This article considers the relationship between working class struggle and popular protest in Africa over the last 40 years. We argue that the form and content of class relations which developed in the period of nationalist struggle and early ‘national development’ have been fundamentally restructured by the process of globalisation. From the late 1970s, a great wave of widespread popular protest and resistance was noted around the world, including Africa (Parfitt & Riley, 1994; Walton and Seddon, 1994). The strikes, marches, demonstrations and riots that characterised this wave of protest and resistance (often termed ‘bread riots’ or ‘IMF riots’) usually involved a variety of social groups and categories and did not always take place under a working class or trade union banner or with working class leadership – if this term is used in its narrow sense. A broader array of popular forces did, however, challenge not only the immediate austerity measures introduced as part of structural adjustment and ‘economic reform’, but also the legitimacy of the reforms themselves and even, sometimes, the governments that introduced them. They also frequently identified the international financial institutions and agencies that led this concerted effort to further enmesh ‘the developing world’ and the ordinary people who live there, into the uneven process of capitalist globalisation in the interests of major transnational corporations and the states that gain most from their operations.
Uxbridge
UB8 3PHUK nicola.ansell@brunel.ac.uk 'Spaces and scales of African student activism: Senegalese and Zimbabwean university students at the intersection of campus, nation and globe' Antipode 40 (1)
Student activism has made an important contribution to the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe. In the first years of independence students were among the most fearsome defenders of the regime. Three broad periods of student activism can be identified. The first pro-government period was followed by a violent break with the regime in 1988, the second period saw students declare that they were `the voice of the voiceless'. With the onset of structural adjustment programmes in the early 1990s, the privileged status of students in higher education was rapidly eroded. The third period emerged after 1995 as student activism converged with the urban revolt that was beginning to shake Zimbabwe. This article assesses the role of student activism in Zimbabwe.
SUMMARY
Arguably the résistance populaire across Burkina Faso in September 2015 against the coup led by members of the old regime was as significant as the uprising that toppled Blaise Compaoré in October 2014. This Briefing attempts to unpick the significance and extent of the popular resistance.
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