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11 March 2010
@ 5.30 for 6pm
Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt: Black Flame - The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism
Black Flame is the first of two volumes that re-examine anarchism’s democratic class politics, its vision of a decentralised planned economy, and its impact on popular struggles in five continents over the last 150 years. From the nineteenth century to today’s anticapitalist movements, it traces anarchism’s lineage and contemporary relevance. It outlines anarchism’s insights into questions of race, gender, class, and imperialism, significantly reframing the work of previous historians on the subject, and critiquing Marxist approaches to those same questions.
Lucien van der Walt teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Michael Schmidt is a Johannesburg-based senior investigative journalist.
Both authors will be here to discuss the book, along with Mandisi Majavu of the Africa Project for a Participatory Society.
Recent praise for Black Flame:
“A book with a deeply impressive quality of research, analysis and writing, this very important and much-needed work is an unexpected delight and an excellent piece of work” Mark Leier, Simon Fraser University, author of Bakunin: the creative passion
“An enjoyable read, from which I have learnt a great deal—fascinating, revealing and often startling. Thanks to both and each of you” Alan Lipman, anti-apartheid activist and exile, author of On the Outside Looking In: colliding with apartheid and other authorities
“Brilliant, a really wonderful book and an outstanding contribution to anarchist theory and history. What does Black Flame get right? Well, almost everything! It is comprehensive, discussing all important issues, people and movements, and the authors do a great job in discussing the ins and outs of our movement and theory, using history to illuminate the ideas and show how they were applied in practice. Do yourself a favour and buy it now! You won’t be disappointed” Iain McKay, author of The Anarchist FAQ, volume 1
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12 March 2010
@ 5.30 for 6pm
Ashraf Jamal: The Shades
Well-known academic and writer Ashraf Jamal will be here from Grahamstown to talk about - and read from - his fantastic collection of short stories, The Shades. He will be in conversation with Prof. Miki Flockemann.
Ashraf Jamal's first collection of stories tracks the states of unease of life in South Africa's phantom democracy. Chilling and haunting, the stories draw the reader into a web of psychic unrest. Flight and fear, revenge and atonement, guilt and innocence are the conflicting themes of a searching and suspenseful collection. Here Jamal shifts from drama and the novel to place his own unique stamp on the short story form. "More fragment than story, more shade than colour," The Shades is as compelling as it is enriching. Perceived by the author as "variations on a story," The Shades assembles "a broken mosaic of who and what we are and what we must become."
Ashraf Jamal teaches Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University. He is the co-author of Art in South Africa: The Future Present; co-editor of Indian Ocean Studies: Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives; author of Predicaments of culture in South Africa. His 2010 critical essays include 'Jane Alexander: Hunger Artist'; 'On the side of the angels: Art and the Contemporary'; 'Africa's Appendix: Superfluity and excess on a Southern Littoral'; 'Lost Marsh: Scandalous Presence'; 'Chimurenga: Communal Yard for Sick Minds'.
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13 March 2010
@ 11am
Storytime: Fairytale Day
Many great stories start with… once upon a time…we are having a fairytale day! You can dress up as a princess or a knight or maybe a king! Come along to our Castle and indulge in tales that have stood the test of time.
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17 March 2010
@ 5.30 for 6pm
Janet Smith & Beauregard Tromp: Chris Hani - A Life too Short
Chris Hani's assassination in 1993 gave rise to one of South Africa's great imponderables: if he had survived, what impact would he have had on politics and government in South Africa? More pointedly, could this charismatic leader have risen to become president of the country?
Hani was a hero of South Africa's liberation, a communist party leader and Umkhonto we Sizwe chief of staff who was both intellectual and fighter, a man who could inspire an army but carried a book of poetry in his backpack. Hani led MK into its earliest battles, and carved a formidable reputation as a thinker, debater and peacemaker.
Hani: A Life Too Short tells the story of Hani's life, from his childhood in rural Transkei and education at Fort Hare University to the controversial Memorandum of 1969, the crisis in the ANC camps in Angola in the 1980s and the heady dawn of freedom. Drawing on interviews and the recollections of those who knew him, this vividly written book provides a detailed account of the life of a great South African.
Both the authors of this excellent book will be here, in conversation with Jeremy Cronin.
Janet Smith is an executive editor of The Star and a special writer at Independent Newspapers, concentrating on socio-political stories, essays and profiles. She is the author of two award-winning novels for young South Africans and the co-author of a third prize-winning book for teenagers. Beauregard Tromp is a senior reporter at The Star newspaper in Johannesburg. He was awarded the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Journalist of the Year in 2009 for his coverage of the xenophobic violence in Johannesburg in 2008.
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19 March 2010
@ 5.30 for 6pm
An Evening with Mike Nicol
Mike Nicol is a journalist and writer, a denizen of Cape Town’s peninsular city. He teaches a course at the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town and has been a writer-in-residence both at UCT and the University of Essen, Germany. In 1997 he was a recipient of a German Academic Exchange Service’s Artists-in-Berlin grant. Mike also works occasionally as an editor.
Although his crime novels are set in his home town, he has a soft spot for Johannesburg and everything in between, particularly the dry reaches of the Karoo, that strange heart of the country.
Following the publication of Payback in 2008, the second book in the Revenge Trilogy featuring Mace and Pylon, Killer Country, is now available.
Mike will be in conversation with our very own Mervyn Sloman, and we will have a copy each of Payback and Killer Country to give to one lucky Lounger on the night.
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20 March 2010
@ 11am
Storytime: Being Brave
It is not always easy being brave. It takes a lot of courage and believing in yourself. It takes a tricky situation and seeing how you can make it work best. Today we are reading stories about bravery and we will have a special guest, William Moultrie, who will share with us how being young is no reason not to be brave.
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24 March 2010
@ 5.30 for 6pm
Bury Me at the Marketplace: Es’kia Mphahlele and Company - Letters 1943–2006
We are delighted to welcome Professor Njabulo Ndebele and Chabani Manganyi to discuss Bury Me at the Marketplace - the letters of Es’kia Mphahlele.
When Chabani Manganyi published the first edition of selected letters twenty-five years ago as a companion volume to Exiles and Homecomings: A Biography of Es’kia Mphahlele, the idea of Mphahlele’s death was remote and poetic. The title, Bury Me at the Marketplace, suggested that immortality of a kind awaited Mphahlele, in the very coming and going of those who remember him and whose lives he touched. It suggested, too, the energy and magnanimity of Mphahlele the man, whose personality and intellect as a writer and educator would carve an indelible place for him in South Africa’s public sphere.
That death has now come and we mourn it. Manganyi’s words at the time have acquired a new significance: in the symbolic marketplace, he noted, ‘the drama of life continues relentlessly and the silence of death is unmasked for all time’. The silence of death is certainly unmasked in this volume, in its record of Mphahlele’s rich and varied life: his private words, his passions and obsessions, his arguments, his loves, hopes, achievements, and yes, even some of his failures. Here the reader will find many facets of the private man translated back into the marketplace of public memory.
Despite the personal nature of the letters, the further horizons of this volume are the contours of South Africa’s literary and cultural history, the international affiliations out of which it has been formed, particularly in the diaspora that connects South Africa to the rest of the African continent and to the black presence in Europe and the United States.
This selection of Mphahlele’s own letters has been greatly expanded; it has also been augmented by the addition of letters from Mphahlele’s correspondents, among them such luminaries as Langston Hughes and Nadine Gordimer. It seeks to illustrate the networks that shaped Mphahlele’s personal and intellectual life, the circuits of intimacy, intellectual inquiry, of friendship, scholarship and solidarity that he created and nurtured over the years. The letters cover the period from November 1943 to April 1987, forty-four of Mphahlele’s mature years and most of his active professional life. The correspondence is supplemented by introductory essays from the two editors, by two interviews conducted with Mphahlele by Manganyi and by Attwell’s insightful explanatory notes.
Correspondents include:
Lionel Abrahams, Chinua Achebe, Andre Brink, Adrian Donker, C J (Jonty) Driver, Nadine Gordimer, Andrew Gurr, Langston Hughes, Stuart James, Chabani Manganyi, Njabulo Ndebele, Isidore Okpewho, James Olney, William Plomer, Jenny Stein, Peter Thuynsma, Norah Taylor, Phillip Tobias, Charles van Onselen and Nick Visser.
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27 March 2010
@ 11am
Storytime: Spot
Spot the little yellow dog is having his birthday and would love for you to come and join in the fun. Spot the lovable dog created by Eric Hill, comes to live at the Book Lounge, well for today anyway. Definitely a ‘paw print’ day!
Die geliefde geel hond, Otto, vier vandag sy 30ste verjaarsdag en hy wil so graag hê dat jy moet kom saam luister na sy stories by die Book Lounge. Woef woef hoera vir Otto!
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