Egalité for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution:

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, also Toussaint Bréda, Toussaint-Louverture, or Toussaint L’ouverture (20 May 1743 — 7 April 1803), was the leader of the Haitian Revolution. His military genius and political acumen led to the establishment of the independent black state of Haiti, transforming an entire society of slaves into a free, self-governing people. The success of the Haitian Revolution shook the institution of slavery throughout the New World..

It is possible that no other legislation has so deeply affected the lives of black people in South Africa as the Natives’ Land Act of 1913. It created overnight a floating landless proletariat whose labour could be used and manipulated at will, and ensured that ownership of the land had finally and securely passed into the hands of the ruling white race.

- Bessie Head

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More resources:

• Umhlaba 1913 - 2013: Commemorating the 1913 Land Act runs at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town from 25 March 2013 to 28 July 2013.
• Native Life in South Africa, by Sol Plaatje, is available for free in various ebook formats on Project Gutenberg.

The demise of apartheid as a political-ideological system, with all its attendant rigmarole of Bantustans, ‘bush colleges’, separate schools for separate ‘races’ and ‘nations’, among all its other tragic absurdities, did not lead to the kind of society that many of us, including many in the present government, had imagined a post-apartheid South Africa would be.

Instead of the socialist Azania of our dreams, apartheid apartheid capitalism was succeeded by post-apartheid capitalism. There was no revolution; at best what we got was no more than regime change.

~ Neville Alexander, Thoughts on the New South Africa

Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan, one of the passengers aboard the Jet Airlines flight that landed at the Waterkloof air force base in what seems a skirting of diplomatic protocol and a breach of national security, was detained briefly last week at Boston’s Logan international airport. He says it was because officials there thought he had a “terroristy-sounding” (my word, not his) name. He also blames Indian external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, a member the rival UPA, the party in national government, for hatching up a plan to leave him high and dry when US immigration officials pulled him aside.

Given the circumstances, I expect that Khan, hard done by assaults by officials of the US government on his personal freedoms in ruthless execution of that government’s war on terror, will release a statement at his earliest convenience praising South African officials for upholding his and the other passengers’ freedom of movement, National Key Points Act be damned. See, amid the outcry and pious handwringing by this country’s government ministers, there is a silver lining. South Africa has indeed been once again shown to be the last bastion of person freedoms and human rights amid a world gone mad with national security this and terrorism that.

A statement from Abahlali baseMjondolo, Western Cape, 1 January 2013

As residents of QQ Section shack settlement and members of the movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, we would like to say that we are not happy about what happened early this morning across the street from QQ Section.

A massive shack-fire, which started at around 4am, swept through almost the entire shack settlement of BM Section leaving thousands homeless and at least three (but possibly as much as six) people dead. We have a few Abahlali members in the settlement and, as residents of QQ Section, we also have a large number of friends and family who also were affected by the fire. We therefore remain in living solidarity with all those affect by the fire in BM section and other shack fires in WD Section and in Du Noon.

The scourge of shack-fires throughout all of Cape Town’s shack settlements and the delayed and uncaring response by the city clearly shows that shackdwellers have been isolated socially, economically and politically. If the government would give us the respect of a citizen of this country, this kind of incident would not have happened.

The immediate cause of the fire remains uncertain (either a cooking accident or a knocked over candle by a drunk community member). Yet the resulting massive fire is beyond our control as residents of the shacks. In other words, these fires are not only preventable, but they are caused by uncaring and anti-poor government policy.

As citizens of this country, we have a right to decent housing, to efficient sanitation, to affordable electricity and to well-planned roads. Yet even though residents of BM section as well as numerous settlements affiliated to Abahlali baseMjondolo have been protesting for these things for years, the government has delivered almost nothing we have demanded for our communities.

• If we had electricity, dangerous paraffin stoves and candles would be a thing of the past and shack-fires would be a rare phenomenon.

• If we had piped water into our homes, we would be able to quickly fight the fires ourselves.

• If we had proper access roads in our settlements, fire-fighters would be able to stop fires much quicker.

• If we had brick house and our own plots of land, fires would not spread from one home to the next.

If we had all these things, or even some of them, an accident by a drunk neighbour would not affect the livelihood those around him.

Shack-fires in Cape Town, just as this report shows they are in Durban, are the result of government policy that denies us the basic things we need to live healthy and safe lives.

Instead, shack-fires have now become an opportunity for the city to pretend it cares for us by giving us a few food parcels and blankets each time a fire rips through one of our communities. And yet, even the city’s contingency plan is lacking:

• Disaster Management has failed to provide emergency accommodation to all the victims of the fire in BM Section.

• Despite claims to the contrary, Disaster Management has failed to provide all victims with food, clothes, blankets and other necessary emergency items.

We therefore appeal to Mayor de Lille to sit down with Abahlali baseMjondolo and other shackdwellers throughout the city to discuss the role that the City of Cape Town plays in creating the conditions of the current shack-fire epidemic.

We as AbM-WC are also asking for solidarity with the victims of the BM Section fire. Please contact us if you’d like to help.

For more information, please contact:

Thembelani @ 0712604119
Mr Qona @ 0713518483

[Infographic] Africa: A story of growth 

aggregatemind:

Amazing animated tribute to Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” created by ORDER.

Ethnic, according to Merriam Webster, is:

1. A heathen

2. a: of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background

b: being a member of a specified ethnic group

c: of, relating to, or characteristic of ethnics.

Ethnic, according to conventional use, is:

1. Anything or anyone not white.

If you are a student of ethnic studies at the University of Utah, you are learn of the cultures and practices of Asian Americas, black Americans, Mexican Americans, and native Americans.

If ethnic food disagrees with you, you’re unlikely to want to eat at a Chinese or Indian restaurant, but you know a great little Italian place around the corner.

If you are black, your hair, as it grows out of your head, before you stick on a weave, is “ethnic hair”. And anyway, I’m not being racist or anything, but it makes you look poor, like a cancer patient and unsuitable for TV.

If you are a BBC reporter explaining what the National House of Traditional Leaders is in South Africa’s democracy, you say it “advises the government on traditional customs of ethnic groups”, because only black South Africans belong to an ethnic group.

“Ethnic”, as currently used, places white at the centre. White is normal, safe, acceptable—and everything else is foreign, weird, different…ethnic.

Ethnic people would do well to remember that the assumptions by which the English language operates are the enemy. “Tribal” groups, too, especially those involved in ethnic clashes in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, would do well to remember the same.

Graph: Perception of corruption in South Africa, 2001-2011, an upward trend (2012 was 69)

What a writer is obliged at some point to realise is that he is involved in a language which he has to change. For example, for a black writer, especially in this country, to be born into the English language is to realise the assumptions by which the language operates are his enemy.

~ James Baldwin, 1979