Struggles over memory are commonplace in contemporary South Africa. The 1980s are an especially contested part of its past. That decade witnessed a mass resurgence of popular struggles that picked up a thread of civil opposition going back to the 1976 Soweto uprising. From outside South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) stepped up its armed struggle and sanctions campaigns; inside the country the United Democratic […]
I’ve been to the Apartheid Museum, just north of Soweto and south of Johannesburg’s downtown. (See the picture on this blog’s About page.) The museum, built next to a casino, has many problems, but today is not the day to raise them. That’s for another time. A big issue for the museum is that it […]
When I first learned of Joe Slovo as a teenager in 1980s South Africa, I thought he must be black inside since whites at the time did not necessarily side with the liberation struggle against Apartheid. Joe was a public exception and paid a heavy price for his commitment.
