Emancipatory Futures Studies at WITS

Lets start thinking and developing a practice to solve the Climate Crisis. Here's a call to develop a new cohort of students equipped with an understanding of Emancipatory Futures Studies in a heating world. This is a new knowledge project to go beyond climate crisis pessimism. Pass on!

Principal Investigator: Prof Vishwas Satgar (International Relations)

Core Research Group: Prof Mucha Musemwa (School of Social Science/History), Prof Sarah Mosoetsa (Sociology) and Prof Michelle Williams (Sociology/Development Studies)

Call for Applications for 2019 Postgraduate Scholarships ___________________________________________

The Emancipatory Futures Studies (EFS) in the Anthropocene Research Project at the University of the Witwatersrand invites applications from MA, PhD and Postdoctoral students for scholarships in the field of emancipatory futures studies for the 2019 academic year.

EFS is a critical approach to studying future temporality. It locates temporality within a heating world and is seeking to develop a new knowledge project grounded in subaltern understandings of climate futures. A crucial temporal category to understand the human impact on the earth’s climate is the Anthropocene, which has become an important geological, historical and climate marker. However, Anthropocene discourses are implicated in anthropocentric conceptions of the future, afflicted with technotopia (blind faith in the assumption that technology will solve all problems), millenarianism and an existential risk future that individualises responses to climate crisis. After a 3, 4 or 5-degree increase in planetary temperature is breached human life on planet earth will be almost impossible. We are currently on a trajectory to have a hotter planet by about 2 degrees (since pre-industrial revolution) within this century. Such an increase will bring incredible challenges to societies and the human condition.

Are there alternative planetary and societal futures that can sustain life? Can such futures emerge from existing just, eco-centric and transformative social practices? Current mainstream futures studies and futurists primarily work with evolutionary assumptions based on the modalities of the current socio-cultural and economic system. Futures studies in South Africa are centred on mainstream trend-spotting, empirical extrapolation and scenario planning, which have been received from the global north and centred on elite leadership decision-making within corporations and government. South Africa’s universities have not been able to sophisticate futures studies and make it accessible to wider publics. Our EFS project seeks to break new ground by developing a cutting edge knowledge project through research, promoting inter and trans-disciplinary engagements, critical theory understandings of emancipatory futures and will provide an engaged online and physical space for intellectual engagement through the EFS Research Group and Public Platform. Students will be exposed to leading thinkers and practitioners in this area of study as they develop their own work.

The project objectives will be realised through an inter-connected research agenda, including:

(1) Ways of thinking about ‘crisis time’ and emancipatory futures studies – Philosophies of knowledge such as critical realism and its links to climate time, social theory and inter-disciplinarity. The role of disciplinary temporality to think climate change, crisis and emancipatory futures;

(2) Emancipatory futures in history - Historical forms (poetry, music, art and literature), civilisational visions, anticipatory practice and visions in peoples’ movements and revolutions;

(3) Utopia/dystopia as modes of thinking and acting the future - Utopia/Dystopia as method, South African and African forms (visual and literary), science fiction, eco-topias/dystopias, intentional communities and social theory related to hope and the everyday;

(4) Techno-emancipatory futures - Histories and futures of work, critiques of 4th industrial revolution, critiques of digital capitalism and aesthetics, limits of productivism, alienation, ethics of science, public interest science and peoples’ science;

(5) Decolonising futures - Futures beyond capitalist modernity, critical histories of science, indigenous ecology, spirituality, eco-feminism, ways of being, traditional knowledge archives and cosmological ideas;

(6) Future pathways through systemic change - Deep democracy, zero waste, transition towns, solidarity economies, food sovereignty, water sovereignty, community seedbanking, socially owned renewables, energy sovereignty, climate emergency states, degrowth, public transport, basic income grants, cooperatives and climate jobs, for instance;

(7) Grand eco-centric futures – Political economy requirements, conditions and challenges for ‘Decarbonised Civilisation’, ‘ A Great Transition’ , ‘Deep Just Transitions’, ‘Ecological Revolution’, ‘ Climate Justice Multi-lateralism’, ‘Post-Carbon Democracies ’ and ‘Renewable Energy World Orders’.

The value of scholarships are:

MA scholarships are for one year @ R95 000.


PhD scholarships are for four years @ R125 000 per annum.

Postdoctoral scholarship for one year @ R190 000.

Eligibility and requirements:

Masters and PhDs - Excellent Honours or Masters results;
a research project that focuses on EFS; preference will be given to historically disadvantaged applicants and a commitment to participate in all EFS program activities including the induction seminar, present work to the EFS research group and attend all public talks.

Postdocs – an excellent PhD on a theme relevant to EFS and plans to produce two articles or a book from the PhD. A commitment to participate in all EFS program activities including the induction seminar, present work to the EFS research group and attend all public talks.

Application process:

Application deadline closes on the 5th December 2018 for all applications.

Your application should include:


1. A motivation letter on the relevance of your research focus and interest in the EFS program. Not more than 1000 words.

2. A detailed and up to date CV.


3. Names and contact details (including email addresses), of two academic references.

4. Certified copies of degrees.


5. A full and up to date academic transcript.

6. A disclosure statement of funding from other sources and specify if those sources provide any restrictions on receiving other funding.

7. If you have or have not applied to WITS, please confirm your disciplinary field, your current or preferred supervisor and send in a copy of your proposal if you have been accepted for study.

Please submit your application to Ricardo.DeSaoJoao@wits.ac.za on or before the 5th December 2018 (MA, PhD and Postdoctoral applications).

Outcomes for MA and PhD applicants will be communicated by mid-December 2018.

@marx200 Theory Seminar and Public Lecture - Gridlock Carbon Capital

South Africa Must Resist Another Captured President: this time by the markets

My article in Conversation can be found here:

https://theconversation.com/south-africa-must-resist-another-captured-president-this-time-by-the-markets-92051

The African National Congress (ANC) has made a dangerous habit of bringing post-apartheid South Africa to the brink of instability and the common ruin of all. The resignation of former President Jacob Zuma and his replacement by Cyril Ramaphosa was such a moment. It brought home the point that the over-concentration of power in the office of the president has clearly not worked. 

A rethink on president-centred politics and the threats it poses to the democracy are crucial for the post-Zuma period. South Africa needs to re-imagine democratic practice, leadership and how power works. 

Some sections of South African society have reduced the Zuma problem to a corruption problem. Dismantle Zuma’s kleptocratic network, the argument goes, and all is solved. Zuma’s demise and a few high profile prosecutions will suffice. 

But another view on the Zuma problem – and one with which I concur – suggests it is a problem of contending class projects inside the ANC. The neoliberal class project under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki saw South Africa integrated into global markets. It maintained stability through modest redistributive reforms. This project laid the basis for a new black middle class to emerge while systematically weakening labour and the left.

But it surrendered the state (including the presidency) to transnational capital and the power of finance. 

The Zuma project, on the other hand, advanced looting as the basis of accumulation and class formation. The extra-constitutional state that emerged deepened the macroeconomic, institutional and legitimacy crisis of the ANC-led state. The left and labour, aligned with the ANC in the tripartite alliance, were co-opted and divided. Both these projects are entrenched in the ANC.

Now what? Messiah-centred presidential politics is extremely dangerous. This is particularly true in a country of extreme inequality and with a formal concentration of power in the office of the president. If politics is not represented, thought and acted beyond this, South Africa is going to repeat historical mistakes.

Since the ANC’s December 2017 conference the media, the banks and international institutions have been talking up a narrative of the “Cyril effect”. Zuma’s removal is attributed to this. In fact the Cyril effect is a narrative of capture of South Africa’s new president by transnational and financial capital.

South Africa’s democracy cannot afford another captured president beholden to credit rating agencies, currency fluctuations, investment flows and business perceptions. South Africa’s democracy has to be grounded in the needs of its citizens and the mandates given by its Constitution.

The ‘Cyril effect’ is hyperbole

The end of Zuma was in fact not because of the Cyril effect. In the main Zuma was removed by the people’s effect which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism. 

This resistance was expressed over 15 years through various institutions and social forces. These included:

• Battles inside the South African Communist Party (SACP) against Zumafication but which led to expulsions;
• By feminists during Zuma’s rape trial and subsequently through #RememberKhwezi;
• Artists and cartoonists lampooning Zuma, including with shower heads;
• The ongoing struggles in communities against corrupt officials;
• The Marikana massacre in 2012. This produced rage among workers and major realignments away from Zuma’s ANC;
• The call by trade unions like the metalworkers’ Numsa for Zuma’s removal;
• The Vukani-Sidikiwe campaign during the 2014 elections which opened up a national debate on how citizens should vote; 
• The rise of #ZumaMustGo Campaign. This was in response to the sacking of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister in December 2015. The NUMSA-led United Front played a crucial role in this;
• The #FeesMustFall movement. Students’ demands included labour insourcing as well as quality, decommodified and decolonised higher education;
• The 2016 local government elections. These were a harbinger of seismic political realignments against the ANC in key cities;
• The role of investigative and nonpartisan media in probing corruption scandals. And the publication of the Gupta-leaks as well as “A Simple Man” and “The President’s Keepers”;
• The courageous role from 2010 onwards of then public protector Thuli Mandonsela in drawing attention to ethics and legal violations by Zuma;
• Court decisions affirming the judiciary’s independence in relation to Zuma;
• Zuma’s miscalculation in firing finance minister Pravin Gordhan, the rallying of activists and the rise of #SaveSouthAfrica. What followed were some of the largest post-apartheid protest marches;
• The powerful voice of liberation struggle veterans like Ahmed Kathrada and others who called for Zuma to resign.

The ANC’s legitimacy crisis

As a result of all this activity the crisis of legitimacy in the ANC – and the ANC state – has deepened. This has placed immense pressure on the party to act. In this context, Ramaphosa is playing out his role out of necessity and to secure the ANC’s electoral fortunes.

For middle class and rich South Africans Ramaphosa’s state of the nation speech represented a return to normalcy – a democracy that works for a few. That’s not to say that the new president didn’t make some important announcements in his state of the nation address. This included his comments about state owned enterprises, redistributive state programmes and anti-corruption mechanisms. 

Nevertheless, the speech struck chords that resonated with the “return to normalcy” narrative.

But South Africans can’t repeat the mistake made in 1994 when progressive civil society demobilised. The people’s effect has to continue to shape a post-Zuma democracy in the interests of all. The ANC has abused majority support and cannot be trusted with the future of South Africa.

People’s power has to be strengthened and continuously mobilised around strengthening democratic institutions, ending corruption, fundamental economic transformation and advancing systemic alternatives to the climate crisis.

Big Debate on Radio 702 - Neoliberalism versus Social Justice

My defence of social and climate justice on Radio 702 can be found here and below link to full recording:

http://www.702.co.za/articles/293134/debate-is-a-social-justice-model-fitting-for-economic-growth-in-south-africa

Neoliberalism versus Social Justice in South Africa - Big Debate

South Africa’s only possible path to economic prosperity is through competing successfully on the global stage, according to independent strategy adviser Shawn Hagedorn.

Responding to this week's State of the Nation Address (Sona) debate Hagedorn has described SA's current perceptive on the economy as 'isolationist' and says the country's focus on redistribution and reparations is limiting. 

He says global integration is needed for a workable growth model.

The whole sort of political, economic nexus, it really centers around social justice issues and is completely debilitating economically, so you have a shift from where a lot of the corruption issues are going to be addressed and what's then going to be left is not a workable growth model.

— Shawn Hagedorn, independent strategy adviser

There is no way that through redistribution, there is going to be restoration, reparations, for the injustices of apartheid, it's just not going to happen.

— Shawn Hagedorn, independent strategy adviser

There is really no place where you you have one large economy without any real benchmark competitors. The only way South Africa can work out that the economy is failing dismally, is through the credit rating status.

— Shawn Hagedorn, independent strategy adviser

Meanwhile Associate Professor at Wits University says Vishwas Satgar says it is impossible to ignore past injustices when approaching economic growth.

His argument is that we have got to think with historical amnesia in South Africa in order to go forward and I think that is fallacious.

— Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Wits University

We cannot ignore the super exploitation that has built this country and the degradation that has been endured by the millions in this country, or the violence that has been central to black lives in South Africa.

— Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Wits University

I disagree with this perspective that we have had an isolationist position. South Africa is a deeply globalised economy, and in that context it was premised on compromise and the political bargain was about allowing historically white capital to have mobility in and out of this economy, but at the same time there was an expectation that it would also invest in this economy. Create jobs...

— Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Wits University

That promise at the heart of that bargain was not realised an actually what you have instead is a high concentration of wealth at the top. Inequity has been one of the outcomes of this deeply globalised economic process.

— Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Wits University

Click on the link below to listen to the full debate...

Launch of Climate Crisis Book! All are invited.

Celebrating 200 years of Karl Marx!

ANC Government is National Disaster in Water Crisis

Just Published!

Celebrating 200 Years of Karl Marx! Join us...

New Book in DM Series: The Climate Crisis

DM Theory Seminar: BRICS, Sub-imperialism and Africa

Invite Public Lecture: Trumpism and the State of US Politics

Is the EFF Left or Fascist?

See article published in Mail and Guardian:

https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-04-the-effs-wrecking-ball-politics-is-fascist-rather-than-left

Student politics is extremely fractious and complicated by its populist crowd character. Whoever steps in front leads the crowd. I came face to face with this reality twice over the past few months: first at a peace meeting at WITS hosted  in a  Church during October 2016, which was disrupted by the EFF, and, second, more recently at the Higher Education Convention, co-hosted by the National Education Crisis Forum. Students and workers wanted recognition for their struggles and the Convention was one way to affirm that and ensure the powerful were listening. The Convention ended in an EFF-led brawl and with students turning on each other. Months of organising and preparing an inclusive platform for constituency based policy dialogue was de-stabilised. The alternative to dialogue is too ghastly to contemplate: violent student protest at universities and deepening state-led securitization of university spaces and more broadly societal struggles. Universities will not survive in this context and South Africa’s tenuous democracy will plunge further into crisis.

Student formations are generally extensions of political formations in most instances. This complicates the dynamics within student politics and in #FeesMustFall protests. Who is really leading? The EFF is an interesting example in this regard given its militaristic and hierarchical form of organisation.  For the EFF delegitimising the ANC at all costs means the worse things get the better for them in any social arena. Deepening crisis through disruption is a political strategy. From parliament, to communities and now universities its mode of often violent disruptive engagement is becoming central to its political practice and this is also diffusing as a societal norm. This means the EFF, in the context of the Higher Education Convention, was not willing to rise above its narrow partisan interests and place the interests of the country first. Solutions to take the country forward are not important but rather short term political calculation to upstage the ANC state is all that matters; even in a context in which the main protagonist of social dialogue is not even the ANC state. This is not oppositional politics but a politics of wrecking everything because collective societal solutions don’t matter. It also means this kind of short termism will, intentionally and unintentionally, unleash forces that will also clash with the EFF down the road. It is breeding a politics that will come back to harm it, assuming it is successful in growing in electoral terms.

But perpetual violent disruption, as a mode of politics, also means this is a politics bereft  of an understanding of what is essential for a democracy to work. South Africa’s transformative constitutionalism, like all modern democracies, requires all contending political forces to accept certain rights and procedural standards in the political game. A crucial assumption at work in this political framework is the idea that political difference is acceptable but should not become antagonistic. The EFF does not respect political difference and is antagonistic to all political forces that do not agree with it. It is not just un-South African as some have suggested but is deeply undemocratic.

Competitive political escalation for the EFF means: accept its way or face violence. Does this make the EFF fascist?  Liberal journalists, some academics and even the SACP have declared the EFF fascist.  The notion of fascism is a slippery concept to define. As an appellation it has multiple meanings, both historically and comparatively speaking and this has to be acknowledged. Liberal scholars normally work with a typology of key characteristics to define fascism such as: charismatic leadership, racism, ultra-nationalism, paramilitarism, violence (actual or threatened), anti-parliamentarianism, anti-constitutionalism and anti-semitic.

This is only helpful to a degree, but also runs into analytical problems given that context specific conditions and dynamics shape fascist forces. In the first half of the 20^th century it was easy to discern national variations of either Italian fascism or Nazi totalitarianism.  However, today fascism is mutating and manifesting in a complex matrix of material national and global conditions. It has arrived wearing pin stripe suits or sometimes as a suicide bomber. This brings us back to the question: are those wearing red berets under the EFF banner fascists? Is the main contribution the EFF has made to South African politics is merely to draw more taut the line between those for democratic transformation and those against?

The EFF is certainly a contradictory formation and on its current trajectory it is not a visionary nation builder, nor a programmatic force for change, nor a democratic political opposition. While at some moments it looks good in relation to the kleptocratic Jacob Zuma regime, we should not assume that it is better.  The EFF expresses serious ambiguities in its ideological make up: constitutional/anti-constitutional, Marxist-Leninist/stakeholder capitalist, male chauvinist/yet appealing to some women, decolonizing/yet willing to accept support from white capital. The EFF like historical fascism draws its  ideas from across the political spectrum. As a result, what it stands for in terms of values, beliefs and ideology is unclear. It really makes it up as it goes through the theater of national politics, expedient political maneuvering and through its authoritarian populist inventiveness.

The EFF received just over a million votes in the previous national elections. Does this mean those who vote for it believe in its mercurial, shallow and make shift belief system? Are these the citizens who buy into the spectacle of authoritarian populist politics?  An electoral outcome is really difficult to decipher. There are always different degrees of support for any political party. This ranges from hard core support to sympathisers to swing voters. In the last national election the EFF certainly picked up a significant  anti-ANC vote and it also found traction in sections of the black middle class and unemployed poor. Interestingly the EFF could not build on this momentum of national support and win a local government election outright. Instead it emerged from the local government elections as a coalition partner to the neoliberal DA in most big Metros. Moreover, given its disposition to violent disruption and its  inability to provide a way forward on national challenges  it is likely that its electoral support has peaked. The next national election will be very telling and will really be surprising if South Africans vote for a party that merely offers fiery rhetoric, intolerance and violence.

But this still leaves the colour red on EFF t-shirts, berets and paraphernalia. What does this mean? For some the red dimension of EFF identity makes it left, coupled with a militant dose of rhetoric like evoking the big ‘N’ word, ‘Nationalisation’.  Nationalisation has always been about state capitalism nothing more. The EFF has successfully claimed a space to the left of the ANC and has projected itself as a left force picking up on residual anti-establishment sentiment. Yet its performative antics in parliament of representing workers through overalls and hard hats smacks of hypocrisy. While most workers earn under R3000 per month in South Africa, an EFF MP earns over R1million  per annum and over R80 000 per month. It pays to act exploited in the EFF script. However, the EFF should not believe that workers are not watching nor unaware of the social distance. Moreover, the EFF has not united left forces of the working class, the left intelligentsia or more generally left social movements. Neither has it provided a serious analysis of contemporary capitalism to guide its interventions. In fact, the EFF in claiming to be left has actually through its politics undermined the prospects of the left in South Africa. It is contributing to the defeat of the left. The EFF is not a left force by any stretch of the imagination despite its own declarations, the colour red in its identity and simplistic media representations of it as a left party. An EFF in power will certainly not take South Africa to the left. It does not have what it takes and given what’s on offer, an EFF-led South Africa will probably mean most South Africans will think the Zuma days were wonderful.

There is no straight line from Malema, to Trump, to Le Pen and even Al Shabab. The EFF is not fascist in the 20^th century sense, but is certainly expressing elements of a 21^st century fascism in its role in South African politics. It is pioneering an original fascism in the South African context. As it fights the ANC violently and other progressive social forces, it is also delegitimizing democratic processes and forms of dialogue. However, unlike the ANC the EFF claims to be left but yet it is politically and ideologically certainly not left. Anti-capitalist ideology is meaningless in the EFF understanding of the world and thus it is certainly not a serious left orientated force. The interests it seeks to aggregate are disparate and not representative of the working class as a whole. Its disdain for hard won democratic values, constitutional principles and practices makes it nothing less than an anti-democratic pariah. South Africans need to choose very carefully where they stand when it comes to the EFF. The national dialogue to resolve the Higher Education crisis will continue in coming months, with or without the EFF. In addition, student formations more generally also have to reflect on their commitment to disciplined, inclusive and respectful democratic dialogue to find policy solutions.

Author: Dr. Vishwas Satgar is a WITS academic. He is also a member of the convening committee of the South African University Staff Network, a partner of the National Education Crisis Forum that hosted the Higher Education Convention.