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Amazing research is being produced by our students, quite a few of whom received mobility bursaries to spend time (sometimes for several months) based at various African Universities. The topics are wide ranging, including material flows in African cities, the roles of intermediaries in urban transitions, suspect assumptions underlying projections of future urbanization, the role of design in the making of sustainable cities, greening the informal economy, earth jurisprudence, agricultural innovation systems, cookbooks capturing local culinary traditions as a means of building local communities,  hemp as the new miracle crop, role of traditional medicine in Tanzania, food security and the informal economy, a review of BBBEE from a sustainability governance perspective, the dynamics of responsible investment practices, green economy within a new cosmology, transdisciplinary approaches to stakeholder engagement over water resources, mainstreaming critical complexity in secondary education, Amazing transformative stuff. They make me proud!

Download:Colloquium booklet 2015

Aahh finally!! A book documenting Africa Uprising – what a wonderful play on the mainstream discourse of Africa Rising – uprisings in 40 African countries discussed. Africa may not be a country, but it has a unique historical legacy and similar modes of governance in a resource constrained world that is grabbing its resources – this third wave of African protest will change the game. I have no doubt about this, and I see it as I travel, talk and watch the streets. See link HERE to the review of the book.

In response to the rise to leadership of the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn, Ben Okri published the following poem in The Guardian on Monday 12 October 2015. As always, Okri captures the spirit of the moment:

They say there is only one way for politics.
That it looks with hard eyes at the hard world
And shapes it with a ruler’s edge,
Measuring what is possible against
Acclaim, support, and votes.

They say there is only one way to dream
For the people, to give them not what they need
But food for their fears.
We measure the deeds of politicians
By their time in power.

But in ancient times they had another way.
They measured greatness by the gold
Of contentment, by the enduring arts,
The laughter at the hearths,
The length of silence when the bards
Told of what was done by those who
Had the courage to make their lands
Happy, away from war, spreading justice
And fostering health,
The most precious of the arts
Of governance.

But we live in times that have lost
This tough art of dreaming
The best for its people,
Or so we are told by cynics
And doomsayers who see the end
Of time in blood-red moons.

Always when least expected an unexpected
Figure rises when dreams here have
Become like ashes. But when the light
Is woken in our hearts after the long
Sleep, they wonder if it is a fable.

Can we still seek the lost angels
Of our better natures?
Can we still wish and will
For poverty’s death and a newer way
To undo war, and find peace in the labyrinth
Of the Middle East, and prosperity
In Africa as the true way
To end the feared tide of immigration?

We dream of a new politics
That will renew the world
Under their weary suspicious gaze.
There’s always a new way,
A better way that’s not been tried before.

Wow, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins the Best of the Best award for her novel about the biafran war (Half of a Yellow Sun) – she’s a Nigerian novelist who sparkles with all the optimism and power of the generation that is reshaping Africa’s future – it is voices like these that will bring forth the futures all Africans – and, indeed, us all – yearn for so so badly. See post

WTO rules that Indians are not allowed to build their own solar panels to meet their energy needs in a low carbon way because this will harm the import into India of American-made solar panels. So herewith clear and irrefutable proof that short-term profits are more important to the people who run the global economy than the long-term needs of the Indian people and the future of the planet that we depend on for our survival. See post

The madness of allocating R200 million for nuclear preparedness – remember how much we wasted in the now shut down PBMR technology? The crowding out of the job-creating energy generating non-corruped renewable energy sector in factor of mega-projects that are perfectly packaged for rent-seekers, cost more than renewable energy, will take ages to build, will definitely not cost what they are originally estimated to cost (unlike renewable energy costs that always come in on budget) and will definitely take longer to build than planned. This is a case of investments in 20th century technologies that make no financial sense in a 21st century world that is investing in the only energy whose costs are going down, whose risks are going down and therefore attract long-term patient and intelligent investors. Nene should be spending this R200 million in the tertiary education sector – the returns there will be far quicker, and long-lasting.

Link to video of protest at parliament:https://www.facebook.com/mark.swilling/videos/10153651402076226/

In a decade or so we will look back on the Marikana massacre and say ‘that was where it all started’. We will be trying to explain either the further degeneration of South Africa’s democracy into an authoritarian regime, or the end of ANC dominance of the state after it suffers an electoral defeat. The former could precede the latter, but that is not a foregone conclusion. The difference in outcome, however, is being shaped as we speak on our campuses countrywide as the students protest against rising fees. What is the historical significance of these campus protests? Is there anything to be learnt from similar movements that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s? Before proceeding, I want to reflect on what I witnessed at the Stellenbosch protest, and the protest outside Parliament of Wednesday.

As has happened often before to extend participation in campus protest, the student leaders of the Stellenbosch movement created a space for students to tell their stories. Using the natural amphitheatre created by the circular stairs leading down to the Gericke Library, large numbers of students gathered to hear students tell their stories. I detected in this well managed democratic space four main narratives. The first, and most popular, was articulated by black students: “I am black. I am angry. And rising fees is just another way of ensuring my exclusion”. Articulated with great passion, anger and emotion in the familiar poetic ways of our African oral tradition, this position got the loudest applause. The second, often articulated mainly – but not exclusively – by white students was: “Fees are rising unjustly because of corruption in government.” This was at times mildly applauded, and quite often the speakers were surprised to be met with ‘booing’. Quite clearly, the speaker’s real motives were not always trusted. The third narrarative was a variation on this theme articulated by many, strongly applauded, but not always: “Fees are rising because government has not prioritized financial support for students to further their education.”  Supported by numbers about declining real expenditure per student, this had a certain appeal and connected to wider societal contradictions. The fourth, clearly designed to deflect attention away from Government as the culprit, referred to Stellenbosch University making a profit last year and not using this to keep fees affordable.

Later that day I was supposed to have a meeting in Parliament with a Deputy Minister who read my recent article in Xolela Mancu’s new book entitled The Colour of the Future and he wanted to discuss it. I could’nt get in, and so his VIP unit smuggled him out, and we met in a cafe. But I spent 30 minutes in the crowd. Many ideologies were reflected in the T-Shirts – ANC, SACP, EFF, NEHAWU, various student associations, Steve Biko’s face,  masked faces and red caps that emulated the Zapatistas, and like all protests the world over, the iconic image of Che Guevara. The crowd included the full spectrum – young black and white people, united in the exhilarating sense of solidarity, power and a sense of danger that goes with any protest action. There were the onlookers, of course, and the tired participants resting on the side, talking, flicking through messages on their phones, scanning the unfolding events. The crowd gathered around the gates, singing songs from the 1980s, but often with different words. Unsurprisingly, the leaders were making up the rules as they went along, judging the crowd, judging the opposition, handling the pressures of the moment and wondering about what happens next. For some on the side, the quicker this thing escalated into a full-frontal conflict, the better. While the Mama’s in their NEHAWU T-shirts talked excitedly, they also said they needed to warn the students against storming the gates because of how the police would react. Behind the gates stood agitated men in suits, flanked by larger men who were obviously security personnel. They chatted on their phones, now and then interacted with student leaders in gaps between the songs, and generally seemed bewildered, obviously failing to get clear instructions from their superiors. The tensions mounted, all through the crowd people were asking others what is going on ‘in front’, while the magnet of danger, action and youthful power continued to draw in more and more people. The student leaders needed government to respond to deliver something of value, or face being outflanked. I had to leave before it all turned nasty as teargas and rubber bullets were used to disperse the crowd. My guess is that the failure to deliver someone in authority to talk to the students coupled to rising pressure by some to escalate the pressure on the gates led to a security decision to ‘clear this crowd’. The scenes that followed were all over social media within seconds, and on TVs that night. Quite a few inside the Parliamentary buildings had children in the crowd outside.

This could just be another student protest about fees, and all actors could keep the issues narrowly focused – like the speaker who tried to focus attention on the University’s profits in order to deflect attention away from the state, and the announcement that Zuma will meet the students and University management to discuss the question of fees today (Friday). But the real challenge facing this movement is whether wider linkages will be made with workers and communities. And in this regard, there are precedents from which lessons can be drawn.

In the 1970s and 1980s, radicalized students did forge wider linkages that established the foundations for the social movements that eventually brought down apartheid. Black students mobilized, like today, by the ideas of Durban-based Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement, realized they needed to extend their work beyond the campuses. This resulted in the start of what became South Africa’s well-developed community-based development movement. Although ideologically this movement shed its Black Consciousness ideology from the mid-1980s onwards, there was always a regular supply of radical students from the campuses to support what eventually morphed into the “civic movement”. Radicalized white students, inspired by the writings of another Durban-based intellectual and academic, Rick Turner, and the international ‘New Left’ movement, set up campus-based Wages Commissions that, in turn, linked up with emerging trade union groups that eventually coalesced into FOSATU and then COSATU (in 1985). By the late 1980s, the civic movement and the trade union movement, together with the student movement on the campuses and in the schools, were the primary pillars of the so-called Mass Democratic Movement.

Will these students make the connections to workers and communities who are also feeling the consequences of South Africa’s self-imposed austerity programme that has been imposed to deal with the consequences of jobless growth, non-developmental welfarism and the collapse of commodity prices which has harmed the Mineral-Energy-Complex? Will the links between the causes of service delivery protests, job losses and rising fees be made? What form will this take? What ideological influences will shape the popular slogans and demands that could emerge from the re-establishment of a student-worker-community alliance reminiscent of the 1980s? For me, the multi-ideological nature of the crowd outside Parliament was encouraging because it reflected the unifying potential of an issue – and so was the presence of the NEHAWU workers, who thought they could share their hard-won struggle experience with the students when it comes to tactics. But while issue politics is good for unifying across ideological differences, it is not always helpful when building multi-constituency alliances. Linking ‘fees must fall’ to ‘services for all’ to ‘jobs for all’ will not be easy. But if this happens, then these student protests will have earned their place in the unfolding history of South Africa’s robustly fragile democracy. If this democracy is to survive, it may well depend on those who are prepared to defend it by joining the protests, and then forging linkages that could reshape the future direction of South African politics. Marikana was the turning point. Will the campus protests mark the start of a broader alliance of movements that could articulate genuine alternatives to the strange mix of austerity, non-developmental welfarism and job-shedding economic policies that we have now? Who from these student movements will forge the links? What skills will they have to avoid imposing their own views instead of listening and facilitating cooperation? How will less educated local community leaders relate to the students who have smart phones and cars? These are the questions we should be asking now, informed by a sense of our own history.

Spent the morning with a group of Brazilians from various professional backgrounds, mainly talking about the global polycrisis and the dynamics of transition (tomorrow South Africa and cities). Their visit was organized Shima, a Brazilian who did our Masters degree, and wants to stay in South Africa now. Like when I first visited Brazil, I was reminded once again how similar Brazilians and South Africans are – in fact, Brazil and the Philippines are the two places in the world I have been that feel similar to South Africa – not sure what it is: the inequalities, modernity and poverty in one, the outwardness, the aliveness of civil society, the contradictions of the middle class, a sense of being a ‘new nation’, the ups and downs, low levels of everyday safety, messiness and an aspiration for order, showmanship. Maybe, but the feel is so similar. Language, of course, is always a barrier – but with a great translator, it can work – like today! Look forward to seeing them again tomorrow.

As I boarded the train heading down from the snowy mountain world of Davos, Switzerland, to get to Zurich airport, I was surprised to find myself sharing a table with three South Africans. One turned out to be Katlego – a graduate from some years ago from our Masters programme Sustainable Development and, as I recall, her undergraduate was a Bachelor of Science with some very good marks. She always did well dealing with quantitative information. Upon further inquiry, I discover all three work for the South African Weather Service, and they have just spent three weeks in Davos at some sort of global ‘calibration’ agency with other countries. The purpose, she said, was to “bring our instruments so that we can all calibrate them absolutely precisely. ….. We’ve spent three weeks taking measurements!” she exclaims, rolling her eyes, reinforced with an impish smile. I gather this was all about making sure that everyone’s instruments are perfectly aligned so that measurements are totally comparable – “so that we all know we are measuring the same thing”, she explains (losing me in some of the technical jargon). I gradually gather that the instruments they are talking about are to measure radiation levels all over the globe, as well as in South Africa. She explains that the SA Weather Service has now built radiation measurement stations around the country to accurate measure radiation levels. And why is this important? I ask. Well, she says, we need to know where the best places are to build solar power plants. Radiation levels of different in different places, and the better they are, the more power the solar power plant will generate. But it is not as simple as that, she explains – it is also about taking into account temperate (because if panels get too hot their performance goes down) and the effect of radiation on the materials used in the solar power plants (such as polymers that degrade with radiation). I was blown away – while us smart analysts in the International Resource Panel were deliberating on the dynamics of the transition to a global economy based on renewable energy, here were young smart black scientists honing their skills nearby to precisely calibrate their instruments to create the databases that the solar power plant operators will need to plan the best possible locations for their installations! Just so amazing how big doors swing on such small hinges. And how the world changes incrementally, as crises translate into paradigm shifts, and then into financial flows and technology innovations, and how much it all depends so much on ordinary young scientists like these who have to spend three weeks in a Swiss Alpine laboratory to carefully and perfectly calibrate their instruments in ways, I guess, only the Swiss can do. What an incredible world we live in. And how inspiring that Katlego found a way to marry her scientific background with her Masters in Sustainable Development to find a job at the SA Weather Service putting in place the databases we will need to transition to renewable energy!

Structural Transformation in Africa and Resource Governance
Just delivered a talk at the Resource Governance Workshop convened by the International Resource Panel in Davos, Switzerland. Took up the challenge laid down yesterday by the ECLAC representative to think in terms of a global architecture and regionally, rather than a ‘sustainable development licence to operate’ which reproduces the old way of doing things that leaves everything up to the sovereign governments to deal with massive transnational mining corporations with expensive lawyers and complex financing mechanisms. Click HERE for the talk and ppt.