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

Solidarity Economy News Issue 27 – 2020

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Solidarity Economy News Issue 26 – 2020

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Solidarity Economy News Issue 25 – 2019

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Solidarity Economy News Issue 24 – 2019

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Solidarity Economy News Issue 23 – 2019

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Solidarity Economy News Issue 22 – 2019

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Solidarity Economy News Issue 21 – 2019

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