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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

I find it interesting that you think van der Walt and Zabalaza's radicalism is fancy; I find it consistently outdated, boring, and basic.

I don't know much about the history of the place in relation to anarchism though. Tankies fucked it all up, you say? I'd be interested to hear more about this.

There is more credible stuff coming from South Africa - those fallists whose politics are anarchistic and are informed by recent decolonial, queer, postcolonial, and intersectional feminist theory.

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therealmidnite wrote

I generally use the term "fancy" in a sarcastic way... sorry about that. I just feel it's rarefied. Whenever I hear "Zabalaza" I get this mental image of a bunch of white academics and white upper-middle class types trying to play vanguard from behind a group of black township people. It's probably unfair, but hey, that's the picture I get. I don't reject academia... I'm just not in the mood for another bunch of Noam Chomsky-armchair socialists.

From what I understand, the anarcho-syndicalist movement in South Africa was pretty strong before and in between the wars. For some reason that I don't understand, they all got swept up into the SACP after the Rand rebellion in the early twenties, from which they were, in turn, purged on Stalin's orders. There's little mention of them being prominent in the Torch Commando fiasco after World War 2 - (you know, back in the days when it was actually the anti-fascists marching at night with tiki-torches). So it seems it was over even before then.

Now that the fallists are out of the hysteria-spotlight here it's a lot easier to get an accurate view of them. At the start, there were a LOT of people trying to make names for themselves by saying and doing stupid things, while the serious people were ignored. The way the media misrepresents and distorts things here is pretty unbelievable - there's really little counter-narratives going on here. This is especially bad for me when trying to understand these things, since I'm stuck out in the middle of nowhere. I admire the way they've managed to resist being co-opted by identitarian politics - no mean feat in South Africa. I saw the conditions black kids were living in at these educational institutions about twenty years ago... it's surprising to me that this has taken so long to happen.

In my opinion, if there's going to be anything "anarchist" growing in South Africa, it's going to have to be a case of, "It's anarchism, Jim, but not as we know it". I think the one thing that bugs me about movements such as the Fallists as well as AmB is that they aren't necessarily anti-state - it's more a question of they're anti-the current state. But, like I said, that's probably because it's not "my" anarchism... it cannot be, not in this place. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. I'm a bit worn out from dealing with all the toxicity over on the South African sub over at reddit - so, apologies if I sound a bit off.

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