Memorial Lectures
Memorial Lecture 2024: Radhika Desai
The Rise of the Authoritarian Right in the World and South Africa
Please join us for the Annual Abdulhay Saloojee lecture and discussion on The Rise of the Authoritarian Right in the World and South Africa – implications for the working class and movement building? The lecture will be delivered by Radhika Desai.
- DATE: Wednesday 18 September 2024
- TIME: 18h00 for 18h30
- VENUE: UCT, Cape Town
In 2024, the African National Congress lost its majority thirty years after delivering South Africans from the hated apartheid regime thanks to its decades-long adherence to corporate neoliberal policies. They thwarted not only the hopes awakened by the end of apartheid but also far more modest hopes for a decent life among South Africa's working people. Worse, the discontents of the ANC's neoliberalism were mobilised not by a well-organised left, which might have put the country back on the track of fulfilling popular hopes, but by political forces which appear to closely resemble the authoritarian populist right-wing politics of Trump, Johnson, Le Pen, the Alternative für Deutschland and similar forces that have emerged over the past decades around the neoliberal world.
In this lecture, Desai will argue that over the past four and a half decades, neoliberalism became the testing ground for the thesis that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand and gave it a failing grade. When capitalism and democracy appeared to work well in the Western world in the three decades after the Second World War, capitalism was heavily modified by the 'socialistic' measures – full employment policy, the welfare state, considerable public ownership, capital controls, strong trade unions and the like – that those countries had been forced to take thanks to the unprecedented mobilization of working people, and even then democracy had to be supplemented by heavy doses of repression.
The onset of neoliberalism, which had progressively peeled away the 'socialistic' measures, has been accompanied by the 'hollowing out of Western Democracy', leading to a generalised crisis of capitalist rule, and as in that other one in the interwar years, which coincided with the onset of mass politics, the rise of fascistic tendencies. Any serious left has not only been the target of neoliberal attack but has suffered from loss of political nerve and, as a result, the denizens of neoliberal polities are left to choose between corporate neoliberalism and the authoritarian right. No wonder fewer and fewer of them are voting.
Desai will reflect on this denouement and what it means for South Africa in particular and on what sort of left mobilization might transform the political horizon into a more hopeful one.
About the Speaker
Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada and Convenor of the International Manifesto Group. Her teaching and writing spans comparative politics, political theory, political economy and international affairs. She proposed a historical materialist approach to understanding world affairs in her Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013) and an original framework for understanding party politics in India in the context its evolving political economy and social transformation in various writings.
She has published dozen books, over 100 articles and book chapters on UK, Indian, US and European politics as well as on international political economy. Her books and articles have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Turkish and Spanish. She is a regular opinion contributor to and her pieces have been published in CGTN, Counterpunch, Frontline, The Guardian, the Hindu, RT and the Valdai Discussion Club. She hosts a fortnightly show, Geopolitical Economy Hour on the Geopolitical Economy Report website. Her most recent book is Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2022, Open Access).
Memorial Lecture 2023: Robin D.G. Kelley
About the Lecture
As a consequence of the negotiated settlement and the crisis of ANC rule, South Africa finds itself in a polycrisis of extreme poverty, inequality and a myriad of deep seated socio-economic problems causing increasing misery for the black working class. Some have even labelled South Africa as a "failed state".
South Africa's post liberation crisis situation is similar to other countries in the region and world. Professor Kelley will share an analysis and draw lessons from his vast knowledge and experience of several countries' after liberation.
Please join us for the Annual Abdulhay Saloojee lecture and discussion on Post-liberation Politics and the Struggle for Democracy. The lecture was delivered by Robin D.G. Kelley.
- DATE: Thursday 14 September 2023
- TIME: 18h00 for 18h30
- VENUE: UCT, Cape Town
Robin D.G. Kelley is a U.S.-based scholar of History and Black Studies whose work focuses on black internationalism, Left movements, political economy and culture. His published works include Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. He also co-edited Walter Rodney, The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World. Robin has described himself as a Marxist surrealist feminist and is currently Professor of U.S. History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Prof Kelley on Cape Talk
Prof Kelley on Radio 786
Lecture Videos (Part 1-3)
Memorial Lecture 2019: Michael Löwy
About the Lecture
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is emeritus research director in social sciences at the French National Center of Scientific Research and lectures at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, France. He is the author of books on Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Liberation Theology, György Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Lucien Goldmann and Franz Kafka. Read more
Friday 5 April 2019 | 6 – 9pm
Venue: Joseph Stone Auditorium, corner of Protea Street and Klipfontein Road, Athlone Cape Town
Memorial Lecture 2018: Adam Hanieh
About the Lecture
The popular rebellions that emerged across the Middle East in 2010-2011 have been met with counter-revolution, increasing violent conflict, and mass displacement on an unprecedented scale. This lecture examined the trajectories of the Arab uprisings, focusing on the deep interconnection of economic and political factors in shaping struggles for democracy and social justice in the region.
Drawing upon his book, Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press 2018), Adam Hanieh examined how the balance of power and regional hierarchies have shifted in the recent period, and what this might mean for future political movements across the region.
- Cape Town: Wednesday 19 September, 6.30pm at Dulcie September Hall, Athlone Civic Centre
- Johannesburg: Friday 21 September, 6pm at University of Johannesburg
Adam Hanieh is a senior lecturer in development studies at SOAS, University of London. He is an expert in the political economy of the Middle East and Palestine studies. His publications include Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011) and Lineages of Revolt: Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (2013).
Listen to Adam Hanieh on Workers On Wednesday
Broadcast on SAfm on 19 September 2018:
Memorial Lecture 2017: John Pilger
About the Lecture
The inaugural AA Saloojee Memorial Lecture was delivered by renowned journalist and filmmaker John Pilger on September 14, 2017 at the University of Cape Town.
Pilger's lecture, titled "The War Against Democracy," examined how Western powers have systematically undermined democratic movements and governments around the world, particularly in the global South.
He drew parallels between South Africa's post-apartheid challenges and similar struggles in other countries that have sought to break free from colonial and neo-colonial domination.
- DATE: Thursday 14 September 2017
- TIME: 18h00
- VENUE: Kramer Building, UCT, Cape Town
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and documentary maker who has focused on political and social issues throughout his career. His documentaries include "The War You Don't See," "The Coming War on China," and "Palestine Is Still the Issue." He has won numerous awards for his journalism and filmmaking, including Britain's Journalist of the Year award and an Emmy for his Cambodia documentaries.