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Published online: 04 Oct 2021 The Congress movement in South Africa was transformed in the early 1960s from a movement committed to the exclusive use of non-violent means in the struggle against apartheid to one focused on rural guerrilla warfare as a free-standing and sufficient first step towards ‘all-out war’ and the armed seizure of power. But few, if any, of the participants in the Congress movement’s deliberations in 1960–61 on whether to ‘turn to violence’ had believed that this was the strategy that they were endorsing when they authorised the abandonment of exclusive reliance on non-violence. The choice facing the Congress movement after 1960 was not between mutually exclusive alternatives of ‘non-violence’ on the one hand and ‘violence’ or ‘armed struggle’ on the other. Rather, Congress leaders contemplated a range of different forms of violent action and considered their relationship to various forms of non-violent activity and to the kind of transition from apartheid that these actions could and should be intended to produce. This article analyses the range of strategic options that were canvassed within the Congress leadership in the early 1960s and the decision-making process by which those options were gradually narrowed. That process was shaped by ambiguity, unilateral action, unintended consequences and state repression, with the result that the Congress movement’s ‘turn to violence’ ultimately took a form that few Congress leaders had initially desired or anticipated.

Why did leaders of the Congress movement in South Africa abandon their exclusive reliance on non-violent means in the struggle against apartheid, form an armed unit (Umkhonto we Sizwe), and launch a campaign of spectacular sabotage bombings of symbols of apartheid in 1961? None of the earlier violent struggles from which Congress leaders drew inspiration, and none of the contemporaneous insurgencies against white minority rule elsewhere in southern Africa, involved a similar distinct, preliminary and extended phase of non-lethal symbolic sabotage. Following the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, Congress leaders feared the social and political consequences of increased popular enthusiasm for using violence. Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, and the other founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe did not launch their sabotage campaign because they believed it would prompt a change of heart among white South Africans, nor because they believed urban sabotage bombings were a necessary prelude to the launch of rural guerrilla warfare. Rather, the sabotage campaign was a spectacular placeholder, a stopgap intended to advertise the Congress movement's abandonment of exclusive non-violence and thus to discourage opponents of apartheid, both inside and outside South Africa, from supporting rival groups or initiating ‘uncontrolled violent action themselves.

Tokamak Energy’s ST40 spherical tokamak, operating in a double null diverted configuration, has a design basis of toroidal field Bt = 3 T on-axis (R = 40 cm), and plasma current Ip = 2MA. The procurement and installation of the top and bottom divertors for installation into ST40 was anticipated to be completed on a quick timescale of approximately ten weeks. The difficulties inherent in a tight deadline were exacerbated by the necessary social distancing measures introduced to combat the global crisis of COVID-19. This paper describes the procurement and installation of the divertors, the design is described in the sister paper [1], authored by Daniel Iglesias.

Winner of Interdependent Social Research Foundation International essay competition 2017. If I were to say that the architecture in our public spaces is ‘really speaking to us’, you would be forgiven for thinking this is a piece about the aesthetics of our cities. In some ways in fact, it is, but not in any artistic sense. I am not discussing a collection of monuments, town houses or grandiose buildings. Alas, the architecture I talk of is more humble and yet perhaps more sinister. There is a message encoded into it, within our parks, streets and centres, which seems to be part of a wider narrative. This essay is an attempt to read it, find out what it says, and consider how that may affect our concept of autonomy, but also, to encourage us to reflect on how we choose to read it: to think on what theoretical framework we should discuss homelessness. The aim is not to necessarily reconceptualize something then, but is more in the tradition of making the familiar seem unfamiliar: not only in what we think, but how we come to think what we do and the extent to which the former is limited by the latter. To achieve this, the leading question I therefore ask is: what does the organization of public space in reaction to a homeless presence tell us about autonomy, and how we think about autonomy?

If I were to say that the architecture in our public spaces is ‘really speaking to us’, you would be forgiven for thinking this is a piece about the aesthetics of our cities. In some ways in fact, it is, but not in any artistic sense. I am not discussing a collection of monuments, town houses or grandiose buildings. Alas, the architecture I talk of is more humble and yet perhaps more sinister. There is a message encoded into it, within our parks, streets and centres, which when presented together, seems to be part of a wider narrative. This paper is an attempt to read it and find out what it says, but also, to set up a discussion on how we choose to read it. In short, this is a substantive example of a storytelling approach to political theory which I believe could help us when we wish to aspire to public engagement . I hope this example allows me to discuss the method behind it in the panel.

When both academic critique and funding criteria essentially say to political theory, ‘what is the point?’, anxiety creeps into the heart of every normative theorist and agonising self-reflection ensues; the study of the political without advisory comment and application may not seem a legitimate use of public finances, where demands to ‘make better use’ of research (in a UK context at least) reveal a common tendency towards impact (Council E. a., 2017). Thus, our response appears urgent: not just for the standing of the subject, but for its very survival, for the continuation of PhD funding relies upon the quality of the reply. The problem is, the replies do not merely conflict, they rest upon fundamentally opposed views of what the subject actually is – effectively, whether or not it should be in pursuit of actual impact. With the premise of an impact agenda therefore set up, in this paper I intend to deliver three objections to a consequential ‘impact theory’, and seek to resolve those objections with an altered methodological approach. I hope this gives us a normative theory that can be seen as ‘legitimate’ in terms of being able to explicitly rise to the challenge of ‘why it should be funded by the taxpayer’, and ‘legitimate’ in the sense that it still retains its philosophical identity; that social prescription does not come at the cost of, what I believe, should be key elements of theorising – conceptual analysis and deep reflection.

Aims: Advances in genomics and molecular diagnostic testing are expanding, but national data on which to base clinical, regulatory and reimbursement policies in the USA are lacking. The study objective is to provide current estimates of utilization/spending trends for private and public payers. Patients & methods: Healthcare utilization/expenditure claims data for 32 million individuals across the USA in 2008–2011 were analyzed. Genetic testing and molecular diagnostic usage was categorized by major testing groups: infectious disease, cancer and inherited/other acquired conditions. Results: Per-person testing cost grew by 14% per year between 2008 and 2011, primarily resulting from increased utilization. Spending per person for Medicare and Medicaid was higher than for commercially insured patients. Expenditure across the USA was estimated at US$5.5 billion in 2011, up 13% from 2010. Discussion: Greater understanding of usage and technology diffusion requires increased data transparency and granularity. Conclusion & future perspective: The use of genetic testing and molecular diagnostics will grow over the next 5 years, with uncertainty about the precise diffusion trajectory. By strengthening the capacity to capture and analyze trends in this changing area of medicine, we increase our chances of promoting positive change to the benefit of patients.

The Carter administration's adoption of an approach towards the South African government's policy of apartheid that was, as Jimmy Carter put it, “correct but as easy on them as possible,” cannot be explained solely by American economic and strategic interests in the region or by the administration's desire for South Africa's cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation and the resolution of the conflicts in neighboring Rhodesia and Namibia. The lessons Carter and Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young drew from their earlier personal experiences in the American South in the 1960s were also of great significance. Those experiences not only gave Carter and Young a strong commitment to ending apartheid in South Africa but also strongly influenced the ways in which they thought that objective might be achieved. First, Carter and Young had considerable sympathy for the position of white South Africans and were concerned to work with them toward peaceful change in a spirit of cooperation rather than confrontation. Second, they believed that American businesses could have a positive impact on race relations in South Africa. They therefore encouraged American investors to adopt “enlightened employment practices,” and resisted pressure from anti-apartheid activists to impose economic sanctions.

Stevens reviews Ryan Irwin’s 'Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order' (2012) and Rob Skinner’s 'The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid: Liberal Humanitarians and Transnational Activists in Britain and the United States, c. 1919–64' (2010), two of the first published studies from an emerging stream of more detached and critical scholarship on the global anti-apartheid movement. The review essay addresses the questions of periodization, strategy, ideology, and the kinds of actors on which scholars focus, highlighting the ways in which these books advance the study of the external struggle against apartheid and the avenues for future research that they suggest.

Eight months into the NHS’s top job, Simon Stevens’s intelligent refusal to enforce a “one size fits all” solution on the service’s ills is—so far—winning him the backing of staff. He talks to Gareth Iacobucci

at the expense of the working class. Initially, due to the lack of capitalist and industrial infrastructure, the truck system was to a certain extent unavoidable; but it did not simply evaporate with the advancement of industry. Long after the convict era,2 wealthy companies continued to operate the truck system in the form of company stores and towns. It was not until 1899 that Western Australia's colonial government banned the truck system in most industries. However, in those industries exempted by the Act, such as agriculture, the practice continued well into the twentieth century. Its limited role in the twentieth century is not the subject of this article, but its historical development in the colonial era is. It is in the colonial era that the truck system can be clearly explained and understood in historical context. The whole question of the truck system is vitally important in showing some of the various ways and means capitalists accumulated capital; and how, in the process, they sought to control the working class. While it barely exists in Western Australia today, it still has relevance in the fact that truck-wages remain a prevalent form of remuneration for labour throughout much of the world.