Contentious politics and contentious scholarship: challenges researching social movements in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article explores challenges associated with conducting research on social movements in South Africa (and beyond). Scholarship and commentary on South African social movements is a contentious and contested field. This article reflects particularly on carrying out research relating to land and housing rights and on the relationships between scholars, activists and activist-scholars working in this area. There is a particular difficulty with regard to identifying and analysing the political biases present within various opposing accounts of the social movements taking action on land and housing issues and their relationships to other actors. The article argues that there are three main pitfalls which researchers should attempt to avoid. First there is the danger of taking the claims made by social movements and by their academic advocates at face value. The second pitfall, on the other hand, relates to the danger of dismissing the praxis of these social movements altogether. The third danger surrounds the risk of the debates and disagreements between academics and commentators overshadowing discussion of the issues upon which movements work. The article suggests that it is necessary to apply a critical lens to all knowledge produced about social movements taking action on land and housing issues in South Africa and, consequently, a number of questions remain unresolved when attempting to put together an accurate picture of the relationships between and praxis of groups and organisations working in this area.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• South Africa
• housing rights
• activist-scholarship
• human rights

View correction statement:

Correction: Contentious politics and contentious scholarship: challenges researching social movements in South Africa

ORCID

Matthew Evans http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6464-5161

Acknowledgements

Thanks must go to the organisers of, and participants in, the conference Activist Scholarship in Human Rights: New Challenges (School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, 28 June 2017) where an early draft of this article was presented and helpful feedback received. The article has also been much improved by helpful comments from the two anonymous reviewers and from Corrinne Lennox.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Matthew Evans is a Teaching Fellow in Law, Politics and Sociology at the University of Sussex and Visiting Researcher in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He completed his PhD at the University of York's Centre for Applied Human Rights. Recent articles appear in International Politics, the Journal of Human Rights, the Journal of Human Rights Practice and Social and Legal Studies. His first book is Transformative Justice: Remedying Human Rights Violations Beyond Transition, published by Routledge.

Notes

1. Ibrahim Steyn, ‘Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Critical Reflection’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 43, no. 2 (2016): 271–85.

2. Ibid.; Bandile Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African Social Movement’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 41, no. 3 (2014): 345–53.

3. Heinrich Böhmke refers to this as the ‘branding’ of social movements. See Heinrich Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’, Dispositions: A Journal, April 30, 2010, http://dispositionsjournal.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html (accessed November 25, 2012).

4. Obscuring or denying issues for the purpose of propaganda or branding differs significantly from the notion of ‘ethnographic refusal’, whereby ‘researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy … not to bury information, but to ensure that communities are able to respond to issues on their own terms’ (emphasis in original). See Alex Zahara, ‘Refusal as Research Method in Discard Studies’, Discard Studies, March 21, 2016, https://discardstudies.com/2016/03/21/refusal-as-research-method-in-discard-studies/ (accessed June 14, 2018). On propagandist and other dynamics between movements and researchers see Shannon Walsh, ‘“Uncomfortable Collaborations”: Contesting Constructions of the “Poor” in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 116 (2008): 255–70; Patrick Bond, ‘Rejoinder: Collaborations, Co-optations & Contestations in Praxis-Based Knowledge Production’, Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 116 (2008): 271–5; Ashwin Desai, ‘Rejoinder: The Propagandists, the Professors & their “Poors”’, Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 116 (2008): 275–7; Shannon Walsh, ‘A Response & An Update’, Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 116 (2008): 278–9.

5. See, for example, Kate Tissington, ‘“Tacticians in the Struggle for Change”? Exploring the Dynamics Between Legal Organisations and Social Movements Engaged in Rights-Based Struggles in South Africa’, in Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-First-Century South Africa, eds. Marcelle C. Dawson and Luke Sinwell (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 201–21; Dale T. McKinley, ‘The Crisis of the Left in Contemporary South Africa’, in Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-First-Century South Africa, eds. Marcelle C. Dawson and Luke Sinwell (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 23–43.

6. See, for example, Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Governing (Through) Rights (Oxford: Hart, 2016); Bal Sokhi-Bulley, ‘Government(ality) By Experts: Human Rights as Governance’, Law and Critique 22, no. 3 (2011): 251–71; Neil Stammers, Human Rights and Social Movements (London: Pluto Press, 2009).

7. Charles R. Hale, ‘Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology’, Cultural Anthropology 21, no. 1 (2006): 98.

8. See, for example, Jonathan Faull, ‘In Praise of the South African Constitution’, Africa is a Country, February 16, 2012, https://africasacountry.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/praising-the-south-african-constitution/ (accessed June 11, 2018); Jackie Dugard, South Africa: Review of Rights Discourse. RIPOCA Research Notes 9-2011, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2011).

9. See, for example, Haroon Bhorat, ‘FactCheck: Is South Africa the Most Unequal Society in the World?’, The Conversation, September 30, 2015, https://theconversation.com/factcheck-issouth-africa-the-mostunequal-society-in-the-world-48334 (accessed March 6, 2016); Matthew Evans, Transformative Justice: Remedying Human Rights Violations Beyond Transition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).

10. See, for example, Richard Pithouse, Writing the Decline: On the Struggle for South Africa's Democracy (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2016).

11. See, for example, Evans, Transformative Justice; Dugard, South Africa: Review of Rights Discourse; Tissington, ‘“Tacticians in the Struggle for Change”?’, 201–21; Stammers, Human Rights and Social Movements. See also, Hannah Miller, ‘A Change in Charity Law for England and Wales: Examining War on Want's Foremost Adoption of the New Human Rights Charitable Purpose’, International Journal of Human Rights 16, no. 7 (2012): 1003–22.

12. See, for example, Stammers, Human Rights and Social Movements; Bill Bowring, ‘Karl Marx and “Marxism”’, The Real Movement Which Abolishes the Present State of Things, September 11, 2017, https://bbowring.com/2017/09/11/karl-marx-and-marxism/ (accessed June 11, 2018); Matthew Evans, ‘Trade Unions as Human Rights Organizations’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 7, no. 3 (2015): 466–83; Paul Gready, ‘The Politics of Human Rights’, Third World Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2003): 745–57; Shannon Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 66–76.

13. Margot E. Salomon, ‘Human Rights Are Also about Social Justice’, Open Democracy, July 25, 2013, http://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/margot-salomon/human-rights-are-also-about-social-justice (accessed August 7, 2013).

14. Matilda Aberese Ako, Nana Akua Anyidoho and Gordon Crawford, ‘NGOs, Rights-Based Approaches and the Potential for Progressive Development in Local Contexts: Constraints and Challenges in Northern Ghana’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 5, no. 1 (2013): 69.

15. Poor People's Alliance, ‘About the Alliance’, http://sekwanele.wordpress.com/about/ (accessed September 1, 2010).

16. Walsh, ‘“Uncomfortable Collaborations”’, 260.

17. Ibid.

18. See, for example, Michael Blake, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, July 6, 2012; Michael Blake, personal interview, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 10, 2015; Lorraine Heunis and Eleanor Hoedemaker, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, August 7, 2012; Dale T. McKinley, Labour and Community in Transition: Alliances for Public Services in South Africa. Municipal Services Project Occasional Paper No. 24, June (Cape Town: University of the Western Cape, 2014). See, further, Evans, Transformative Justice.

19. See, for example, SDI, Shack/Slum Dwellers International Annual Report 2012 (Shack/Slum Dwellers International: Cape Town, 2012); SDI Programme Officer, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, August 3, 2012.

20. See, Evans, Transformative Justice.

21. One might think, for example, of extending Ron Dudai's characterisation of the human rights report genre as ‘advocacy with footnotes’ further. Any research seeking to effect social change (or influence processes which in turn might effect social change) – any scholarship as activism – can be seen as advocacy with footnotes regardless of whether it is carried out in an NGO or academic setting and regardless of whether it is disseminated in the form of a report or a peer-reviewed paper. There are differences, of course (different audiences and registers, for instance), but a key similarity between this kind of scholarship and the reports analysed by Dudai is the importance placed upon evidencing claims and conferring legitimacy upon the author's position through footnoting this evidence. In this sense both activist-scholarship and human rights reports invite their audiences not simply to trust the author but seek to demonstrate that the author ought to be trusted (and their views acted upon) due to the evident, verifiable credibility of their claims – the tensions which result from this are also shared across the two genres. See Ron Dudai, ‘Advocacy with Footnotes: The Human Rights Report as a Literary Genre’, review of Through No Fault of Their Own: Punitive House Demolitions during the al-Aqsa Intifada by Ronen Shnayderman (trans. Zvi Shulman), Human Rights Quarterly 28, no. 3 (2006): 783–95. Furthermore, scholarship as activism, even in the form of drawing attention to politically inconvenient facts is not necessarily safer (or less courageous) than social movement-embedded forms of activist-scholarship. See, for example, Kamala Visweswaran, ‘Conclusion: Fragile Facts – On Scholarship and Activism’, Cultural Dynamics 23, no. 1 (2011): 78–9.

22. On organic intellectuals, see David Forgacs, ed., The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935 (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 300–11. See also Mark Cresswell and Helen Spandler, ‘The Engaged Academic: Academic Intellectuals and the Psychiatric Survivor Movement’, Social Movement Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 141–2; Adam Gary Lewis, ‘Ethics, Activism and the Anti-Colonial: Social Movement Research as Resistance’, Social Movement Studies 11, no. 2 (2012): 230–1.

23. See, for example, Charles Hale, ‘What is Activist Research?’, Social Science Research Council Items 2, no. 1/2 (2001): 13–15; Hale, ‘Activist Research v. Cultural Critique’, 96–120; David Croteau, ‘Which Side Are You On? The Tension Between Movement Scholarship and Activism’, in Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Social Movement Scholarship, eds. David Croteau, William Hoynes and Charlotte Ryan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 32–5; see also, Dawson and Sinwell, ‘Ethical and Political Challenges of Participatory Action Research in the Academy’, 177–91; Assata Zerai, ‘Models for Unity Between Scholarship and Grassroots Activism’, Critical Sociology 28, no. 1/2 (2002): 201–16; Lara Montesinos Coleman, ‘Ethnography, Commitment, and Critique: Departing from Activist Scholarship’, International Political Sociology 9, no. 3 (2015): 263–80.

24. Kevin Gillan and Jenny Pickerill, ‘The Difficult and Hopeful Ethics of Research on, and with, Social Movements’, Social Movement Studies 11, no. 2 (2012): 133–43; Marcelle C. Dawson and Luke Sinwell, ‘Ethical and Political Challenges of Participatory Action Research in the Academy: Reflections on Social Movements and Knowledge Production in South Africa’, Social Movement Studies 11, no. 2 (2012): 177–91; The Autonomous Geographies Collective, ‘Beyond Scholar Activism: Making Strategic Interventions Inside and Outside the Neoliberal University’, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 9, no. 2 (2010): 245–75.

25. See, for example, Heinrich Böhmke, ‘Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle’, Dispositions: A Journal, May 20, 2012, http://dispositionsjournal.blogspot.com/2012/05/social-movement-hustle_20.html (accessed December 14, 2012).

26. Nigel C. Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’; Heinrich Böhmke, ‘The Shackdwellers and the Intellectuals: Don't Talk About Us Talking About the Poor’, PoliticsWeb, October 21, 2010, http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=206254&sn=Detail&pid=71616 (accessed December 14, 2012).

27. See, for example, Richard Pithouse, ‘Solidarity, Co-option and Assimilation: The Necessity, Promises and Pitfalls of Global Linkages for South African Movements’, in Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements and the Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South Africa, ed. Nigel C. Gibson (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006), 247–86; Pithouse, Writing the Decline; Richard Pithouse, ‘Forging New Political Identities in the Shanty Towns of Durban, South Africa’, Historical Materialism 26, no. 2 (2018).

28. See, for example, Böhmke, ‘The Shackdwellers and the Intellectuals’; Böhmke, ‘Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle’; 031 Business, ‘Q&A with Heinrich Böhmke’, 031 Business, July 27, 2016, http://www.031business.com/2016/07/27/qa-with-heinrich-bohmke/ (accessed June 11, 2018).

29. See, for example, Ashwin Desai and Heinrich Böhmke, ‘Mpumalanga's New War’, in Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002), 82–90; Böhmke, ‘Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle’. Pithouse has also co-authored with Desai in the past; see, for example, Ashwin Desai and Richard Pithouse, ‘Sanction All Revolts: A Reply to Rebecca Pointer’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 39, no. 4 (2004): 295–314.

30. Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa.

31. Indeed, Böhmke derides Pithouse and others as ‘Abahlologists’. See New Frank Talk, ‘Correspondence between Prof John Comaroff and Heinrich Böhmke’, New Frank Talk 13 (March 2013), http://heinrichbohmke.com/2013/05/comaroff/#Correspondence1 (accessed June 11, 2018); Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’; Böhmke, ‘The Shackdwellers and the Intellectuals’.

32. Böhmke, ‘Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle’.

33. Ibid., 21; Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’; Böhmke, ‘The Shackdwellers and the Intellectuals’.

34. Mandisi Majavu, ‘I thus Caught that Colonial Mind-Set at Work: The Mis-representation of Post-Apartheid Social Movements’, ZNet, April 9, 2012, http://www.zcommunications.org/i-thus-caught-that-colonial-mind-set-at-work-the-mis-representation-of-post-apartheid-social-movements-by-mandisi-majavu (accessed December 14, 2012); Mandisi Majavu, ‘“White Talk” Reconstructs Whiteness as Victimised Personality’, Debate, listserv message posted April 16, 2012, http://lists.fahamu.org/pipermail/debate-list/2012-April/028527.html (accessed December 14, 2012).

35. See, for example, Pithouse, Writing the Decline.

36. By this, Pithouse presumably means literature which (in his view) contributes to promoting the domination of social movements by academics or NGOs in relation to their favoured methods, approaches and modes of analysis, as opposed to literature which supports the autonomy and independence of poor people's struggles. See Pithouse, ‘Solidarity, Co-option and Assimilation’, 256–57, 278.

37. See, for example, Rebecca Pointer, ‘Questioning the Representation of South Africa's “New Social Movements”: A Case Study of the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 39, no. 4 (2004): 271–94; Desai and Pithouse, ‘Sanction All Revolts’, 295–314; Buntu Siwisa, ‘Crowd Renting or Struggling from Below? The Concerned Citizens’ Forum in Mpumalanga Township, Durban, 1999–2005’, Journal of Southern African Studies 34, no. 4 (2008): 919–36; Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’; Böhmke, ‘The Shackdwellers and the Intellectuals’; Majavu, ‘I thus Caught that Colonial Mind-Set at Work’; Böhmke, ‘Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle’; Who Is Heinrich Bohmke, ‘The Lies and Distortions of Heinrich Bohmke’, https://whoisheinrichbomke.weebly.com/ (accessed June 11, 2018). The email correspondence (published in the Black Consciousness-oriented journal New Frank Talk, having ‘fall[en] from a truck’) between Böhmke and the anthropologist and Africanist John Comaroff, and between Böhmke and representatives of the Harvard International Review, is particularly depressing. See Athi Mongezeleli Joja and Andile Mngxitama, ‘Introduction’, New Frank Talk 13 (March 2013), http://heinrichbohmke.com/2013/05/comaroff/#Introduction (accessed June 11, 2018); New Frank Talk, ‘Correspondence Between Prof John Comaroff and Heinrich Böhmke’; New Frank Talk, ‘Correspondence Between Harvard International Review and Heinrich Böhmke’, New Frank Talk 13 (March 2013), http://heinrichbohmke.com/2013/05/comaroff/#Correspondence2 (accessed June 11, 2018).

38. Dawson and Sinwell, ‘Ethical and Political Challenges of Participatory Action Research in the Academy’, 180–1.

39. Dawson and Sinwell, ‘Ethical and Political Challenges of Participatory Action Research in the Academy’, 181. For reflection on and discussion of somewhat similar critiques of activist-scholarship in the context of the UK, see The Autonomous Geographies Collective, ‘Beyond Scholar Activism’.

40. For further discussion of, and reflection upon, the dynamics and dilemmas of researcher positionality see, for example, Victoria Sanford and Asale Angel-Ajani, eds., Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006).

41. See, for example, Matt Birkinshaw, ‘Abahlali baseMjondolo: “A Homemade Politics” – Rights, Democracy and Social Movements in South Africa’ (paper presented at Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, March 15–17, 2009), http://libcom.org/library/abahlali-basemjondolo-%E2%80%98-homemade-politics%E2%80%99 (accessed December 14, 2012); Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa. See also Matthew Evans, review of Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo by Nigel C. Gibson, Social Movement Studies 12, no. 4 (2013): 491–2.

42. See, for example, Pointer, ‘Questioning the Representation of South Africa's “New Social Movements”’, 271–94.

43. Martin Legassick, ‘Housing Battles in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Mandela Park, Khayelitsha’, South African Labour Bulletin 27, no. 6 (2003); Martin Legassick, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, August 4, 2010.

44. Martin Legassick, ‘The State of the Left in South Africa’ (paper presented at ‘Politics in South Africa Today’, Dialogue, Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust, Johannesburg, July 2011), http://www.wolpetrust.org.za/dialogue2011/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20The%20state%20of%20the%20left%20in%20South%20Africa.pdf (accessed December 14, 2012), 3.

45. See, for example, Mike Louw, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, July 6, 2012; Blake, personal interview, July 6, 2012; Soraya Hendricks, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, July 11, 2012.

46. See, for example, Blake, personal interview, July 6, 2012; Heunis and Hoedemaker, personal interview, August 7, 2012; Hendricks, personal interview, July 11, 2012; Mtetho Xali, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, August 3, 2012.

47. See, for example, Abahlali baseMjondolo, ‘A Brief Guide to the History and Praxis of Abahlali baseMjondolo for NGOs, Academics, Activists and Churches Seeking a Relationship with the Movement’, May 22, 2007, http://www.abahlali.org/node/1391 (accessed September 1, 2010); see also Mncedisi Twalo, personal interview, Cape Town, South Africa, July 4, 2012.

48. It is not prima facie clear whether this was an instance of circumventing the problematic dynamics of gatekeeping or of insufficient conformity to the processes set out by the movement – or neither, or both. Accounts do exist of the messy realities of this kind of research. However, these often concentrate on raising dilemmas and questions rather than on providing answers to them, and much of the literature which does propose solutions to potentially problematic dynamics between researchers and the communities and movements with which they engage (proposing, for instance, participatory coproduction of research) is silent on the question of how difficult or problematic dynamics within movements or communities might ethically be navigated. For examples of the former, see Jonathan Darling, ‘Emotions, Encounters and Expectations: The Uncertain Ethics of “The Field”’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 2 (2014): 201–12; Njoki Wamai, ‘First Contact with the Field: Experiences of an Early Career Researcher in the Context of National and International Politics in Kenya’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 2 (2014): 213–22. For an example of the latter (proposing coproduction), see Graeme Chesters, ‘Social Movements and the Ethics of Knowledge Production’, Social Movement Studies 11, no. 2 (2012): 145–60 and for a discussion of these types of proposals, see Carl Wilmsen, ‘Extraction, Empowerment, and Relationships in the Practice of Participatory Research’ (paper presented at the 11th Annual Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships [CFERP] Workshop, Brandon Springs Group Center, Land Between the Lakes, Tennessee, September 5–9, 2007), https://nature.berkeley.edu/community_forestry/Workshops/2007/Extraction%20empowerment%20and%20relationships%20unlinked.pdf (accessed June 12, 2018); also Hale, ‘What is Activist Research?’, 13–15, particularly the (unanswered) questions at 15 and Charles R. Hale, ‘In Praise of “Reckless Minds”: Making a Case for Activist Anthropology’, in Anthropology Put to Work, eds. Les W. Field and Richard G. Fox (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 114–16. In contrast to the literature which proposes an increased melding of activism and scholarship (especially through use of movement-embedded and coproduced ethnography) in order to address these issues, Lara Montesinos Coleman argues that ‘the “gaps” between solidarity and writing are not a problem to be solved. Rather, they are productive of a critical ethos’. See Coleman, ‘Ethnography, Commitment, and Critique’, 264.

49. See Abahlali baseMjondolo, ‘Collectivism vs. Individualism: Press Statement’, April 19, 2012, http://abahlali.org/node/8726 (accessed January 29, 2013); Abahlali baseMjondolo, ‘Election of an Interim Committee for AbM Western Cape, QQ Section, Khayelitsha, Cape Town, Sunday 22 April 2012’, April 26, 2012, http://abahlali.org/node/8747 (accessed January 29, 2013); Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape, ‘Clarification on Role of Mzonke Poni in Abahlali baseMjondolo’, press statement, January 25, 2013, New Frank Talk 13 (March 2013), http://heinrichbohmke.com/2013/05/comaroff/#ABMletter (accessed June 11, 2018); Joja and Mngxitama, ‘Introduction’; New Frank Talk, ‘Correspondence Between Prof John Comaroff and Heinrich Böhmke’.

50. Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’.

51. SDI Programme Officer, personal interview, August 3, 2012; Sandra van Rensburg, personal interview, Johannesburg, South Africa, March 13, 2015; Leopold Podlashuc, The South African Homeless People's Federation: Interrogating the Myth of Participation. Working Paper, African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Cape Town: University of the Western Cape, 2011).

52. SDI Programme Officer, personal interview, August 3, 2012; van Rensburg, personal interview, March 13, 2015; Podlashuc, The South African Homeless People's Federation.

53. Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.; see also Podlashuc, The South African Homeless People's Federation.

56. Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’.

57. Ibid.

58. Van Rensburg, personal interview, March 13, 2015.

59. Majavu, ‘I thus Caught that Colonial Mind-Set at Work’.

60. Richard Pithouse, ‘Fidelity to Fanon’, in Living Fanon: Global Perspectives, ed. Nigel C. Gibson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 232.

61. Ibid.

62. Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’; Böhmke, ‘The Shackdwellers and the Intellectuals’.

63. Pithouse, ‘Fidelity to Fanon’, 232; Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’.

64. See, Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’; Joleen Steyn Kotze, ‘Note from the Editor’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 113–15; Patrick Bond, ‘The Intellectual Meets the South African Social Movement: A Code of Conduct is Overdue, when Researching Such a Conflict-Rich Society’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 117–22; Shannon Walsh, ‘The Philosopher and His Poor: The Poor-Black as Object for Political Desire in South Africa’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 123–7; Steven Friedman, ‘Letter for Concern by Steven Friedman and Signatories’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 129–31; Lisa Thompson and Pieter Fourie, ‘Letter of Reply from the Editors of Vol. 41, No. 3’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 133–40; Mondli Hlatshwayo, ‘White Power and Privilege in Academic and Intellectual Spaces of South Africa: The Need for Sober Reflection’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 141–5.

65. For example, Steyn, ‘Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-apartheid South Africa’, 271–85.

66. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 345.

67. Ibid.

68. See, for example, Matthew Evans, ‘How Can Land Reform Be Utilised to Facilitate the Right to Housing in Urban Areas of South Africa?’, unpublished MA dissertation, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, September 2010; Matthew Evans, ‘Advancing Transformative Justice? A Case Study of a Trade Union, Social Movement and NGO Network in South Africa’, PhD thesis, University of York, October 2013; Evans, Transformative Justice.

69. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 349.

70. Ibid., 345. In this regard, see, for example, Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa.

71. Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa.

72. S’bu Zikode, ‘Foreword’, in Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa, v.

73. Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa, 175–6.

74. See, for example, Lewis, ‘Ethics, Activism and the Anti-Colonial’, 230–1; David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), 11–12; David Graeber, ‘Anarchism, Academia, and the Avant-Garde’, in Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy, eds. Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, II and Deric Shannon (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 111–12.

75. Indeed, Pithouse does not always report his relationship with Abahlali baseMjondolo in his writing on the movement. Likewise, as discussed elsewhere, it is also not always clear by what criteria some intellectuals’ relationships with movements are categorised by scholars such as Gibson as problematic, whereas others (such as AbM's relationship with Pithouse) are viewed as benign. See Evans, review of Fanonian Practices in South Africa; Matthew Evans, ‘Snapshots of Repression and Resistance’, review of Writing the Decline: On the Struggle for South Africa's Democracy by Richard Pithouse, Historia: Journal of the Historical Association of South Africa 62, no. 1 (2017): 131–3; see also Walsh, ‘“Uncomfortable Collaborations”’, 262.

76. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 349.

77. South African History Online, ‘National Party (NP)’, South African History Online, March 30, 2011, www.sahistory.org.za/topic/national-party-np (accessed September 7, 2017).

78. See, for example, Mahlatse Mahlase, ‘DA Has Its Work Cut Out to Show It's Not a “White Party with a Black Leader”’, News24, April 13, 2018, https://www.news24.com/Columnists/MahlatseGallens/da-has-its-work-cut-out-to-show-its-not-a-white-party-with-a-black-leader-20180413 (accessed June 12, 2018); Donwald Pressly, ‘SACP: DA-IFP Alliance is “Elite Enclave”’, Mail and Guardian, March 25, 2004, https://mg.co.za/article/2004-03-25-sacp-daifp-alliance-is-elite-enclave (accessed June 12, 2018).

79. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 345.

80. See, for example, Sibusiso Tshabalala, ‘Why Abahlali Endorsed the DA: S’bu Zikode Speaks to GroundUp’, GroundUp, May 5, 2014, https://www.groundup.org.za/article/why-abahlali-endorsed-da-sbu-zikode-speaks-groundup/ (accessed June 11, 2018).

81. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 345. She is also scathing about the alleged behaviour of the movement's president, see ibid., 349.

82. Blake, who had worked for the International Labour Research and Information Group, unexpectedly died in late 2017. See Workers’ World Media Productions, ‘Remembering Michael Blake 1954–2017’, Workers’ World Media Productions, October 6, 2017, http://www.wwmp.org.za/index.php/2-uncategorised/390-remembering-michael-blake-1954-2017 (accessed June 13, 2018).

83. Blake, personal interview, April 10, 2015.

84. Ibid.

85. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 345.

86. See, for example, Peter Alexander, ‘Rebellion of the Poor: South Africa's Service Delivery Protests – A Preliminary Analysis’, Review of African Political Economy 37, no. 123 (2010): 25–40; Peter Alexander and Peter Pfaffe, ‘Social Relationships to the Means and Ends of Protest in South Africa's Ongoing Rebellion of the Poor: The Balfour Insurrections’, Social Movement Studies 13, no. 2 (2014): 204–21; Pithouse, Writing the Decline.

87. See Alexander, ‘Rebellion of the Poor’, 37.

88. See Peter Alexander, Carin Runciman and Trevor Ngwane, ‘South Africa's Rebellion of the Poor’, in Third International Conference on Strikes and Social Conflicts: Combined historical Approaches to Conflict. Proceedings, eds. Martí Marín Corbera, Xavier Domènech Sampere and Ricard Martínez i Muntada (Barcelona: CEFID-UAB, 2016), 157. See also Sam Ashman, Zachary Levenson and Trevor Ngwane, ‘South Africa's ANC: The Beginning of the End?’, Catalyst 1, no. 2 (2017): 75–106 and, for some discussion of Pithouse's changing tone, see Evans, ‘Snapshots of Repression and Resistance’.

89. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 347.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. Ibid.

93. Ibid.

94. Ibid.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid., 348–9.

97. Ibid., 349.

98. See, for example, Eileen Pittaway, Linda Bartolomei and Richard Hugman, ‘“Stop Stealing Our Stories”: The Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Groups’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 2, no. 2 (2010): 229–51; Human Rights Media Centre, The Story is Yours, The Choice is Yours: Media Ethics for Storytellers (Cape Town: Human Rights Media Centre, 2006); Paul Gready, ‘Introduction – “Responsibility to the Story”’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 2, no. 2 (2010): 177–90.

99. See, for example, Anne Campbell, ‘“Extractive” Research and Its Prevention’, Higher Education + International Development, June 15, 2013, https://anneccampbell.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/extractive-research-and-its-prevention/ (accessed June 12, 2018).

100. See, Steyn Kotze, ‘Note from the Editor’; Bond, ‘The Intellectual Meets the South African Social Movement’; Walsh, ‘The Philosopher and His Poor’; Steven Friedman, ‘Letter for Concern’; Thompson and Fourie, ‘Letter of Reply’; Hlatshwayo, ‘White Power and Privilege in Academic and Intellectual Spaces of South Africa’.

101. Steven Friedman, ‘Letter for Concern’; Thompson and Fourie, ‘Letter of Reply’.

102. See, for example, Bond, ‘The Intellectual Meets the South African Social Movement’; Walsh, ‘The Philosopher and His Poor’; Hlatshwayo, ‘White Power and Privilege in Academic and Intellectual Spaces of South Africa’.

103. Steyn, ‘Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, 273.

104. Ibid. (footnote omitted).

105. See, for example, Hale, ‘In Praise of “Reckless Minds”’, 123.

106. See, for example, Campbell, ‘“Extractive” Research and Its Prevention’; Sandra Kouritzin and Satoru Nakagawa, ‘Toward a Nonextractive Research Ethics for Transcultural, Translingual Research: Perspectives from the Coloniser and the Colonised’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (2018), doi:10.1080/01434632.2018.1427755; Adam J.P. Gaudry, ‘Insurgent Research’, Wíčazo Ša Review 26, no. 1 (2011): 113–36.

107. Campbell, ‘“Extractive” Research and Its Prevention’; Croteau, ‘Which Side Are You On?’, 20, 27–8; Cresswell and Spandler, ‘The Engaged Academic’, 143–4.

108. See, for example, Paul Gready, ‘First Encounters: Early Career Researchers and Fieldwork’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 2 (2014): 195–200.

109. Miriam George, ‘Ethical Lessons Learned from Conducting Refugee-Based Research in an Indian Refugee Camp’, Journal or Human Rights Practice 7, no. 3 (2015): 459.

110. See, for example, Darling, ‘Emotions, Encounters and Expectations’, 208–10; Pittaway, Bartolomei and Hugman, ‘“Stop Stealing Our Stories”’, 229–51; Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology’, 66–76. See also Walsh, ‘“Uncomfortable Collaborations”’, 263 and, more generally, Teju Cole, ‘The White-Savior Industrial Complex’, The Atlantic, March 21, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/ (accessed June 13, 2018).

111. See, for example, Wilmsen, ‘Extraction, Empowerment, and Relationships’; Dawson and Sinwell, ‘Ethical and Political Challenges of Participatory Action Research in the Academy’, 177–91; Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology’, 66–76.

112. She further argues that ‘[a]ctivist-generated paradigms are not always superior to “objective” or expert-oriented paradigms’, positing that ‘[i]n arenas like the courtroom, it is not only legitimate, but appropriate, to present scholarly consensus and objective scholarship where it exists on contentious issues’. See Visweswaran, ‘Fragile Facts’, 76; see also Hale, ‘Activist Research v. Cultural Critique’, 108–9.

113. Nick Crossley, ‘Response to Cresswell and Spandler’, Social Movement Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 156.

114. Whilst it is common for researchers to engage with movements whose aims they have some degree of sympathy with, complexity and difficulties may be most obvious when researchers engage with movements – or encounter community dynamics – with which they profoundly disagree. One might reasonably hope that even those not conducting human rights research per se would nevertheless seek to prioritise ethical principles consistent with human rights in the conduct of their research. This becomes complicated in instances where principles of human rights (and indeed of research ethics) come into tension with one another. If, for example, researchers are on the one hand seeking to avoid conducting extractive research and on the other wish to avoid assisting movements pursuing inegalitarian or anti-human rights ends, then a straightforwardly ethical resolution is not obvious (particularly when consideration is given to the potential for research to inflict a form of violence upon researchers themselves). See, for example, S.J. Creek, ‘A Personal Reflection on Negotiating Fear, Compassion and Self-Care in Research’, Social Movement Studies 11, no. 2 (2012): 273–7; Victoria Sanford, ‘Introduction’, in Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism, eds. Victoria Sanford and Asale Angel-Ajani (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 10–11; Wamai, ‘First Contact with the Field’, 213–22, especially 217; Hale, ‘What is Activist Research?’, 15.

115. Hale, ‘In Praise of “Reckless Minds”’, 105.

116. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 348.

117. Ibid., 346.

118. Ibid.

119. Ibid.

120. On the concept of ‘displaying’ and its relationship to performativity, see Janet Finch, ‘Displaying Families’, Sociology 41, no. 1 (2007): 65–81, especially 76–7.

121. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 346.

122. See, for example, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 18; Sally Engle Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 38–51; Peggy Levitt and Sally Merry, ‘Vernacularization on the Ground: Local Uses of Global Women's Rights in Peru, China, India and the United States’, Global Networks 9, no. 4 (2009): 441–61; Jo Becker, Campaigning for Justice: Human Rights Advocacy in Practice (Stanford: Stranford University Press, 2013), 256. For a critical reflection on issues related to this, see Coleman, ‘Ethnography, Commitment, and Critique’, 263–80.

123. See, for example, Pointer, ‘Questioning the Representation of South Africa's “New Social Movements”’, 271–94; Steyn, ‘Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, 271–85; Desai, ‘The Propagandists, the Professors & their “Poors”’, 275–7. See also Hale, ‘In Praise of “Reckless Minds”’, 112, 118.

124. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 350. Contending with related dilemmas, Coleman asks of activist-scholars, ‘[h]ow do we “speak truth to power” when the very politics of truth is at stake?’ adding that ‘writing “for” or “with” those in struggle implies inserting our writing within parameters of intelligibility that define “us” (the resistance) and our field of action’. This risks activist-scholarship becoming ‘entrap[ped] within frames that obscure entanglements between struggles and the very relations of power that they seek to contest’. See Coleman, ‘Ethnography, Commitment, and Critique’, 264.

125. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 348.

126. Ibid., 351.

127. David Shub, Lenin: A Biography, rev. ed. (London: Pelican Books, 1966), 450–1.

128. See, for example, Steyn, ‘Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, 271–85.

129. Ibid., 279.

130. Ibid.

131. See, for example, Lara Montesinos Coleman and Serena A. Bassi, ‘Deconstructing Militant Manhood: Masculinities in the Disciplining of (Anti-)Globalization Politics’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 13, no. 2 (2011): 204–24.

132. Howard S. Becker, ‘Whose Side Are We On?’, Social Problems 14, no. 3 (1967): 239–47. See also Croteau, ‘Which Side Are You On?’, 20–40.

133. See, for example, Darling, ‘Emotions, Encounters and Expectations’, 206–8; Hale, ‘Activist Research v. Cultural Critique’, 105; Christopher Anthony Loperena, ‘A Divided Community: The Ethics and Politics of Activist Research’, Current Anthropology 57, no. 3 (2016): 332–46; Anne de Jong, ‘The Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Human Rights, Activism and Academic Neutrality’, Social Movement Studies 11, no. 2 (2012): 193–209; Cresswell and Spandler, ‘The Engaged Academic’.

134. Gready, ‘First Encounters’, 195–200; Brendan Browne and Luke Moffett, ‘Finding Your Feet in the Field: Critical Reflections of Early Career Researchers on Field Research in Transitional Societies’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 2 (2014): 223–37; de Jong, ‘The Gaza Freedom Flotilla’; see also Alvin W. Gouldner, ‘Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology’, Social Problems 9, no. 3 (1962): 199–213; Becker, ‘Whose Side Are We On?’.

135. Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology’, 67. See also Sanford, ‘Introduction’, 1–15.

136. See, for example, Steyn, ‘Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, 271–85; Hale, ‘In Praise of “Reckless Minds”’, 116–18; see also Coleman and Bassi, ‘Deconstructing Militant Manhood’.

137. Loperena, ‘A Divided Community’, 345.

138. Ibid.

139. See also, for example, Walsh, ‘“Uncomfortable Collaborations”’, 255–70; Coleman, ‘Ethnography, Commitment, and Critique’, 263–80.

140. Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’.

141. Adam J.P. Gaudry, for example, argues that ‘[i]n truth, all research is propaganda’ and suggests researchers should be open about this. See Gaudry, ‘Insurgent Research’, 133 (emphasis in original).

142. See, for example, Richard Pithouse, ‘The Complicated Relationship of Transnational Organizations and Local Popular Movements: Reflections from South Africa’, Progressive Planner 183 (2010): 16–19; Richard Pithouse, ‘To Be Citizens, Not Children’, The South African Civil Society Information Service, August 29, 2011, http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/737.1 (accessed October 10, 2011); Michael Neocosmos, ‘Rethinking Politics in Southern Africa Today: Elements of a Critique of Political Liberalism’, in Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements and the Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South Africa, ed. Nigel C. Gibson (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006), 55–102; Nigel C. Gibson, ‘Introduction – Calling Everything into Question: Broken Promises, Social Movements and Emergent Intellectual Currents in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, in Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements and the Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South Africa, ed. Nigel C. Gibson (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006), 1–53. See also Evans, review of Fanonian Practices in South Africa; Evans, ‘Snapshots of Repression and Resistance’.

143. See, for example, Böhmke, ‘The Branding of Social Movements in South Africa’.

144. See, for example, Tissington, ‘“Tacticians in the Struggle for Change”?’; McKinley, ‘The Crisis of the Left in Contemporary South Africa’.

145. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 346.

146. See, Sokhi-Bulley, Governing (Through) Rights, 64, 71; see also, Sokhi-Bulley, ‘Government(ality) By Experts’, 251–71; Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology’, 67.

147. See, for example, Böhmke, ‘Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle’; Majavu, ‘I thus Caught that Colonial Mind-Set at Work’.

148. Mdlalose, ‘The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo’, 350.