Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond
Imperialism, Subimperialism and Popular Resistance in South Africa
The Brecht Forum 451 West Street (new location) May 23, 7-9 pm Brutus and Bond will present new books, provide updates on the reparations movement, and show recent video footage of rebellion and repression
DENNIS BRUTUS Brutus turned 80 last November, but has not paused even momentarily. Early 2005 saw him moving between activist events in Pittsburgh (where he is professor emeritus), Johannesburg, Boulder, Malta, Bandung and San Francisco. With Jubilee South Africa, he recently initiated the launch of a campaign against Barclays Bank, demanding reparations for vast apartheid profits. One of the first South African poets to be widely read in Europe and the U.S., Brutus' work found early critical acclaim. His first book, Letters to Martha, was published while he was imprisoned for defying a 'banning' order by the apartheid government following his campaign to desegregate the South African Olympic team. After being shot in the back by Johannesburg police during an escape attempt and breaking rocks for 18 months at the notorious Robben Island prison alongside Nelson Mandela, Brutus was exiled, and resumed simultaneous careers as a poet and anti-apartheid campaigner. He was instrumental in achieving the apartheid regime's expulsion from the Olympics, won numerous awards for poetry, and helped organize key African writers' organizations with Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Upon moving to the U.S., Brutus served in several academic positions, including at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh, defeating efforts by the Reagan Administration to deport him. Following the transition to democracy in South Africa, Brutus remained active with grassroots social movements in his home country and internationally. In the late 1990s he became a pivotal figure in the global justice movement and a featured speaker each year at the World Social Forum. In the anti-racism, reparations and economic justice movements, he continues to serve as a leading strategist, working closely with the Center for Economic Justice, 50 Years is Enough!, and the Jubilee anti-debt movement. In South Africa, he is a key figure in the Social Movements Indaba, the coalition of progressive activists who marched more than 25 000 people against the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. Brutus' latest book is Leafdrift (Whirlwind Press, Camden, 2005).
PATRICK BOND Bond is professor of development studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, and directs the Centre for Civil Society - <?xml:namespace prefix = p ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:powerpoint" />http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs. He is a ZNet monthly commentator and author/editor of three new books:
ELITE TRANSITION: FROM APARTHEID TO NEOLIBERALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA (Second edition, May 2005, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press) Elite Transition is a seminal accounting of compromises and struggles in post-apartheid South Africa. Combining original documentation, insider anecdotes and theoretical insights, Patrick Bond dissects a range of socio-economic continuities from old to new South Africa. He deploys political-economic analysis and draws upon case studies such as social contracts, black economic empowerment, housing, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, international financial influence, and corporate power. The original edition provided a powerful analysis of South Africa's first years of democracy and an optimistic account of potentials that still exist for a progressive, grassroots resurgence of the liberation spirit. The updated edition includes a lengthy Afterword which maintains a scorching critique of elitist politics and economics. Most importantly, perhaps, the book provides context for the upsurge in popular protest against the government's neoliberal policies since 2000.
'an essential and invaluable contribution. great freshness and richess of detail' - Mail and Guardian
FANON'S WARNING: A CIVIL SOCIETY READER ON THE NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT (Second edition, April 2005, Africa World Press, UKZN CCS and AIDC)
Is the New Partnership for Africa's Development a genuine blueprint for Africa's recovery? If so, why did the US State Department describe it as 'philosophically spot-on', and why is it celebrated at the Bretton Woods Institutions and Davos World Economic Forum? Fanon's Warning reproduces seminal commentaries dating to Nepad's 2001-02 inception, by major social movements, trade unions, intellectuals and other opinion leaders, including enthusiastic advocates of Nepad. It includes the original Nepad text and a paragraph-by-paragraph annotated analysis. This second edition contains a major new Afterword essay, updating Nepad's politics and economics through late 2004.
'A bold, piercing critique. a splendid ensemble of diverse articles, statements and commentaries by civil society groups, intellectuals, analysts and policy-makers on Nepad. The editor highlights the volume with a closely argued, theoretically rich, and nuanced introduction. an acerbic attack on the policies of Thabo Mbeki and his advisers.' - African Affairs
TALK LEFT, WALK RIGHT: SOUTH AFRICA'S FRUSTRATED GLOBAL REFORMS (April 2004, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press) Between incomparable drawings by Zapiro, Patrick Bond considers the dynamics of international political economy and geopolitics.He reviews a series of contemporary examples where Pretoria is frustrated by unfavourable power relations: US unilateralism and milit ism, the UN's World Conference Against Racism and reparations for apartheid profits, soured trade deals, stingy debt relief and counterproductive international financial flows, unsuccessful reform of multilateral institutions, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development and the World Water Forum.
'Thanks to Patrick Bond's analytical skills and brilliant cartoons by Zapiro, the book Talk Left, Walk Right allows global justice activists to decode rhetoric and reality: from Washington and Davos conferences to the South African townships. Mbeki and the ANC are not hapless victims, but are deeply implicated in promoting faraway ideologies and unaccountable powers.' -- Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director, 50 Years is Enough! Network, Washington DC
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