To support their cause, a group of urban Marxist-Leninists from outside the province – who were allied with the BPLF and the broader Baloch struggle – produced an underground bulletin in English and Urdu. Entitled Jabal – or mountain in Balochi (((However, it is worth noting that the word koh is more often used in Balochi for mountain than jabal.))), one of Balochistan’s indigenous languages, as well as in Sindhi, a neighbouring tongue – it was an homage to the northeastern mountain tracts where the BPLF organised against the state’s military operations.

In at least 14 issues published over three years, Jabal’s editors, writers and allies surreptitiously curated, printed, and distributed alternative histories, news and information, critiques of the regime and its policies, and strategic and tactical analyses of the operation. Published entries included original writings and translated or re-published texts from other national liberation and revolutionary movements from around the world. In its first editorial, Jabal’s creators stated that they wanted to help readers “overcome” the “lies and distortions spewed out daily by the … regime” and to “lay the basis for the UNITY of all oppressed nationalities, democratic and progressive forces in Pakistan” and around the world for the purposes of reimagining the postcolonial state. (((Jabal, December 1976, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 2.)))

As a bulletin written in English and Urdu, Jabal was not meant for the vast majority of Baloch who took part in the struggle against military operations, a significant portion of whom were unable to read and write, and many of which did not speak English or Urdu. Instead, through the close coordination between the BPLF leadership and the editorial collective, it served as a vehicle to forge solidarity with struggles around Pakistan and the world.

Via Jabal, this Teaching Tool presents an alternate historical narration of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s counter-insurgency operation in Balochistan, just two years after the secession and independence of Bangladesh in 1971. As a minor and alternative media outlet, it provided another narrative to more formal and established channels subject to state censorship and regulation. It also followed the dissolution of extreme policies of centralising power in the federal government, which ignored Pakistan’s multiple nations and languages. As a journal allied with these efforts, Jabal furthers debates on the limits of postcolonial nationalism after the formal end of empire through critiques allied with minoritised communities that experienced not victory, but defeat, at the moment of formal decolonisation.

The following text is a translated excerpt from the Mazdoor Kissan Party Circular

Al-Jadid was an anti-Zionist, Communist publication founded soon after the advent of Israeli statehood and the 1948-49 Palestinian Nakba, which destroyed Palestinian society, decimating its political parties, cultural institutions, intellectual milieu, and literary culture. It was launched with the mission of rebuilding this anti-colonial Arab literary landscape, or what in other colonial contexts has been described as a country’s “literary infrastructure.” (((For an in-depth discussion on literary infrastructure see Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann, “The Void, the Distance, Elsewhere: Literary Infrastructure and Empire in the Caribbean,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 24, no. 2 (62) (July 1, 2020), 1-2.)))

But in order to build a literary tradition, a country needs a publishing industry, gathering places, journals and the wide array of “institutions that provide literary training, facilitate and promote the circulation of literary texts, and consecrate literary value, including commercial, non-commercial and academic or state-supported cultural projects.” (((Ibid))) A “literary infrastructure” requires more than the ability to publish books—it includes the supportive edifice that makes possible the development of writers, readers, literature, public literacy and literary culture to begin with.

As we begin to trace the names and networks embedded in the journal’s table of contents, a textual map emerges, revealing clues to how al-Jadid organized itself around the daunting task of Arabic literary reconstruction after Nakba.

Note: The full collection of the Perspectives Tunisiennes periodical was digitized by the “Association Perspectives El Amel Ettounsi” (perspectives50.tn@gmail.com) and made available on CDs in January 2014. They are also held at the National Library in Tunis.

Its pages are filled with news items, articles, reports and interviews concerning not only the revolution, military operations, the counterinsurgency and its collaborators, but connections with and mentions of global revolutionary movements and socialist states across the world. This Teaching Tool considers the periodical as an important archival source and offers a detailed and contextualised exploration of how Sawt al-Thawra constructed an internationalist revolutionary worldview through analysis of key themes: connections with the transnational Left in the Middle East including the Palestinian Revolution and the Iranian Left; references to various national liberation movements and figures from Cuba to Vietnam; attention to women’s liberation in the PFLOAG’s project of social transformation; and engagement with solidarity and support committees in the global New Left. Beyond its abundant expression of a politically situated and imagined revolutionary subjectivity, Sawt al-Thawra presents a window into the material transnational and transregional links between the Dhufar Revolution and the tricontinental world in the long 1960s.

Revolutionary Papers delegates gather in the Ashley Kriel Hall, Community House. Photo: Ruvan Boshoff.

The Revolutionary Papers Conference was held at Community House in Cape Town between April 28-30, 2022. The conference looked at how periodicals—including newspapers, magazines, cultural journals, and newsletters—played a key role in establishing new counter publics, social and cultural movements, institutions, political vocabularies, and art practices. Bringing together scholars, activists, and artists, the workshop traced the ways in which periodicals supported social, political, and cultural reconstruction amidst colonial destruction, building alternative networks that circulated new political ideas and dared to imagine worlds after empire.

Poster for the Open(ing) Event.

The three-day conference showcased the works of over forty researchers, exploring magazines and newspapers from countries across the world, including Algeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Yemen, South Africa, Kenya, China, the Caribbean, Europe, Palestine, Lebanon, Oman, Namibia, India, the African Diaspora and more. On April 28, following the first day of the conference, Revolutionary Papers also launched an open exhibition on anti-colonial periodicals entitled Quiet dog bite hard! Clandestine Networks of Revolutionary Papers. This vibrant evening featured an art installation by Phokeng Setai, two sonic lectures by Michael Bhatch and Nombuso Mathibela engaging with albums of anti-Apartheid and black liberation struggles, as well as protest music from South Asia by Sara Kazmi and from South Africa by Soundz of the South. Photos from the launch along with the curatorial statement by Phokeng feature in this teaching tool.

The welcome and opening remarks for the conference. L-R: Koni Benson, Paolo Israel, Mahvish Ahmad, Chana Morgenstern, Sara Kazmi and Heidi Grunebaum.

Community House in Salt River/Woodstock, Cape Town. Home for the three days of the Revolutionary Papers conference.

The conference featured seven panels, structured ‘Reflections’ from select participants at the end of each day, and each morning a conceptual ‘Framing’ presented by the lead organisers on the three broad themes of the counter-institutional, the counter-cultural, and the counter-political. The proceedings concluded with an open discussion on ‘Ways Forward’, in which possibilities for a productive dialogue between Revolutionary Papers, political organising, radical archiving, and counter-cultural production were explored, with a focus on developing and expanding the Revolutionary Papers Teaching Tools to translate scholarship on revolutionary periodicals into an instrument of political education and alternative pedagogies in the classroom and beyond.

Ben Verghese and Chana Morgenstern try out the teaching tool workstation set up for attendees in the Ashley Kriel Hall. Photo: Ruvan Boshoff.

The conference also launched a number of new teaching tools on the Revolutionary Papers website, which look at a range of leftwing and radical publications namely The Namibian Review, Dawn, The Workers’ Herald, Voice of the Children, Sawt al Thawra, Abantu Batho and Umteleli wa Bantu.

Poster for the conference.

This teaching tool of the Revolutionary Papers conference revisits the discussions and anti-colonial encounters that took place at Community House, a historic site of anti-Apartheid struggle, over three days and nights. It features short recaps of each panel along with ‘Asides’ that invite you to click Expand so as to access additional visual, written or sonic documentation.

In the words of the Revolutionary Papers founders:

It took us three years to get here. We meet at a time where a violence once contained at the peripheries makes its way back to the centre. A global pandemic, ecological collapse, imperial wars, and the destructive effects of a white supremacy are now more intensely felt in Europe and North America than when we began Revolutionary Papers. The radical periodicals that we will revisit are a reminder that this violence, so often cast as exceptional, has always been the rule for most of the world’s peoples. With all of you, we hope to think with and through these journal to imagine alternative ways of working and living together, and other more capacious futures.

Dawn: Journal of Umkhonto wa Sizwe, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1986.

This teaching tool focuses on Dawn, the official organ of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), or ‘Spear of the Nation’, which was the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Founded after the banning of organisations associated with the Congress Alliance and the ‘turn to armed struggle’ in 1961, Dawn’s primary functions were to keep MK cadres in exile informed about the struggle against apartheid, to inspire the people of South Africa to become ‘Freedom Fighters for their country’, and to build and maintain the legend of MK and its fighters. Over the course of almost thirty years (1961-1990), hundreds of editions of Dawn were published. It therefore serves as a critical means through which to understand the contested histories of MK and the Congress Alliance as well as the debates, theories and political tendencies that informed and influenced their political, military, and ideological struggles.

The logo of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). Source: South African History Online.

In addition to a general overview of Dawn, this teaching tool also offers a close reading of a 1986 edition which includes insights from the author’s PhD dissertation. The timing of this edition of Dawn was important for a number of reasons. On the one hand, the mid-1980s marked a period when the ANC and its allies escalated their armed struggle against apartheid. Whereas on the other, 1986 marks the end and aftermath of the Mkatashinga mutiny which occurred in MK camps in Angola. The Mkatashinga mutiny took the form of three separate mutinies which resulted in casualties, several executions and the torture and detention without trial of MK’s rebels. It is this contested historical conjuncture that this teaching tool attempts to understand, not only in terms of the anti-apartheid struggle and southern African historiography, but also as a means to trace the ways in which these histories and legacies manifest today in postapartheid South Africa.

What follows are a series of edited extracts from the author’s PhD which include discussions about the Mkatashinga mutiny, the mythologisation of Chris Hani, and revolutionary discipline. These extracts are interwoven with Dawn articles, photographs, short stories, and artworks which can either be read alongside the main text or can be treated as stand alone articles and sources.

1. the early origins, which were mainly mission-controlled, [1836 – 1884]
2. the period from 1884 to 1932 when black newspapers were largely independent though often struggling to survive
3. from 1932 when whites exerted increasing influence on the black newspapers (this date can perhaps be pushed back to 1920 with the founding of a newspaper by the Chamber of Mines)(((Couzens, 1984. 1)))

The two publications of interest in this project, Abantu-Batho and Umteteli wa Bantu, straddle between the second and third periods described above. Abantu-Batho is viewed as the last largely independent newspaper for Black people. At the same time, Umteteli wa Bantu is considered the first newspaper used to fight back against the discourse that directly attributed the dismal plight of black South Africans to oppression from whites. Comparing the two provides an interesting case study of how journalism’s agenda, content, and discourse changed based on how black audiences were conceptualised.

The front pages of these publications have been chosen as the site on which to undertake the close reading because they are the most important page in a newspaper.(((A.E. Reisner, 1992. ‘The news conference: How daily newspaper editors construct the front page.’ Journalism Quarterly, 69(4), pp.971-986.))) The layout and content of these pages are a visual cue of what the newspaper deems most important and who the audience is conceived to be. Also on these pages are important details such as the cost of the publication, the date on which a particular issue is published and who the publisher is. These seemingly mundane details help reader place the publication in a particular genre and geographic location, even before a single news item is read.

Newsletter of the Children’s Resource Centre, 1987.

Izwi Labantwana, Die Kinderstem, Voice of the Children is the official newsletter of the southern African organisation the Children’s Movement, which had been produced between 1986 and 2017. The newsletter released issues annually in the early 90s, increasing up to five issues per annum in the later years. The production team largely consisted of child and youth members, who curated and wrote most of the pieces, which are conveyed in three languages interchangeably, i.e., isiXhosa, Afrikaans, and largely English.

Izwi Labantwana, which translates from isiXhosa to English as “voice of the children”, offers an insight to how the children perceive the world in an unabashed version of their own frame of understanding. In spanning over four decades, we are given a temporal window into where child-centred perspectives of the poorer sects are little known.

Newsletter of the Children’s Resource Centre, 1987.

This teaching tool is an expansion of research that previously was published in an Honours thesis. It is intended to acknowledge the newsletters of the Children’s Movement alongside publications that are more typically considered as being “revolutionary” while also offering for closer readings and analysis than the Children’s Movement’s own archive allows.

The Namibian Review: A Journal of Contemporary South West African Affairs was published between 1976-1987. Initially it was produced by the Namibian Review Group (later known as the Swedish Namibian Association) and 14 editions were printed by Namibian political exiles in Sweden between 1976-1978. In 1979 the journal was translocated from Stockholm to Windhoek where another 18 editions were published in a context of intensifying southern African liberation struggle. For example, Kenneth and Ottilie Abrahams were the longest standing founding members of the Namibian Review Group, organized as an organization. They spent nine years in exile in Sweden, after escape from South Africa and South West Africa (colonial Namibia) to Zambia and then Tanzania after the infiltration of the Yu Chi Chan Club’s National Liberation Front, where all members were either incarcerated, killed, or escaped into exile.

The goal of the Namibian Review was to provide a platform for the discussion of all aspects of life in Namibia with particular emphasis on the problems of the long hard struggle towards independence. The journal encouraged a free flow of ideas “so that the leaders of tomorrow can prepare themselves, intellectually, for the tasks which will face them when they eventually take over the reins of power.”(((“Preface,” The Namibian Review Publication, No.1 “Three Essays on Namibian History by Neville Alexander,” June 1983, p.1.)))  The journal was used as a place to  campaign for democracy in its reporting on, analysis of, and arguments about the road to liberation, and the transition to independence.