A discussion with Jasper Finkeldy on 2 March at CLP

The destructive and competitive values that sustain capitalism and that legitimate hierarchy – and which are relentlessly pushed throughout society – often undermine the work we try to take forward with people in so much of the work we do in the broader community. It’s so important to challenge these, and to articulate an alternate value set, not only in what we say, but also in what we do. The “Trade School” initiative in our home-town of Pietermaritzburg is a great practical example of “solidarity practices that reinforce values of mutualism, cooperation, social justice, democracy, and ecological sustainability”.

The Pietermaritzburg -based collective that runs Trade School 2016 has created an accessible platform where “anyone can be a teacher and anyone can be a student”. Those who want to teach offer to run a class; & those who want to learn sign up for what the session/s they want– no money changes hands, but learners bring things the teachers ask for as barter, because learning and knowledge has value after all!

Read the full padkos serving here

For a number of us, Jonathan Langdon has been a key intellectual thinking the connections between social movements, learning, and praxis. Padkos and the Paulo Freire Institute are really excited that he will be with us in Maritzburg soon. Join us for a discussion that will draw on 15 years’ work with Ghanaian social movements. In “‘E yeo ngo’ (Does s/he eat salt?): Learning in Movement”, Langdon shares insight from a 5-year participatory study of the Ada Songor Advocacy Forum, a social movement in Ghana. We’re returning to the Centre for Visual Arts Gallery on Ridge Rd (UKZN) for this one – so be there on Monday, 25^thApril @ 4.30pm to hear the presentation, engage Jon, and share some drinks and snacks together.

Read more here

The Nomponjwana women started a gardening project as part of elevating poverty. They call themselves Sekwanele, which means ‘enough!‘, Women’s group.

The group was started after a number of unsolved cases that were reported to the South African Police Services (SAPS) and traditional headsmen concerning women being abused and killed in the area, were not dealt with. Read more here

Beautiful beadwork jewellery made by Ladysmith Women’s groups. Please contact Nomusa at Church Land Programme on 033 2644 380 to buy or place orders.

During the past week, waste-pickers in the town where the Church Land Programme (CLP) is based staged a protest action at the gates to the municipal waste dump. A couple of CLP people were there in solidarity and Mark Butler wrote a reflection piece which appeared in the local daily, The Witness.

Read the reflection piece here

We’re heading back to Durban on the 14th November for another exciting “Beats and Boundaries” collaboration! This time we feature two more fantastic documentary movies during the afternoon, and follow that with a live gig that night with some of Durban’s finest bands. Once again, it’s all happening at The Winston Pub in Clark Road, Durban: doors open from 2pm; movies kick off at 4pm; and live bands, Deadpandoll, Roachy and the Rock Coaches, and Matt Vend and the Tender Ten, take the stage from 9pm on. See here for more.

Lewis R. Gordon returns as the next in our remarkable series of radical padkos visitors for CLP’s 2015 “School of Thought”. We’re so grateful and humbled to have had Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar address and engage us in the previous session. It was profoundly insightful, and very productive in relation to our own thinking of emancipatory struggle here. The “School of Thought” continues to be a brilliant space of critical engagement for CLP’s padkos comrades and colleagues. In our ongoing work at CLP, the critical thinking of grassroots militants remains our principal point of entry and departure for emancipatory politics and thought. And there’s no question that this work benefits, and benefits from, mutual dialogue with other emancipatory thinkers and theorists who also take the real thought and practice of liberatory praxis in other places around the world seriously.

Read the full serving here

This community has organized themselves and demanded to be treated with respect and dignity. Now RDP houses are being built and they are almost finished. Even though they have not been handed over to the owners yet, there is progress. Read the full story here