CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 3: REVIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
3.5 PROTESTS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND COUNTER- HEGEMONY: TOWARDS A THEORE1 JCAL FRAMEWORK
and exerting influence (Hemson, nd). "Community participation in South Africa is informed by the memory of community struggle - a radical form of participation - against the racist apartheid State" (Williams, 2006, p. 4). The implications of the apparent demand for "a radical form of participation" raises the issue not only of the model of democracy but of the content of the decisions that would be made if such weight were given to ordinary people over matters of governance, that is, the type of developmentalism that would be espoused and its implications for policy. Would it be trapped within the strictures of capital accumulation or would it be a (potentially) counter-hegemonic form that challenges the primacy of capital in the social metabolism? Sinwell (2009b) observes that it is not a given that invented spaces will generate radical developmental ideas, he bemoans the fact that when some social movements and community organisations fail to question the structures of the system and operate within, for example, given official budgetary constraints, the result is a zero-sum game of competition among different sections of the community. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible for critical ideas to be generated in the context of official invited spaces (ibid). But it can be argued that the "radical form of [democratic] participation" (Williams, ibid) developed in the South African townships in the 1980s was counter-hegemonic in relation to the then existing sociopolitical and economic order.
3.5 PROTESTS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND COUNTER-
But this might just be an impression if we consider that some researchers have questioned the actual effectiveness of the South African protest movement in the struggle against
neoliberalism (Bomke, 2010a; Desai, 2008; Pithouse, 2006; Sinwell, 2010a). They point to the absence of a conscious and consistent political project tied to action on the ground and delivering telling blows on the neoliberal order. They question the ideological content of the protest movement and point out that no platform or programme specifically challenging
neoliberalism and proposing a coherent set of alternative policies has so far emanated from the South African movements (Sinwell, 2010a). The fact that many protesters end up voting for the ANC is also a bone of contention (ibid). Other critics have also been discouraged by the
perceived weakness of the movements: the fragmentation and isolation of the protests, their episodic nature, the lack of unity between unions and movements, and the apparent decline and demise of some social movement organisations (Harvey, 2007). From this point of view, there has not developed a strong enough challenge to neoliberal hegemony in South Africa.
This study inserts itself within the context of this debate. It seeks to get a clearer picture of the nature of the protests, the factors behind them, and their impact and significance through focusing on how the protest leaders understand their struggle and how they wage it. Agency and ideology is related to the material conditions which the protesters seek to change.
Following Gramsci (1988) and Eyerman and Jamison (1991), the protest leaders interviewed are theorised as the grassroots "organic intellectuals" or "movement intellectuals" of the protest movement. Their ideas are engaged with in the light of the thesis that a counter-hegemonic project needs to be consciously crafted and popularised by the movement intellectuals in the course of struggle. In developing its theoretical framework the study seeks to explore whether and how such a characterisation can be applied in the South African context by engaging with the following questions: Is the idea of developing a counter-hegemonic to neoliberalism useful in understanding the ideas of the protest leaders interviewed? If so, which ideas, mechanisms and forms of oppositional knowledge are deployed by the protest leaders to contest the dominant discourse of the neoliberal hegemony? How can the ideas of the protest leaders be characterised? What processes are involved in their formation and articulation? Can the discourse of contestation deployed in the course of leading service delivery protests be usefully
understood applying the typology of harnessing (appropriating) versus directly challenging the dominant ideology? (Woerhle, et al. 2008) Which theoretical approaches and research
methods are best suited to answer such questions? Is the distinction between activist theorising as opposed to academic theorising useful in this respect? (Barker and Cox, 2002).
3.6 CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have pointed the reader to the South African literature on post-apartheid protest action that emphasises the proliferation of the resistance movements. I have dwelled on those structural aspects that might explain this phenomenon focusing on the inadequacy of the economic and social improvements in the lives of ordinary people in contrast to the
promises and aspirations that accompanied the democratic transition. My main argument is that the vision of the new democracy and new society developed during the anti-apartheid struggle by the mass movement has been tampered by the historic compromise made between capital and the apartheid regime (the old order), and the leadership of the national liberation movement (the new order). Finally, I attempt to pull together the many threads arising from the literature I have referred to in this chapter and the preceding chapters to argue that a theoretical framework for understanding the roots and possible prognosis of the post-apartheid protest and strike movement would need to incorporate the major themes I have raised, and in particular, their relationship to the question of the development of a counter-hegemonic project; that is, the struggle for a radically different type of democracy and society.