Politics at a distance from the state: radical, South African and Zimbabwean praxis today
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , van der Walt, Lucien
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71364 , vital:29837 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2016.1240792
- Description: For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified radical social transformation with the capture of state power. The collapse of supposedly enabling states led recently to a crisis of left and working class politics. But this has also opened space for the rediscovery of society-centred, anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, labelled as ‘at a distance’ politics. These modes have registered important successes in practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and have involved strands of anarchism and syndicalism, and autonomist Marxism. This article, an introduction to a collection of papers emerging from a 2012 conference of academics and activists in South Africa, aims to help articulate an understanding of social transformation from below that has been analytically and politically side-lined not only in South Africa (and Zimbabwe), but globally. In doing so, it provides a preliminary attempt to map and create a dialogue between three major positions within the broad category of ‘at a distance’ politics.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2016
The party-state in the land occupations of Zimbabwe: the case of Shamva district
- Authors: Bhatasara, Sandra , Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71353 , vital:29836 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909616658316
- Description: There has been significant debate about the land occupations which occurred from the year 2000 in Zimbabwe, with a key controversy concerning the role of the state and ruling party (or party-state) in the occupations. This controversy, deriving from two grand narratives about the occupations, remains unresolved. A burgeoning literature exists on the Zimbabwean state’s fast-track land reform programme, which arose in the context of the occupations, but this literature is concerned mainly with post-occupation developments on fast-track farms. This article seeks to contribute to resolving the controversy surrounding the party-state and the land occupations by examining the occupations in the Shamva District of Mashonaland Central Province. The fieldwork for our Shamva study focused exclusively on the land occupations (and not on the fast-track farms) and was undertaken in May 2015. We conclude from our Shamva study that involvement by the party-state did not take on an institutionalised form but was of a personalised character entailing interventions by specific party and state actors.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2018