Ahmed Veriava

This article is about a practice of “frank-talking” associated with Steve Biko and the BC movement of the 1970s. It sets out a reading of a short fragment titled “On Death” (found at the end of I Write What I Like) through the lens of the (coincidental) con- nection between Biko’s Frank-talk and Foucault’s lectures on par- rhesia. Through an intentional mispronunciation of the concept of parrhesia, I re-member Biko’s statement “On Death,” and the scene of the interrogation that it describes, as an exemplary instance of Biko’s frank-talk and one which I show can usefully be read as a modern modality of parrhesia. With Biko, the “parrhesiatic” state- ment disrupts the white supremacist (bio)political order for the ways it comes to be articulated as a practical expression of Biko’s sense of his own equality as a Black subject.

The articles in this section were written in mid-2014. Since then, there have been developments relevant to the story they tell. In December 2014, the Eco-nomic Freedom Fighters (EFF) held its first “national assembly, ” during which a controversial election returned most members of the established leadership to various positions. December 2014 also saw movement in the National Union of Metalworkers initiative to form a “united front. ” In this case, a “prep-aratory assembly ” was held that established an interim steering committee made up of “labor ” and “community ” activists in order to prepare for the offi-cial launch of the front in April 2015. The respective gatherings of the EFF and a nascent united front committed both groups to a new set of campaigns. Many of the questions posed by the essays in this section are already shaping the debates about the character of such campaigns. How the possibilities identified in the following articles play out will likely become clearer as...

This article is about representations of poverty and governmental frameworks for addressing it in postapart­ heid South Africa. It is, therefore, also about “the poor,” about their place in society, and the ways they inter­ vene in the making of the present. But in elite publics, this “name” is subject to an incessant doubling, and the poor are at once targets of governmental intervention made visible as abstract subjects of statistical representation, and the “real” on show at suburban intersections. They are at the same time the “dangerous class(es),” entering the public realm with images of burning tires and riots being quelled, and the primary object of “caring” government; they are at once an “underclass” of criminals and delinquents making undeserved claims on societies’ resources and figures turned into representations of the “wrong” of the past, whose redress is given as the reason for the existence of the ruling elite. We might even say the black poor is today at the same time “the people,” whose authentic belonging is the tes­ tament of ofcial nationalism, and the part apart.

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the problem of water losses, taken up through a discussion of a contentious infrastructure project called Operation Gcin’amanzi. It shows how Johannesburg Water worked to make a set of infrastructural and institutional-political ‘problems’ visible through numbers, highlighting important shifts in technologies of government. Today water loss auditing is becoming more important in the management of water infrastructure, and the story of Operation Gcin’amanzi is a significant episode in this history. I return to Operation Gcin’amanzi, then, in order to say something about the present, and specifically the ways technologies of government like the audit are reshaping practices for managing not only the built infrastructure, but also the human networks that connect to it.

Every day, as I leave work, I walk past the faint outline of the stencil-graffiti face of Solomon Mahlangu—an Umkhonto We Sizwe operative who was captured and hanged by the apartheid state—on the wall of the main admin- istration building at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), where I teach political studies. Although most of his features have been scrubbed away, just about everyone at Wits knows who it is and why he is there. At the height of its confidence in October 2015, FMF (Fees Must Fall) transformed the university into an occupied space through a coordinated blockade of entrances to the institution and turned the main concourse of the administration building—called senate House—into a “political assem- bly.” Over the next two years this building, housing the university senate and the offices of senior managers, became the floor of the movement at Wits, the theater of its unfolding contests, and the prize that running battles between militants and armed police were later fought over.

This article focuses on the problem of water losses, taken up through a discussion of a contentious infrastructure project called Operation Gcin’amanzi. It shows how Johannesburg Water worked to make a set of infrastructural and institutional-political ‘problems’ visible through numbers, highlighting important shifts in technologies of government. Today water loss auditing is becoming more important in the management of water infrastructure, and the story of Operation Gcin’amanzi is a significant episode in this history. I return to Operation Gcin’amanzi, then, in order to say something about the present, and specifically the ways technologies of government like the audit are reshaping practices for managing not only the built infrastructure, but also the human networks that connect to it.

This article is about representations of poverty and governmental frameworks for addressing it in postapart­ heid South Africa. It is, therefore, also about “the poor,” about their place in society, and the ways they inter­ vene in the making of the present. But in elite publics, this “name” is subject to an incessant doubling, and the poor are at once targets of governmental intervention made visible as abstract subjects of statistical representation, and the “real” on show at suburban intersections. They are at the same time the “dangerous class(es),” entering the public realm with images of burning tires and riots being quelled, and the primary object of “caring” government; they are at once an “underclass” of criminals and delinquents making undeserved claims on societies’ resources and figures turned into representations of the “wrong” of the past, whose redress is given as the reason for the existence of the ruling elite.
We might even say the black poor is today at the same time “the people,” whose authentic belonging is the tes­ tament of ofcial nationalism, and the part apart.

Every day, as I leave work, I walk past the faint outline of the stencil-graffiti face of Solomon Mahlangu—an Umkhonto We Sizwe operative who was captured and hanged by the apartheid state—on the wall of the main admin- istration building at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), where I teach political studies. Although most of his features have been scrubbed away, just about everyone at Wits knows who it is and why he is there.
At the height of its confidence in October 2015, FMF (Fees Must Fall) transformed the university into an occupied space through a coordinated blockade of entrances to the institution and turned the main concourse of the administration building—called senate House—into a “political assem- bly.” Over the next two years this building, housing the university senate and the offices of senior managers, became the floor of the movement at Wits, the theater of its unfolding contests, and the prize that running battles between militants and armed police were later fought over.

... we mock them, laughing with comrades, arguing with security, patting each other on the backs, a new energy to fight on… (Prishani Naidoo and Ahmed Veriava, July ... That was dependency – to lead people to depend on Oliver Tambo, in exile; if he comes back, you will be free. ...