Steven Friedman

Whose Liberation? A Partly-Forgotten Left Critique of ANC Strategy and Its Contemporary Implications

At the beginning of the 1980s, a group of left intellectuals and activists sought to press the then-exiled African National Congress (ANC) to adopt a change of strategy which would have given priority to the organized collective action of workers and the poor: they were expelled and their proposed remedies ignored. But, while it had little impact on political practice at the time, the implied debate between the dissidents and the ANC raised issues crucial to understanding the challenges which face South African democracy today. Although the dissidents’ approach was based on a flawed analysis of the processes which produce social change, it did highlight an aspect of anti-apartheid resistance strategy which has made achieving a more egalitarian and democratic South African more difficult.

From Classroom to Class Struggle: Radical Academics and the Rebirth of Trade Unionism in the 1970s

In the early 1970s in South Africa two developments coincided. Workers in the port city of Durban struck, triggering a union movement which was crucial in defeating apartheid and which remains the society’s largest organized force. And radical scholars began to analyse apartheid as a system of class domination. The two were related, for the scholarship helped convince middle-class radicals to join the union movement. It also made democracy and a critique of private economic power key themes for the movement. The relationship between the ideas and the movement show the limits and possibilities of academic influence on social movements.

Unlocking Ability: Democracy and Disabled People’s Campaign for Recognition

The central challenge facing campaigners for the rights of disabled people can be summed up in an easily misunderstood question: how do ‘problems’ become citizens? People are, of course, not ‘problems’ but are commonly viewed as such by governments and planners. In this respect, disabled people have much in common with slum dwellers and people excluded through stigmatised health conditions like HIV/AIDS. This chapter considers the complex politics of engagement by and on behalf of excluded groups and suggests ways of reaching a more inclusive polity.

The Sounds of Silence: Structural Change and Collective Action in the Fight against Apartheid

Abstract The 1960s are usually seen by accounts of modern South African history as a period of quiescence in which resistance to apartheid was crushed. A closer look at the period reveals that the decade was a period in which change in both social structure and political agency laid the foundation for resistance in the 1970s and beyond – a time in which the seeds of apartheids destruction were sown. The structural change which began this process was the economys need for more skilled black labour; this gave black people greater bargaining power. The change in agency was the emergence of the Black Consciousness movement with its stress on black collective action. They combined to forge a new form of resistance politics which ultimately defeated apartheid. This history invites not only a re-evaluation of the 1960s but of the respective roles of structure and agency in South Africas past and present.

The limits of prescription: courts and social policy in India and South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper explores the social policy-making role of supreme courts in India and South Africa. It argues that both significantly shaped social policy. But neither imposed its will on elected government – both recognised that judicial power is limited and sought negotiation with the government and other interests to ensure compliance with rulings. Despite the difference between them, both courts promote and support collective action by the poor or their allies in civil society. The paper traces the institutional roots of the relative strength of the two courts and their relations with their governments and links their rulings to the political environment.