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Under what conditions do states protect minority rights in a context of domestic resistance? Recent decades have seen rapid divergence on LGBT rights worldwide, with Africa presented as "norms antipreneur" in the face of international pressure. Yet, in 1996, South Africa was the first country in the world to provide constitutional protection on grounds of sexual orientation. This article develops an original theory on LGBT rights protection using a conflict-to-rights framework. Employing process tracing, elite interviews and archival sources, I show how a situation of insurgency allows LGBT activists to build networks and increase egalitarian attitudes to attain in-group status. Continued violence also works to block public participation in policy-making while dividing opposition forces, allowing a tiny group of activists to effectively lobby for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, especially at the turn of the millennium, several countries considered as mature democracies are now exhibiting trends and patterns of democratic recession, democratic backsliding and democratic apostacy as many of them are experiencing legitimacy erosion as manifested through frequent public delivery protests organized by cross-sector social movements and general dissatisfaction with the quality and nature of service delivery. In South Africa, between 2004 and 2019, there were a total of over 3 000 service delivery protests organised by several social movements, with the country experiencing 2 455 service delivery protests just between July and September 2022 alone. This calls for an interrogation of the problems of service delivery protests in the midst of democratic consolidation. This paper therefore sought to examine the intricacies presented by problems of service delivery protest organised by various social movements within the contexts of states experiencing democratic consolidation. Specifically, the paper analysed the impact and implications of these social movements-organised service delivery protests on the progression of democratic consolidation. Methodologically, secondary data sources are used for analysis, with the concept of democratic consolidation providing conceptual lenses for analysis. Findings are critical in adding fresh perspectives and insights into the conversations on service delivery and democratic consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In African culture, widowhood is frequently accompanied by rites that must be carried out by the widow. Widows are compelled to carry out these rites and may not feel comfortable executing them since they involve violence. The minority who dares to refuse to participate can face serious consequences because they are persecuted by their families and society. Research shows that widows suffer from fear and coercion, stigmatisation, dehumanising experiences, movement and social restrictions, and exposure to harmful traditional practices. This article examines violent aspects of widowhood rites within the South African context. A qualitative study that examined oppressive structures and how they impacted social injustice and the marginalisation of widows was employed. The data were collected from a purposeful sample of widows in Gauteng province, South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather data from 28 widows, which were then subjected to thematic analysis. Our findings showed that widows were subjected to painful widowhood rites, which were frequently performed against their preferences. The rites affected them both physically and emotionally. The article recommends that policies be put in place to safeguard the rights of widows and protect them from exploitative cultural beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. We assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa. We find surprisingly little evidence that exposure to information about the fossil fuel divestment movement can increase public support for policies that address climate change. Our findings suggest that divestment movements may be less effective at changing beliefs and policy preferences than previously realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we centre the knowledge and contributions of environmental justice social movements towards transformations for sustainability in Transdisciplinary Research. Scholar activists within research teams can help bridge networks of scholars with social movement networks to build strongly engaged and relational transdisciplinary research. We draw on reflections and learnings from the Coastal Justice Network, a scholar activist network working in solidarity with small-scale fishers and other blue justice movements in South Africa. We discuss some of the alignments, possibilities, and tensions inherent in this mode of TD research. Lastly, we suggest approaches for bridging the academic-activist divide within TD ocean research, including the inclusion of scholar activists who have established relationships with social movements in TD teams; ensuring adequate time and learning spaces for developing relational capacities such as reflexivity and solidarity; and embracing and learning from the messy politics of alliance building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's identity politics supports strict citizenship, places a high importance on racial identification and recognition, and subjects newly acquired citizens to structural and racial discrimination. The interpretivist research paradigm was employed in this ethnographic study to demonstrate how transnationalism combined with integrative belonging helps to create pluralist communities. The study investigated the complex sense of belonging and community exclusion of naturalised citizens against foreign distinctions through controversial citizenship patterns, jus sanguinis and jus solis regulations, and globalisation systems. It challenged notions of citizenship for naturalised citizens who encounter racial exclusions from the full citizenship available to locals and contended that immigration and the idea of cultural citizenship may have an impact on host cultures without undermining national identities. Achieving cultural citizenship necessitates reciprocity with both natives and those with whom one cannot identify racially, as well as mutual inclusion and full involvement for naturalised citizens. In view of the expansion of global capitalism, it is necessary to have more international mobility, diversity of cultures for a sense of meaningful belonging and a new approach to citizenship policy that shuns racial and ethnocentric politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Participation Paradox" by Sinwell Luke examines the use of participatory democracy in Thembelihle, an informal settlement in South Africa. The book explores how residents organized themselves to secure basic services and resist eviction through participatory democratic methods. Although the process was challenging, it ultimately allowed the community to obtain housing and electricity. However, the author also acknowledges the community's vulnerability due to the absence of an anti-systemic political sensibility and a strong socialist political party. The book provides a nuanced analysis of the strengths and limitations of participatory democracy in action and South African social movements in the post-apartheid era. It also raises questions about the sustainability and scalability of participatory democracy movements and their potential role in addressing climate change and climate justice. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the root causes of student unrest in South African universities and evaluates the institutional responses to these protests, otherwise regarded as social unrest. The study is lensed through social movement theory and institutional theory. The study adopted transformative paradigm under qualitative approach and participatory research design to analyze the experiences of universities in South Africa that have experienced significant social unrest in recent years. Focus group discussion was conducted with university management staff, student activists, and security officers of the selected universities. The findings showed that lack of access, socio-economic inequalities, ineffective communication, and open engagement are the primary causes of social unrest. In contrast, providing equitable access, economic liberation, effective communication, and open engagement is the possible institutional response that alleviates social unrest on university campuses. Hence, promoting equitable access and economic liberation coupled with effective communication and open engagement among stakeholders was recommended. Plain Language Summary: Causes and Institutional Responses of Social Unrest. This paper investigates why South African university students protest and how the institutions respond. Using social movement and institutional theories, the study talks to university managers, student activists, and security officers in universities with recent protests. The key issues identified are limited access, economic inequalities, poor communication, and exclusion from decision-making. The suggested solution is to focus on fair access, reducing economic disparities, improving communication, and involving everyone in decisions. The researcher recommends promoting equitable access and economic fairness, alongside better communication and inclusive decision-making, as a way to address and prevent social unrest on university campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal on Masculinities & Social Change / Masculinidades y Cambio Social is the property of Journal on Masculinities & Social Change / Masculinidades y Cambio Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The history of campaigns against apartheid through sport reveals messy relationships between athletes and social movements, advancing recent debates over the possibilities and constraints of sport politics. The anti-apartheid movement coalesced around a transnational sporting boycott to isolate South Africa, but the American tennis icon Arthur Ashe made a series of visits to compete there in the 1970s. Ashe believed in participation as the primary mechanism for change through sport, only later embracing the boycott. When tennis tournaments and rugby tours brought South Africans to the United States, anti-apartheid organizations mobilized their own confrontational protests to interrupt play. As the growing movement won over athletes and South African propaganda turned toward commercial sport spectacle, the special position that athletes occupied provided leverage. However, their magnified legacy also obscured how resistance to apartheid through sport found success in the first place. Despite the appeal of participation as the natural path of progress, strategies of confrontation often proved more effective in the struggle against apartheid. Questioning the politics of participation and widening the frame to consider confrontation changes our understanding of sport politics, looking beyond individual athletes and bringing everyday people off the sidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of African Political Economy is the property of Review of Political Economy (ROAPE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This briefing critically discusses the moral question of whether South Africa deserves climate reparations. It examines the deeply unequal and polluting nature of the South African economy in order to demonstrate how claims from South Africa for climate finance and reparations are morally complex and fraught. For South Africa's claims for climate reparations and finance to be justified, the article proposes two conditions. First, that South Africa act in line with its fair share of global climate action. Second, that climate finance must help to transform South Africa's deeply unjust society and bring benefits not to the rich elite, who themselves owe climate reparations, but to the majority, especially the poor, Black and working class. Applying these two principles, the briefing asks whether the Just Energy Transition (JET) Partnership and the accompanying Investment Plan announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa meet those conditions. It argues that they potentially fail to meet both. The piece also warns that global South countries must be critical of JET Partnership funding models, as they may be used as tools to entrench the interests of international financiers who seek to dominate the clean energy future. To counteract such a possibility, climate justice movements should work to ensure that climate finance is a true fulfilment of climate debt owed to the global South, which works to ensure meaningful social, economic and ecological justice. The author writes this piece not just from an academic perspective as a postdoctoral research fellow. He also writes it from his perspective as the elected General Secretary of the South African Climate Justice Coalition – a coalition of over 50 trade union, grassroots, community-based and non-profit organisations working together to advance a transformative climate justice agenda. In his role as general secretary, he has engaged with coalition member organisations and worked to build a shared and critical activist agenda towards both the JET Partnership and the South African government's response to the climate crisis more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores three protest movements differing in scale and scope in two regions in the world. #feesmustfall (2015-2016) was a social media movement in South Africa to protest against prohibitive hikes in university fees. #Jallikattu (2017) was a social media movement in Tamil Nadu (India) to lift a ban imposed by the Supreme Court of India against an ancient cultural sport with bulls. Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a South African social media movement to raise issues related to shack dwellers. While there is literature focusing on these movements individually (Bosch 2016, Kalaiyarasan 2017, Mdlalose 2014), a comparative approach offers some alternate insights into how state power manifests in the age of digital capitalism. Habermas (1987, 1989) theorised the transformation of the public sphere and key to understanding how these publics contest existing power structures is his explication of authentic communicative action. Using Fuchs's (2016) and Zuboff's (2019) analyses of social media activism, we examine police brutality and su rveillance in these three movements. The classical model of diaspora (Harutyunyan 2012) is introduced to show how it manifests in two of the protest movements, and contemporary notions of diaspora (Grossman 2019: 1265) are explored to see what they could offer to diverse protest cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

3Cities are a place of transformation, since cities are being challenged through various processes, among them gentrification. Likewise, cities are a space for innovation and new solutions, as many changes start locally. Reclaim the City is one such local movement: It is a response to weak statehood which results in a limited ability to solve the housing crisis and the continuation of spatial segregation in Cape Town. Gentrification deepens the housing crisis and has an impact on the most vulnerable groups, black and colored people, who are affected by eviction. Based on a qualitative study, this article first unpacks the weakness of the city authorities regarding housing and then analyzes the relationship between Reclaim the City and the city. This relationship is not to be understood as a binary, conflictual liaison; rather, the relationship is complex, involving resistance but also complementarity, because in the self-organized occupation Reclaim the City offers what the city is not able to provide. The response of the authorities is ambivalent: They welcome self-organization and yet try to control and delegitimize the occupation by criminalizing the occupants. The relationship between Reclaim the City and the city thus shows that self-organization does not necessarily lead to new interfaces between the state and social movements, as often discussed in the context of new municipalism, but rather housing becomes a field of social contestation in that the city and Reclaim the City negotiate for mutual acceptance and legitimation, at times with an open end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article summarizes the book "Decolonizing Constitutionalism" by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Sara Araújo, and Orlando Aragón Andrade. The book proposes to reconstruct constitutionalism from a counter-hegemonic perspective, challenging the classical and Western view of human rights. The chapters of the book address topics such as Islamic constitutionalism, the new constitutional order, social movements, and the role of indigenous women in constitutional transformation. The work seeks to promote inclusion and social participation in the definition of constitutions in countries of the global south, analyzing legal pluralism and constitutionalism in South Africa and Latin America. [Extracted from the article]

Public protest represents an important sanction on rulers and institutions. Protest is a quotidian phenomenon in South Africa; perhaps the defining element of post-apartheid political life. Geographic representations of protest abound – typically dot distribution maps – but these merely confirm that more protests occur where there are more people. Visualisations of protest per capita and protestors per capita (or ‘general propensity’), which are best rendered as choropleth maps, are well-placed to overcome this limitation. The South African Police Services’ database of protest is the largest publicly-available single-country protest event database. Having used machine learning to classify 89,000 protest events, I locate each within one of the country’s 234 municipalities, and depict these events using counts, count per capita, and the general propensity. This reveals a proportionally high number of rural protests, and that municipalities hosting major industries, along with provincial seats of government, present the highest propensity for protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the relationship of South Africa's middle classes to popular protests. Dubbed 'the rebellion of the poor' in scholarly debates, these protests target access to public infrastructures such as electricity, water, education and housing. I argue that the relationship of South Africa's middle classes to these 'service delivery protests' is highly ambivalent, charged with political tensions and structural contradictions. The main reason is that class positionalities strongly shape people's perceptions of their interests and their inclinations to support certain kinds of protest. At the same time, there are movements that transcend this scenario of class-based interests. Student protests such as #Feesmustfall and #Rhodesmustfall that began in 2015 signal how material interests in widening the access to tertiary education and ideological interests in decolonial education can coalesce, amalgamizing new collective subjects into being and galvanising them into new forms of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing the history of activism in post-apartheid South Africa from the Treatment Action Campaign to the Social Justice Coalition, amongst others, one is able to develop an account of various practices and strategies that have been utilised to leverage state resources and lobby support for various causes. This history of rights-based activism has provided various social movements and community-based organisations with a framework with which to engage the state and more localised bureaucratic structures like the City of Cape Town. This article, which is based on two years of ethnographic research, looks at the activist practices and strategies employed by an environmental activist organisation called the PHA Campaign, which operates in a landscape that has been characterised as neoliberal and that explicitly caters to private developers. By looking at how this organisation leveraged the acute water scarcity that threatened the Western Cape from around 2016, or what has been called the "Day Zero" water crisis, this article applies Ahmann's concept of "working time" to the South African activist landscape and examines how organisations can mobilise how a crisis is framed to their benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southern Africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected. The region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. Despite the fact that young people in the region are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from policy and decisionmaking spaces -- especially those living in global and urban peripheries. In this article, I speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics. I do so by unpacking the everyday concerns and negotiations of youth activists in the urban periphery of Lephalale in Limpopo, South Africa -- not typically seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. Lephalale is viewed as a future hub of power generation in South Africa, the rapid growth of the town being based on the expansion of coal extractivism. The complexities and paradoxes around how youth are navigating their futures in this site of mega coal projects are explored through two case studies: the Lephalale Unemployment Forum and the Waterberg Environmental Justice Forum. With climate and environmental catastrophe producing both shrinking futures and horizons of possibility, I argue that youth contestation and negotiation of their futures hold out possibilities, even with their contradictions, for collective reimagining of urban space and development. Through the methodology I employed to explore these negotiations and contestations, I aimed to be cognisant of how research is embedded in context- specific power- laden social relations. While it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationship- building before, during and after the research, which would be the basis for a collaborative research project years later. This way of conducting slow research is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as for research that traverses the boundary between academia and social movements in this time of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, scholars have turned to Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution to explain the reproduction and development of capitalism. Most accounts focus on elite maneuvers from above. With specific attention to the case of South Africa, I examine the relationship between passive revolution, secured by elites through the negotiated democratic transition of the early 1990s, and mobilization from below in the post-apartheid period. South Africa's passive revolution featured formal racial inclusion, the preservation of extreme inequality and economic insecurity, the demobilization of popular forces, and narrow elite struggles for state resources. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists and residents in the impoverished townships and informal settlements around Johannesburg, I show how passive revolution produced fractured militancy: the simultaneous proliferation and fragmentation of popular resistance. I demonstrate this process by examining the policy, organizational, and leadership dimensions of the relationship between passive revolution and popular mobilization. The analysis has implications for the study of both capitalism and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, as Finkeldey (2023, 97) argues in I Fighting Global Neo-Extractivism: Fossil-Free Social Movements in South Africa i , 'Public claim-making and the inner organisational life of social movements mobilising against fracking in South Africa have not been explored in any depth so far'. Fighting global neo-extractivism: fossil-free social movements in South Africa: by Jasper Finkeldey, London, Routledge, 2023, 147 pp., £29.59, ISBN 9780367620127 Through this theoretical positioning, Finkeldey provides an in-depth analysis of two Fossil-Free social movements located within the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. [Extracted from the article]

The research draws from diary entries shared by participants across various urban neighbourhoods and dwellings in Gauteng Province in South Africa during the Level-5 lockdown period. Occurring between 27 March and 1 May 2020, the Level-5 lockdown was severely restrictive, as residents were confined within their homes, and their movement and social activity curtailed. Research has already indicated that this had a negative impact on the mental health and food security of ordinary people. In this paper, we illustrate how participants' diary entries offer a layered and longitudinal lens to support this emerging research. Notably, analysis of these diary entries illustrates that the 6-week lockdown took an emotional toll on participants across different urban neighbourhoods and dwellings. Furthermore, these diary entries point to the sources of frustration and anxiety being shaded by the spatial and structural location of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of African Political Economy is the property of Review of Political Economy (ROAPE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Review of African Political Economy is the property of Review of Political Economy (ROAPE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Drawing on fieldwork carried out among different South African poor people's movements, this article explores what is played out on the fringes of this type of mobilization. Away from the noise of demonstrations, we can observe the particularities of a commitment that links together the cause being defended, the immediate socio-spatial environment of the activists, and their everyday worlds—a commitment that is rooted in the 'regime of the near'. The space of activism thus coincides with the spaces in which the daily lives of these women and men unfold. I argue that this approach helps us better understand how mobilization spreads and how it can be sustained. It also makes it possible to measure more precisely that on which the legitimacy claimed by the movement and its visibility are based, as well as the persistence of commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union of South Africa (WEAU) was founded in 1911, only a year after the declaration of the Union of South Africa. While scholars of the South African women's suffrage movement have paid particular attention to the race politics of the WEAU and its allied organisations, comparatively little scholarship has focused on white suffragists' claims to citizenship. This article addresses this scholarly lacuna and argues that the South African women's suffrage movement's demands for citizenship were entangled with a broader project to reform and modernise the South African state. In so doing, the article explores how members of the WEAU imagined what it meant to be 'South African' in the 1910s and 1920s, and particularly in relation to their framing of citizenship as a tool for shoring up white supremacy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-important tool for quantitative analysis of protests, the potential power of Protest Event Analysis (PEA) has only increased with the rise of Machine Learning technologies and the ubiquity of big data. PEA coders also present an advantage over contemporary Natural Language Programming innovations by being customisable to incorporate locally appropriate terms and vernaculars, expressed as personalised ontologies. As such, there is a need to develop a standard process for deploying machine learning tools that can draw on the local. This paper introduces such a tool, innovating the numeration of abstract indicators. "Machine Learning Protest Event Analysis Keyword Enumerated Recoding" is a protocol that enables PEA coders to read and classify large "event databases", incorporating local terms and abstract indicators into the analysis. Applying this protocol to 150,000 records in a police-recorded database of crowd events in South Africa, protest events could be individually rated by levels of "tumult"—a feat hitherto inhibited by conventional PEA methods. Innovations in estimating crowd sizes, as well as an updated view of post-apartheid protest, showing that protests tend to be more common but less prone to violence than previous theories concluded, speaks to the potential for this protocol to unearth novel insights on even bigger data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary provides a critical discussion of the three essays in this forum and reflects on the similarities and differences between the crises of democracy under globalized neoliberal capitalism in South Korea and South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The laws of motion of capitalism were sketched by Karl Marx in 1867 (Capital Volume 1) and brought to Africa most forcefully by Rosa Luxemburg in 1913 (The Accumulation of Capital). Their modelling of capitalist crisis tendencies (Marx) and of the ways imperial colonisation compelled a super-exploitative relationship between capital and non-capitalist socio-ecological relations (Luxemburg) provide necessary but insufficient ingredients for economic decolonisation. South African political economists subsequently developed potentials for Marxist methods to be applied in different sites across the continent, with attention to race, ethnicity, gender and environment as well as class domination. After reviewing these works and their relationship to the earlier classics, and after considering corresponding processes of capital accumulation, this essay considers opportunities for applying the theory of uneven development as further elaborated by David Harvey and Neil Smith. It then considers several of the most relevant acts of economic decolonisation I have witnessed in South Africa, led by grassroots activists: anti-apartheid struggles; labour uprisings; community, social movement and student mobilisations over municipal services, AIDS medicines and tertiary education; and democracy movements which emerged in neo-colonial kleptocratic regimes since 2011. What is evident is that, as Luxemburg argued, "Accumulation of capital periodically bursts out in crises and spurs capital on to a continual extension of the market. Capital cannot accumulate without the aid of non-capitalist relations, nor can it tolerate their continued existence side by side with itself." And likewise, the activists inspired by Marxist, Luxemburgist analysis in South Africa, can no longer tolerate a neo-colonial mode of uneven capitalist development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has a patriarchal tendency to treat womxn as beneficiaries of protest and activism rather than as agents in the construction of a new socio-political order and as drivers of change through protest. This paper examines the internal gender tensions within South Africa's 2015-2016 student movements including how these tensions materialised publicly; in a sample of university campuses and in the media. The complex particularities of young black womxn who are agitating for an intersectional approach to protest - one that privileges gender - and an end to patriarchy and misogynoir in these movements is observed. Content analysis of self-articulated goals, mission statements on various media and case studies are detailed where black womxn activists constitute majority membership in movements even as they remain disenfranchised in their operationalising. To counter marginality, black womxn student activists' interventions demonstrate a new radical political autonomy that embraces an inclusive feminist ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates the transformative potential of guaranteeing justiciable socio-economic rights in domestic law, by engaging with the judicial vindication, over nearly a quarter-century, of the right to housing in the South African Constitution. Initial assessments of housing rights litigation in the country suggested that, while the right provided temporary protection against eviction and could provide temporary relief in housing emergencies, it was of limited use in addressing spatial injustice and unequal access to affordable housing. But over time, judicial vindication of the right to housing has given poor and vulnerable communities a foothold in cities, which is productively being leveraged by social movements claiming a right to the city. Meanwhile, separate remedial frameworks around land rights and political participation appear to be slowly converging with the housing jurisprudence, in ways that hold significant potential for transformative change in South African cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a body of education scholarship in South Africa that captures the role played by social movements in democratising education in post-apartheid South Africa. However, this scholarship says little about how power dynamics affect learning and intellectual labour in social movements or social movement organisations. In addition, the issue of learning in social movements or social movement organisations is hardly explored in the South African social movement literature. This lack of focus on how activists, especially grassroots activists in working-class communities, learn and produce knowledge in social movements and organisations obscures the complexity of learning and knowledge production in activist settings. This article explores how activists, especially grassroots activists, learn in social movements. Based on secondary literature and interviews, the article advances two main arguments: First, learning in social movements and organisations takes place in non-formal and informal ways. Both these forms of learning take place inside and outside formal educational settings. And they both contribute to the empowerment and critical consciousness of activists in social movements and organisations. In addition, informal learning takes place inside and outside popular educational spaces. However, it is not inevitable that non-formal and informal forms of learning in activist settings will generate critical knowledge and activist practices that disrupt the status quo. Second, power relations based on "race", social class, gender, and sexuality, among other axes of social division, impact on how learning takes place in non-formal or popular contexts of education. This article seeks to understand how power relations shape the learning and knowledge production process in social movements and organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements are at the forefront of fighting for another world as conceptualised through Arundhati Roy's portal. COVID-19 and state measures imposed to contend with it have severely impacted not only the activism of movements, but also their capacity to learn. Translocal social movement learning offers one way in which such learning can continue. This article shares reflections from participants involved in a translocal learning engagement between movement members and activist-scholars from Ghana, South Africa and Canada. It provides an important example of the kind of non-hierarchal social movement learning that can happen at a distance, when movements share, learn and support one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights both the internal educative practices of social movements and how these practices can effectively link to building Freirean pedagogies within higher education institutions. At the heart of this possibility lies the democratic transformation of relations between students and teachers on the one hand and researchers and activists on the other. I draw from two case studies of my own research on community-based organisations and workers' movements in post-apartheid South Africa, which point to the possibilities and challenges of developing Freirean approaches within the neoliberal higher education context. The article suggests that if the goal of education is to challenge systems of oppression, then social justice and the democratisation of the knowledge project must be the guiding principles we employ to navigate our everyday teaching and learning practices both inside and outside the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on contemporary youth organizing has documented psychological benefits associated with participation and some evidence of local political impact. But how do local organizing campaigns transform into regional or national movements? This is a practical question facing youth organizers and one that calls for attention from researchers. In this article, we draw on 3 years of ethnographic fieldwork with South Africa's Equal Education (EE) to analyze collective action frames that enabled EE youth to assert legitimacy and construct shared aims across locales. Our findings focus on how youth constructed historical continuity frames that lent them legitimacy as upholders of the South African freedom struggle and flexible problem frames that linked young people's local struggles, such as inadequate sanitation or broken windows at their schools, to a national policy agenda. We discuss connections to other youth movements and implications for the interdisciplinary youth organizing field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now wide recognition that grassroots community organizing is a uniquely necessary approach for contending with the persistent and escalating socioeconomic inequities that manifest as disparities across many societal domains, including housing, safety, education, and mental and physical health. The articles in this special issue report findings from studies designed to increase understanding of community organizing processes and produce actionable knowledge that can enhance these and other similar efforts to create more equitable and just cities and regions. These studies examine a variety of community organizing campaigns, initiatives, and networks in North America, as well as one in Bulgaria, and one in South Africa. These groups are building social power and demanding economic, racial, educational, and environmental justice. In this introductory article, we highlight some of the themes that emerge from this set of studies and make recommendations for future roles that research can play in advancing collective understanding and the practical objectives of grassroots organizing initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a decade, widespread protests have erupted within South Africa's impoverished black townships and informal settlements. The mobilizations resembled what Sidney Tarrow refers to as a 'cycle of contention' or 'protest cycle,' as they represented a diffusion of heightened conflict across society. In contrast to Tarrow's protest cycle, however, resistance failed to converge around 'objective coalitions' and a generalized challenge, and it persisted rather than reaching exhaustion. Drawing on a case study of protest and organizing in Bekkersdal, this article argues that the fragmentation and localization of resistance reinforced this peculiar combination. Bekkersdal activists responded to democratization by seeking administrative fixes to local government. Political parties also pulled activists in different directions, yet without facilitating bridges to activism in other areas. While providing a highly visible example for activists in other areas to replicate, the Bekkersdal resistance thus failed to produce broader concessions that might have discouraged protests elsewhere. The case study shows how local containment of political incorporation processes may enable the persistence of protest cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are spaces constituted through social action, and how do they constitute social action? We address these questions by studying how protesters appropriate spaces by occupying streets and public buildings and by spreading specific atmospheres. We apply Alfred SCHÜTZ's phenomenological take on the constitution of multiple realities in terms of "province of meaning" as a heuristic device to capture the diversity of protest atmospheres along with their spatial, affective, and epistemic dimensions—those embodied and situated as well as virtual. This perspective allows us to describe empirical examples of protest situations in South Africa and Senegal where "the streets" and the media meet. Our research material spans documents, tweets, video material collected online, and ethnographic interviews. In this article, we look at how embodied practices reproduce and manifest particular "provinces of meaning" and "protest atmospheres," and how these embodied practices are complemented by social media practices. Our proposed approach not only provides an example of how a social space is created and refigured through social protest, but also allows a further understanding of the situational emergence of protests as collective action that creates "we-experiences." The phenomenological perspective goes beyond the widespread mind/body dualism that underlies so many interpretations of social movement culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik is the property of Waxmann Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Trabalhos em Lingüística Aplicada is the property of Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Portal de Periodicos Eletronicos Cientificos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper offers an approach to understanding dramatic social change, entwined with belief revision and shifting knowledge. It explores the interplay between rapidly changing material and ideological conditions through the concept of a rupture. Ruptures are breakdowns in existing social and epistemic practices and relations: periods which call into question what is normalized, such that something else can grow through the cracks. Ruptures do not guarantee any particular replacement, but rather facilitate the emergence of new practices and understandings of the world. Ruptures thus create conditions of possibility for people to explore new social relations and ideas. To develop this idea, this paper draws on Franz Fanon's writings on the Algerian anti-colonial revolution (1954–1962), as a paradigmatic rupture, as well as two smaller-scale ruptures: the student-worker movements over 2015–2016 in South Africa (#FeesMustFall) and Brazil (the primavera secundarista). In their respective contexts, each movement has substantively challenged prevailing practices and understandings that had been hegemonic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely acknowledged that mega-sporting events play a powerful role in nationbuilding in their host countries, and many scholars have empirically demonstrated this relationship. The 2010 South Africa FIFA World Cup provided a potent vehicle through which national unity and integration could be successfully promoted. However, more recent Brazilian experiences in the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics proved that an identical outcome is not always the case. This study examines how the hosting of mega-sporting events in South Africa and Brazil yielded contrasting effects on nation-building. Events in these two countries are compared to explore how two analogous societies that hosted mega-sporting events at a similar time ultimately experienced completely different outcomes. It is argued that differences in the cost of these mega-events, different economic circumstances and, differences in the characteristics and impact of social movements in the two countries were major contributing factors to the divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil society engagement around health care and population health improvement is an important driver towards Health for All. Research can improve the effectiveness of health activism by examining the resources, structures and strategies of civil society engagement. However, research to support such engagement faces epistemological and methodological challenges which call for specific research strategies. A four year multi-country study was undertaken by the People's Health Movement, a global network working for health for all. The research took place in six countries (Brazil, Colombia, DR Congo, India, Italy, South Africa) and globally, and was directed to understanding five domains of civil society engagement: movement building; campaigning and advocacy; capacity building; knowledge generation, access and use; and engaging with governance. The research plan and methods of data collection and analysis were tailored to address the objective of improving activist practice, while negotiating research challenges identified during the design phase. Results include insights into the practice of civil society engagement in relation to the five domains of activist practice, as well as experience gained in managing six methodological challenges which we describe as: making meaning, aligning research and action, managing power relations, valuing experiential knowledges, chaos and contingency, challenging preconceptions. Researching activism can produce useful insights into practice as well as support continuous improvement in the effectiveness of such activism. However, there are significant methodological challenges that can be addressed through appropriate strategies. More research, building on the approach described in this paper, can contribute to more effective civil society activism for health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical-methodological proposal to research movements and the state based on the associations they establish. It is grounded in three investigations: the first one about the transformations of the Landless People's Movement (LPM) of South Africa, the second about interactions between Brazilian rural movements and the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra); the third focuses on the transnational ties of the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (Contag). The main effect of the article is an ontological definition of movements and the state as collectives whose existence is defined by continuous assemblages of heterogeneous and unstable elements. Since it is not possible to take them as enclosed analytical units, it is up to the research to observe continuous constructions of groups and collectives which are contingent and contextual. Researchers will often follow these processes before their public expression. The proposal is to understand which elements allow things to take the courses we normally observe and analyze. It is also suggested the methodological use of controversies as analytical categories and the observation of the processes in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has a long-established independent left, outside the big traditions of nationalism and Marxism-Leninism. Post-apartheid its fortunes have varied considerably, as space opened up for movements to the left of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, but opportunities declined as the state increased its legitimacy, penetration of civil society, and systems of patronage. This paper looks at cooperation, competition and convergence on the independent left, with particular reference to independent Marxists (mainly the well-established Trotskyist tradition) and revolutionary anarchists and syndicalists (a movement that revived in the 1990s). These intersections have taken place in study groups, popular education, student struggles, and post-apartheid social movements and unions, and indicate the vitality and fragility of the independent left, and the ongoing importance of cooperation and overlaps, as well as of long-standing divisions over theory and strategy. Particular attention is paid to Keep Left, the Socialist Group, the Democratic Socialist Movement, and the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]