Living Learning by Lindela Figlan, Rev. Mavuso, Busi Ngema, Zodwa Nsibande, Sihle Sibisi and Sbu Zikode with guest piece by Nigel Gibson, Anne Harley and Richard Pithouse Rural Network The Church Land Programme (CLP) supports the Living Learning process and published this booklet during 2009. David Ntseng ([email protected]) coordinates the Living Learning programme within CLP, and Mark Butler facilitated the sessions, took the notes and put the booklet together. CLP is based in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. They can be contacted by phone at +27 33 2644380, and their website address is: www.churchland.co.za, where you can download a PDF version of this booklet. Please feel free to make use of the content of this booklet, with appropriate acknowledgement of the organisation and authors. LLivingiving LLearningearning TThehe CContributorsontributors Lindela Figlan Rev. Mavuso is Busi Ngema is is a second year a second year a second year student in the student in the CEPD student in the CEPD CEPD programme. programme. He is programme. She is He is the Vice- the Secretary of the the Youth Organiser President of Abahlali Rural Network. for the Rural BaseMjondolo Network. Movement. Zodwa Nsibande Sihle Sibisi is Sbusiso Zikode has has graduated in the a second year graduated in the CEPD programme. student in the CEPD CEPD programme. She is the National programme. He is the He is the President Secretary of Abahlali Treasurer of Abahlali of Abahlali BaseMjondolo BaseMjondolo BaseMjondolo Maovement. Movement. Movement. TThehe CContributorsontributors 1 TThehe gguestuest ccontributors:ontributors: Nigel C. Gibson is the author Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination, and the editor of a number of books including Rethinking Fanon; Contested Ter- rains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary Africa in Focus (with George C. Bond); Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements and the Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South Africa; and Biko Lives! Contesting the Lega- cies of Steve Biko (with Andile Mngxitama and Amanda Alexander). He has recently been announced as a recipient of the 2009 Frantz Fanon Prize by the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Anne Harley works for the Centre for Adult Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is the co-ordinator of the Certificate in Educa- tion, which brings together people working in community struggles in the Pietermaritzburg area and beyond. Richard Pithouse teaches Politics at Rhodes University. 2 LLivingiving LLearningearning CContentsontents Preface .....................................................................................................................................................................................5 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................7 The Living Learning Sessions ..........................................................................................................................11 Session 1: 28th January ...........................................................................................................................11 Session 2: 18th February ........................................................................................................................13 Session 3: 17th March ..............................................................................................................................18 Session 4: 14th April ..................................................................................................................................24 Session 5: 13th May ....................................................................................................................................33 Session 6: 3rd June .....................................................................................................................................41 Session 7: 22nd July ..................................................................................................................................44 Session 8: 12th August ............................................................................................................................50 Session 9: 25th August ............................................................................................................................56 Session 10: 14th October .........................................................................................................................61 Out of Order: A living learning for a living politics ......................................................................69 Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................69 Everybody Counts, Everybody Thinks ...............................................................................................72 A Living Politics ....................................................................................................................................................78 Education ..................................................................................................................................................................80 Hegemony ................................................................................................................................................................85 Freedom (& UnFreedom) ..............................................................................................................................87 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................89 Glossary ................................................................................................................................................................................91 CContentsontents 3 4 LLivingiving LLearningearning PPrefacereface The origin of this booklet is exceptional in our view. It began as a series of discus- sions between movement militants who are students at the University of KwaZulu Natal doing a Certifi cate in Education (Participatory Development) (CEPD) with the Centre for Adult Education. This book is a written record of those discussions that became known as a ‘Living Learning’. The militants who led these discussions are members of two key people’s move- ments: some brought their thinking, their politics and their experience from the struggles of Abahlali baseMjondolo (an urban-based movement of shack-dwellers fi ghting for humanity, land and housing) and some from the Rural Network (a rural- based movement fi ghting for restoration of dignity, rights and land, and resisting the brutalisation of the poor by commercial farmers and landowners). The main idea behind these discussions was to expand space for careful and critical refl ection, and to explore the connections between the experience of being an mil- itant, faced with real threats of landlessness and repression and abuse by author- ities, on the one hand, with that of being an academic student engaging other written experiences from a range of contexts. This connection is vital because any serious and concrete project of transformation must begin and remain in popular grassroots struggles. It is refl ected in the very idea of a ‘Living Learning’ – a label which the militants themselves coined. It is an extension of the term ‘Living Politics’ which S’bu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo has described as a politics that: … starts from the places we have taken. We call it a living politics because it comes from the people and stays with the people. It is ours and it is part of our lives. … It is the politics of our lives. It is made at home with what we have and it is made for us and by us. Zikode, 2008. “The burning issues of land and housing”: An address to the Dia- konia Council of Churches. This experiential understanding of politics is divorced or subtracted from party pol- itics or state politics, and aims for popular control over society. In fact, Living Poli- tics is life of the ordinary men, women and children fi ghting for dignity as human beings, every day, until they count. It can be understood by everyone, especially the poor, because they make and own it. All the militants are on this CEPD course PPrefacereface 5 through the mandate of their movements to take their politics to the academy, and to bring back to the movements the knowledge they encounter at the academy. In this cycle of connection and refl ection, the Living Learning sessions became a space for knowledge production, and the ‘living learners’ thought that perhaps that knowledge could be a contribution to the world, particularly on issues relating to praxis (refl ection and action) when dealing with issues of education, development, state power, people’s power, etc. What usually happens in each session is that each ‘living learner’ contributes to a list of issues they want to discuss, and then the facilitator fi nds out from the group which ones are key, so they can be discussed fi rst. As the discussion unfolds the facilitator took notes and made them available to everyone in the group for check- ing and correction. During one of these sessions in 2008, a discussion was held on what to do with these notes from Living Learning sessions – and that’s when the idea of publishing them was raised. By way of an Introduction,