Bøger af Ashwin Desai

When Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994, freedom-loving people around the world hailed a victory over racial domination, injustice and inequality. The end of apartheid did not change the basic conditions of life for the majority of oppressed South Africans, however. Material inequality has deepened and new forms of resistance have emerged in commnities that have discovered a common oppression and solidarty and forged new and dynamic political identities. Desai's book follows the growth of the most unexpected of these community movements, describing from the inside the process through which the downtrodden regain their dignity and defend the most basic conditions of life. His book begins with one specific community, with local government enforcing cut-offs of water and electricity, and evicting families from their houses whose breadwinners have lost their jobs. As the Chatsworth community begins to organize and discover leaders among its ranks, so their example spreads to other communities in Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal region, and their struggles build links with those in other parts of the new South Africa. We Are the Poors was a major event in the life of the South African Left when the first edition was published there in 2000. This new edition follows the ongoing course of events to the present.

Presents the history and inner workings of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) against the canvas of the major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s up to the first democratic elections in 1994.

This is the first publication in the Democratic Marxism Series , which seeks to elaborate the social theorising and politics of Democratic Marxism. This edited volume introduces some contemporary approaches to Marxism and explores some of the ways in which Marxism has been used in Africa.