Powers of action: locating agency in a post-apartheid redress campaign

Abstract

This article examines the redress-centred campaigning activities of the Khulumani Support Group, a South African victim advocacy organization that has cultivated a specific form of agency through its demands for victim reparations. The article explores the efforts of this organization in a manner that pays attention to specific understandings of the power to act enabled by a Foucauldian perspective. More specifically, the article follows in the steps of recent scholarship emphasizing the productive or ‘positive’ dimensions of governmentality taking root in all areas of life and identifiable in the activities of social movements, grassroots organizations and other related groups.

Keywords:

• governmentality
• power
• agency
• South Africa
• redress
• reparative justice

Acknowledgements

This article draws on a doctoral research project supported by an Open University research studentship and undertaken between 2007 and 2010. The author wishes to thank Clive Barnett, Jenny Robinson and Allan Cochrane for guiding the research and Nick Blomley for his support. He would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. ‘The Significance of the Successful Appeal Ruling in the Khulumani Lawsuit’, Khulumani Support Group Release, November 2007.

2. Azanian Peoples Organization (AZAPO) and Others v. President of the Republic of South Africa and Others (CCT17/96), at paras. 46, 47.

3. Ibid., para. 45.

4. ‘Billions Needed for Victims of Apartheid Rights Abuses’, South African Press Association, 3 April 1997.

5. The others were community rehabilitation, symbolic reparation and institutional reform programmes.

6. ‘ANC welcomes TRC Proposals for Reparations’, South African Press Association, 23 October 1997.

7. ‘Don’t Reduce Apartheid Victims to Beggars: Omar’, South African Press Association, 25 February 1999; emphasis added.

8. Statement of the President of the ANC Thabo Mbeki, on the Report of the TRC Joint Sitting of the Houses of Parliament, Cape Town, 25 February 1999.

9. Ibid.

10. Statement of the President of the ANC Thabo Mbeki, on the Report of the TRC Joint Sitting of the Houses of Parliament, Cape Town, 25 February 1999.

11. Budget Speech 2001/2002 by the Minister of Finance, T.A. Manuel, 21 February 2001.

12. Interview with Dr. Marjorie Jobson, Johannesburg, 4 May 2009.

13. The amount was roughly equivalent to US$4,000 at the time.

14. Statement by President Thabo Mbeki to the National Houses of Parliament and the Nation on the occasion of the tabling of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Cape Town, 15 April 2003.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Letter from the KSG Steering Committee to Mr. Manthata (TRC), 14 August 1996. Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation TRC Materials Collection, SAHA AL3110.

20. ‘Ferdi Barnard Killed David Webster, Amnesty Committee Told’, South African Press Association, 15 April 1997.

21. Transcript of testimony of Maggie Friedman to the Committee for Human Rights of the TRC, 3 May 1996. Case: GO0218 – Johannesburg.

22. Tshepo Madlingozi, Talk given at Justice for Apartheid Crimes Symposium held at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, 31 January 2009.

23. ‘Khulumani East Rand protest focusses on TRC ‘Unfinished Business’’, Khulumani Press Statement, 21 November 2005.

24. Ibid.

25. As it flagged up the need to bring about equity for all South Africans, the Freedom Charter subsequently became a manifesto of sorts for the liberation movement. For more, see Suttner and Cronin 2006.

26. Charter for Redress Proposed by Victims and Survivors of Apartheid Gross Human rights Abuses and Violations in South Africa, at 1.

27. Ibid., p. 3.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., p. 5.

30. ‘4th World Chambers Congress’, Khulumani Press Statement, 21 June 2005.

31. Ibid.

32. The BEE was heavily criticized for perpetuating another form of injustice, in that it targeted a narrow cohort of beneficiaries (see Freund 2007, Tangri and Southall 2008).