The Global Race Research Lab invites you to the following book launch and conversation:

Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City
by Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Global Studies

Moderated by Christopher Paul Harris, Global Studies

Discussants:
Rudo Mudiwa, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Constantine Manda, Political Science
Laura Mitchell, History
Safia Msami, Global Studies
António Tomás, Anthropology

Book description: 

Abahlali baseMjondolo is one of the most prominent social movements on the African continent. Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City (2024, free ebook available through UCI library) explores this South African shack dweller movement for the lessons it offers other struggles across the world. Grounded in the local realities of the fight for land, housing, and dignity, the book makes broader interventions in national, continental, and global debates about urban geography, African studies, social movements, and racial capitalism. It argues that the shack settlement is emblematic of a democratic South Africa still profoundly shaped by apartheid’s afterlife.

"A city like Durban can be taken as a looking glass to think the world. This is the wager of this book. Focusing his research on Abahlali baseMjondolo, a prominent shack dweller organization, Al-Bulushi explores an amazing fabric of struggle and self-organization that resonates in other global landscapes and foreshadows the coming of a new age for the alter-globalization movement. In the dire conjuncture we are living through, this book opens new vistas for a politics of liberation.” – Sandro Mezzadra, author of In the Marxian Workshops

“Yousuf Al-Bulushi not only narrates an in-depth history and political geography of shack dweller struggles in Durban, South Africa, he provides a radical template for urban studies. Theoretically sophisticated and deeply researched, Ruptures will appeal to scholars across many academic fields, even while it remains accessible to the general reader. It is a remarkably absorbing and brilliant study.” – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Settler Colonialism

“Traveling with Al-Bulushi takes us beyond the surfaces of rhizomatic textures of the rainbow nation and its fake racial cohesion to systemic, structural, and institutional violence. Ruptures is an important contribution to both urban studies and African Studies, and indeed to deeper understandings of the operations of the modern world-system. I have nothing but praise for this erudite and elegantly delivered word which decolonizes our minds as it offers a devastating indictment of racial capitalism.” – Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of Beyond the Coloniality of Internationalism.