The party-state in the land occupations of Zimbabwe: the case of Shamva district
- Authors: Bhatasara, Sandra , Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71353 , vital:29836 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909616658316
- Description: There has been significant debate about the land occupations which occurred from the year 2000 in Zimbabwe, with a key controversy concerning the role of the state and ruling party (or party-state) in the occupations. This controversy, deriving from two grand narratives about the occupations, remains unresolved. A burgeoning literature exists on the Zimbabwean state’s fast-track land reform programme, which arose in the context of the occupations, but this literature is concerned mainly with post-occupation developments on fast-track farms. This article seeks to contribute to resolving the controversy surrounding the party-state and the land occupations by examining the occupations in the Shamva District of Mashonaland Central Province. The fieldwork for our Shamva study focused exclusively on the land occupations (and not on the fast-track farms) and was undertaken in May 2015. We conclude from our Shamva study that involvement by the party-state did not take on an institutionalised form but was of a personalised character entailing interventions by specific party and state actors.
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A feminist perspective on autonomism and commoning, with reference to Zimbabwe
- Authors: Alexander, Tarryn , Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71374 , vital:29838 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2016.1235353
- Description: This article engages with the autonomist Marxism of John Holloway from a feminist standpoint. The positions developed by this feminist critique are used to shed new light on the land occupations in contemporary Zimbabwe. Though sympathetic to his work, we argue that Holloway does not sufficiently address gender identity with specific reference to social reproduction and women. The notions of the commons and the process of commoning are consistent with Holloway’s autonomist framework and its complementarities to Silvia Federici’s Marxist feminist lens on the commons is highlighted. Against a tendency within autonomist and commoning theories, we argue for a pronounced identitarian politics as grounded in localised struggles undertaken by women as women. We privilege the significance of women asserting and revaluing their identities as part of a possible project of transformation. For us, struggling against and beyond what exists is invariably rooted in struggles within what exists (including identities).
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Politics at a distance from the state: radical, South African and Zimbabwean praxis today
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , van der Walt, Lucien
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71364 , vital:29837 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2016.1240792
- Description: For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified radical social transformation with the capture of state power. The collapse of supposedly enabling states led recently to a crisis of left and working class politics. But this has also opened space for the rediscovery of society-centred, anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, labelled as ‘at a distance’ politics. These modes have registered important successes in practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and have involved strands of anarchism and syndicalism, and autonomist Marxism. This article, an introduction to a collection of papers emerging from a 2012 conference of academics and activists in South Africa, aims to help articulate an understanding of social transformation from below that has been analytically and politically side-lined not only in South Africa (and Zimbabwe), but globally. In doing so, it provides a preliminary attempt to map and create a dialogue between three major positions within the broad category of ‘at a distance’ politics.
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NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144699 , vital:38371 , DOI: 10.1177/0021909614535552
- Description: This book focuses on the process of ‘NGOization’, namely, ‘the institutionalization, professionalization, depoliticization and demobilization of movements’ for social change (p. 1) by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This process arises in and through the interface and relations between movements and NGOs and it highlights the overall system-maintenance role of NGOs. Of course, NGOs may not deliberately seek to depoliticize and demobilize movements. Rather, NGOization may involve the unintended consequences of the logic and dispositions of NGOs as a particular organization form.
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Patriarchy, women, land and livelihoods on A1 farms in Zimbabwe
- Authors: Chiweshe, Manase K , Chakona, Loveness , Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71204 , vital:29812 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909614541083
- Description: In this article, we focus on patriarchy, women, land and livelihoods on A1 farms in Zimbabwe which arose from the fast track land reform programme. There is now significant literature on A1 farms in Zimbabwe. These studies include a number of ethnographic and comparative studies but this literature does not give sustained attention to patriarchy and women. In addition, though, a small number of works have appeared based upon a more focused gender analysis. We draw upon this more focused literature and offer fresh fieldwork evidence based on recent studies undertaken by two of the authors, in Goromonzi and Mazowe districts. At times, radical socio-spatial reorganisation such as fast track may destabilise systems of patriarchy. In the case of fast track, there has been a reconfiguration of relations between men and women yet this is uneven and contradictory and remains within the confines of patriarchal structures, practices and discourses. At the same time, women have manoeuvred and negotiated at local levels to enhance their lives and livelihoods.
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Imagining Civil Society in Zimbabwe and ‘Most of the World’:
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144802 , vital:38380 , ISBN 9781461482628 , DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-8262-8_11
- Description: This chapter re-visits the notion of civil society in what Partha Chatterjee (The Politics of the Governed, 2004) calls ‘most of the world’ (beyond the capitalist metropoles) and, in doing so, uses Zimbabwe (and Africa more broadly) as an entry point into the literature on civil society. This chapter consists of four main sections. First, I discuss literature on civil society in Africa which, in the main, dichotomises civil society and the state empirically without any sustained theoretical reflections. Second, I provide an overview of Zimbabwean society and politics over the past decade and the ensuing debate, which in many ways produces a Manichean dualism whereby civil society is equated with progression and the state with regression. Third, I locate this conceptualisation of civil society within the broader international literature on civil society. These three sections, as a whole, highlight slippages in defining and understanding civil society: between civil society as a set of empirically identifiable organisational formations and civil society as a social space marked by civil liberties and voluntary arrangements in bourgeois society. Finally, I reimagine civil society in relation to ‘most of the world’.
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Liberation movements in power: party and state in southern Africa
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144688 , vital:38370 , DOI: 10.1080/21528586.2014.960705
- Description: In Liberation movements in power, Roger Southall provides a rich and refined account of political transformation in three ex-settler colonies in southern Africa, namely, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. In particular, he focuses on their former hegemonic national liberation movements, namely, the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in Namibia and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) – now ZANU-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) – in Zimbabwe, their metamorphism into political parties and party machines, and their ‘capture’ of state power as the dominant political party subsequent to the end of white settler colonialism and the emergence of non-racial democracy. The general conclusion is that democratic ideals and procedures have become subordinated to the dictates of authoritarian restructuring.
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Zimbabwe takes back its land:
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144677 , vital:38369 , DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2014.984946
- Description: Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land offers a useful introduction to fast-track land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe for a broad popular audience unfamiliar with the existing literature on fast-track land reform. But its value as a contribution to a more specialised and nuanced body of knowledge about fast-track is considerably more problematic.
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Marxisms past and present
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , Vale, Peter C J
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71263 , vital:29825 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513612470532
- Description: Marxism was central to the understanding of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. This article provides a critical analysis of Marxist literature on South Africa since the 1970s, drawing out its relevance for contemporary analyses of the post-apartheid state and for radical politics today. It suggests that while the literature offered important insights into the character of the apartheid state, it failed to provide a critical appraisal of the state per se. Moreover, the capturing of state power by the liberation movement was not grounded in an understanding of the oppressive character of the state-form. The undermining of mainstream Marxism under neo-liberalizing conditions in post-apartheid South Africa has opened up the prospects for anti-statist radical libertarian thinking (including autonomist Marxism), and this thinking is consistent with the practices of certain autonomist popular politics currently emerging. Social theorizing on South Africa has had a complex relationship with Marxism. This article is interested in drawing on this experience in an effort to understand its implications for the ‘new’ South Africa where, 20 years after apartheid’s formal ending, social transformation remains caught in the logic not of Marxism but neo-liberalizing capitalism.
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NGOs and rural movements in contemporary South Africa:
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144666 , vital:38368 , DOI: 10.1080/02533952.2013.806415
- Description: This article provides a critical examination of relationships between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and rural movements in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly with regard to the possible subordination of movements to NGOs. In discussing NGOs as a particular organisational form, and in reviewing some arguments pertaining to NGOs and rural movements globally, I explore whether NGOs in South Africa have a progressive role to play in agrarian transformation.
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Civil society and state-centred struggles
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71231 , vital:29821 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2012.641723
- Description: This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.
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Marx, Weber and NGOs:
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144738 , vital:38375 , DOI: 10.1080/21528586.2007.10419171
- Description: This article offers a sociological understanding of intermediary NGOs in the modern world. In does so by drawing on certain epistemological insights of Marx and Weber, and this entails methodologies of both deconstruction and reconstruction. In arguing against a sociological behaviourism that pervades the NGO literature, the article conceptualises intermediary NGOs as a ‘social form’ embodying contradictory relations. For analytical purposes, the contradiction between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ is brought to the fore.
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Quality of life in Grahamstown, East London and Mdantsane: preliminary result
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , Bekker, Simon , Lambie, Eileen
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144756 , vital:38376 , DOI: 10.1080/02580144.1981.10428933
- Description: A quality of life survey amongst residents of three Eastern Cape towns, viz. Grahamstown, East London, and Mdantsane, shows that the attitudes to home and neighbourhood which urban residents in the Eastern Cape develop, are fashioned in large part by both the residential “group area” in which these urban dwellers live, and by their socio-economic status. White residents, overwhelmingly, are satisfied with their diets, their municipality, their homes. They feel safe in their homes and are satisfied that police protection is available if needed. For black residents fear of poverty and unemployment, of physical violence, and dissatisfaction with an inadequate diet is widespread. Indian and coloured urban residents who are generally perceived as minorities in Grahamstown and East London, occupy an intermediate position. Their residential areas are sited close to predominantly low income black residential areas. Higher income Indian and coloured households show lower rates of dissatisfaction with diet, housing, and municipal services than the black community.
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Radical thinking in South Africa’s age of retreat
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , Vale, Peter C J
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71214 , vital:29818 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909612442654
- Description: This article traces the rise and fall of radical praxis in South Africa and offers a critique of the prevailing practices of former Marxists under post-apartheid conditions. Western Marxism emerged in the 1970s in South Africa and Marxist activists became deeply involved in the liberation movements. With the unravelling of apartheid, the main liberation forces made a social pact with capitalist forces and former Marxists embraced a statist project. In the context of the rise of ‘new’ social movements, radical thinking of a more Libertarian kind is emerging in contemporary South Africa.
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Zimbabwe's Land Reform: myths and realities
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144710 , vital:38372 , DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2011.581502
- Description: Zimbabwe’s land reform is the first book on contemporary Zimbabwe that offers an empirically-rich and detailed account of redistributed farms that arose from ‘fasttrack’ land reform 10 years ago. In order to fully appreciate the significance of this book, it is necessary to outline briefly recent intellectual debates on Zimbabwe. Two main positions exist on Zimbabwean politics and society. The first position argues that the radical restructuring of agrarian relations (including undermining white agricultural capital and breaking up large commercial farms into smaller units) is a progressive tendency that has opened up opportunities for black small-scale farmers. Simultaneously, this position often underplays the existence of state restructuring of an authoritarian kind. The second position argues that land redistribution has dramatically undercut agricultural production thereby severely compromising food security for all Zimbabweans. It brings to the fore violent state action in instigating land occupations and in thwarting political opposition to ‘fast-track’.
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Transcending objectifications and dualisms: farm workers and civil society in contemporary Zimbabwe
- Authors: Sadomba, Zvakanyorwa W , Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71242 , vital:29822 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909609357417
- Description: In the academic literature, civil society is often conceptualized in terms of objectifications and subject—object dichotomies. This is the case with regard to both social movements and non-governmental organizations. This article seeks to transcend such argumentation by providing ‘thick descriptions’ of the agency of farm workers and civil society in the context of land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe. We examine a land-based social movement (and the role of farm workers within it) and the involvement of a particular non-governmental organization in farm worker livelihoods. On this basis, we offer a re-formulation of civil society as a social field marked by ambivalences and tensions.
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Dancing around the same spot? land reform and Ngos in Zimbabwe: the case of SOS Children’s Villages
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61006 , vital:27910 , http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/asr.v13i2.60408
- Description: This paper discusses the rural-based operations of an international NGO in Mashonaland Central province, Zimbabwe. The aim is to highlight the contingent variation of NGO practices within defined limits. It does this through 'thick description’ of the NGO of focus, the SOS Children’s Village, and compares its 'handling' of the transforming countryside with the response of two other NGOs. It concludes by suggesting some conceptual points in understanding organizational dispositions of NGOs.
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Fanon’s Curse: re-imagining Marxism in South Africa’s age of retreat
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , Vale, Peter C J
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: conference paper , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61029 , vital:27924 , http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.587.740&rep=rep1&type=pdf
- Description: Given its growing, even dark, reputation for xenophobia, it seems extraordinary that South Africa remains open to ideas from the outside. Fifteen years after apartheid in South Africa ended, the country’s great cities are branded with the same imported images that clutter glittering malls in New York, London or Sydney. The rapidity of this makeover from apartheid’s grey conformity is held to be testimony to the success of neo-liberal globalisation which was enthusiastically embraced with apartheid’s ending.
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NGOs and rural movements in contemporary South Africa
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71252 , vital:29823 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2013.806415
- Description: This article provides a critical examination of relationships between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and rural movements in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly with regard to the possible subordination of movements to NGOs. In discussing NGOs as a particular organisational form, and in reviewing some arguments pertaining to NGOs and rural movements globally, I explore whether NGOs in South Africa have a progressive role to play in agrarian transformation.
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From Control to Confusion: The Changing Role of Administration Boards in South Africa, 1971–1983 by Simon Bekker and Richard Humphries
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , Atkinson, Doreen
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144789 , vital:38379 , DOI: 10.1080/02533958508628694
- Description: Book review: Kirk Helliker and Doreen Atkinson (1985) From Control to Confusion: The Changing Role of Administration Boards in South Africa, 1971–1983 by Simon Bekker and Richard Humphries.
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