Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa

Download or read book Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa written by Mzwanele Mayekiso and published by UJ Press. This book was released on 2023-02-24 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insider’s account of an extraordinary period of national political transition is also a primer on a new radical philosophy, the street–smart Marxism that developed in South Africa’s sprawling townships between 1985 and 1995 and rendered them ungovernable for the apartheid state. Mzwanele Mayekiso, a young leader of the “civics”—as South Africa’s popular community organizations are called—spent almost three years in prison as a result of the civics’ militant organizing. Here, he interlaces his personal story with caustic assessments of apartheid’s hand–picked township leaders, with rebuttals of armchair academics, and with impassioned but self–critical analyses of the civics’ struggles and tactics. He ends with a vision of an international urban social movement that, he argues, must be a crucial component of any emancipatory project.