Reconstituting Activism at the Borders of Contemporary South Africa
Debates about the meaning(s) of activism have been perennial preoccupations in post-authoritarian/undemocratic societies such as South Africa. There are those who insist that the attainment of formal political emancipation renders struggle and activism superfluous and anachronistic. Yet, the political realities of contemporary society have produced new struggles causing participants therein to argue for a resurrection of radical activism. In South Africa proponents of these divergent positions have used the anti-apartheid struggle as the primary historical reference to gain legitimacy. Both pivot on the crucial question of the appropriateness in a democratic South Africa of the kind of radical and popular activism that defeated white minority rule. With this in mind, how may one comprehend the evolution of activism in the unchartered terrain of formal democracy in South Africa? In this brief paper I intend to address this question by proposing that two dominant imaginings and practices of activism have taken shape, and although they have certain distinctive features, also share several common traits. An important arena in which each has been reconstituted over the past decade and a half has been the context of the creation of contentious local spaces and politics. This process has affected the potential for new forms of activism to transcend the ideological borders of the politics of parochialism and nationalism.