Global Activism and Discourses of Dispossession in South Africa

Abstract

The protracted history of the antiapartheid struggle has obviously led to a relatively vibrant tradition of social activism and also the development of various civil society organizations in contemporary South Africa. It is clear that the multiple social technologies of political struggle have remained in place to meet some of the daunting challenges of the neoliberal age. South Africans, just like other peoples, have to struggle against residual forms of apartheid (read colonization) as well as the problems, modalities, and contradictions of the new global economy. In essence, there is a collective need to broaden and refashion (not always consciously) the ideologies and languages of political struggle and resistance. As in other parts of Africa, deapartheidization, just as the imperatives of decolonization, has to be oriented toward the project of nation-building. As we know, projects of nation-building are ideologically fraught terrains.