amaNdiya

amaNdiya article

Feels like a century ago - but maybe we revisit as entry point, the role of music vs pc-ness etc? In many ways, set the tone for "ordinary people" songs to re-come from Zuma's ANC - where now it's about who sings loudest - when you google this you get Zapiro's cartoons of Zuma...

Kwanele?

A House in Zambia

This is a new book (published 2010) but the approach of looking at the history of a space/ place has resonance

House in Zambia: Recollections of the ANC and Oxfam at 250 Zambezi Road, Lusaka, 1967-97’, edited by Robin Palmer: a reflection on ‘Southern Africa’s twin struggles for political freedom and economic development’ through the window of an ordinary house with extraordinary occupants.

Review: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/65593

This book is something rather unusual, the biography of a house. Not some aristocratic family’s great residence. An ordinary house, a modern house, but worth ‘listening to’ because of the remarkable people who lived and worked in it. 250 Zambezi Road was for over twenty years witness to the longest and most daunting of Africa’s liberation struggles – the African National Congress’s (ANC) century-long fight to bring democracy and non-racialism to South Africa. For much of that time, and afterwards, 250 was also in effect Oxfam’s operational base in Zambia, as this most famous of Britain’s development charities played its part in Africa’s other historical battle: to win a decent standard of living for the poor.


This is not an ‘academic’ book, although historian Hugh Macmillan’s ‘Story of a House’ is a fascinating account of a little known corner of South Africa’s liberation story. Most of the book is written by a diverse group of Oxfam workers, many Zambians as well as Britons, who assemble their recollections of how they worked together. The reader only gets glimpses of the difficulties the ANC faced in exile, and learns too little of Oxfam’s unfolding perspectives and strategies in its development work. But beyond the occasional and probably well justified sense of nostalgia, there is a lot to be learned, particularly about how Oxfam worked in this part of the world. Victor Pelekamoyo perhaps sums this up best: ‘As an outsider, I wondered why Oxfam laboured so much to make the partners feel that Oxfam existed because of them, and not the other way round’. Dr Robin Palmer, who pulled this book together, and his contributors are to be congratulated on a remarkable and original work, and for arranging its publication in Zambia and not distant Europe.

White washing Zuma

A dash through Europe has helped the new ANC leader establish his pragmatic credentials with diplomats and businesses With one bound Jacob Zuma was free. No longer was the new President of the African National Congress a dangerous populist in a threatening alliance with communists and trades unionists. Instead, he was a considered diplomat given to statesmanlike utterances, a pragmatist whose willingness to listen to other viewpoints marks him apart from his political rival and President of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki. That at least was the view of Europe's business people and bien-pensants who spent time with Zuma on his whirlwind tour of Western Europe in the week ending 26 April.

Why South Africa will never be like Zimbabwe

Jeremy Cronin

In this Chris Hani Memorial Lecture, Jeremy Cronin traces the differences between the ANC and Zanu-PF as liberation movements and as parties in power.

ANC: A View from Moscow

Shubin, Vladimir

Reprint of this classic study. The apartheid government chose to interpret Soviet support for the ANC as part of a Kremlin conspiracy to take over South Africa. Oliver Tambo, on the other hand, described the Soviets as a 'genuine ally in our struggle ...acting neither out of consideration of selfish interest nor with a desire to establish a so-called sphere of influence.' Here told for the first time is the detailed, often dramatic story of the relationship between the USSR and the ANC.

440pp. SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA MEDIA.
2008 1999 9781770096318 Paperback