durban, South Africa. He is an architect. He is not an architect. His experience of the ‘profession’ led him to broaden his definition of architecture focusing on space. A space that unites rather than walls that divide – anarchitecturewithoutwalls. In 2000 Jahangeer conceptualised and implemented ‘The CityWalk’ initiative as a way of directly engaging and observing the flux and mutability in his adopted city. It now includes Johannesburg, London, Belo Horizonte, Addis Ababa, Malmo, Marseilles, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. His work is multi-media and includes live performance, film/video, sculpture, painting, installation and architecture. He has collaborated with numerous international artists / organisations in Scandinavia, Europe and other African countries where he has instigated projects of a diverse nature including site responsive architectural installations, both temporary and permanent, that engage the urban fabric often in an openly critical and sometimes provocative manner. In 2008 he co-founded an NPO called Dala. This organisation focus on devising initiatives which engage art / architecture for social justice. Jahangeer won the inaugural South Award for the design of a mobile fold away shop for hawkers at the Design Indaba in 2009. His most recent considerable work is a 4-ton stainless steel sculpture as part of an urban rejuvenation programme of the Ellis Park precinct in Johannesburg. He was a keynote speaker at the pre-post-per-form colloquium on inter-disciplinary arts in February and recently published in Urban Future MANIFESTOS (Hatje Cantz 2010) along with fellow contributors Edward Soja, AbdouMaliq Simone , Edgar Pieterse and Lebbeus Woods.

Global Climate Justice: How and Where is the Movement Going? 21 June

University of KwaZulu‑Natal Centre for Civil Society Seminar

Seminar: Global Climate Justice: How and Where is the Movement Going?
Speaker: Patrick Bond
Date: Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Time: 12:30‑2pm
Venue: Memorial Tower Building #601, University of KwaZulu‑Natal Howard
College Campus

The political challenge offered by a growing climate justice movement
could be decisive when the Conference of Parties 17 ‑ the world climate
summit ‑ convenes in late November at Durban's International Convention
Centre. What is the state of the movement around the world, and what
debates will climate justice spark with other environmental traditions
at the COP17?

Patrick Bond has returned from a ten month sabbatical which generated a
book manuscript, The Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press 2011). He
has worked on social justice and political ecology in South Africa since
1990.

Understanding horizontal philanthropy in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 2 June

Date: Thursday 2 June 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Speakers: Mvuselelo Ngcoya & Shauna Mottiar

Topic:
Philanthropy is generally understood as a practice undertaken by the rich and more resourced in favor of the poor and under resourced. This understanding fails to consider forms of philanthropy that exist among the less resourced and which account for the survival of many communities. This paper considers such forms of philanthropy through specific reference to two case studies in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is structured in three parts. The first part interrogates understandings of the term philanthropy among horizontal philanthropists. For example, while the English term ‘philanthropy’ has no direct translation in any of South Africa’s indigenous languages, there is a prevailing ubuntu philosophy grounded in a commitment to the collective self. This African worldview stresses the importance of community, solidarity, caring, and sharing. It suggests a profound dynamic process of interdependence and emphasizes that true human potential can only be realized in partnership with others. In this way, philanthropic interactions are judged by how well they promote the mutual reinforcement of the self and the other in a community. There are various manifestations of ubuntu including the poor who actively help family members and neighbours on the premise that giving, no matter how little, is a fundamental expression of one’s humanity (Wilkinson – Maposa et al, 2004). The second part of the paper examines the manner in which horizontal philanthropy is institutionalized following studies that have highlighted ‘collective action’ where individuals act together, either habitually or spontaneously, to help or to give and the prevalence of stokvels in South Africa where communities pool resources to meet common needs such as funeral arrangements (Seleoane, 2008). The third part of the paper considers how manifestations of horizontal philanthropy are linked to local governance and policymaking.

Speakers:

Mvuselelo Ngcoya is Senior Lecturer at the School of Development Studies, UKZN and Shauna Mottiar is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, UKZN. This seminar is based on a paper they presented at the IRSPM Conference in Dublin, Ireland earlier this year. It forms part of the Centre for Civil Society Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship project.

Women in Social Movements and Community Organizing 30 May

The Centre for Civil Society (CCS) & the School of Politics UKZN are hosting a discussion on The Role of Women in Social Movements and Community Organizing in KwaZulu-Natal

Participants include:
Orlean Naidoo – Westcliff Flats Residents Association, Chatsworth
Ma Dudu Khumalo – Didiyela Women’s Group, Inanda
Thandiwe Zondi – Rural Women’s Movement, Durban
Sam Moodley – Women in Action, Durban
Mrs Perumal – Merebank Women’s Community Organization, Durban
Lubna Nadvi – School of Politics, UKZN / Women’s Activist Network Durban
Shauna Mottiar – CCS, UKZN

Discussion will focus on the main issues dealt with by women’s movements and organizations in KwaZulu-Natal, the challenges faced and strategies employed. The merits of and ways to build solidarity among movements / organizations will also be discussed.

Date: Monday 30 May
Time: 09:30-12:30
Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College, UKZN

Please contact Shauna Mottiar for further information – 031 2602940 / mottiar@ukzn.ac.za

Pharmaceutical Patent Lawfare: The Umckaloabo Case 19 May

Speaker: Chris Morris
Date: Thursday 19 May 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, Level 6, Memorial Tower Building, Howard College

Topic:
Current contestation over pharmaceutical bioprospecting for South African genetic resources for drug development and sales foregrounds tensions between medicine, capitalism, and regulatory governance in the global South. This presentation explores the NGO-led legal case against Schwabe Pharmaceuticals of Germany, a company that was granted patents entitling it exclusive use of South African Pelargonium for the development of medicines treating respiratory infections, AIDS and AIDS-related diseases. I take this case as an ethnographic window into the North-South politics of intellectual property disputes and the complex dynamics among actors vying for say as to who should own, and subsequently benefit from, the knowledge of profitable raw materials for medicine. I will touch on the commercial history of Schwabe’s Pelargonium-derived phytotherapy Umckaloabo, the NGO challenge of Schwabe’s Umckaloabo extraction method patent, and the uncertainties of “community” in claims to culture as property.

Speaker Bio:
Chris Morris is a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology and an instructor in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His interest in the anthropology of law, politics, and biotechnology emerged as an undergraduate researcher at the University of Regensburg looking at the social effects of the German state’s response to the outbreak of Mad Cow disease in Bavaria. As an MA student, he conducted multi-sited research in the offices of German and Tanzanian ministries, development corporations, and European NGOs involved in health-sector reform in Tanzania. He continues to find North-South (especially European-African) development cooperation to be an exciting window into the governance of health technologies. Now a Social Science Research Council and National Science Foundation fellow, his current dissertation research concerns inequality and legal contestation over pharmaceutical bioprospecting for South African genetic resources for drug development and sales. He is currently based at the CCS as a Visiting Scholar.

Reflections on organising US labour and community campaigns 13 April

SEMINAR at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society

TOPIC: Reflections on organising US labour and community campaigns
SPEAKER: Ron Carver
DATE: Wednesday 13 April
TIME: 12:30‑2pm
LOCATION: Memorial Tower Building #602, Howard College Campus

Ron Carver (second from left) at the CCS

Ron Carver has been a human rights activist since the day after his high
school graduation in 1964, when he left his home in Boston,
Massachusetts to join the Southern civil rights movement’s Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He then became an activist and leader
of numerous labour‑community campaigns, and is currently an advisor to
United Auto Workers President Bob King, based in Washington, DC.

Carver's photography reflects working culture and the struggle against
patriarchy, racism and exploitation. In the 1960s in the US Deep South,
Carver worked days as an assistant to SNCC communications director
Julian Bond. At night in SNCC’s darkroom, he processed the film of seven
staff photographers and developed a lifelong love of photography. He
created his Mothers and Daughters photo essay during the past four
years, as he traveled on behalf of the Teamsters Union, advocating for
trade union rights on six continents. Durban is represented in the
portfolio, which Carver will screen and discuss in conversation with
former labour organiser (and CCS Community Scholar) Dudu Khumalo.

Mothers and Daughters
by Ron Carver

Nearly five years ago I was visiting the Teamsters Port Division office
in Charleston, South Carolina, when I learned that the six‑year‑old son
of our office manager, Sandra Brown, had just been diagnosed with
cancer. Sandra’s daughter, Monique, arrived from Washington an hour
later to help her mother cope with the devastating news.

After lunch, I took a series of photographs of Sandra and Monique and
was pleased to have been able to capture the love, empathy and support
flowing between them. Challenging myself to document the emotional
connection between other mothers and daughters I embarked on the
creation of this essay.

In most cases I spend the better part of an hour shooting one hundred or
more frames, stopping often, taking advantage of the digital camera’s
instant feedback to share my progress with those I am photographing. The
mothers and daughters gradually relax, feeling more comfortable with me
and with the photo shoot.

After the portrait of Sandra and Monique, the next most important
portrait here is the most recent‑‑taken a few months ago in Cuernavaca,
Mexico. It is a portrait of eight‑year‑old Mariana Soto Laredo and her
mother Rosalba Laredo Jimenez. Mariana was only two years old when her
father, my friend and colleague, Teamsters Port Division Representative
Gilberto Soto, was assassinated in his native El Salvador. He had been
traveling throughout Central America, building a solidarity network
among port trucker unions.

Ron Carver's photos are displayed at:
https://picasaweb.google.com

Civic Engagement and Democratic Consolidation in S- Korea 5 April

CCS Seminar: Civic Engagement and Democratic Consolidation in South
Korea ‑Lessons for South Africa

Date:Tuesday 5 April 2011
Time: 12:30‑14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, Level 6, MTB Tower
Speaker: Wiebe Nauta

Listen to a audio recording of this seminar

Topic: This paper examines civic engagement and democratic consolidation in South Korea, whereby the central question is what Sub‑Saharan Africa particularly South Africa can learn from these experiences. When broadly comparing the history of civic engagement in the two countries, striking similarities come to the fore. Not only, do they more or less share a similar periodization, with a mass‑based struggle against an authoritarian regime in the 1980s, a period of democratic transition in the 1990s and a harsh confrontation with the global markets in the late 1990s. Incidentally, two prominent historical figures Kim Dae‑jung and Nelson Mandela share a certain likeness as well. Belonging to the same generation, they both fought for freedom and were imprisoned for treason before becoming the first democratic presidents of their countries and being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When comparing the role of civil society organizations in the struggle for democracy, many similarities can also be noted, particularly in the period of democratic transition.

As NGO staff cooperated with the first democratic government in both
countries and as many left their organizations to join the government,
while at the same time experiencing a loss of cause, the capacity of
civil society was temporarily undermined. Yet in the last decade, some
prominent differences have emerged, particularly when examining the role
of the trade unions, investments in the education sector and ICTs. It is
unsurprising, therefore, that a relatively new term Netizen, the wired? citizen in the information age regularly surfaces when describing democracy and the public sphere in South Korea. As a result, the paper concludes that South Korea has witnessed democratic consolidation, while the situation in South Africa still leaves much to be desired.

Speaker Bio: Wiebe Nauta (PhD) is assistant professor at Maastricht University in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht The Netherlands. He teaches Globalization and Inequality and Development & Poverty in the 21st Century. He has done research in the Eastern Cape in South Africa on a regular basis since 1996.

The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War
Speaker: Adekeye Adebajo
Date: 23 March 2011
Venue: School of Development
Studies Seminar Room
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: The Curse of Berlin refers to the Conference of Berlin in 1884 – 1885 at which the rules were effectively set by European states for the partition of Africa. The book being presented argues that historical and structural events continue to affect and shape Africa’s contemporary international relations. This study adopts a historical approach, even though its main focus is on contemporary issues. The first part of the book focuses on Africa’s quest for security with three essays on Africa’s security institutions; another on the political, peacekeeping, and socio-economic roles of the United Nations (UN) in Africa; and a third on an assessment of Africa’s two UN Secretaries-General: Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Ghana’s Kofi Annan. The second section of the book focuses on Africa’s quest for leadership and six essays examine the hegemonic roles of South Africa, Nigeria, the United States, China and France on the continent. The five essays in the final section of the study analyse Africa’s quest for unity and examine the roles and significance for Africa of six historical figures: Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Kwame Nkrumah, Cecil Rhodes, Barack Obama and Mahatma Gandhi; as well as assessing the African Union and the European Union in comparative perspective.

Speaker: Adekeye Adebajo has been Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR), Cape Town, South Africa since 2003. He served as Director of the Africa Programme of the New York-based International Peace Academy. During the same period, Dr Adebajo was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in New York. He previously served on UN missions in South Africa, Western Sahara and Iraq. Dr Adebajo is the author of Building Peace in West Africa; Liberia’s Civil War; and co-editor of Managing Armed Conflicts in the Twenty-First Century; West Africa’s Security Challenges; A Dialogue of the Deaf: Essays on Africa and the United Nations; South Africa in Africa; Gulliver’s Troubles: Nigeria’s Foreign Policy After the Cold War; and From Global Apartheid to Global Village: Africa and the United Nations. He obtained his doctorate from Oxford University in England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. ">

Climate Justice, Global Alliance-Building and Climate Jobs, 22 March

The Centre for Civil Society welcomes you to a seminar

Title: Climate Justice, Global Alliance-Building and Climate Jobs
Speakers: Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale
Date: Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Time: 14:00-16:00
Location: CCS, Memorial Tower Building, Room 602

Audio recording of Jonathan Neale's presentation

Climate justice will require both global-scale alliance building and a strong vision of economic transformation that will create millions of new Climate Jobs. From Cochabamba in April 2010 has come one of the most visionary gatherings and statements about climate justice. And from Britain, a labour-environmental-community alliance has generated a proposal for a million Climate Jobs. The speakers will provide lessons from their experiences and address potential analyses, strategies and tactics associated with COP17.

Nancy Lindisfarne is the secretary of the Oxford branch of the Campaign against Climate Change, was closely involved in editing the One Million Climate Jobs Report. She attended Klimaforum in Copenhagen and the alternative climate summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. She was coordinator of the cultural events at the European Social Forum in London in 2004, and for many years a union rep in the Association of University Teachers. Nancy left teaching to train as a painter and printmaker. Formerly a lecturer in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, she is the author of Bartered Brides (about marriage and politics in Afghanistan); Dancing in Damascus (short stories about Syria); and Thank God We're Secular (in Turkish translation).

Jonathan Neale is an anti-capitalist and climate activist. He has been international secretary of the Campaign against Climate Change (UK) since 2004, and is the editor of One Million Climate Jobs Now. He was part of organising the Genoa Social Forum and the European Social Forum, and was co-founder of Media Workers against the War in the UK.onathan teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University and writes novels, plays and nonfiction for adults and children. His writing includes Stop Global Warming – Change the World; What's Wrong with America; A People's History of the Vietnam War; You are G8 – We are 6 Billion; and many articles on Afghanistan.

One million climate jobsNOW!
A report by the
Campaign against Climate Change
trade union group to the Communication Workers
Union, Public and Commercial Services union, the
Transport Salaried Staff Association and the
University and College Union

CCS research on protests in South Africa 17 March

CCS research on Protests in South Africa 2009 - 2011 :
Speaker: John Devenish
Date: Thursday 17 March 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room - 602, Level 6, The Tower, MTB, Howard College

A presentation on the Centre for Civil Society Social Protest Observatory run by John Devenish and Patrick Bond capturing social protest in South Africa over the past two years. The Social Protest Observatory focuses on the so called 'service delivery protests'. This seminar will outline the methods and findings of the Observatory and discuss how best to document and disseminate the research.

CCS Research on Protests in South Africa 2009 2011 with special attention to the so called Service Delivery Protest.
By John Devenish

INTRODUCTION
Since mid 2009 Patrick & myself have been recording protests in South Africa. We have accumulated a huge amount of material. However for it to be of any use it need to be processed further

This seminar will present my attempts to organize this material so that it is useful other researchers. Due to various factors there have been interruptions in the collecting the info in 2010. The statistics presented here should not be taken as absolutely accurate rather we need to observe the patterns & trends within this data.

FURTHER RESEARCH
A CD will be provided on request containing info
1. Raw data All the material used in the study, also accessible here: http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?2,27,3,1858 on the CCS Website
2. Summaries of protests 2010, for 2009 August-December 2010 & Jan Feb 2011.
3. Protest Hotspots Service delivery protest listed in a excel file with dates & area info included where available.
4. Table of number of protests sorted by type columns & months rows
5. Word & PDF versions of this presentation.

THE SERVICE DELIVERY PROTEST
There is a lot of talk in the media about the so called service delivery protests. However its necessary to define exactly what we mean by this term. While every protest is different, a protest can be classified as service delivery protest if it has most of these characteristics.

Occur in informal settlements or other low income areas. Protests in more affluent areas about service delivery usually take the form of rates boycott.

Diffuse range of grievances not just about ie services water electricity, people dissatisfied but remain passive until.

Trigger event ie Ermelo imposition of candidates on people, other areas demarcation issues, broken promises by local politicians or allegations of corruption.

Spontaneous lack of planning or involvement of established organizations.

Evidence that protests in one area can trigger others in adjacent areas. The Protest Hotspots file contains area info as well as dates. This could be used with a map to study this effect further. Also to predict potential future protests. For example if one reads about a protest then checks on the map if there are any protest hotspots nearby there is a chance that there will be protests there later . This will be a subject of further study.

These protests are by characterized by the following actions

Marches

Road blockades

Attacks on Government officials & infrastructure

Looting & Xenophobia although evidence suggests that this may be done by criminal & other elements taking advantage of the ensuing disruptions

Heavy handed police response.

DECLINE IN SERVICE DELIVERY PROTESTS IN 2010
From the table above, notice a decline in number service delivery protests. However we must also consider what other factors could affect coverage of these protests.

1.Lack of interest from media (protests old news) 2.Less violent protest getting less coverage

Whether there has been a real decline in service delivery protests may require further data, such as from the SA Police Services, which usually record around 8000 protests/year. A crucial factor in mid/late 2010 was the decision by the Independent On Line to restrict coverage at its website to subscribers of an expensive service, which thus cuts out the word 'protest' from google searchers. This requires us to look at more material not from the mainstream media. From the protest table, it seems that the Service delivery protests occur in waves, that build up then die down. Think the long term pattern is affected by elections, when politicians make promises to communities there were elections in 2009 & 83 entries in protest hotspots for that year August to December compared with 104 for the whole of 2010.

When the promises made at elections are not met, people get angry and protest. The protests don’t have a meaningful effect on the situation & people get apathetic till the next round of elections. Data for March 2011 is not included but I’ve noticed an increase in protests, moving towards the crest of the next wave. I predict major increase in SD protests after the 2011 elections in May other researchers have come to similar conclusions.

EFFECT OF THE WORLD CUP ON PROTESTS
Although the WC in June July had a damping effect on protests it did not eliminate them altogether. There were a number of protests focusing specifically on the WC & Fifa. As well as labor related protests with people employed for the world cup.
http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?4,82
http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?3,28,11,3643
http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?3,28,11,3655

POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN WORK RELATED & SERVICE DELIVERY PROTESTS
This is debatable. However if you study the info provided there are examples of COSATU & other trade Unions attempting to organize people around these issues. This usually takes the form of a march on the local government

OTHER PROTESTS
Other types of protests recorded are
Student both tertiary & school, there have been examples of primary school students embarking on protests
Environmental & Animal Rights
Strikes & other labor related protests
Crime Protests about crime & vigilantism undertaken by large numbers of people
Racism & Xenophobia Race Xenophobic & other hate crimes & counter actions
Other What does not fit into the other categories.

Background Information

SA Protest Observatory

List of Protests January-February 2011

List of Protests 2010

List of Protests 2009

Documentary Screening of 'Zimbabwe's Blood Diamonds', 10 March

Seminar: Zimbabwean Diamonds: Burden or Boon?
Date: Thursday 10 March 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room - 602, Level 6, The Tower, MTB, Howard College

Zimbabwean Minister Tendai Biti called it, “the biggest find of alluvial diamonds in the history of mankind”. But under the present political leadership, the Marange diamond fields, estimated at a value of $800 billion, has transformed into a burden rather than a boon for Zimbabwean citizens. Since 'discovery' in 2006, the diamond field has become a gravy train to ZANU-PF facilitated by interlocking interests comprised of the Zimbabwean military, foreign buyers, and South Africa and Chinese multinationals using opaque legal and financial secrecy services, such as banking secrecy and nominee directors, to conceal the nature of exploitation.

Seminar on the 2011 World Social Forum

Date: Friday 25 February 2011
Time: 12:30 - 14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, Level 6, The Tower, MTB
Speakers: Patrick Bond, Rehana Dada, Blessing Karumbidza and Molefi Ndlovu

The 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar occurred from February 6-11. Several Durban participants - Patrick Bond, Rehana Dada, Blessing Karumbidza and Molefi Ndlovu - will report on their experiences in areas ranging from the WSF itself, to the state of the global Climate Justice movement, to the growing food and agriculture crisis, to the innovations in media required for grassroots voices to finally make themselves heard.
CCS EVENTS AT THE WSF

State Legitimacy in Contemporary South Africa

Topic: Sources of State Legitimacy in Contemporary South Africa: A Theory of Political Goods
Date: Tuesday 22 February 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, Level 6, MTB Tower
Speaker: Danielle Carter

A key question confronting states that have recently transitioned from authoritarian rule is how to legitimate institutions of the state. No longer charged with serving the narrow interests of a strong and powerful minority, state institutions are often faced with the challenge of transforming in a way that allows them to garner the trust and willing obedience of the majority. In mature democracies, the question of state legitimacy has largely been settled. In these contexts citizens-while not always agreeing with the actions of state actors-rarely question their decision making powers and authority. In nascent democracies, on the contrary, trust in institutions is often shallow and the authority of the state remains contested. The efficacy of state attempts to legitimize itself are often as uncertain as regime consolidation itself. For new democratic states that do manage to secure support, the question then becomes: what are the determinants of state legitimacy? Are they instrumental or affective? Are citizens more likely to accept and obey the decisions of police and courts when they are more satisfied with the provision of political and economic goods? Are they more likely to acquiesce to outcomes that they are unhappy with when agents who are responsible for the outcome share their ethnicity? In essence, what accounts for the citizenry’s perception that the existing institutions of the state are the most proper? This paper investigates the sources of state legitimacy in contemporary South Africa using Afrobarometer data. In exploring the sources of state legitimacy in this context, I emphasize the primacy of political goods, suggesting that those who give the government positive ratings on the provision of key political goods will be more likely to view the state as legitimate. I also explore the importance of institutional trust and structure in shaping attitudes towards the legitimacy of the state. I find that political goods and institutional trust are powerful predictors of state legitimacy in South Africa, performing better than structural theories.

Speaker Bio: Danielle Carter is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from Goucher College in 2003 with a degree in International Relations. She then worked for Sheladia Associates, an international development firm, before pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science. Her current fields of study are Comparative Politics (major field) and Public Policy (minor field). Danielle's substantive interests include state-society relations, political culture and democratization. She is primarily interested in the Sub-Saharan African region with a particular focus on Southern Africa. Danielle conducted pre-dissertation research and undertook intensive language training in South Africa as a Fulbright-Hays fellow. Under the direction of her advisor Dr. Michael Bratton, Danielle intends to write her dissertation on how state weakness shapes individual reliance on non-state forms of security in post-Apartheid South Africa. Ultimately, she hopes to unpack the mechanisms linking reliance on private security to individual attitudes toward democracy and perceptions of state legitimacy. Danielle expects to graduate in 2011. At that time she plans to pursue a career in teaching and research.

Niall Bond The history of 'civil society 14 February 2011

Join a Seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil
Society, in the School of Development Studies

Seminar: The history of 'civil society'
Speaker: Niall Bond
Date: 14 February 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: Memorial Tower Building, Level 6, Room 602

The seminar covers the history of the concept of civil society and the
shifts in its meanings and political occupation.

Niall Bond is senior lecturer at the University of Lyon and researcher
at the Ecole d'Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (where he completed a
post-doctoral habilitation). He holds a doctorate from the University of
Freiburg in Germany.

The history of the concept of civil society
Niall Bond

It is a pleasure for me to be able to speak at the Centre for Civil Society on the concept of civil society. I do so as a historian of political concepts influenced by a German historian, Reinhard Koselleck, who noticed that the meanings of fundamental concepts shift according to their usefulness for and use by various social or political forces. We can trace the renewal in interest in what has recently been called “civil society” to the nineteen-eighties, a time at which intellectuals in the industrialised world called for the mobilisation of social forces in countries in the developing world to work as a countervailing force to the State and the interests it defended. Civil society, i.e. organised society outside the government and the State, was then noted for its capacity to contest the actions and position of the State, and the potential of groups of men and women attached to issues and working from outside the structures of government to participate in policy formulation by contesting the status quo is one of the striking aspects of this institute, the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which was founded and given its name in 2001, at a time at which the most recent usage had been popular for over a decade and civil society in South Africa had taken down an oppressive regime. In the movement against apartheid, the question arose as to the place for civil society, indeed as to whether a place for civil society in a new order. The term, “civil society” seemed to designate part of our social, economic and political reality in an unambiguous fashion, and therefore to serve as a useful heuristic tool in talking about politics in a global context. Because of the role of the organisations outside the state in achieving liberation in South Africa, the term, “civil society” was used in the industrialised world of representative democracies to capture what had happened in South Africa and Eastern Europe and was happening in other places in the world.
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Global justice - some emerging topics and responses 25 January 2011

CCS Seminar: Global justice - some emerging topics and responses
Date: Tuesday 25 January 2011
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, Level 6, MTB Tower
Speaker: Dr Teppo Eskelinen
Topic:The global financial crisis and its social implications have shaken the Leftist political agenda in Europe. The role of the state is strengthening, paradoxically along with increased austerity measures. Governments are falling into a debt trap and GDP growth is ever more often called into question as a social objective. New movements related to slowing down the financial markets and protection of basic services are rising. Shortly, in a world in which Europe is still massively overusing natural resources and maintaining neo-colonialist measures in for example trade policy, an increasing number of Europeans are feeling ever more precarious, poor, and marginalized. I will discuss, what conclusions can be drawn from these processes for global justice, on the levels of both theory and practice.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Teppo Eskelinen completed his PhD in political philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has published widely on recent forms of capitalism and is based at the Left Forum, which is a Leftist think tank in Helsinki, Finland. He also works as a journalist, writing regularly on economics, globalization and social movements for several Finnish newspapers. As an activist, he is the former chairperson of Attac Finland, active with NIGD and social forums. He is also a long-time third world debt cancellation activist

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