Comparative digital protest cultures in South Africa and Tamil Nadu: #feesmustfall, #Jallikattu, and Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) - a case of surveillance and diasporic potential
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38140/aa.v55i2.7780Keywords:
Abahlali baseMjondolo, #feesmustfall, #jallikattu, diaspora, digital protest cultureAbstract
This paper explores three protest movements differing in scale and scope in two regions in the world. #feesmustfall (2015-2016) was a social media movement in South Africa to protest against prohibitive hikes in university fees. #Jallikattu (2017) was a social media movement in Tamil Nadu (India) to lift a ban imposed by the Supreme Court of India against an ancient cultural sport with bulls. Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a South African social media movement to raise issues related to shack dwellers. While there is literature focusing on these movements individually (Bosch 2016, Kalaiyarasan 2017, Mdlalose 2014), a comparative approach offers some alternate insights into how state power manifests in the age of digital capitalism. Habermas (1987, 1989) theorised the transformation of the public sphere and key to understanding how these publics contest existing power structures is his explication of authentic communicative action. Using Fuchs’s (2016) and Zuboff’s (2019) analyses of social media activism, we examine police brutality and surveillance in these three movements. The classical model of diaspora (Harutyunyan 2012) is introduced to show how it manifests in two of the protest movements, and contemporary notions of diaspora (Grossman 2019: 1265) are explored to see what they could offer to diverse protest cultures.
Downloads
References
Abahlali baseMjondolo. 2006. A short history of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban shack dwellers’ movement. Abahlali baseMjondolo. October 2006. [Online]. Available at: https://abahlali.org/a-short-history-of-abahlali-basemjondolo-the-durban-shack-dwellers-movement/ [accessed 8 September 2023].
Abahlali baseMjondolo. 2022. Building international pressure against repression. Abahlali baseMjondolo. 18 October. [Online]. Available at: http://abahlali.org/node/17576/ [accessed 11 November 2022].
Abraham KJ. 2014. Review of Defining and re-defining diaspora: from theory to reality, by David M and Muñoz-Basols J. Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(10): 1882-1884. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2014.920095
Austin D. 1995. Democracy and violence in India and Sri Lanka. New York, NY: Published in North America for the Royal Institute of International Affairs by the Council on Foreign Relations Press.
Bezuidenhout C. 2008. The nature of police and community interaction alongside the dawn of intelligence led policing. Acta Criminologica: African Journal of Criminology & Victimology. CRIMSA Conference special edition 3: 48-67.
Bosch T. 2016. Twitter and participatory citizenship: #FeesMustFall in South Africa. In: Mutsvairo B (ed). Digital activism in the social media era. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Braga R. 2019. A return of class struggle without class? Moral economy and popular resistance in Brasil, South Africa and Portugal. Sociologia & Antropologia 9(2): 469-493.
Brouwer L & Bartles E. 2015. Arab spring in Morocco: social media and the 20 February movement. Afrika Focus 27(2): 9-22.
Brubaker R. 2017. Revisiting “the ‘diaspora’ diaspora”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(9): 1556-1561.
Castells M. 2012. Networks of outrage and hope: social movements in the internet age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chatterjee S and Roychoudhury S. 2013. Institutions, democracy and ‘corruption’ in India: examining potency and performance. Japanese Journal of Political Science 14(3): 395-419. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1468109913000169
Choudhry P. 2018. Anti-Sterlite protest: was protocol followed in police firing in Tuticorin? India Today [YouTube channel]. 23 May. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJNOEtCCh9M&t=857s [accessed 8 November 2023].
Cox R and Calder E. 2023. Five years on from India’s Thoothukudi massacre, families and activists demand justice. Global Witness. 25 May. Available at: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/five-years-on-from-indias-thoothukudi-massacre-families-and-activists-demand-justice/ [accessed 19 November 2023].
Doyle G. 2002 Media ownership. Sage: London.
Duncan J. 2021. The enemy within: securitising protest as domestic instability in South Africa. In: Williams M and Satgar V (eds). Destroying democracy: neoliberal capitalism and the rise of authoritarian politics. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Fuchs C. 2016. Critical theory of communication: new readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the age of the internet. London: University of Westminster Press.
Grossman J. 2019. Toward a definition of diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies 42(8): 1263-1282.
Habermas J. 1987. The theory of communicative action. Lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist reason. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Transl Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Haffo I. 2016. A student gives flowers to a riot police officer during a protest at Wits. Groundup. 4 October. Available at: https://twitter.com/groundup_news/status/783327657211691010 [accessed 20 May 2022].
Hall S. 1990. Cultural identity and diaspora. In: Rutherford J (ed). Identity: community, culture, difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Hamann R. 2019. Dynamic de-responsibilization in business–government interactions. Organization Studies 40(8): 1193-1215. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840618815927
Hansen M, Islar M and Krause T. 2015. The politics of natural resource enclosure in South Africa and Ecuador. Conservation Society 13(3): 287-298.
Harutyunyan A. 2012. Challenging the theory of diaspora from the field. In: Working Papers des Sonder- forschungsbereiches 640 1/2012. Available at: http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/series/sfb-640-papers/2012-1/PDF/1.pdf
Holdt KV. 2013. South Africa: the transition to violent democracy. Review of African Political Economy 40(138): 589-604.
Kalaiyarasan A. 2017. Politics of Jallikattu. Economic and Political weekly 52(6): 11-12.
Koko K. 2022. How feesmustfall students were used to defraud crime intelligence. Mail and Guardian. 22 September. Available at: https://mg.co.za/news/2022-09-22-how-feesmustfall-students-were-used-to-defraud-crime-intelligence/ [accessed 24 October 2022].
Majola N. 2022a. Housing activist murdered in Durban. SERI calls for urgent investigation into Cato Manor police and other officials following Ayanda Ngila’s death. Groundup. 9 March. Available at: https://www.groundup.org.za/article/housing-activist-murdered-alleged-hit- durban/ [Aaccessed 20 May 2022].
Majola N. 2022b. Slain Durban activist knew she was in danger. Groundup. 9 May. Available at: https://www.groundup.org.za/article/housing-activist-murdered-alleged-hit-durban/ [accessed 20 May 2022].
Mdlalose B. 2014. The rise and fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African social movement. Politikon 41(3): 345-353.
Moja T, Luescher TM & Schreiber B. 2015. Equity and social justice in higher education. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa 3(2): v-ii.
Mulinge M and Lesetedi G. 1998. Interrogating our past: colonialism and corruption in sub-Saharan Africa. African Journal of Political Science 3(2): 15-28.
Munoriyarwa A. 2022. The militarization of digital surveillance in post-coup Zimbabwe: ‘Just don’t tell them what we do’. Security Dialogue 53(5): 456-474.
Muralidharan K. 2017. A state of protest: why Tamil Nadu tops list of most protests in India since 2009. Hindustan Times. 30 April 2017. Available at: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/a-state-of-protest-why-tamil-nadu-tops-list-of-most-protests-in-india-since-2009/story-Vkq7rBAfNIFnBcuMH1dcsL.html [accessed 17 January 2019].
Nel R. 2016. Social media and the new struggles of young people against marginalisation: a challenge to missional ecclesiology. Stellenbosch Theological Journal 1(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/STJ.2015.V1N2.A24
Ojha AK. 2016. Corruption in India: understanding the institutional context to counter it. In: Khatri N and Ojha AK (eds). Crony Capitalism in India. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-58287-4_5
Oliver E and Oliver WH. 2017. The colonisation of South Africa: a unique case. HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 73(3): a4498. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4498
Olorunnisola A and Martin B. 2013. Influences of media on social movements: problematizing hyperbolic inferences about impacts. Telematics and Informatics 30(3): 275-288.
Oyedemi TD. 2020. Protest as communication for development and social change. In: Servaes J (ed). Handbook of communication for development and social change. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2014-3
Pillay S. 2004. Corruption – the challenge to good governance: a South African perspective. International Journal of Public Sector Management 17(7): 586-605. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513550410562266
Raghavan S. 2013. South Africa still struggling to fulfill Mandela’s hopes and dreams. The Washington Post. 6 December. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/south-africa-still-struggling-to-fulfill-mandelas-hopes-and-dreams/2013/12/06/95ce7a26-5e80-11e3-8d24-31c016b976b2_story.html [accessed 18 July 2019].
Rajagopal K. 2016. Supreme Court refuses to vacate stay on Jallikattu order. The Hindu. 13 January 2016. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/Supreme-Court-refuses-to-vacate- stay-on-jallikattu-order/article13999317.ece [accessed 18 July 2019].
Respondent 1. 2020. South African student. [Personal interview]. November 2020.
Respondent 2. 2020. South African student. [Personal interview]. November 2020.
Respondent 3. 2020. South African student. [Personal interview]. November 2020.
Respondent 4. 2020. Indian citizen. [Personal interview]. December 2020.
Respondent 5. 2020. Indian citizen. [Personal interview]. December 2020.
Respondent 6. 2020. South African activist. [Personal Interview] May 2020.
Safran W. 1991. Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1(1): 83-99.
Sandhu HS. 2014. British Raj: The legacy of colonialism in India. Sociological Imagination: Western’s Undergraduate Sociology Student Journal 3(1): Article 6.
Satgar V. 2019. Racism after apartheid: challenges for Marxism and anti-racism. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. https://doi.org/10.18772/22019033061
Seboka S. 2022. Kgomotso Phahane and others charged for R54m in irregular tenders. Politicsweb. 21 September. Available at: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/top-cops-and-others-charged-for-irregular-tenders- [accessed 24 October 2022].
Shaheer I, Carr N and Insch A. 2021. Rallying support for animal welfare on Twitter: a tale of four destination boycotts. Tourism Recreation Research 48(3): 384-398.
Shuval JT. 2000. Diaspora migration: definitional ambiguities and a theoretical paradigm. International Migration 38(5): 41-56.
Smillie S. 2021. Hector Pietersen and the 16 June photograph that changed everything. Daily Maverick. 12 June. Available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-06-12-hector-pieterson-16-june-1976-youth-day-photograph/ [accessed 8 September 2023].
Solomons L. 2022. ‘Our hearts are heavy’: another KZN activist gunned down inside his home. News24. 20 August. Available at: https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/our-hearts-are-heavy-another-kzn-activist-gunned-down-inside-his-home-20220820 [accessed 24 October 2022].
Sudhir TS. 2017. Jallikattu protests: the real Chennai arsonists and stone-pelters must be unmasked. Firstpost. 24 January. [Online]. Available at: https://www.firstpost.com/india/jallikattu-protests-will-the-real-chennai-arsonists-please-stand-up-3217554.html [accessed 18 July 2019].
Taneja S, Bhatnagar M, Kumar P and Rupeika-Apoga R. 2023. India’s total natural resource rents (NRR) and GDP: an augmented autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test. Journal of Risk and Financial Management 16(2): 1-14.
TechCentral. 2015. Top Twitter trends in SA in 2015. 7 December. Available at: https://techcentral.co.za/top-twitter-trends-in-sa-in-2015/61889/ [accessed 14 October 2020].
Thirumurthy P. 2018. The massacre in Thoothukudi: intelligence failure or deliberate assault. The News Minute.com. 24 May. Available at: https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/massacre-thoothukudi-intelligence-failure-or-deliberate-assault-81865 [accessed 12 June 2021].
Veemaraja N. 2015. Impact of caste system in Indian democracy. International Journal of Management Research and Social Science 2(3): 91-94.
Vitale A. 2017. The end of policing. London: Verso.
Voss K and Williams M. 2012. The local in the global: rethinking social movements in the new millennium. Democratization 19(2): 352-377.
Young R. 2012. Postcolonial remains. New Literary History 43(1): 19-42.
Zondo RMM. 2022. Judicial Commission of inquiry into allegations of State Capture, corruption and fraud in the public sector including organs of state. Report Vol 5 Part 1 – SSA and Crime Intelligence. Available: http://www.saflii.org/images/state-capture-commission-report-part-5-vol1.pdf [accessed 20 November 2022].
Zuboff S. 2019. The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York: Public Affairs.
##submission.downloads##
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Jabulani Nkuna, Kameshwaran Envernathan Govender, Anusharani Sewchurran
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
