It is now over forty years since Steve Biko died in detention and the major Black Consciousness organizations were banned. Now forty years later, the face of black politics and indeed the whole balance of power in South Africa, has changed almost beyond recognition - and yet the memory of Biko and the imprint of Black Consciousness remain indelibly with us.

In this book a number of Biko’s colleagues and friends have come together to reassess the achievements of Biko and Black Consciousness, and to examine the rich legacy they have left us. In their chapters they reflect on the many ways in which the Black Consciousness Movement succeeded in transforming black minds and politics by freeing people to take their destiny into their own hands - encouraging them to press the very limits and redefine what had been accepted as the bounds of possibility.

Black Consciousness left a legacy of defiance in action and inspired a culture of fearlessness which was carried forward by the township youth in 1976 and sustained throughout the 1980s. For it is in South Africa’s township that there has been an awakening of the people, people who finally made the politicians move.

Within the past 18 years of democratic rule in South Africa, the disparities have hardly been reduced, as is manifest in the realms of education, health, security, and employment. As a former liberation movement, the African National Congress underestimated the tasks ahead when transforming South African society, and the degree to which the apartheid legacy impacted the people's ability to make use of their democratic rights and to call politicians to account for their performance. This book calls for citizen responsibility to shape the nation's future and defend the rights of liberty enshrined in its constitution. (Series: Carl Schlettwein Lectures - Vol. 8)

The essays in "Violence and Subjectivity, " written by a distinguished international roster of contributors, consider the ways in which violence shapes subjectivity and acts upon people's capacity to engage everyday life. Like its predecessor volume, "Social Suffering, " which explored the different ways social force inflicts harm on individuals and groups, this collection ventures into many areas of ongoing violence, asking how people live with themselves and others when perpetrators, victims, and witnesses all come from the same social space.
From civil wars and ethnic riots to governmental and medical interventions at a more bureaucratic level, the authors address not only those extreme situations guaranteed to occupy precious media minutes but also the more subtle violences of science and state. However particular and circumscribed the site of any fieldwork may be, today's ethnographer finds local identities and circumstances molded by state and transnational forces, including the media themselves. These authors contest a new political geography that divides the world into "violence-prone areas" and "peaceful areas" and suggest that such descriptions might themselves contribute to violence in the present global context.

Mamphela Ramphele is a figurehead of modern South Africa. The partner of Steve Biko, until his death in 1977, she has demonstrated extraordinary political leadership and statesmanship, most recently as the leader of the Agang SA party. In this highly acclaimed autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele vividly describes her extraordinary life - when she was born to teacher parents in the rural village of Kranspoort, few would have predicted that she would become not only a medical doctor, but an international leader and the founder of not one but two new political movements. As a young woman, Mamphela was instrumental in creating the ideology of Black Consciousness with her partner, Steve Biko. As an accomplished and respected businesswoman who had reached the pinnacle of success, she felt compelled to start Agang SA, to provide South African voters with an alternative to the increasingly corrupt ANC. Richly anecdotal, this book describes her loves and losses and her remarkable successes in both politics and business.

The richly anecdotal story of an extraordinary life – when baby Mamphela was born to teacher parents in the rural village of Kranspoort, few would have predicted that she would become not only a medical doctor, but an international leader and the founder of not one but two new political movements. As a young woman, Mamphela was instrumental in creating the ideology of Black Consciousness with her partner, Steve Biko. As an accomplished and well-off businesswoman who had reached the pinnacle of success, this year she felt compelled to start Agang SA , to provide South African voters with an alternative to the inept and increasingly corrupt ANC.

In this very readable autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele vividly describes her rural childhood, her extended family, her first loves and losses – after the death of her firstborn, she nearly lost her and Steve’s baby after his death by torture – and her subsequent successes in both politics and business.

She exposes what went on behind the scenes in the run-up to the launch of Agang SA, discusses her relationship with a number of prominent South Africans, including Helen Zille, and she shares her vision for a future South Africa of which we can all be proud.

In these conversations with people of a younger generation Mamphela Ramphele responds to the growing despair among young South Africans about the cracks that are appearing in our system of governance and threatening the idealism of the country that reinvented itself with the dawn of democracy in 1994.

She shows incisively how successive post-apartheid ANC governments have betrayed the nation for a culture of impunity among those close to the seat of power, where corruption goes unremarked and accountability has been swept aside. Enduring poverty, inequity and a failing public service, most notably in health and education, are the results.

At once challenging and encouraging, Ramphele urges young South Africans – our future leaders – to set aside their fears; to take control of their rights and responsibilities as citizens in upholding the values of the constitution; and to confront the growing inequality that is undermining good governance, social justice and stability.

In the last three years the migrant labor hostels of South Africa, particularly those in the Transvaal, have gained international notoriety as theaters of violence. For many years they were hidden from public view and neglected by the white authorities. Now, it seems, hostel dwellers may have chosen physical violence to draw attention to the structural violence of their appalling conditions of life. Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that the majority of hostel dwellers are peace-loving people who have over the years developed creative strategies to cope with their impoverished and degrading environment.
In this challenging study, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele documents the life of the hostel dwellers of Cape Town, for whom a bed is literally a home for both themselves and their families. Elaborating the concept of space in its many dimensions--not just physical, but political, ideological, social, and economic as well--she emphasizes the constraints exerted on hostel dwellers by the limited spaces they inhabit. At the same time, she argues that within these constraints people have managed to find room for manoeuvre, and in her book explores the emancipatory possibilities of their environment.
The text is illustrated with a number of black-and-white photographs taken by Roger Meintjes in the townships and hostels.

"Remaking a World "completes a triptych of volumes on social suffering, violence, and recovery. "Social Suffering, "the first volume, deals with sources and major forms of social adversity, with an emphasis on political violence. The second, "Violence and Subjectivity, "contains graphic accounts of how collective experience of violence can alter individual subjectivity. This third volume explores the ways communities "cope" with--endure, work through, break apart under, transcend--traumatic and other more insidious forms of violence, addressing the effects of violence at the level of local worlds, interpersonal relations, and individual lives. The authors highlight the complex relationship between recognition of suffering in the public sphere and experienced suffering in people's everyday lives. Rich in local detail, the book's comparative ethnographies bring out both the recalcitrance of tragedy and the meaning of healing in attempts to remake the world.