Mandisi Majavu

Mandisi Majavu

Mandisi Majavu is the Book Reviews Editor of Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the co-editor of 'Visual Century: South African art in context Vol 4: 1990 - 2007' (Wits Press, 2011).

Some of his work has appeared in the anthologies: 'Real Utopia: Participatory society for the 21st Century' (Ak Press, 2008) and 'Beyond Borders: Thinking critically about global studies (Worth Publishers, 2006).

Is Black Consciousness Still Relevant?

Picture: Steve Biko, a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa in the 60 Mandisi Majavu - Although recent newspaper reports that the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Socialist Party of Azania (Sopa) are to merge ought to be welcomed by those of Black Consciousness (BC) tradition, the fact of the matter is that the BC tradition in South Africa is intellectually stuck in the 20th century. According to the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM), proponents of the BC tradition have not been able to rethink BC politics for a new situation. The new situation being...

Necessary Illusions: Postcolonial Untold Myths and Legends

Picture: Helen Suzman and Nelson Mandela courtesy cortland.edu Mandisi Majavu - As Noam Chomsky once wrote, the vocation of “historical engineering” is as old as history. White liberalism has developed this vocation into a science, and one of the tools that liberals deploy when carrying out “historical engineering” is ethnic solipsism. This is why today the French revolution is globally recognised as an important historical event, whereas the Haitian revolution is not foregrounded in the study of the development of the 18th century social...

The Politics of the Black Middle Class

Picture: Mamphela Ramphele courtesy World Economic Forum/Flickr. Mandisi Majavu - Before the 2009 general elections, political pundits predicted that a shift of black electoral support from the African National Congress (ANC) to Congress of the People (COPE) was inevitable. It was further pointed out that this shift was going to occur along class lines; we were told that the black middle class perceived COPE as the political party that could represent its class interest. Although COPE won about seven percent of the national vote in the 2009 elections, the internecine feud...

Cultural Revolution: Liberating Zuma and His Cohorts

Picture: GovernmentZA/flickr Mandisi Majavu - For a man who spent ten years on Robben Island fighting against a white supremacist apartheid regime, President Jacob Zuma comes across as seriously ill equipped when talking about issues related to race and culture. Generally speaking, his views on race and culture are primitive. Recently he’s been quoted in the media as having said, “Spending money on buying a dog, taking it to the vet and for walks belonged to white culture and was not the African way.” Granted he...

This Africa to Come

Picture: African Diaspora Alliance for International Development Mandisi Majavu - Frantz Fanon once wrote that the challenge facing civil society and progressive governments in Africa is how to organize African countries around values that promote and encourage participatory democracy, equity and mutual aid. Although most African countries gained independence from European colonial rule in the 60s and the 70s, that remains the biggest challenge facing the continent today. It is for this reason that many political commentators expected the Arab Spring in North Africa to...

Solly Tyibilika: One Dimensional Man

Picture: www.gazeta.ru Mandisi Majavu - Many sports journalists view Solly Tyibilika’s rugby career, the former Springbok player who was shot dead at a tavern in Gugulethu, as a waste of talent.  It is said that Tyibilika could play like a champion if you could get him on the field.  Loffie Eloff, a rugby coach, is quoted in the newspapers as saying that Tyibilika had “discipline problems”.  “He’d just disappear for days, even weeks, on end.” Tyibilika’s friends...