Sara Kazmi introduces the panel. Photo: Ruvan Boshoff.

The closing programmed panel brought to the front table presentations that expanded upon the discussion in panel six. Newspapers and magazines from struggles in the mid-twentieth century through to the present-day were shared. All the revolutionary publications named offer(ed) approaches for developing critical texts from inside sites of (in)formal education while also using these texts as creative pedagogical tools and popular education resources. Sara Kazmi chaired the session with the following panelists:

1. Ciraj Rassool (History, UWC): “Schooling the Nation through Words: Reading and Writing in the Non-European Unity Movement, 1940s-50s.”
2. Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja (Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, University of Cape Town) and Koni Benson (History, UWC): “The Social Life of the Namibian Review.”
3. Mahvish Ahmad (Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science): “On Underground Study Circles as Anticolonial Praxis.”
4. Leigh-Ann Naidoo (School of Education, UCT): “Publica[c]tion: Publishing, An Alternative and the Creative Process of Critique.”
5. Lorna Houston (Programme Coordinator at Brave Rock Girl): Pathways to Free Education.

Ciraj Rassool presenting. Photo: Ruvan Boshoff.

First to present, Ciraj Rassool introduced the role of teachers in three interconnected South African political formations: the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), the Anti-Coloured Affairs Department Movement (Anti-CAD) and the All-African Convention (ACC). Central to Ciraj’s argument is how, in his own words: “the entire institutional edifice of the AAC and Unity Movement can be understood as a massive initiative in public education, which saw the creation of a body of symbolic expressions, rhetorical strategies, methods of analysis and an entire repertoire of research, knowledge creation and dissemination.”

Ciraj told how in the 1940s-50s, the NEUM and associate groups cultivated “schools as sites of politicisation” and “meeting halls as public classrooms” with “bulletins and pamphlets as worksheets.” Publications produced and instrumental to the movement building included The Torch and the Anti-CAD Bulletin. Through reading, talking, reading aloud, distinctions and hierarchies between readers and thinkers/writers were challenged. Ciraj also made reference to IB Tabata (and Jane Gool), specifically a tour through the Eastern Cape, the New Era Fellowship, the Cape Action League. and the APDUSA newsletter (later renamed Unity Newsletter)

Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja and Koni Benson began their joint contribution by narrating how they came to learn of The Namibian Review. Their journey included engagement with Neville Alexander’s popular education work, facilitating Know Your Continent sessions and episodes of what they called Radical Histories. These Radical Histories, which include interacting with The South African Committee for Higher Education (SACHED) along with figures of influence, in particular Ottile and Kenneth Abrahams. These organisations, individuals, ideas and activist education are traced in a teaching tool: Mapping the Social Lives of The Namibian Review.

Map of the life journey and movements of Ottilie Abrahams. An interactive version of this features in The Namibian Review teaching tool.

Nashilongweshipwe and Koni described their reading of and engagements with The Namibian Review as a study of critical pedagogy. Bringing the study into the room, Koni acknowledged elder comrades in attendance – including Marcus Solomon, Derek Naidoo, and Leonard Gentle – who contributed to the movements being narrated. A copy of a map of Ottilie Abrahams’ journeying and an anthology of Neville Alexander’s writing were passed around the Ashley Kriel Hall thus allowing conference participants to engage further.

As with her teaching tool on Jabal, Mahvish Ahmed transported us to Balochistan. However, whereas Jabal was produced in the 1970s, for this presentation, Mahvish introduced a contemporary publication and media platform called Sagaar. Asking how can organising still take place in conditions of extreme violence by the state, Mahvish discussed the The Baloch Students Organization – Azad.

For her fieldwork she mostly worked with women students, who shared how the production of Sagaar involved organising and mobilising with active study circles. In the study (or knowledge) circles, students would summarise an article, which when carried out in the group would boost individuals confidence. This then encouraged students to write themselves. Students who were active in the study circles shared how their involvement led to friendships and was consciousness-raising.

Map of the 2016 Publica[c]tion journey.

Leigh-Ann Naidoo organised her presentation in three parts: publics, process and pedagogy. In the first of these parts, Leigh-Ann reiterated a question she and fellow editors (Thato Magano and Asher Gamedze) asked in producing Publica[c]tion: “How do we put the action back into public resistance?” Leigh-Ann mentioned once produced, they printed 4000 hard copies along with a digital PDF edition, all distributed for free [PDF available here].

Editorial statement by the Publica[c]tion collective.

Referring to the a map of a bus journey the Publica[c]tion team took in 2016, Leigh-Ann recalled how following the energy drain of violence (internal and external to student movements), partisan politics and tactics of campus shutdowns and occupations, the process of producing the paper encouraged a variety of modes of writing and contributors from across the country (and student comrades overseas). The map then became the contents page for the publication. When it came to distributing the paper, which Leigh-Ann reiterated is “not a product”, a series of launches with readings and workshops took place, one of which was at Community House in the same room – the Ashley Kriel Hall – where the Revolutionary Papers conference was taking place. To close, Leigh-Ann read from the Publica[c]tion collective’s editorial statement.

Lorna Houston was the final panelist to present, focusing on Pathways to Free Education. Produced out of Cape Town since 2016, with much shared impetus and personnel to Publica[c]tion, Lorna identified the foundations of the Pathways collective and journal as being three-fold: to offer distractions to the political education taking place on campus(es); as a space for critical engagement; and a community building approach to producing publications. When it came to assigning tasks within the production, often this division of labour would be simply be by a question such as: “who is available to edit?” With regard to editorial feedback, Lorna recalled encouragement that would “allow [a] decolonial voice to come through.”

For the second half of her presentation, Lorna read from a text she wrote published in the third edition of Pathways: ‘Reflections on Pathways to Free Education‘s Winter School 2017’ [which will soon be republished in a new teaching tool]. Echoing the cyclical process that Mahvish had earlier mentioned, Lorna recalled how during the Winter School, there would be an approach whereby actions were reflected on then adjustments made that in turn informed the next actions (and so on: action-reflection-adjustment…).

A hand-drawn map of an imagined “Greater Balochistan” carried by the weekly Al-Baloch, Karachi, in its issue of 25th December, 1932, on page 7. Source: Baloch, Inayatullah. 1989. The Problem of Greater Balochistan: A Study of Baloch Nationalism. Hamburg: Beiträge zur Süudasienforschung [Hamburg].

To bring the panel to a pause point, Sara Kazmi shared a few notes. She commented on how insightful it is to have producers of the publications present so as to speak of processes. Additionally, she added however that one limitations of written publications is the functional literacy required to engage with them and that this can impact on which publics work with the texts. Lastly, she applauded how all these revolutionary papers allow for concepts and themes to be stretched. Picking up on this last point, Nashilongweshipwe said how they’d learn that in The Namibian Review, there were fierce debates, for instance in regard to ideas of “the nation”. Mahvish also spoke to this on the (dis)agreement(s) in the The Baloch Students Organization – Azad, on what did or did not make it into the journals, and the particular challenges of infiltration into social movements with state intelligence agencies listening in.

Jacob Marengo School, as featured in The Namibian Review teaching tool. Photo: Koni Benson.

As the session was opened to the room, Estefania Bournet asked if Koni and Nashilongweshipwe know if Paulo Freire’s writings had directly reached comrades in Namibia. To this a reply came with a responding yes, with confirmation that indeed Ottilie Abrahams read Freire and used his texts as part of the Education for Liberation she was committed to. From her own active involvement in/with Fallism, Kelly Gillespie pointed out that at the time of their production, both Publica[c]tion and Pathways to Free Education were very clear to “not to be vanguardist”, however, in hindsight perhaps they can now be seen as being so. Lorna Houston responded to this reiterating that she joined the Pathways collective after it started and appreciated the solidarity across different institutions campuses. Lorna also shared that students appreciated this unity and also found Pathways to be a healing space.