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4968 results in Wits University Press

Page 142 of 249

  • 4 - ‘Power is in your own hands’: Why Jihan El-Tahri does not like movements

    • By Jihan El-Tahri, author and documentary filmmaker. She lives in France, Jyoti Mistry, filmmaker and associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in the School of Arts, Antje Schuhmann, works as senior lecturer in the Political Studies department and the Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
  • Edited by Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann
  • Book:
    Gaze Regimes
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 33-43

  • Summary

    Jihan El-Tahri is one of the most recognisable and visible filmmakers on the African continent. Born in Lebanon, as an adult she worked internationally as a news correspondent. In the early 1990s she turned to producing and writing documentaries. She is well known for her politically charged documentaries and her uncompromising approach to her political, visual and creative vision. Her award-winning documentaries include: House of Saud (2004), Cuba: An African Odyssey (2007) and Behind the Rainbow (2009).

    The kind of documentaries that El-Tahri has focused on makes her a filmmaker to be reckoned with not just in terms of her subject matter but also for her relentless approach in dealing with complex political and ideological issues. In House of Saud she focused on the history of Saudi Arabia and its complex military and economic co-dependency with America. In Cuba: An African Odyssey, her subject matter was the important historical and political connection between African liberation movements and their ideological and military support from Cuba. Her sourcing of rare archival footage, coupled with candid interviews, provides the audience with an in-depth and layered understanding of the political significance of these alliances.

    Continuing with her exploration of liberation movements, Behind the Rainbow is a fascinating account of an exiled liberation movement, the African National Congress, which came to power in 1994 in South Africa. The film charts the compromises and shifts in power and lays bare the influence of South Africa's political transition on the continent. It is clear from the film that the interviews secured for this documentary were neither easy to facilitate nor without specified preconditions, but once again the conversations are charged and insightfully refreshing. El- Tahri has often said on public platforms that her choice of subject matter seems to create an ‘absence of women’ but her own voice-over as the filmmaker narrating her documentaries not only marks her subjectivity but produces a poignancy in affirming the place of women in the ‘histories that men write’.

    Even when she reflects on her experiences as a filmmaker El-Tahri often recounts film projects from which she chose to walk away.

Capitalism’s Crises
  • Class struggles in South Africa and the world
  • Edited by Vishwas Satgar
  • William K. Carroll, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Isham Christie, Andreas Bieler, Jamie Jordan, Hilary Wainwright, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Sumsngala Damodaran, Niall Reddy, Mark Heywood
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015
  • The contributors to this volume draw on a non-dogmatic Marxist approach to explain the systemic and conjunctural dynamics of crisis inherent in global capitalism. Their analysis asks what is historically specific to capitalism's crises while avoiding catastrophic or defeatist claims. At the same time the volume situates left agency within actual patterns of resistance and class struggle to clarify the potential for transformative change.The cycle of resistance strengthened by the World Socal Forum and transnational activism is now punctuated by the experience of the Arab Spring, the agency of anti-systemic movements, left think tanks, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, labour unions, left parties in Europe such as Syrizia and Podemos and peoples' budgeting in Kerala, India. On the down side, we are witnessing the waning of the Workers Party in Brazil and serious challenges for South Africa's once powerful labour movement and still formative social justice activism. All these developments are assessed in this volume.This is the second volume in the Democratic Marxism series. It elaborates on crucial themes introduced in the first volume, Marxism in the 21st Century: Crisis, Critique and Struggle (edited by Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar).

  • 17 - Tsitsi Dangarembga: A manifesto

    • By Tsitsi Dangarembga, writer, filmmaker, teacher and cultural activist. She lives in Harare, Zimbabwe where she directs the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa Trust., Jyoti Mistry, filmmaker and associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in the School of Arts, Antje Schuhmann, works as senior lecturer in the Political Studies department and the Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
  • Edited by Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann
  • Book:
    Gaze Regimes
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 201-211

  • Summary

    Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Zimbabwe and is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Nervous Conditions (1988). As a filmmaker and activist she is invested in the ‘capacity building’ of young female visual artists. She recognised the opportunity present in the gathering of an influential group of women at the Goethe-Institut ‘ARTSWork: Meeting of African Women Filmmakers’ conference in 2010, and used the context of the conference to draft a preliminary Manifesto of African Women Filmmakers, the initial workings of which are outlined below. Inspired by the undertakings of the manifesto, the accompanying interview offers a contextual description of the immediate experiences, observations and rationale for how filmmaking for women in Zimbabwe has evolved. Even more significantly, Dangarembga addresses the complexity of the gendered experience for filmmakers on the continent.

    MANIFESTO OF AFRICAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS

    Having met at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, at the Conference of African Women Filmmakers held from 2 to 5 September 2010;

    Having deliberated on the continued misrepresentation and under-representation of women in general, and in particular of African women in all their diversity worldwide in the moving images media;

    Recognising our exclusion as a group from a fair share of the resources of all natures that constitute the means of representation in the medium of moving images in all its forms;

    Recognising that the media represent a social voice and position of authority so that which appears in the media is socially empowered and that which does not appear in the media is socially disadvantaged, with the result that mainstream moving images media works to continue the subjugation of women, and particularly of African women;

    Acknowledging the platform availed to us by the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg, this meeting of African Women Film Practitioners requests all national cultural ministries and all national public and private broadcasters on the continent, and the Commission of Culture in the African Union to take appropriate steps, in conjunction with representative structures of African Women Film practitioners (such as UPAFI – Pan African Women in Film – and its affiliated membership bodies), as well as regional bodies (such as Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe) to hold consultations aimed at putting into place mechanisms to implement, with critical and urgent considerations, this manifesto.

  • Chapter 7 - EFF and the left claiming ANC turf

  • Susan Booysen
  • Book:
    Dominance and Decline
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 221-260

  • Summary

    The Economic Freedom Fighters have inflicted multiple damages on their onetime parent body and present nemesis the ANC, changes realised precisely in the time of the tortuous and staggered disintegration of the Tripartite Alliance and its constituent member Cosatu. Cosatu's mutation is still unfolding but it is clear that South African politics has entered a new phase. The emerging period stands out for the weakening of the ANC internally (pivoting around the faction that spins for Zuma), and Alliance-wise for the emasculation of the SACP and Cosatu. Two sets of developments were crucial: the remaining part of Cosatu trying to sustain a compliant federation, on the terms of the S'dumo Dlamini faction; and the Numsa-based Irwin Jim grouping, expelled but still claiming the Cosatu tradition, while advancing the formation of a workers’ party.

    Had it not been for the fallout around Zuma a different ANC, Cosatu and Alliance would have prevailed. Highly significant as it is, the EFF is but one streak on the left political landscape, although admittedly one with strategic and electoral advantage – for the time being – over the rest of the left. It has solid populist-nationalist support, high-profile leadership, and enjoys sound media coverage – besides having established a credible electoral footing in 2014.

    This chapter focuses on the EFF and the labour-aligned left, both important for longer-term left politics and the weakening of the ANC. It assesses the ‘moment’ of Cosatu fragmentation and the associated failure of the Tripartite Alliance. It takes stock of the political conjuncture, considering whether a left party is rising. It then focuses on the EFF and its ideological-policy positioning, also asking whether the EFF is in fact a left project with sustainability in terms of organisational, electoral and grassroots appeals. Can it fend off the ‘Cope curse’? The chapter explores both the enigmatic EFF leadership and the nemesis it finds in President Jacob Zuma, and then returns to the fallout from the Cosatu war, issues around the formation of a rival union organisation, and the emerging workers’ party. It reflects on the hurdles a workers’ party would have to overcome in order to become an alternative to the ANC, the EFF and the DA.

    The rebellion of the lambs

    The EFF rapidly grew out of its ANC Youth League shoes to become a 6 per cent opposition party.

  • 9 - Do biofuels offer a solution?

  • from Section 4 - What we can do to avoid and adapt to climate change
  • Bob Scholes, Mary Scholes, Mike Lucas
  • Book:
    Climate Change
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 162-164

  • Summary

    Currently biofuels hardly make a difference in the big picture, but they may fill an essential niche in future, for instance as aviation fuels. Care will need to be taken to avoid competition for land and water between biofuels and food production.

    Coal, oil and gas started out as plant biomass millions of years ago. Plant biomass is currently the biggest energy source in Africa. Even in coal- and electricity-rich South Africa, many families still burn wood and charcoal. Provided the biomass is sustainably harvested, burning biomass is approximately carbon neutral – in other words, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by the fire is the same as the amount originally removed from the atmosphere when the plant grew. Approximately the same amount of CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere when replacement plants grow.

    Modern biomass energy technologies are much more thermally efficient than traditional wood-burning fireplaces, stoves or charcoal kilns. Wood, grass and forestry or agricultural waste can be burned in carefully controlled furnaces, producing energy at a cost quite similar to coal, but without most of the pollution. The problem is that biomass energy is generally spread out all over the landscape, rather than concentrated in a mine, like fossil fuels. The costs of moving it to the power plant can be high. Therefore, efficient use of biomass energy requires a shift from a few enormous power stations to many small power stations.

    One of the most intractable future renewable energy challenges is to provide liquid fuels for ships, trains, vehicles and aeroplanes. Some of these modes of transport can use electricity directly from the grid or stored in batteries. Yet despite great advances in battery technology, their ‘energy density’ (that is, the energy stored per unit mass of the battery) remains too large to be a viable power source for aircraft. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels have a much higher energy density than current batteries. Biomass can be converted to liquid fuel, which can substitute for petrol, diesel and aviation fuel. Biofuels can also be blended with liquid fossil fuels, reducing the overall total carbon footprint. There are several paths to make liquid fuels from biomass:

  • • Oil can be extracted from many species and converted to a diesel fuel suitable for trucks, trains and jets.

  • • Sugars and starches can be fermented to form ethanol, which can be burned in many internal combustion engines. […]

  • Chapter 1 - Reconstituting and re-imagining the left after Marikana

  • from PART 1 - NEW POLITICAL DIRECTIONS?
    • By Noor Nieftagodien, South African Research Chair (SARCHI): Local Histories, Present Realities, Head of History Workshop, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
  • Edited by Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
  • Book:
    New South African Review 5
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 18-33

  • Summary

    Since the Marikana massacre in August 2012 the character of what constitutes left politics in South Africa has been experiencing profound transformation. Until then the left was broadly defined in relationship to the Tripartite Alliance, and more specifically by either support for or opposition to the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) project of the African National Congress(ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Undergirded by the ANC's political power, the left in the ruling Alliance placed their hopes in an ANC-led state to deliver ‘a better life for all’. The ANC's hegemony has been constructed on the idea that, as the main party of liberation, it embodies the national aspirations of the black majority and is the ultimate guarantor of freedom. Its dominance was also entrenched by the subordination and institutionalisation of the independent movements of the working class, built from the 1970s, which led the struggle to overthrow apartheid. Unions, civics, youth organisations and women's movements were marshalled behind a political consensus centred on the NDR. Left-wing critics, particularly from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), were tolerated as long they did not pose a fundamental challenge to this consensus – which has consigned them to the purgatory of the seemingly perpetual first phase of the revolution. Those who were deemed a threat have been silenced or purged, to ensure acquiescence to the party line. This has been made evident by, for instance, contestations related to the Marikana massacre, Nkandlagate and the government's macroeconomic policies.

    Although the ANC's comfortable victory in the 2014 general elections seemed to confirm the authority of the ruling Alliance, beneath this veneer of ‘business as usual’ important tectonic shifts were already underway, the effects of which have opened the prospects for wide-ranging changes to the country's political landscape. The Marikana massacre undoubtedly marked a moment of severe disruption to and subsequent fracturing of the Tripartite Alliance. However, the ideological fault lines that have since manifested themselves publicly have been present in the Alliance for many years. Centred on divisions between those who defend the status quo (cohering principally around the ANC/SACP leadership) and those who have found the subordination of the workers’ movement to the economic and political interests of the elite increasingly intolerable, the contestations between them have become increasingly intense.

  • 1 - African Women in Cinema: An overview

    • By Beti Ellerson, founder and director of the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema.
  • Edited by Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann
  • Book:
    Gaze Regimes
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 1-9

  • Summary

    African cinema born during the African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s re-appropriated the camera as a tool to counter the colonialist gaze that had dominated representations of Africa up until that time. The emergence of women in African cinema coincided with this nascent period during which a cadre of film professionals positioned themselves for the creation of a veritable African cinema culture. One such professional of note is the pioneer of Senegalese media culture, Annette Mbaye d'Erneville: feminist, journalist, writer, communications specialist, media activist and culture critic. The first Senegalese to earn a degree in journalism, she studied in Paris in the late 1940s, and since returning to Senegal in 1957 she has devoted her life to the cultural politics of the country, forging important institutions such as the Association Senegalaise de la Critique Cinematographique, Rencontres Cinematographiques de Dakar (RECIDAK), and the Henriette Bathily Women's House.

    Similarly, Guadeloupean Sarah Maldoror, who was born and raised in France, joined forces with artists from Africa and the Caribbean during a time of heightened cultural, intellectual and political discovery. In the early 1960s she went to Moscow to study filmmaking. Having already joined the pro-independence movements, it is not surprising that her films would take on similar anti-colonialist themes. She has been a mentor and role model to many African women filmmakers, notably Togolese Anne-Laure Folly Reimann, whose film Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie (1998) traces her own life as filmmaker engagée.

    Several women were among the film professionals who established the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), both created in 1969. These two exemplary African cinema institutions continue to be a reference for continental co-operation and organisation in the area of culture. Zalika Souley, trailblazing actress from Niger, served on the founding committee of FEPACI, while Burkinabe Alimata Salembere, one of the founding members of FESPACO, and whose compatriot Odette Sangho was also a member, presided over the organising committee of the first festival. The documentary Tam Tam à Paris, made in 1963 by journalist Therese Sita-Bella, was among the entries at the festival and is considered the earliest film by an African woman.

Page 142 of 249