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By the end of the 20th century, those who believed in a different way of organising society were in deep trouble. Against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as well as the neutralisation of the radical impulses of the national liberation projects in Africa, anyone who dared mention the word “socialism” or “revolution” took a major chance at being laughed out of the room. For a while, the marriage of liberal democracy and the “free market” looked like a match made in heaven. Capitalism not only relied on brute repression to enforce its rule. The ideas associated with capitalism seemed seductive and irresistible.
Aims: To help us to reconnect with our own ideas about what led us to the journey of activism and what, from our individual perspective, it means to be free.
Aims: To help us to us to reconnect with the different conceptions of freedom, what they offer us as we engage in struggles to win freedoms and how we can locate our ideas of freedom in relation to these conceptions.
Aims: Through this activity, we will create a picture of different forms of resistance across the globe in the post 2000 era.
Aims: To help us to reflect on how different struggles have laid the basis for us to discuss the strategic choices available for those fighting for freedom today.
On this day, we will be looking at struggles for freedom which are focused on the state. This includes struggles which are waged against the state (e.g uprisings against military dictatorships), as well as struggles which have as their objective the taking of state power – either through elections or revolution.
Aims: Understand what the state is theoretically and how do we understand the state in the South African context.
Aims: Understand the possibilities and drawbacks of the state-oriented route to freedom in the 21st century, using the case study of Venezuela
Aims: The nature of the state and state power
Aims: Build an understanding of the contemporary feminist movement in Sudan and South Africa, and hopefully.
By the 1980s in the struggle against apartheid, the mass movements exercised the notion of dual power where they were both challenging the apartheid regime and also experimenting what a future South Africa would look like.
Aims: Understand the relationship between different decision-making regimes and freedom as self-determination.
Aims: Understanding perspectives on local popular power, self-determination and freedom.
Aims: Understand the particular context, strategies, political rethinking and political imaginations of case studies.
Aims: To help us to critically reflect on how land has been used by two powerful movements in envisioning and concretising the idea of freedom in the here and now (using land to build tomorrow today)
On this day we turn the focus to our own organisations and look at our movements with a critical eye. Most of our movements are geared at fighting injustice and challenging certain aspects of the status-quo.
Aims: To help us to draw connections and links between our movements, their aims and forms of resistance and to reflect critically on the five questions we were asked to respond to.
Aims: To help us to understand the importance of imagining a radically different world and to think of ways in which our everyday experiences discourage us from dreaming of radically different futures.
Aims: To help us to exercise our radical imaginations and conceive of potential ways of living and organising social relations that promote true freedom for all.
On this last day, we go back to the questions we posed at the beginning of the module. What does it mean to struggle for freedom today? What is the best way to get to the world of our dreams?
Aims: To imagine not only new ways of organising social relations, but the routes we might take to get there, and why certain routes might be more effective than others.
Aims: To help us to evaluate this module (Strategies for winning freedom today) and the course – Rethinking Freedom. We will reflect on our learning journey and give feedback to build on the work done thus far.