Township Politics

Civic Struggles for a New South Africa

Mayekiso, Mzwanele

• Publisher: UJ Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781776424276
• eBook ISBN:
  9781776424283
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This insider's account of an extraordinary period of national political transition is also a primer on a new radical philosophy, the street–smart Marxism that developed in South Africa's sprawling townships between 1985 and 1995 and rendered them ungovernable for the apartheid state. Mzwanele Mayekiso, a young leader of the "civics"—as South Africa's popular community organizations are called—spent almost three years in prison as a result of the civics' militant organizing. Here, he interlaces his personal story with caustic assessments of apartheid's hand–picked township leaders, with rebuttals of armchair academics, and with impassioned but self–critical analyses of the civics' struggles and tactics. He ends with a vision of an international urban social movement that, he argues, must be a crucial component of any emancipatory project.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Prologue
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART 1: A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA
• 1. Alexandra as Freedom Dawned (early 1990s)
• 2. My Pre-Alexandra Years (1964-1985)
• PART 2: ALEXANDRA AT WAR
• 3. Alexandra Awakening(1985-1986)
• 4. The Advent of People's Power (1986)
• 5. Lessons of the Uprising
• 6. Behind Apartheid Bars (1986-1989)
• PART 3: ALEXANDRA IN THE INTERREGNUM
• 7. Back to the Streets and the Struggle (1989-1990)
• 8. Civics and "Working-Class Civil Society" (1989-1991)
• 9. From Protest to Development? (1989-1991)
• 10. Campaigns for Community-Controlled Development (1990-1993)
• 11. From Protest to War (1990-1993)
• 12. The Drama of Local Government Negotiations (1990-1993)
• 13. "lnstitutions that Themselves Need to Be Watched Over": A Review of Intellectual Attackson the Civic Movement (1992-1993)
• PART 4: TOWARD AND BEYOND LIBERATION
• 14. The Civic Movement's Agenda (1993-1995)
• 15. Conclusion: The Future of the Civics (1994-1995)
• Bibliography