ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses resistance by examining the counter-discourses among resistance organizations in South Africa. It presents an overview of the intensive subaltern upheavals of the 1980's, suggesting that to comprehend its politics people have to trace the main counter-discourses historically. The chapter identifies the main counter-discourses as the 'rights discourse' associated with the African National Congress (ANC), 'anti-colonial/psychological discourse' of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and 'class analysis discourse' of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Trotskyist organizations. The chapter discusses Black Consciousness of the 1970's and make the case that it prepared the 'fighting spirit' that became a 'way of life' of the subaltern during the 1980's; thus contributing fundamentally to the collapse of Apartheid rule. The under-privileging of non-military aspects of the colonial encounter was not surprising because the construction relies primarily on a dichotomy between colonizer and coionized; a position that also lied at the heart of hegemonic discourses.
