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Our vision is to build human solidarity to sustain
life and a grassroots driven, just transition for
system change
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INVITATION: ‘Facing the Heat in South Africa’ Photography Exhibition
EXHIBITION FROM 4 MAR – 6 MAY 2026 | VENUE: ORIGINS CENTRE
Southern Africa is heating at twice the global average.
With the failure of the UN multi-lateral process to
rapidly phase out fossil fuels, the world has lost the
opportunity to prevent a 1.5°C overshoot. South Africa
and the region have to brace for 3°C of heating. The
country is completely unprepared for this post-normal
reality.
Through ten years of photographic documentation, this
exhibition and book brings into focus unfolding climate
shocks, injustice and resistance post a 1°C overshoot at
the global level. It furnishes powerful insights into the
structural drivers and complexity of climate extremes,
while foregrounding how the meaning of weather has
changed. The deployed photographic optic brings clarity
to the notion of climate risk in everyday life. Moreover,
this work, as a photographic archive, also provides
forensic evidence for how an uncaring and criminalised
political leadership, addicted to fossil fuels, is force
marching the country into climate disaster.
Ultimately the photographic medium echoes the
warnings of climate science but also amplifies the case
for climate justice solutions to secure a livable, just and
democratic future for all. As author and curator of this
exhibition, Vishwas Satgar, wrestles with the question:
what is photography’s role in these times of planetary
crisis? All are invited to view the exhibition.
Inaugural Lecture of Professor Vishwas Satgar
The Coloniality of the Planetary Crisis – Possible Emancipatory Politics and Futures.
The discipline of International Relations has not kept its promise of securing world peace and neither can it grasp the destruction of the planetary commons. It is also steeped in a Western conception of ‘Westphalian’ politics such that it thinks the ‘international’ in ways that perpetuates imperial asymmetries. This critical and decolonial lecture will highlight scalar levels of crisis that take us beyond the ‘national’ and ‘global’ and will challenge the normalising of planetary crisis by failing power structures and Anthropocene discourses. To meet the challenges of planetary crisis the ‘political’ has to be rethought. This lecture will highlight the urgency of emancipatory political imaginaries and praxis to secure planetary life.
Dr. Vishwas Satgar is a Professor of International Relations, editor of the democratic Marxism series and principal investigator for Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene.
Launch of the COPAC Food Sovereignty Hub
Launch of Food Sovereignty Hub and Activist Training Centre at Wits
“Today was one of those days when life sparkles and you know that after ten years of consistent transformative activism at Wits, change is happening!
We launched the Cooperative and Policy Alternative Centre Food Sovereignty Hub and Activist Training Centre with activists from Gauteng communities, the Climate Justice Charter Movement and the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign. This is the second hub at Wits and will be the backbone for all our agroecology gardens and forests. It will also be a space for emancipatory pedagogy, zero-input cost agroecology farming research and larger institutional transformation of Wits to accelerate the deep just transition.
These photos offer a glimpse into our agroecology garden, tool bank, seed bank, training space, water harvesting tanks, and more.
We also married this launch to a 4-day activist school and launched the Gauteng Food Sovereignty Forum and process.
I won’t see how the seed sharing, knowledge, and food sovereignty praxis travels into the years ahead and amongst generations. But knowing that foundations have been laid for this brings me immense joy.
Thanks to all the students, activists, academics, WCCO colleagues, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and the EMS Foundation for your support over the years. Without you, we would not have come this far!”
Professor Vishwas Satgar
Newsletter 31: Rooted in change: cultivating food sovereignty and agroecology for a just future. March 2025
MARCH EDITION 2025
Solidarity Economy News Issue 27 – 2020
Solidarity Economy News Issue 26 – 2020
Solidarity Economy News Issue 25 – 2019
Solidarity Economy News Issue 24 – 2019
Solidarity Economy News Issue 23 – 2019
Solidarity Economy News Issue 22 – 2019
Solidarity Economy News Issue 21 – 2019
Solidarity Economy News Issue 20 – 2018
Solidarity Economy News Issue 19 – 2018
Solidarity Economy News Issue 18 – 2017
Solidarity Economy News Issue 17 – 2017
Solidarity Economy News Issue 16 – 2017
Solidarity Economy News Issue 15 – 2016
Solidarity Economy News Issue 14 – 2016
Solidarity Economy News Issue 13 – 2016
Solidarity Economy News Issue 12 – 2015
Solidarity Economy News Issue 11 – 2015
Solidarity Economy News Issue 10 – 2015
Solidarity Economy News Issue 9 – 2014
Solidarity Economy News Issue 8 – 2014
Solidarity Economy News Issue 7 – 2014
Solidarity Economy News Issue 6 – 2013
Special issue – SEM Conference Report
Solidarity Economy News Issue 5 – 2013
This special issue contains the draft conference documents discussed at the 2nd Solidarity Economy conference from the 23rd to 25th August 2013 in Berea Johannesburg.
Solidarity Economy News Issue 4 – 2013
Solidarity Economy News Issue 3 – 2012
Solidarity Economy News Issue 2 – 2012