Examining M K Gandhi’s attitude towards South African natives during his sojourn in South Africa, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, in their book The South African Gandhi, have accused Gandhi of racism, arguing that Gandhi kept his struggle for British concessions for indentured Indians in South Africa separate from the struggle of Zulu people for freedom from colonial rule, because Gandhi considered the natives racially inferior and called them Kaffirs—a derogatory term used against them by the Whites as well as Indians. However, accusing Gandhi of racism indicates a misrepresentation of his ideas in transition, and the word Kaffir does not connote a racial slur.
Tracing the genesis of Germany’s apology for genocide in Namibia, this article situates Germany in the context of colonialism and racism in Africa. It contends that Germany is morally guilty of violating human rights but is legally not bound to pay reparations to Namibia. In order to promote humanitarian international law, institutions like the United Nations need to initiate measures to compensate the victims of genocide.
The BRICS summit held in October 2016 suggested the possible use of local currency in intra-BRICS trade to lower costs. This article extends this idea and proposes a scheme for setting up a clearing account in local currencies of the BRICS countries. It contends that such a step will provide avenues for generating additional demand within the region while cushioning the member countries against shocks from exchange rate volatility.
Scholars following the transnational turn in migration studies have stressed the way in which connections that migrants maintain across nation state boundaries affect their daily lives and subjectivities in the place of settlement. By doing so, the influence of the local context on transnational ties is sometimes overlooked. Based on five months of fieldwork amongst the Gujarati Hindu community of Cape Town, the cases presented in this paper show that local particularities inherently affect global processes. It suggests a reconceptualisation of transnational connections that emphasises the influence of the local and historical context of migration and argues that the regionalised migration trajectories and the manifestation of the history of apartheid in the local context have significantly affected the way in which transnational ties with India are maintained by this community.
After 2010, two Indian generic companies started local plants in South Africa, attempted to partake in the morally loaded politics of antiretroviral therapy, and complied with broader affirmative action policies there. This article analyses a variety of sources and tries to lay bare the nexus between drug manufacturers, the state, and civil society organisations and tries to contextualise them in the anthropological theories of public health and humanitarian aid.
This is a chronological account of Gandhi's writings with a view to assess whether or not his outlook towards African blacks can be considered racist. This article also attempts to understand the immediate context in which Gandhi makes his comments on black Africans and argues that the absence of such an understanding might lead to a dubious or inappropriate conclusion.
Community radio - the cheapest and most accessible of the electronic mass media - is ruled out in many countries because of legal restrictions. This paper looks at community radio in Australia and South Africa. Australia has a mature 'third tier' of broadcasting, now over 20 years old, facing the problems of an established sector, with consistent if relatively diminishing state support. As a relatively new democracy, South Africa's adoption of community radio is significant on a global scale. As the debate around community radio in India gathers momentum, and various initiatives start to emerge, some of the challenges they currently face may have lessons for India.
