LEFT FORUM
Revisiting South Africa’s Transition: Contradiction and Possibilities (Amandla Publishers) Amanda Alexander, Columbia University and Centre for Civil Society (http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs), University of KwaZulu-Natal (Chair) Mazibuko Jara, South African Communist Party Brian Ashley, Co-founder, Jubilee South, Amandla Publishers Dennis Brutus, Centre for Civil Society (http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs), University of KwaZulu-Natal
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Amanda Alexander is a Ph.D. student in the history department at Columbia University and a visiting scholar at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.
Brian Ashley was the Director of the Alternative Information and Development Centre, a prominent organisation in facilitating the building of struggles against neoliberal globalisation in South Africa. He was founder member of the third world anti-debt movement Jubilee South and has been active in struggles against the World Trade Organisation. He is also a prominent member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in South Africa.
Dennis Brutus is professor emeritus of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He was a political prisoner in South Africa and remains active on issues of racism, anti-war, and corporate globalization. He is a member of Jubilee South Africa and the African Social Forum. Recent publications include Leafdrift (Whirlwind Press) and Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (Haymarket Press). He is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre for Civil Society, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.
Mazibuko Jara is a member of the Cape Town District Executive Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP). He is an activist and researcher in human rights, HIV/AIDS, lesbian and gay equality, community development, promotion of co-operatives, alternative economic transformation, and land and agrarian reform. He was recently expelled from the Party's Young Communist League after serving as its deputy national secretary. Mazibuko currently works as the Research Director of the Ikhwezi Institute, a newly established a progressive, black-led think tank and as Co-Managing Editor for Amandla Publishers.