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Memory against forgetting : memoir of a time in South African politics, 1938-1964
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ISBN: 1776141563 1776141555 9781776141555 9781776141562 9781776141548 1776141547 Year: 2017 Publisher: Johannesburg : Wits University Press,

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Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein was arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, on 11 July 1963 and tried for sabotage, alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other leaders of the African National Congress and Umkhonto we Sizwe in what came to be known as the Rivonia Trial. He was acquitted in June 1964, but was immediately rearrested. After being released on bail, he fled with his wife Hilda into exile, followed soon afterwards by their family. This classic text, first published in 1999, is a remarkable man's personal memoir of a life in South African resistance politics from the late 1930s to the 1960s. In recalling the events in which he participated, and the way in which the apartheid regime affected the lives of those involved in the opposition movements, Rusty Bernstein provides valuable insights into the social and political history of the era.


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Dominance and decline : the ANC in the time of Zuma
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ISBN: 1868148874 9781868148875 9781868148851 1868148858 186814884X 9781868148844 Year: 2015 Publisher: Johannesburg : Wits University Press,

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As Jacob Zuma moves into the twilight years of his presidencies of both the African National Congress (ANC) and of South Africa, this book takes stock of the Zuma-led administration and its impact on the ANC. Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma combines hard-hitting arguments with astute analysis. Susan Booysen shows how the ANC has become centred on the personage of Zuma, and that its defence of his extremely flawed leadership undermines the party's capacity to govern competently, and to protect its long term future. Following on from her first book, The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Power (2011), Booysen delves deeper into the four faces of power that characterise the ANC. Her principal argument is that the state is failing as the president's interests increasingly supersede those of party and state. Organisationally, the ANC has become a hegemon riven by factions, as the internal blocs battle for core positions of power and control. Meanwhile, the Zuma-controlled ANC has witnessed the implosion of the tripartite alliance and decimation of its youth, women's and veterans' leagues. Electorally, the leading party has been ceding ground to increasingly assertive opposition parties. And on the policy front, it is faltering through poor implementation and a regurgitation of old ideas. As Zuma's replacements start competing and succession politics take shape, Booysen considers whether the ANC will recover from the damage wrought under Zuma's reign and attain its former glory. Ultimately, she believes that while the damage is irrevocable, the electorate may still reward the ANC for transcending the Zuma years. This is a must-have reference book on the development of the modern ANC. With rigour and incisiveness, Booysen offers scholars and researchers a coherent framework for considering future patterns in the ANC and its hold on political power.


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The Backroom Boy: Andrew Malengeni's Story
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ISBN: 9781776140879 1776140877 9781776140862 1776140869 Year: 2017 Publisher: Wits University Press

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The Backroom Boy opens dramatically in China, 1962. Andrew Mlangeni is one of a small select group undergoing military training there. The unannounced visitor is Mao Tse-Tung or Chairman Mao as he was known, Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Mlangeni was selected as one of the first-ever six members who received military training in China before the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He seems to have been chosen because he was a dedicated, intelligent and dependable operative, rather than a leader. Even after his release after 25 years on Robben Island, Mlangeni was not given a senior position in the post-apartheid democratic government. 'I was always the backroom boy,' says Andrew Mlangeni about himself. Andrew Mlangeni, is a struggle stalwart, Rivonia Trialist, and Robben Island prisoner 467/64 who was next door inmate to Nelson Mandela's acclaimed 466/64 prison number. Released after 26 years of incarceration, he served as Member of Parliament, and is Chairman of the ANC's Integrity Commission and Founder of the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation. With the passing of Ahmed Kathrada (March 2017), Mlangeni (91) is one of only two Rivonia Trialist still alive with Denis Goldberg. While still at school, Andrew Mlangeni joined the Communist Party of South Africa and also the ANC Youth League. These were the organisations that shaped his values. Decades of resourceful activism were to lead to his arrest and life sentence in the Rivonia trial. Mlangeni's lifelong commitment to the struggle for liberation reverberates with other biographies and memoirs of leading figures, such as Rusty Bernstein's Memory Against Forgetting and Albie Sachs' We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge. This story of an ANC elder is a well-researched historical record overlaid with intensely personal refl ections which intersect with the political narrative. Above all, it is one man's story, set in the maelstrom of the liberation struggle. This biographical project has been developed for, and published in conjunction with, the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation.


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The African National Congress and the regeneration of political power
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ISBN: 1868145530 9781868145539 9781776141661 1868145425 1776141660 1868147819 9781868145423 Year: 2011 Publisher: Johannesburg : Wits University Press,

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The African National Congress is light years beyond the liberation movement of old. It remains a juggernaut, but its control and dominance are no longer watertight. The ANC lives the contradictions of weaknesses, cracks and factions while retaining its colossal status. As a party-movement it draws on its liberation credentials, and extracts immense power from its deep anchorage in South Africa's people. It is immersed in electoral politics that marks the state of its overwhelming power cyclically. As government the ANC is the object of protest, but not protest designed to bring the ruling party to its knees. The ANC is in command of the state, yet fails to definitively counter the deficits that make South Africa's democracy seem so diluted. Its incredulous and thus far trusting supporters condemn but only rarely punish deployees who do not 'pass through the eye of the needle'. The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power unpacks these contradictions. It focuses on four faces of the ANC's political power - the organisation, the people, political parties and elections, and policy and government - and explores how the ANC has acted since 1994 to continuously regenerate its power. By 2011-12 the power configurations around the ANC were converging to a conjuncture holding vexing uncertainties. This book presents insights into how South African politics - in many ways synonymous with the politics of the ANC - is likely to unfold in years and possibly decades to come.


Book
Shadow of liberation : contestation and compromise in the economic and social policy of the African National Congress, 1943-1996
Authors: ---
ISBN: 9781776143962 1776143965 9781776143979 1776143973 9781776143986 1776143981 9781776143955 1776143957 Year: 2019 Publisher: Johannesburg : Wits University Press,

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Shadow of Liberation explores the twists, turns, contestations and compromises of the African National Congress' (ANC) economic and social policy-making, with a particular focus on the transition era of the 1990s and the early years of democracy. Padayachee and Van Niekerk focus on the primary question of how and why the ANC, given its historical egalitarian, redistributive stance, did such a dramatic about-face in the 1990s and moved towards an essentially market-dominated approach. Was it pushed or did it go willingly? What role, if any, did Western governments and international financial institutions play? And what of the role of the late apartheid state and South African business? Did leaders and comarades 'sell out' the ANC's emancipatory policy vision?

Drawing on primary archival evidence as well as extensive interviews with key protagonists across the political, non-government and business spectrum, the authors argue that the ANC's emancipatory policy agenda was broadly to establish a social democratic welfare state to uphold rights of social citizenship. However, its economic policy framework to realise this mission was either non-existent or egregiously misguided.

With the damning revelations of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture on the massive corruption of the South African body politic, the timing of this book could not be more relevant. South Africans need to confront the economic and social policy choices that the liberation movement made and to see how these decisions may have facilitated the conditions for corruption - not only of a crude financial character but also of our emancipatory values as a liberation movement - to emerge and flourish.


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Township Violence and the End of Apartheid : War on the Reef
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ISBN: 178744337X 1787443361 1847012124 Year: 2018 Publisher: Suffolk : Boydell & Brewer,

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A powerful re-reading of modern South African history following apartheid that examines the violent transformation during the transition era and how this was enacted in the African townships of the Witwatersrand.


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The ANC's early years : nation, class and place in South Africa before 1940
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ISBN: 1868888827 1868885291 Year: 2010 Publisher: Pretoria : Unisa Press,

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At a time when African National Congress alliance politics are again prominent in South Africa, this nuanced study of the intersection of class and African national forces in the history of Africa's oldest national liberation movement helps explain the deeper origins of this alliance. The book squarely places African agency at the centre of South African history and re-casts the story of the ANC in the words and actions of its own members and supporters at local and regional, as well as national, levels. In doing so, it shines a long overdue light on ordinary black activists, including politicised workers and women, and integrates these stories with those of more well-known leaders.


Book
One hundred years of the ANC : debating liberation histories today
Authors: --- --- --- --- --- et al.
ISBN: 1868146006 1868145735 177614287X 9781776142873 9781868146000 Year: 2012 Publisher: Johannesburg : Wits University Press,

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On 8 January 2012 the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, the oldest African nationalist organisation on the continent, celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. This historic event has generated significant public debate within both the ANC and South African society at large. There is no better time to critically reflect on the ANC's historical trajectory and struggle against colonialism and apartheid than in its centennial year. One Hundred Years of the ANC is a collection of new work by renowned South African and international scholars. Covering a broad chronological and geographical spectrum and using a diverse range of sources, the contributors build upon but also extend the historiography of the ANC by tapping into marginal spaces in ANC history. By moving away from the celebratory mode that has characterised much of the contemporary discussions on the centenary, the contributors suggest that the relationship between the histories of earlier struggles and the present needs to be rethought in more complex terms. Collectively, the book chapters challenge hegemonic narratives that have become an established part of South Africa's national discourse since 1994. By opening up debate around controversial or obscured aspects of the ANC's century-long history, One hundred years of the ANC sets out an agenda for future research. The book is directed at a wide readership with an interest in understanding the historical roots of South Africa's current politics will find this volume informative. This book is based on a selection of papers presented at the One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories and Democracy Today Conference held at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 20-23 September 2011.

50 Years of the Freedom Charter
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ISBN: 1776150201 1868883752 Year: 2006 Publisher: Pretoria : University of South Africa,

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50 Years of the Freedom Charter is a new edition of a classic work, banned for possession under the apartheid government. The main body of the text, prepared initially in 1986, has been left unaltered, but the authors have added a substantial new introduction and a bibliography of some of the literature that was not then available within the country or emerged after publication of the book. This book offers an elaborately illustrated and fascinating account of the making of the historic Freedom Charter in South Africa in 1955. The material is presented largely through the words of actual participants, as recorded in interviews with the authors. It includes a significant section on the contemporary relevance of the Freedom Charter today.


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Liberation movements in power : party & state in Southern Africa
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ISBN: 1782040803 1847010660 1847011349 Year: 2013 Publisher: Woodbridge, Suffolk : Pietermaritzburg : James Currey ; University of KwaZulu-Natal Press,

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The liberation movements of Southern Africa arose to combat racism, colonialism and settler capitalism and engaged in armed struggle to establish democracy. After victory over colonial and white minority regimes, they moved into government embodying the hopes and aspirations of their mass of supporters and of widespread international solidarity movements. Even with the difficult legacies they inherited, their performance in power has been deeply disappointing. Roger Southall tracks the experiences in government of ZANU-PF, SWAPO and the ANC, arguing that such movements are characterised by paradoxical qualities, both emancipatory and authoritarian. Analysis is offered of their evolution into political machines through comparative review of their electoral performance, their relation to state and society, their policies regarding economic transformation, and their evolution as vehicles of class formation and predatory behaviour. The author concludes that, while they will survive organizationally, their essence as progressive forces is dying, and that hopes of a genuine liberation throughout the region will depend upon political realignments alongside moral and intellectual regeneration. ANC South Africa. SWAPO Namibia. Zanu-PF Zimbabwe. Roger Southall is Professor Emeritus in Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand and a Research Associate of the Society, Work and Development Institute. Southern Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press

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