Suchergebnisse

Bureaucrats of Liberation narrates the history of the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights organization founded in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy. Between 1963 and 1994, the Southern Africa Project connected lawyers from Namibia, South Africa, and the United States. Within the Project's network, activist lawyers exchanged funding resources, provided logistical support for political trials, and mediated new voting and governmental systems.The Project's history provides a lens into twentieth century geopolitics tied to anti-apartheid, decolonization, Cold War, and movements agitating against white supremacy. In doing so, it pays careful attention to the Project's different eras, beginning with US Executive Branch officials helming the effort and evolving into a space where more activist-oriented attorneys on both sides of the Atlantic drove its mission and politics.

When Moses Kotane founded The African Defender in 1937, he did so with the intention to encourage African self-sufficiency through teaching and publishing in indigenous languages and through sharing information on how to survive in segregated South Africa. In doing so, he entered into public conversation with writers and editors of other independent publications such as The Anti-Fascist or occasional series by groups such as the South African Jewish Deputies Board. In the decade after Kotane and his peers began their own discussions, conversations about fascism and anti-fascism in South Africa moved from the margins among those deemed alarmist into spaces where anti-racist activists increasingly saw red flags connecting European oppression with the growing populist nationalism in their own country. This article examines this decade through the language and conversations of independent publications such as Kotane's, in the face of the proliferation of groups such as the Greyshirts, The People's Movement, the South African National Democratic Party ('Blackshirts'), The South African Fascists, and the Gentile Protection League. It argues that anti-fascist philosophies not only informed but served as cornerstones to a nascent anti-apartheid movement.

Representative of similarly positioned Frontline States, Botswana became a negotiated space during the twentieth century's second half. Within a continent where leaders often imagined regional and continental unity, the realities of late-stage colonialism just as often undermined these visions. This chapter investigates the country's difficult positioning and the sometimes-positive, sometimes-adverse space within, betwixt, and between its citizens and neighbours. Utilising sources from Botswana's National Archives, as well as from liberation movement archives emanating from the ANC and SWAPO, it seeks to understand how parties constrained under Total War imagined Pan-Africanist ideals within their physical realities. ; https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/mono/1071/thumbnail.jpg

In 1986, a "panel of ordinary South Africans" addressed members of the US Congress. Their visit did not command as much attention as would the visit of (future president) Nelson Mandela in 1990 or as did (former prime minister) Jan Smuts in 1930. Yet, for an increasing number of Americans watching closely, it represented a momentous public rebuttal to apartheid. The visit responded to ongoing celebrity protests and built public support for sanctions. While many Americans instigating "designer arrests" believed that they spoke for South Africans, in 1986, physicians, activists, and children who had faced detention spoke for themselves on foreign soil, becoming embroiled in attendant tension and harassment on their way home. An examination of the records of the Southern Africa Project and the US Congress reveals that, while the embassy protests were catalytic, this panel of "ordinary South Africans" on the Hill—and, subsequently, on national and international television—provided public faces for anti-apartheid movements in ways that celebrities certainly could not. As such, it is necessary to examine the factors leading to the panel, its impact on US anti-apartheid politics, and places of connection with youth activism and celebrity protest generally.