Martin Legassick, author of The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800-1854, was quoted in an article about the growing number of unemployed teaching graduates in South Africa.

In an article for SACSIS, Anna Majavu highlighted the struggles of black graduates who are unable to find teaching placements.

Majavu says that even though teaching has been identified as a scarce skill, schools do not employ available teachers. As a result, hoardes of prospective students are turned away or excluded from overcrowded schools.

Because finding a placement for their children seems hopeless, parents from Cape Town’s Philippi East set up a makeshift school in a community hall earlier this year. Legassick says this is not the first time an intervention such as this has been necessary.

Read the article:

The same thing happened in Cape Town’s Mandela Park in 2003. The Anti-Eviction Campaign mobilised unemployed and retired teachers and occupied the Andile Nhose community centre to set up the ‘Peoples’ Power Secondary School’ to cater for 1800 excluded learners. According to research by professor emeritus Martin Legassick, the provincial department of education (then in the hands of the ANC) shut the school down after eight months, leaving hundreds of learners without a placement. This was after the school was invaded several times by riot police and learners teargased for the ‘crime’ of having occupied the community centre to use for a worthy activity.

• Complete article: SACSIS

Book details

• The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800-1854 by Martin Legassick
  EAN: 9780620366106
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Hussein Solomon has written a article for the Centre for Research on Islamic and Malay Affairs (RIMA) Occasional Papers series entitled “ISIS in Africa: The Danger of Political Correctness”.

Solomon, the editor of Against All Odds: Opposition Political Parties in Southern Africa, says the fact that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is spreading into Africa is “increasingly self-evident”, calling it a “worrisome development”.

According to Solomon, while Islam is dominant in north Africa, in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, another key factor to consider is that “one-third of the population in sub-Saharan Africa” is also Muslim.

The spreading of ISIS’ tentacles in Africa is taking place at a time when religious intolerance is on the rise on the continent with a concomitant rise in terrorist incidents. Nigeria’s Boko Haram, alone, has carried out more than 1,000 attacks since 2010 which has resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people and a further 6 million affected by this terrorist violence. The 300,000 Nigerian refugees who have fled this tsunami of terrorism and have sought refuge in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger provide adequate testimony to the human costs of such terrorism.

• Complete article: Research on Islam and Muslims in Africa

Book details

• Against All Odds: Opposition Political Parties in Southern Africa edited by Hussein Solomon
  EAN: 9780620476003
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Martin Legassick, author of The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, will engage in a panel discussion with Andrew Nash as part of the Marikana Day Commemorations.

The discussion will take place on 19 August at the University of Cape Town and forms part of the week-long event in memory of the miners who were killed during the Marikana massacre on 16 August, 2012.
 

Event Details

• Date: Tuesday, 19 August 2014
• Time: 1:00 PM
• Venue: University of Cape Town
  Rondebosch
  Cape Town | Map
• RSVP: Faeza Meyer, 079 088 6566, or
  Ru Slayan, 083 273 7242, slyrua001@myuct.ac.za

• Find the complete programme here

Book Details

• The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800-1854 by Martin Legassick
  EAN: 9780620366106
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Mzwakhe Ndlela, author of For the Fallen: Honouring the Unsung Heroes and Heroines of the Liberation Struggle, took part in a Brand South Africa/Sowetan Dialogue in Durban recently.

The dialogue was facilitated by Alex Mthiyane of Gagasi FM. Other panelists included Stanley Rwandarugali, a Rwandan refugee and programme manager for the Rwandan Genocide Dialogues in Durban; Musa Mdluli, chairman of Khuphuka Investment Holdings and a PhD student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal; and Play Your Part ambassador Brian Mpono, director of Khwezi Oils.

Ndlela said young people should be properly educated about what happened during the struggle against apartheid: “We should teach them of the struggle history of Africa and make sure they guard our freedom with jealousy.”

Ndlela, whose book chronicles heroes who are not documented, said: “We should tell the youth and kids about the struggle so that they know where we come from. We should teach them of the struggle history of Africa and make sure they guard our freedom with jealousy.

“Our freedom was paid for by many an African, not just South Africans, so we should never undermine our brothers and sisters.”

• Complete article: Play Your Part

Book details

• For the Fallen: Honouring the Unsung Heroes and Heroines of the Liberation Struggle by Mzwakhe Ndlela
  EAN: 9780620562850
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The South African Institute of International Affairs has releasesd an excerpt from Against All Odds, edited by Hussein Solomon. The excerpt consists of the first chapter, written by Solomon, which is titled “Conceptual Overview of Opposition Political Parties in Southern Africa”. In this chapter he looks at why the political opposition is so weak and fragmented in the region.

In February 2010, Tendai Biti, an official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance, bluntly stated, ‘ZANU-PF cannot continue to urinate on us’.1 What Biti was complaining about was the penchant of the dominant Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front of President Robert Mugabe to ignore the opposition MDC in the governance of Zimbabwe, even though both parties were part of a supposedly inclusive unity government in Harare.

• Keep reading: SAIIA (pdf download)

Book details

• Against All Odds: Opposition Political Parties in Southern Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe edited by Hussein Solomon
  EAN: 9780620476003
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Martin Legassick, author of The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800-1854, is involved in an historical debate with Professor Hermann Giliomee, who is objecting to a land claim in Salem in the Eastern Cape. The local Xhosa community is laying claim to the thousands of hectares of Salem commonage which was divided up amongst the 1820 settlers and is currently home to several farms.

Giliomee is arguing that there is no evidence that the Xhosa people occupied that area but Legassick says that “old-fashioned histiographies were often blinkered and exclusive concentrating mainly on whites” and therefore the accounts we are now left with may not be accurate:

Two world-renowned South African historians are squaring up in the Land Claims Court in Grahamstown over events that happened between 70 and 200 years ago.

Celebrated left-wing South African historian and theoretician Martin Legassick is taking on prolific South African historical and political author Professor Hermann Giliomee over a massive land claim in Salem, some 15km south-west of Grahamstown.

• Complete article: Daily Dispatch

Book details

• The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800-1854 by Martin Legassick
  EAN: 9780620366106
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!