“As a group of Palestinian Arabs residing in the UK, we hope that through ‘Free Palestine’ we shall contribute our share to a greater understanding and rapport between the British people and the Arabs of Palestine. Thus, in attempting to acquaint those interested with the facts of the situation, we aspire to represent as well as reflect the rights and aspirations of our people. This means we fully subscribe to our people’s legitimate desire to return to a free, secular and democratic Palestine, and that we unreservedly support our people’s armed struggle to achieve these natural and elementary aims in its homeland.”

These items of liberatory press in the form of the newspapers, journals and papers such as Inqaba ya basebenzi gave space for publicised and collective expression of dissent against the injustice of the dominant social order. Periodicals which highlight key engagements of critiques of current socio-economic and political ills, but also resolutions and active movements within the organisation. Inqaba ya basebenzi was produced by the underground movement in exile in English and local African languages. After 1989 the journal was transformed into a supplement and gave way for the Congress Militant, by 1990 Inqaba ya basebenzi had reached 28 issues in English and 4 other local languages with topics ranging from the political status within Southern Africa as well as international coverage.

Between 1984 and 1992, the network also produced a number of calendars with political messages and calls to action. Printed on inexpensive newsprint at Esquire Press in Athlone, where community newspapers such as Grassroots, Saamstaan, New Era, and Living Roots went to press, these now hard-to-find calendars were smuggled under t-shirts and distributed amongst the Flats community. According to “struggle printer” Prakesh Patel, this was risky, and marked by security police harassment, happening from four to five times a week, with the firm having more than 2000 printing plates seized and more than 100 criminal cases lodged against the company (Morris, 2004). The network produced its last calendar, dedicated to the then-recently deceased Dumile Feni, in 1992… read more

Christopher Ouma and Madhu Krishnan

The small magazine has held a significant but understudied effect on not only the project of imagining Africa in the long twentieth century, but also of articulating projects of solidarity, intimacy and political action. As a key node within larger ecologies of print culture, the small magazine is notable for the ways in which its flexible form and sometimes eccentric modes of circulation trouble what have come to be seen as ‘orthodox’ or received wisdom as to the nature of self-fashioning and modernity on the African continent. While the ‘smallness’ of its form underlines its context as a site-specific platform of cultural production, it’s networks of circulation and the audiences and publics it convenes point to a wider and much more ambitious intention which cannot be reduced to simplistic or one-dimensional systemic models of understanding. As ‘form’ and therefore a ‘genre’ in the long twentieth century of African cultural production, the small magazine has convened various platforms for the articulation and intersection of various projects, often in intersectional logic; anti-colonialism, pan-Africanism, Anti-apartheid imagination and broader project(s) of decolonization during the second half of the twentieth century. This project seeks to examine how small magazines are able, through the networks they create scale up and scale down their visibility through various strategies of curation and self-fashioning which evolve and transform over time and space. It is the specific nexus of scalability, in tandem with the curatorial potentiality of the small magazine through various models of formal juxtaposition and intellectual patterning, we argue, which has lent it its importance as an archive of the present with respect to African models of intellectual production. Such strategies account for the longevity, political and cultural potency of the form which has had a significant footprint in the long twentieth century of political and cultural organization and the imagination of identity in the continent. The project draws from example in magazines such Transition, Black Orpheus, Nexus/Busara, Chimurenga Chronic, Kwani? amongst many others, exploring how media, platform, visibility, publicness, form and genre come together in the small magazine to produce new understandings of African models of modernity, coalition and solidarity.

The Journal of Black Theology in South Africa was a bi-annual academic journal which ran from May 1987 until November 1998. In a context of legislated (at least initially) anti-black racism and repression, it sought to be “a vehicle of communication and a forum for exchange of ideas… (to) hasten the dawning of a new day of freedom” through stimulating “creative thought, lively theological discussion and… (reorienting) the social life and political action of the black community” (Mofokeng, 1987).

This paper will firstly situate the journal within the historical and political context out of which it emerged, mapping and positioning it within the history of black theology in South Africa. Next, the paper will go on to detail some of the journal’s particularities with regard to (among other things) how the journal began, who was involved, what it aimed to do, the role that it played, how it was distributed, its readership, why it ended and how it was structured. The paper will then engage with some aspects of the journal’s content. This of course cannot be covered comprehensively, as such, I have broken it down into the following four sections which will be covered in brief:

1. How the journal develops a hermeneutics/framework/lens of black theology through bringing scripture into conversation with the black experience.
2. How the journal uses a hermeneutics/framework/lens of black theology to explore topical issues such as land, gender, economic justice, colonialism, black identity, racism, labour, negotiations, culture, etc.
3. How the journal brings South African black theology into conversation with other historical and contemporary global expressions of liberative praxis.
4. How the journal uses a hermeneutics/framework/lens of black theology to critique and challenge dominant theology and ideas within in that perpetuate the unjust status quo.

Finally, the paper will look at how the journal imagined the future of black theology in South Africa and put this in dialogue with the actual landscape of black theology in South Africa today, concluding with some tentative thoughts about a way forward.

Izwi Labantwana, Die Kinderstem, Voice of the Children is the official newsletter of the national 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., Xhosa, Afrikaans, and largely English.

The newsletter offers an insightful contribution towards a better understanding of what the perspective of young South Africans might look like within the social activist arena. The Children’s Movement is unique in its approach in addressing the challenges faced in the home and community life of the children through focusing on self-organisation. The members formulate their own group structure and itinerary with materials, trainings, programmes, and advice provided by the movement. The groups engage in fun, educational activities and discuss the socio-economic issues, at times conducting surveys to pinpoint what is happening around them. A strong emphasis is placed on acknowledging and implementing possible interventions for change.

The newsletter reflects an array of these events and gatherings, with personal narratives of the children’s experiences in virtually every issue. The movement’s emphasis on realizing the agency of children, driven by the core belief that children have the potential to create change, contradicts traditional notions of children’s passive role within social spheres. Through Izwi Labantwana we see children taking responsibility for their own needs and that of other children. In the images of children cutting the nails of their peers and attending to vegetable gardens at the health centres, set up mostly in empty classrooms at local schools. To capturing their voices on podiums at the movement’s national conferences, where representatives share the challenges and inspirations they perceive in life.

The literary production is largely curated and edited by child members of the movement. It draws special attention to the inclusion of artistic creativity, many editions are filled with poetry sent in from children’s groups all around South Africa, mostly in the Western Cape. In addition to many instances of song, dance and celebration in the newsletter, there are many how-to moments. Articles with easy instructions, on how to make boardgames, ty-dyes, but more importantly how to substitute things like toothpaste with everyday items.

The newsletter was initially produced for print, with an archive available in large colour format. The letters were distributed among the groups where resources were readily available, and upon request where it had to be sourced. Some time around 2009 the editions were released online on the movement’s official website, where the full collection of the newsletter is available and freely downloadable. In the change, an extension was made where the editions became richer with text and content of the editorial teams. What is not left behind is the opinion of the children, with flowing inserts of their experiences being part of Children’s Movement of South Africa.

The movement began in the 1980s formed from children’s groups on the Cape Flats led by anti-apartheid organisers. The organisation chooses to focus its work within impoverished or isolated areas, those most affected by the economic inequalities of apartheid. A few years later, in 1985 the movement created the Children’s Resource Centre to assist in providing trainings and distributing materials to those in need. Since then, over 100 children’s groups, with over 5000 members have been involved in the organisation’s health, environment, culture, media, youth, and values programmes. In between there has been feeding schemes, skills training, cv workshops, and the like. The movement has received various levels of funding over the decades with capital fluctuations changing dynamics, decentralizing, but never extinguishing the spirit of those on the ground.

Congress Militant, paper of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency (MWT) of the ANC, was published between the late 1980s and 1996 (when it was replaced by Socialist Alternative). As the more propagandistic accompaniment to the theoretic journal, Inqaba ya Basebenzi (published in exile from 1981) the paper played a crucial role in the organisation of the MWT of the ANC inside the country. Linked to and modelled on similar papers published by national sections of the Committee for a Workers’ International, Congress Militant also drew on the experiences of revolutionary papers produced in South Africa over the course of the 20th century. Initially produced semi-clandestinely, and more openly from the early 1990s, thousands of copies of each issue were sold across the country. This presentation will reflect on two central aspects of the paper: its production and role as organiser, both of which were fundamentally influenced by radical political ideas and praxes. An Editorial Committee, comprising mainly full-time organisers, had overall responsibility for the production of the paper and its political positions. Many articles, however, were written by worker and youth activists, which process often involved collective writing exercises. Organised as sites of both political education (including literacy education) and deliberation over strategies and tactics of struggles, this programme of ‘writing from below’ was arguably the life-blood of the paper. Inspired by Lenin and Trotsky’s writings on revolutionary papers as party organisers, Congress Militant was used as propaganda tool in struggles (here the presentation will focus on two campaigns: the organisation of Self-Defence Units in the early 1990s and a campaign to radicalise the South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union), recruiter, fund-raiser and as the scaffolding for the organisational structure of the MWT of the ANC. The presentation will explore the dynamics inherent in the co-existence of the commitment to participatory practices in the production the paper with the objectives of articulating and propagating ‘a line’, the formulation of which ultimately rested with the Editorial Committee.

The shutting down of autonomous Black educational spaces that were started by students at universities, and the mass-popular nature of the uprisings had led to a situation where the movement wasn’t engaged in the type of critical education work that had initially been its basis. Furthermore, despite some isolated attempts by Black students to build relationships with progressive organisations beyond the academy, #feesmustfall and #outsourcingmustfall remained primarily centred on universities.

As a response to this combination of circumstances, Pathways converged as a group of people who wanted to continue the work to which we had been participating on campus; collectively discussing and planning the non-partisan movement and struggles for free education. We wanted to create a space to learn about, participate in, and contribute to the debates around free education, and through that, build relationships with people and collectives working in different sectors who were interested and committed to the project of free education. We had the position that education is something that implicates and affects everyone, and is connected to struggles around wages, disability, land, patriarchy, sexuality, housing, etc.

Pathways’ work has been based on a ‘community-building’ approach to publishing. By this, we mean gathering people and getting perspectives on free education – the movement ,histories, and debates – from people working and organising in different fields and different places. This includes students from different institutions and levels, workers and organisers from trade unions, progressive academics, social movement activists and others.