Big Tsek: Joburg’s Private Surveillance Network and our Public Deficit

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: For the Ruth First Fellowships, of which African Studies is a sponsor, we seek new, younger voices to address a pressing, current issue in the tradition of Ruth First’s activist research. In 2021, we asked applications for the Fellowship to speak to the following key question: What do the radical changes in the public sphere enabled by the power of Big Tech mean for the public sphere? We hoped to tease out the meaning, paradoxes and contradictions of the impact of the big technology companies and their instruments with regard to the public sphere. Murray Hunter responded with a proposal to produce an essay–part narrative, part analysis–meditating on why the private power of giant technology companies seem largely to be treated as more palatable and benign than state power. And, equally importantly, what we need to do about it. At a hybrid event hosted live at The Forge in Braamfontein and online, Hunter delivered the 2021 Ruth First Memorial Lecture in January 2022, with a keynote address by Nanjala Nyabola, writer, political analyst, and activist based in Nairobi, Kenya.