Download or read book The Man Who Founded the ANC written by Bongani Ngqulunga and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1912, just over a year after returning from his studies at Columbia and Oxford, the thirty-year-old Pixley ka Isaka Seme succeeded where others had failed in forming a political organisation that represented all black South Africans. Seme also established a national newspaper, became one of the pioneering black lawyers in South Africa, bought land from white farmers for black settlement at the time when opposition to it was gaining momentum, became an adviser and confidant to African royalty, and was considered a leading visionary for black economic empowerment. And yet, when he became president general of the ANC in the 1930s, he brought it to its knees through sheer ineptitude and an authoritarian style of leadership. On more than one occasion he was found guilty for breaching the law, which partly led to him being struck off the roll of attorneys. This book discusses in detail Seme’s extraordinary life, tracing it back to his humble beginnings at Inanda Mission to his triumphs and disappointments across the continents, in his public and private life. When Seme died in 1951 he was bankrupt and his political standing had suffered greatly. And yet he was praised as one of the greatest South Africans ever to have lived. For all this, he has largely been forgotten. This biography brings the remarkable life of this extraordinary South Africa back to public consciousness.
Download or read book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC written by William Mervin Gumede and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a spokesman for a country, a continent and the developing world, Thabo Mbeki played a crucial role in world politics, but to many people he remained an enigma throughout his presidency. Is this simply because he was a secretive man, or were there complicated political factors at play? Who was the real Mbeki? In this book, multiple-award-winning journalist William Mervin Gumede chronicles Mbeki’s spectacular rise to dominate Africa’s oldest liberation movement. He explores the complex position that Mbeki occupied – following in Nelson Mandela’s footsteps, holding together an alliance with deep ideological differences, and ruling an intensely divided country. Revealing the political and personal tensions behind the scenes, Gumede explains how Mbeki sought to mould the ANC into his image through tight control, and exposes the intrigues behind the battle for succession. Covering Mbeki’s attempts to modernise the economy and kick-start an African Renaissance, and investigating his controversial stance on issues from AIDS to Zimbabwe, the book offers invaluable insights into the arcane machinations behind political decisions that touch the lives of millions every day.
Download or read book One Hundred Years of the ANC written by Arianna Lissoni and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the ANC in its centennial year. On 8 January 2012 the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, the oldest African nationalist organisation on the continent, celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. This historic event has generated significant public debate within both the ANC and South African society at large. There is no better time to critically reflect on the ANC's historical trajectory and struggle against colonialism and apartheid than in its centennial year. One Hundred Years of the ANC is a collection of new work by renowned South African and international scholars. Covering a broad chronological and geographical spectrum and using a diverse range of sources, the contributors build upon but also extend the historiography of the ANC by tapping into marginal spaces in ANC history. By moving away from the celebratory mode that has characterised much of the contemporary discussions on the centenary, the contributors suggest that the relationship between the histories of earlier struggles and the present needs to be rethought in more complex terms. Collectively, the book chapters challenge hegemonic narratives that have become an established part of South Africa's national discourse since 1994. By opening up debate around controversial or obscured aspects of the ANC's century-long history, One hundred years of the ANC sets out an agenda for future research. The book is directed at a wide readership with an interest in understanding the historical roots of South Africa's current politics will find this volume informative. This book is based on a selection of papers presented at the One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories and Democracy Today Conference held at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 20-23 September 2011.
Download or read book The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power written by Susan Booysen and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The African National Congress is light years beyond the liberation movement of old. It remains a juggernaut, but its control and dominance are no longer watertight. The ANC lives the contradictions of weaknesses, cracks and factions while retaining its colossal status. As a party-movement it draws on its liberation credentials, and extracts immense power from its deep anchorage in South Africa’s people. It is immersed in electoral politics that marks the state of its overwhelming power cyclically. As government the ANC is the object of protest, but not protest designed to bring the ruling party to its knees. The ANC is in command of the state, yet fails to definitively counter the deficits that make South Africa’s democracy seem so diluted. Its incredulous and thus far trusting supporters condemn but only rarely punish deployees who do not ‘pass through the eye of the needle’. The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power unpacks these contradictions. It focuses on four faces of the ANC’s political power – the organisation, the people, political parties and elections, and policy and government – and explores how the ANC has acted since 1994 to continuously regenerate its power. By 2011-12 the power configurations around the ANC were converging to a conjuncture holding vexing uncertainties. This book presents insights into how South African politics – in many ways synonymous with the politics of the ANC – is likely to unfold in years and possibly decades to come.
Download or read book Comrades Against Apartheid written by Stephen Ellis and published by James Currey. This book was released on 1992 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the South African Communist Party and how it took over the leadership of the ANC between 1960 and 1990, during the time when both organisations were banned in South Africa and were forced to establish their headquarters in exile. It also concerns Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation, the guerilla army set up jointly by both organisations under the overall command of Nelson Mandela. North America: Indiana U Press
Download or read book External Mission written by Stephen Ellis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nelson Mandela's release from prison in February 1990 was one of the most memorable moments of recent decades. It came a few days after the removal of the ban on the African National Congress; founded a century ago and outlawed in 1960, it had transferred its headquarters abroad and opened what it termed an External Mission. For the thirty years following its banning, the ANC had fought relentlessly against the apartheid state. Finally voted into office in 1994, the ANC today regards its armed struggle as the central plank of its legitimacy. External Mission is the first study of the ANC's period in exile, based on a full range of sources in southern Africa and Europe. These include the ANC's own archives and also those of the Stasi, the East German ministry that trained the ANC's security personnel. It reveals that the decision to create the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) -- guerrilla army which later became the ANC's armed wing -- as made not by the ANC but by its allies in the South African Communist Party after negotiations with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. In this impressive work, Ellis shows that many of the strategic decisions made, and many of the political issues that arose during the course of that protracted armed struggle, had a lasting effect on South Africa, shaping its society even up to the present day.
Download or read book The ANC s War against Apartheid written by Stephen R. Davis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the armed wing of the African National Congress also “contributes significantly to scholarship on liberation movements more broadly.”—Gary Baines, author of South Africa’s Border War For nearly three decades, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), waged a violent revolutionary struggle against the apartheid state in South Africa. Stephen Davis works with extensive oral testimonies and the heroic myths that were constructed after 1994 to offer a new history of this movement. Davis deftly addresses the histories that reinforce the legitimacy of the ANC as a ruling party, its longstanding entanglement with the South African Communist Party, and efforts to consolidate a single narrative of struggle and renewal in concrete museums and memorials. Davis shows that the history of MK is more complicated and ambiguous than previous laudatory accounts would have us believe, and in doing so he discloses the contradictions of the liberation struggle as well as its political manifestations.
Download or read book The ANC Underground in South Africa 1950 1976 written by Raymond Suttner and published by Firstforumpress. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely assumed that the African National Congress essentially disappeared from South Africa after its banning in 1960 and the imprisonment of its leaders, until public support for it revived in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising. Raymond Suttner takes issue with that view. Drawing on extensive oral testimony, Suttner reveals how internally based activists, often working independently of the ANC in exile, were able to reconstitute and maintain effective underground networks. His scope encompasses the broad features of the clandestine work, the impact that it had on personal lives, and the opportunities that were presented for both bravery and abuse. He also considers the gendered character of the underground ANC. In the concluding chapter of the book, he explores the gradual establishment of the ANC hegemony, which continues to this day.
Download or read book The ANC Youth League written by Clive Glaser and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brilliant little book tells the story of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League from its origins in the 1940s to the present and the controversies over Julius Malema and his influence in contemporary youth politics. Glaser analyzes the ideology and tactics of its founders, some of whom (notably Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo) later became iconic figures in South African history as well as inspirational figures such as A. P. Mda (father of author Zakes Mda) and Anton Lembede. It shows how the early Youth League gave birth not only to the modern ANC but also to its rival, the Pan Africanist Congress. Dormant for many years, the Youth League reemerged in the transition era under the leadership of Peter Mokaba—infused with the tradition of the militant youth politics of the 1980s. Throughout its history the Youth League has tried to “dynamize” and criticize the ANC from within, while remaining devoted to the mother body and struggling to find a balance between loyalty and rebellion.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the ANC Youth League written by Rebone Tau and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What were the origins of the ANC Youth League, where has it gone wrong and how can it once again become an organisation that represents and supports South Africa’s youth? For most of its existence, the ANC Youth League has played a powerful role in the politics of the ANC, and therefore of South Africa. In this book, Youth League member Rebone Tau tells the story of the league, from its formation in Soweto in 1944 to its banning, reconstitution and current standing, highlighting key incidents that led to the organisation’s rise and fall. The book explores the radicalising role played by the league’s early leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and O.R. Tambo; the formation of the ANC Youth and Students Section in exile, first led by Thabo Mbeki; the return from exile in the 1990s and the leadership of Peter Mokaba; the controversies around the presidency of Julius Malema and his subsequent sacking; and the absence of Youth League leadership in the #FeesMustFall movement and current South African politics. Finally, the book considers the role that the Youth League could play in the future. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Youth League insiders, this is a fascinating glimpse into a vital and volatile institution in South African politics.
Download or read book People s War written by Anthea Jeffrey and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 25 years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political violence, and the memory of the trauma has faded. Nevertheless, some 20 500 people were killed between 1984 and 1994. Conventional wisdom has it that most died as a result of the ANC's people's war. Many books have been written on South Africa's political transition, but none has dealt adequately with the people's war. This book does. It shows the extraordinary success of the people's war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power, as well as the great cost at which this was done. The high price of it is still being paid. Apart from the terror and killings it sparked at the time, the people's war set in motion forces that cannot easily be tamed. Violence, once unleashed, is not easy to stamp out. 'Ungovernability', once generated, is not readily reversed. For this new edition, Anthea Jeffery has revised and abridged her seminal work. She has also included a brief overview of the ANC's National Democratic Revolution for which the people's war was intended to prepare the way. Since 1994, the NDR has been implemented in many different spheres. It is now being speeded up in its second and more radical phase.
Download or read book Anatomy of the ANC in Power written by Mcebisi Ndletyana and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has undergone dramatic changes over the last thirty years. Historically a hotbed of political activism, Port Elizabeth is an illuminating site. In 2016, observers greeted with shock the ANC's loss of the city, one of its crown jewels and a party stronghold. Yet, as this book shows through its analysis of power and politics in Port Elizabeth, the party's political decline was authored by its own hand. In Anatomy of the ANC in Power, the author presents an intimate portrait of the ANC at a local level over a 28-year period and one that informs what is now playing out at a national level. The book traces four stages that characterise the party's post-1990 life in Port Elizabeth: rebuilding; ascension to political office; political decline; and adaptation to new contexts where its power was lost or is under threat." From publisher's website.
Download or read book The Founders written by André Odendaal and published by Jacana Media. This book was released on 2012 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The African National Congress was founded a hundred years ago, in January 1912. But the roots of the ANC run even deeper in South African history. In fact, the ANC's founding was the culmination of more than sixty years of organisation by a new class of African modernisers.
Download or read book Umkhonto we Sizwe written by Thula Simpson and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 1046 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The armed struggle waged by the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), was the longest sustained insurgency in South African history. This book offers the first full account of the rebellion in its entirety, from its early days in the 1950s to the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as South African president in 1994. Vast in scope, this story traverses every corner of South Africa and extends throughout southern Africa, where MK’s largest campaigns and heaviest engagements occurred, as well as to the solidarity networks that the rebellion mobilised around the world. Drawing principally from previously unpublished writings and testimonies by the men and women who fought the armed struggle, this book recreates the drama, heroism and tragedy of their experiences. It tells the story of leaders like Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Joe Slovo and Chris Hani, whose reputations were forged in the crucible of the armed struggle, but it is also a tale of martyrs such as Looksmart Ngudle, Ashley Kriel and Phila Ndwandwe, as well as of MK cadres such as Leonard Nkosi and Glory Sedibe, who would ultimately turn against the ANC and collaborate with the state in hunting down their former comrades. Written in a fresh, immediate style, Umkhonto we Sizwe is an honest account of the armed struggle and a fascinating chronicle of events that changed South African history.
Download or read book Southern African Liberation Movements and the Global Cold War East written by Lena Dallywater and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-06-17 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the global context of the Cold War, the relationship between liberation movements and Eastern European states obviously changed and transformed. Similarly, forms of (material) aid and (ideological) encouragement underwent changes over time. The articles assembled in this volume argue that the traditional Cold War geography of bi-polar competition with the United States is not sufficient to fully grasp these transformations. The question of which side of the ideological divide was more successful (or lucky) in impacting actors and societies in the global south is still relevant, yet the Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that exists until today. Acknowledging the complexities of liberation movements in globalization processes, the papers thus argue that activities need to be understood in their local context, including personal agendas and internal conflicts, rather than relying primarily on the traditional frame of Cold War competition. They point to the agency of individual activists in both "Africa" and "Eastern Europe" and the lessons, practices and languages that were derived from their often contradictory encounters. In Southern African Liberation Movements, authors from South Africa, Portugal, Austria and Germany ask: What role did actors in both Southern Africa and Eastern Europe play? What can we learn by looking at biographies in a time of increasing racial and international conflict? And which "creative solutions" need to be found, to combine efforts of actors from various ideological camps? Building on archival sources from various regions in different languages, case studies presented in the edition try to encounter the lack of a coherent state of the art. They aim at combining the sometimes scarce sources with qualitative interviews to give answers to the many open questions regarding Southern African liberation movements and their connections to the "East".
Download or read book The Lusaka Years The ANC in Exile in Zambia 1963 to 1994 written by Hugh Macmillan and published by Jacana Media. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the extraordinary story of the ANC in exile in Zambia, where the organisation had its headquarters for most of the time after it was banned in South Africa. The book uses the ANC’s own archives, the Zambian archives and oral sources, as well as the author’s own participant observation, to provide a vivid account of this crucial era in southern African history. It seeks to understand the sociology of the ANC in exile in Zambia and argues that this was very different from its camp-based culture in Angola. It also examines the influence of the ANC’s exile experience on its approach to negotiations with the South African government and the transition from apartheid. It concludes by arguing that the legacy and lessons of exile were not, as some observers suggest, so much secrecy, paranoia and a lack of internal democracy, as caution, moderation and the avoidance of utopian experiments or great leaps forward.
Download or read book After the Party written by Andrew Feinstein and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Party is the explosive story of the power struggles dominating South African politics and a crucial analysis of the ANC's record in power. Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC member of parliament, uncovers a web of corruption to rival Watergate, revealing a web of concealment and corruption involving senior politicians, officials and figures at the very highest level of South African politics. With an insider's account of the events surrounding the contentious trial of South Africa's colourful President, Jacob Zuma, and the ongoing tragedy in Zimbabwe, After the Party has been acclaimed as the most important book on South Africa since the end of apartheid.
