ABSTRACT
Movement dynamics and popular mobilization in post-apartheid South Africa are tremendously heterogeneous. Tomes could be written on the shifts in movement mobilization during the period under consideration. Trying to condense the multiple and complex stories of movements into a single chapter has presented us with an enormous challenge and our first and foremost caveat is that this discussion cannot hope to do all the movements and modes of protest justice. In our quest for breadth, we have sacrificed some depth, and are well aware that we have glossed over some of the particularities that are intrinsic to each of the movements. Nonetheless, we seek to provide a panoramic image of popular resistance in post-apartheid South Africa that allows us to contextualize the ebbs and flows in movement activity and discuss one of the key themes of this collection, namely transformation and mobilization’s evolution. Each part of the discussion could be developed into a lengthy chapter in its own right, but here we have provided a few brief insights into the landscape of popular mobilization in post-apartheid South Africa, in the hope that interested readers will dig deeper and take it upon themselves to unpack the complexities that constitute the contemporary South African socio-political order. The discussion that follows addresses the processes and conditions that facilitated the emergence of contemporary South Africa’s movements and examines the way in which the different movements operate. The chapter also considers some of the key moments in movement mobilization, some of which harbored potential for growth, while others hampered the movements’ progress, resulting in some of the movements shifting into a period of abeyance. The final part of the chapter discusses the renewed potential of movements to have a deeply transformative impact on South African politics.
