Lindsey Collen in Panel on Social Movements at Jozi Bookfair
05.11.2022
Last Sunday saw the closing session of the annual Jozi Bookfair, which was back in action after the Covid lockdowns. It took the form of a lively panel, hibrid live-and-Zoom, on the way forward for social movements in South Africa, with Lindsey Collen of LALIT giving a perspective from “outside” South Africa.
The theme of the Bookfair this year was “Re-imagine the World, Re-make the world!” while the bookfair also paid hommage to the late Oupa Lehulere, one of the imaginers and makers of the Jozi Bookfair, itself. The closing panel was “in conversation” with two short yet key documents written by Oupa.
Trade unionist John Appolis chaired alongside activist and academic Mondli Hlatswayo. They were live in the marquis packed with mainly young people in Johannesburg. Activist Shaheed Khan, intervened on Zoom from Cape Town while activist Lindsey Collen of LALIT, and who is also a patron of the Jozi Bookfair, intervened from Mauritius. After the talks there was a lively session of interventions from the floor. The central concern was how to build the political will for new social movements strong enough to challenge the precise kind of capitalist rule in place in South Africa and world-wide. Reference was made throughout to the two papers of Oupa’s – which we have re-published on our website in the Documents Section – and which the speakers referred to throughout their talks. The very titles of the papers are evocative: “The Corruption of a Dream” and “The Long Shadow of the de Klerk Regime”. (See Documents Section of our website.)
