I very rarely find a reason to write about politics these days. The absurdity of it all makes it too difficult to write seriously about it. But one point that I think is missing in the current discussions about Andile Mngxitama and his BLF Goonpta movement is the fact that the press, in particular the Mail & Guardian, initially promoted his ‘radical’ thuggery by publishing his … Continue reading Where I stand 28/07/2017
1.The Rebel – Albert Camus Camus’s The Rebel (L’Homme Révolté) was famously panned by Sartre and his friends in the periodical Le Temps Moderne. In the published exchanges that ensued Camus was, it is often said, defeated in the rhetorical joust. Even Tony Judt, a great admirer of Camus, said: ‘In L’Homme Révolté (1951) Camus offered some important observations about the dangers of lyrical revolutionary illusions; … Continue reading 4 Books on Violence – Camus, Arendt, Fanon & Zizek
I have, over the last few weeks, been reading about violence in general and revolutionary violence in particular. This is largely due to a certain focus within my PhD on Albert Camus and his book The Rebel, but also because of the reoccurrence of the strange version of political violence in South Africa that is taking place there yet again. Perhaps the most enigmatic of this literature is … Continue reading Where I Stand 03/06/2016
With all of the Frantz Fanon worship going around I thought that I would finally read The Wretched of the Earth cover-to-cover – rather than just dealing with the chapters one is dished out at universities. Having just got through that incendiary horse manure that Sartre placed at the front of it, the experience is going well, although I do not agree with his Hegelian inspired dialectical … Continue reading Where I Stand 24/05/2016
Are South Africans Free? by Lawrence Hamilton Nelson Mandela, in his Long Walk To Freedom, wrote that South Africans have ‘merely achieved the freedom to be free’. As Lawrence Hamilton, Professor of Politics at the University of Johannesburg, argues, in his book Are South Africans Free?, the political freedom attained in 1994 has in fact failed to ‘free’ the majority of South Africans. Instead Hamilton opines … Continue reading Are South Africans Free? – A Review
