"Because your yard is too big": Squatter struggles, the local state and dual power in Uitgenhage, 1985-1986

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 14 March, 1988By focussing largely on the struggle Langa's squatters waged against forced removal, this chapter will attempt to analyse the complex interactions between local township administrators, the white establishment, employers, community organisations and trade unions. To understand this complexity, the romantic conception of unstratified communities united against a monolithinc state needs to be jettisoned. Instead, the internal workings of both the social movements and state apparatuses must be studied. This cannot be achieved, however, without taking into account the impact social movements have on the state and how the actions of state officials affect the strategies of social movements. Furthermore, this relationship does not exist outside the influence employer interests exert on the local state and the way this influence is mediated by trade union pressure. As this chapter will show, once the object of study is extended in this way, social processes come to light that call into question two teleologies. The first is the optimistic view that social movements are only important to the extent that they contribute to the build-up of a national movement that will, at some moment in the future, detonate the collapse of the state. The second is the pessimistic view that social movements only win those concessions that structural conditions allow ruling class interests to concede (1). In both cases, the impact of local movements and how they determine the terms of social organisation is ignored. For the former, the structure of society will only be transformed when the moment of revolution arrives and not before. As far as the latter is concerned, any changes that do take place, occur on terms determined almost entirely by the ruling class

The Age of Sustainability

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment. Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching. Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers

Role of Organic Acids in Suppression of Sclerotium rolfsii During Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD)

Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) is a non-chemical method used for controlling soilborne plant pathogens. Individual elements of the ASD (also referred to as biological soil disinfestation or BSD) process, including application of organic amendments or soil saturation, have been studied for over 50 years for suppression of various soilborne plant pathogens. More recent research, primarily in the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States has been targeted at developing a soil disinfestation process based on anaerobic decomposition of labile soil amendments that can be integrated into modern horticultural production systems as a soil fumigant. The process leads to the creation of several fermentation by-products including the generation of short chain organic acids or volatile fatty acids (VFAs), other volatile compounds, and subsequent lowering of soil pH. These byproducts act as pesticides for soilborne pathogens. The saturated soil, changes in soil microbial communities, and byproducts of fermentation give rise to an environment inhospitable to many plant pathogens. Volatile fatty acids (VFAs), including acetic and n-butyric acid, are reported to play a role in the suppression of plant pathogen inoculum during anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD), but it is unclear how VFAs affect sclerotia of Sclerotium rolfsii. To evaluate the effect of VFA, VFA concentration, soil pH and soil texture on germination of S. rolfsii sclerotia, a series of anaerobic growth chamber trials was conducted. Alongside anaerobic growth chamber trials, greenhouse trials were conducted to evaluate endemic soil populations of Trichoderma spp. following the same ASD treatments. These studies show Acetic and n-butyric acids in soil solution are likely a primary factor in suppression of germination and colonization of S. rolfsii during ASD treatment, and activity against these fungal propagules is dependent on concentration, solution pH and soil texture. Sclerotial germination was generally reduced by exposure to either acetic or n-butyric acids, and most notably reduced by VFAs in autoclaved soil (29% germination). Overall, mean germination rates in n-butyric acid were significantly lower than those of acetic acid (32% and 44%, respectively). Germination rates were reduced as acid concentration increased to 4, 8, and 16 mmol/kg concentration (56%, 38% and 19%, respectively)

The United Democratic Front and township revolt: South Africa

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The Making of Class, 9-14 February, 198

Urban control and changing forms of political conflict in Uitenhage : 1977-1986

The central question posed in this thesis is as follows: why did the apartheid urban system change over time and in space during the 1980s? Based on a case study of Langa Uitenhage, the changes in this local urban system are explained in terms of the complex and irreducible relations of power that exist within the urban system between three primary sub-systems that interacted at the local level, namely the state agencies (especially local governments and the security forces), community- and workplace-based social movements, and formal business sector, particularly the local branches of large-scale national and multi-national corporations. The primary findings of the thesis are as follows: (i) Uitenhage's urban system changed over time and in space as a result of the complex interactions and transactions between the elements of this local urban system and as a result of the dynamic interplay between this local urban system and the wider non-local urban, socio-economic and political systems within which Uitenhage's local urban system was embedded. (ii) Local urban politics can be explained as the organised expression of those interactions and transactions that resulted from conflicting conceptions of urban meaning and the corresponding urban functions and urban forms that flowed from different urban meanings. (iii) The dynamics of local urban politics cannot be explained as the epiphenomena of underlying structural contradictions. There were key moments when certain interactions occurred that decisively changed the qualitative nature of the relationships between the elements of the local urban system as a whole. Herein lies the importance of such occurances as police massacres of peaceful demonstrators, violent crowd attacks on representatives of the state, local-level negotiations and mass detentions. (iv) This local case study contributes to an explanation of urban system change and the dynamics of urban politics. However, the case study has not been designed to generate another general theory of urban sysem change or urban politics. It only demonstrated the usefulness of systems theory as a guide for case study research

The power and limits of the emergency state

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented August 1989This paper is an assessment of the strategies, structures and resources that the Emergency State has deployed to fight its battles on the "political terrain" (1). We intend demonstrating that a new set of strategies are being implemented in response to the failure in the face of mass resistance of the early "total strategy" reforms. While capital and the popular classes have pursued in their own ways a range of strategies to transform apartheid, the state (and the interests that dominate it) has been able to mobilise enormous resources and coordinate ambitious policies to respond to these challenges