Jacana

David Lush chats to author Paul Trewhela about the significance of his book Inside Quatro in today’s South Africa.

While Inside Quatro documents meticulously the abuses of the ANC and Swapo in exile, there is little reflection or analysis on what implications these abuses have had for the ANC and Swapo’s governance of South Africa and Namibia respectively. Wasn't this a missed opportunity?

PT: Primarily the book has an historical character, though with open-ended relevance to the present and the future. The two most important chapters in the book, in my view (chapters 2 and 11), are not ones written by me, but give first-hand accounts of the experience in exile in the ANC and Swapo camps. As I explain in the Introduction, all but four of the 14 chapters are from Searchlight South Africa, which was banned in South Africa. While available to academics, and quite widely cited in various publications since then, these texts have not been available to the general public until now.

• Read the complete article at TheCommune.org

Book details

• Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO by Paul Trewhela
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  EAN: 9781770097766
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Contributors to TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa and representatives of Gender DynamiX, a Human Rights organisation promoting freedom of expression of gender identity, with a focus on transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming identities, have added their voices to poets, Yvette Christiansë and Gabeba Baderoon, in expressing their concern at Minister Lulu Xingwana’s reaction towards lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi’s work.

Special to the Jacana Media blog, Robert Hamblin and Caroline Bowley speak on this topic with passion and conviction:

***

Gender DynamiX is deeply concerned about the policing of bodies by the State. A very large part of our work is centred on examining the practices of the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and their unethical activities towards Transgender people. We are now faced with the question whether this is becoming a government trend.

Has the Department of Arts and Culture now joined hands with the DoH and the DHA in their discriminatory practices towards gender variant bodies? Minister Xingwana’s recent behaviour regarding the work of gender activist artist Zanele Muholi adds to the gravity of what seems to be a growing conservative trend in state departments.

“Immoral, offensive and going against nation-building,” said Lulu Xingwana, the Minister of Arts and Culture about Muholi’s work. “Immoral and offensive” speaks to the old “art vs. porn” debate, as well as to peoples’ personal opinions. The point of advocacy art is not aesthetics. It is to educate, to stimulate debate, to object to it if you wish, and to give people a platform from which to voice opinions. When Xingwana publically gives an opinion, she’s doing it on behalf of us all. She is a government minister and so in condemning it outright in essence, she claims that of the entire nation echoes her opinion. It most certainly doesn’t, as recent reactions in the City Press, the Times etc. clearly show.

“Nation building,” according to our very fine constitution, includes lesbians, transgender, gender non-conforming people, and so on – and it certainly includes artists. The constitution even has room for reactionary and conservative opinions like Xingwana’s – but not as our national representative of arts and culture in this country and worldwide.

Zanele Muholi is the kind of artist you would never have experienced in the bad old days of apartheid. She’s black, she’s a lesbian, and she has very clear messages for her community – for us. Her photography tells truths many people don’t enjoy – that there are black lesbians and gender variant people in South Africa. Her work also tells us that we are allowing the ongoing rape of black lesbians in order to “cure” them and all too often, their murders. Zanele Muholi is a symbol of the inclusiveness of the constitution.

Xingwana has publicly and officially expressed her personal negative feelings about gender variant peoples’ bodies and how they should interact. The figures in Muholi’s work are clearly not engaged in sexual activity. We interpret it as the minister’s policing of bodies and the behaviour of those bodies.

There are disturbing parallels between this and the way the Department of Health discriminates against gender variant bodies, noting that discrimination is taking place in the form of exclusion / gate keeping for treatment at most government hospitals. At the Department of Home Affairs there is a clear trend where the Department is not implementing the Amendment of Act 49 of 2003. Act 49 explicitly allows trans and intersex people to amend their documentation without requiring genital surgery. This law was amended partly because of the lack of access to, and gate keeping at State Hospitals.

Gender DynamiX would like to see government officials and especially Xingwana embrace our diversity, and make a concerted effort to sensitise themselves to gender variance, to educate themselves about art activism, and to acknowledge that gender variant people too are part of the rainbow nation that we are building!

In addition, Gender DynamiX demands public acknowledgement by the Government Ministers concerned, of the vulnerability of our constituency, and of the ongoing prejudices lesbians, gays, transgender and intersex people, artists and many other marginalised groups are facing on a daily basis.

Book details

• TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved
  EAN: 9781920196226
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Inside Quatro provides a first-hand account of the ANC’s Quatro prison camp and of the mutiny in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in Angola in 1984; articles on the SWAPO ’spy drama’ of the 1970s and 1980s; an analysis of a death in exile with implications relating to Jacob Zuma; and a study of the responses of both the ANC and SWAPO to these episodes of intolerance, repression and excess. In all his essays, Trewelha analyses problems of the liberation struggles with a former insider’s knowledge and a journalist’s ability to ferret out the facts.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

In April 1990 a group of eight former members of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) returned to South Africa a few weeks after Jacob Zuma, but under very different conditions.

While Zuma was smuggled into South Africa in secret by the government (with Penuell Maduna, head of the ANC’s legal department) to prepare for negotiations with President FW de Klerk, the eight had fled from the ANC in Tanzania following six traumatic years after mutinies of ANC troops in Angola in February and May 1984.

Less than two months after their arrival back in South Africa, one of the eight, Sipho Phungulwa — a former bodyguard of the South African Communist Party leader and MK chief of staff, Chris Hani — was shot dead by ANC members in Mthatha in a daylight public assassination early in June 1990, after he had left the ANC offices with a colleague, Nicholas Luthando Dyasophu.

• Read the complete article in the Mail & Guardian

Book details

• Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO by Paul Trewhela
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781770097766
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Albie Sachs hit the nail on the head with his comment that the only truly non-racial institution in South Africa is patriarchy. In response to Jacob Zuma’s recent call for a fresh look at the nation’s morals, Pregs Govender, author of Love and Courage: A Story of Insubordination, examines a few “traditional values” and explains how they’ve served as a beating stick for our nation’s women for generations:

When he opened the House of Traditional Leaders this week, President Jacob Zuma reiterated his call for a national debate on a moral code and on the values of South Africans. He argued that traditional leaders could play an important role in service delivery and rural development. The president quoted Albert Luthuli’s famous model of leadership: “A chief is primarily a servant of his people.”

As a freedom fighter, President Zuma served in the liberation movement under one of South Africa's most respected leaders, Oliver Tambo. In a critical speech in the ’80s, Tambo helped many of us think about how our values as a movement needed to guide our actions. The apartheid state manipulated culture, tradition and ethnicity to divide and rule. It reduced women classified as “African” to “perpetual minors”.

• Read the complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• Love and Courage: A Story of Insubordination by Pregs Govender
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  EAN: 9781770093423
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Image courtesy Womenundefined

Forthcoming from JacanaA Tapestry of Human Sexuality in Africa is a colourful and intricate examination of human sexuality on the continent. All too often, sexuality in Africa is examined through the lenses of epidemic and disease. In this volume, individual strands of the vast tapestry that make up human experiences of sexuality in its various forms are examined in their own right.

This collection of papers intends not to be the last word on the subject. Rather, it takes cognisance of the fact that this is an ever-changing and multifaceted area of enquiry, whose margins and colours shift and change along with the African people and their continent. These authors imagine a more accepting, understanding world, that embraces the many filaments of human sexuality.

The voices are fresh and individual, and speak about often understudied aspects of human sexuality. Examinations of such microcosms as the coverage of gender-based violence in Kenyan print media, the experience of sexual violence by Nigerian students, and the way the Internet can be a valuable tool for communicating important messages about sexuality to Muslim people, provide lessons that can be translated into a greater understanding of sexuality on the continent at large.

About the editor

Dr. Oka Obono is Senior Lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and is a habitué of the international lecture circuit. An activitist, scholar and methodologist, he has been Principal Research of a multi-year year project aimed at increasing male responsibility for safeguarding reproductive health at individual, household and community levels. He chaired the multilingual Dakar-based network of African researchers monitoring governance trends in West Africa, coordinates the National Working Group on Accountability, investigating popular forms of accountability in Nigeria. His writings and advocacy stress the need for a plurality of voices in the discourse of everyday sexual and reproductive life.

In this project, Dr. Obono provided training and mentorship for the Sexuality Leadership Fellows from conceptualization of individual projects to the reporting stages. He is at present conducting research into the long term factors responsible for HIV transmission in African societies.

Book details

• A Tapestry of Human Sexuality in Africa edited by Dr. Oka Obono
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781920196264
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Image courtesy John Abromowski / PSTC African Alumni Conference

Author of Native Nostalgia, Jacob Dlamini is one who peers through the smoke and mirrors of SA politics, seeking the true nature of the situation. In this article for Business Day he names and shames some of those who boarded the ANC gravy train in Limpopo Province – including, yes, you guessed who:

I MET Sello Rasethaba a couple of years ago at Madiba’s, a South African restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. The restaurant is popular with expatriates and South Africans passing through the Big Apple. Rasethaba was part of a South African government delegation involving politicians, public servants and businesspeople. Their visit took in a number of city stops, including Washington .

Madiba’s is about the only place in the US where you can order pap and boerewors or a plate of bobotie . It is also one of the few places in New York where you can order Castle and Windhoek lagers, one reason South African expatriates and those passing through New York love the place.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Native Nostalgia by Jacob Dlamini
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  EAN: 9781770097551
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AIDS denialism, false AIDS-cures, quacks, charlatans and the dexterous activism of the Treatment Action Campaign as a result. The story of the TAC is one of the great triumphs of citizen activism for social justice and human rights.

Jacana Media and The Book Lounge invite you to the launch of Nathan Geffen’s Debunking Delusions: The Inside Story of the Treatment Action Campaign.

Join the author and Andile Madondile, presenter of Khayelitsha radio show on HIV, Radio Zibonele, as they are interviewed by editor of the Cape Times, Alide Dasnois.

Event Details

• Date: Tuesday, 09 March 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland
  cnr Buitenkant
  Cape Town | Map
• Guest Speakers: Andile Madondile, Alide Dasnois
• RSVP: booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425

Book Details

• Debunking Delusions: The TAC campaign against AIDS denialists by Nathan Geffen
  EAN: 9781770097810
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The City of Cape Town is heading for disaster: indeed, it’s already in deep crisis if one cares to look closely enough. The recent proliferation of public construction, public squares and public housing along the N2 towards the airport is little more than a mirage compared with the direction of more underlying trends.

Cape Town’s grim future is born out of the confluence of the globalised economic and ecological collapse that is fast becoming the defining feature of the twenty-first century. It is manifested most starkly in the dire situation that faces the majority of the city’s residents, who are excluded from the formal economy and must rely on substandard public services and their own makeshift shelters. The scenario is serious enough to draw everyone’s attention but should be set against the broader issues of long-term economic resilience and environmental sustainability to achieve a low-carbon society – so we have our work cut out for us.

The purpose of Counter Currents, edited by Edgar Pieterse, is to demystify these challenges and present readers with a creative portfolio of thinking, practice and strong vision to show that we can find alternatives – and, moreover, that these alternatives are already emerging in (marginal) sections of the state, civil society and the business sectors.

Contents

• Introduction – Edgar Pieterse
• Reflections on Leadership and Governance in Cape Town – David Schmidt
• Jane Alexander: Hunger Artist – Ashraf Jamal
• The Right to the City – Abdoumaliq Simone
• Karen Press
• The Cape Town 2030 Initiative: A contested vision of the future – Stephen Boshoff
• Towards Urban Infrastructure Sustainability – Wendy Crane, Mark Swilling, Lisa Thompson-Smeddle, Martin de Witt
• Public Transport: Tackling Cape Town’s Achilles Heel – Herrie Schalekamp
• Making Public Space in 21st Century Cape Town: An idealistic planning construct or a catalytic city building project? – Barbara Southworth
• Cape Town Central City Strategy – Andrew Boraine
• District Six Development Framework: Prospects for urban and social sustainability – Lucien le Grange
• Oude Molen: Imagining sustainable human settlements – Nisa Mammon
• Kosovo Informal Settlement Upgrade: Sustainability towards dignified communities – Mokena Makeka
• An Experiment in Public Housing – Luyanda Mpahlwa
• Photo-Essay: Social Integration in Cape Town – Tau Tavengwa
• Nurturing Creativity: The Spier experiment – Tanner Methvin
• A Development Plan for Paardvlei, Somerset West – Dave Dewar & Piet Louw
• Space & Transformation: Reflections on the new WCED schools program – Iain Low
• Regionalism and Sustainability – Sue Parnell & Greg Clarke
• Dealing with Sustainability – Mark Swilling
• Why Transformative Change is so Elusive: A conversation – Edgar Pieterse, Mokena Mokekwa, Mark Swilling, Gita Goven, Andrew Boraine, Catherine Stone and David Schmidt
• Conclusion: Re-imagining Cape Town through the rebus of identity, economy and ecology – Edgar Pieterse

Don’t miss this important public-policy read: your future may depend on it!

Book details

• Counter Currents: Experiments in Sustainability in the Cape Town Region edited by Edgar Pieterse
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781770097957
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Journalist and author of Inside Quatro, Paul Trewhela was recently involved in a roundtable discussion at Cambridge University regarding the human rights records of liberation movements in southern Africa. The discussion focused specifically on Trewhela’s book and was organized by the Cambridge Centre of Governance and Human Rights.

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, the Centre of Governance and Human Rights at Cambridge University hosted a roundtable discussion at King's College on Wednesday 10 February with leading academics on Southern Africa – Professors Stephen Ellis, Saul Dubow and Jocelyn Alexander – and with Paul Trewhela, the author of Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO (Jacana, 2009). The seminar was chaired by the BBC World Service's Africa Editor, Martin Plaut.

Participants set out to examine the human rights record of liberation movements in the region as a whole, with a particular focus on Inside Quatro.

• Read the complete article at Politicsweb

Book details

• Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO by Paul Trewhela
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781770097766
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) invites you to a panel discussion chaired by Prof Steven Friedman, as Xolela Mangcu discusses his new book, The Democratic Moment: South Africa’s Prospects under Jacob Zuma.

Join the author with Professor Raymond Suttner, a former political prisoner and author of The ANC Underground, and Sipho Seepe, columnist at the Business Day, in a discussion.

Event Details

• Date: Tuesday, 23 February 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: University of Johannesburg Council Chambers, Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
  Cnr Kingsway Ave & University Road
  Johannesburg | Map
• Guest Speaker: Steven Friedman, Raymond Suttner, Sipho Seepe
• RSVP: Johnny Alubu Selemani, jaselemani@uj.ac.za, 073 553 0726

Book Details

• The Democratic Moment: South Africa’s Prospects under Jacob Zuma by Xolela Mangcu
  EAN: 9781770097742
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!