Join us tor the launch of a new book – Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy : Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below.
Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy : Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below is in many ways the authors Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams’ manifesto – drawing on decades of scholarship, activism, and engagement with movements from the Global South.
It confronts the crises that ae defining our time: climate breakdown, inequality, and democratic erosion. It speaks not only to specialists but to thoughtful readers searching for credible and hopeful alternatives to a failing status quo. Retired trade unionist, Dinga Sikwebu will be in conversation with the authors.
About the book
Capitalism’s crisis is planetary. It is a system upending nature and society, causing many to live and work in despair. In Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy, Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams map a new transformative politics arising from inspiring worker cooperative systems that advance planetary care from below and that have the potential to undermine the capitalist status quo.
Based on extensive research across 15 countries, the authors examine case studies that explore transformative approaches to social reproduction, public power, nature, and territorial expansion in opposition to global hegemonic power.
Satgar and Williams show that, against all odds, people are experimenting with deep democracy and building systems of care that offer living alternatives to the planetary crisis.
About the authors
Vishwas Satgar is Professor of International Relations at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the editor of the Democratic Marxism series
and is the principal investigator for the Emancipatory Futures Studies in the
Anthropocene project.
Michelle Williams is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg. She has co-edited with Vishwas Satgar various volumes in the
Democratic Marxism series. Her publications include Building Alternatives: The
Story of India’s Oldest Worker Owner Cooperative.
Facing the Heat In South Africa: Workshop on how to use the photobook
OFFICIAL OPENING: ‘Facing the Heat in South Africa’ Photography Exhibition and Book Launch
OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE ‘FACING THE HEAT IN SOUTH AFRICA’ PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION AND BOOK LAUNCH. Through ten years of photographic documentation, this exhibition and book bring into focus unfolding climate shocks, injustice and resistance post a 1 °C overshoot at the global level. 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. The launch featured a panel discussion with Professor Vishwas Satgar, moderated by Mandla Nkomfe (Deputy Chairperson, Ahmed Kathrada Foundation), alongside the discussants Prof. Francois Engelbrecht (Climatologist, Wits) and Jessica Ngwenya (Lead Campaigner, Climate Justice Charter Movement). It was followed by a dialogue and a tour of the exhibition.
Permanent Exhibition: ‘Facing the Heat in South Africa’ Photography Exhibition
VENUE: Faculty of Humanities
South West Engineering Building
Ground Floor, Room 18B
Braamfontein Campus East
Johannesburg (JNB), South Africa
This exhibition utilised photography to document 10 years of climate extremes and resistance in South Africa. It maps climate risks we are facing and provides clues for transformative adaptation as part of deep just transitions in communities, workplaces , sectors and in the country. The recent floods and extreme winds and rainfall in parts of the country are a continuity of the 10 year pattern documented in this exhibition. Climate change and injustice is part of lived reality and cannot be denied . This exhibition calls for a societal driven national climate risk assessment and response strategy and a Climate Emergency Social Contract to phase out fossil fuels and accelerate South Africa’s just transition. Climate Justice resistance is showing a way forward if we act now. Take your family, friends and colleagues to this exhibition and also buy the book in leading book stores to deepen your understanding of climate challenges.
FACING THE HEAT EXHIBITION: CULTURAL CREATIVES DIALOGUE CIRCLE
collaboration.
Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below
By Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams
Capitalism’s crisis is planetary. It is a system upending nature and society, causing many to live and work in despair. So far, the left has been incapable of inspiring an effective challenge to it. In Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy, Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams map a new transformative politics arising from inspiring worker cooperative systems that advance planetary care from below and which have the potential to undermine the capitalist status quo.
Based on over a decade of research across 15 countries, the authors examine case studies that explore transformative approaches to social reproduction, public power, nature and territorial expansion in opposition to global hegemonic power.
They also uncover the power of solidarities engendering emancipatory, utopian imaginaries in the global north and south. They show how, against all the odds, people are experimenting with deep democracy and building systems of care to live differently and exit the planetary crisis.
Open Access download link: https://www.plutobooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Satgar-Williams-Worker-Cooperatives-and-Deep-Democracy.pdf
Book Launch
Book Launch
Where: Ike’s Bookshop
48a Florida Road, Durban
Monday 2 March
Phone: 031 303 9214
Email: ikesbooks@iafrica.com
A Love Letter to the Many Arguments for Transformative Left Politics in South Africa
Brill Version
Author:
BOOK LAUNCH INVITATION | Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy | Wits Humanities Graduate Centre, Johannesburg | Thursday 5 February 2026 @ 4pm
Join us tor the launch of a new book – Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy : Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below.
Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy : Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below is in many ways the authors Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams’ manifesto – drawing on decades of scholarship, activism, and engagement with movements from the Global South.
It confronts the crises that ae defining our time: climate breakdown, inequality, and democratic erosion. It speaks not only to specialists but to thoughtful readers searching for credible and hopeful alternatives to a failing status quo. Retired trade unionist, Dinga Sikwebu will be in conversation with the authors.
About the book
Capitalism’s crisis is planetary. It is a system upending nature and society, causing many to live and work in despair. In Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy, Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams map a new transformative politics arising from inspiring worker cooperative systems that advance planetary care from below and that have the potential to undermine the capitalist status quo.
Based on extensive research across 15 countries, the authors examine case studies that explore transformative approaches to social reproduction, public power, nature, and territorial expansion in opposition to global hegemonic power.
Satgar and Williams show that, against all odds, people are experimenting with deep democracy and building systems of care that offer living alternatives to the planetary crisis.
About the authors
Vishwas Satgar is Professor of International Relations at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the editor of the Democratic Marxism series
and is the principal investigator for the Emancipatory Futures Studies in the
Anthropocene project.
Michelle Williams is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg. She has co-edited with Vishwas Satgar various volumes in the
Democratic Marxism series. Her publications include Building Alternatives: The
Story of India’s Oldest Worker Owner Cooperative.
A Love Letter to the Many: Arguments for Transformative Left Politics in South Africa
Book by Vishwas Satgar
South Africa was the hope of the leftist world when it emerged from apartheid in 1994. It had an impressive and rich tradition of left politics. At the heart of post-apartheid democracy-making was a revolutionary nationalist ANC, the oldest Communist Party in Africa, the SACP, and one of the most militant labour union federations in the world, COSATU. Yet, today South Africa finds itself at a crossroads. It can either devour itself through inequality engendered social conflict; plunge further into racial polarisation due to the resurgence of exclusionary nationalist and neo-fascist politics; or risk being overcome with failure as socio-ecological systems collapse and the country gets overwhelmed by the many persistent crises. Many are deeply concerned about what South Africa has become and where it is headed. This book explains through a political economy/ecology analysis why and how the degeneration, delegitimation and crisis of national liberation politics has happened. Moreover, Left politics have failed. The world historical defeats of Soviet socialism, social democracy and revolutionary nationalism also became defeats for the South African left. This was not inevitable. At the same time, neoliberal dogma’s primacy of the sovereignty of capital and markets, over the state, people and nature, has also not worked. The grand and deep criminalized experiment has reached its limits. Its product: a hollow and criminalized market democracy predicated on an unviable society while producing a dialectic of reaction; the new extreme right. In these informed writings there is pushback against the neoliberal turn, Zumafication, emergent neofascism, the fraud of the National Democratic Revolution and the normalisation of the dangerous climate contradiction. At the same time there is a consistent transformative intellectual praxis, against the grain of defeat, that embraces the opportunity of left renewal initially inside the SACP but extending beyond. These arguments document 27 years of working with trade unions, township communities, waste pickers, unemployed peoples’ movements, informal traders, social movements and the global left to reconstruct the left imaginary beyond the traditional left, reform versus revolution, binary. These writings provide critical resources for transformative left politics and points to new frontiers for further elaboration. Finally, this volume curates a small part of post-apartheid history. It adds to the invisible archive of the left and takes its readers into a world that has been feared, misunderstood or caricatured. This volume is a contribution to decolonial South African thought. It is shared as a gift to the many, specifically to the next generation, so that they continue to struggle for and build an emancipated country and world in the present, before it is too late. Through a self-reflexive transformative politics, informed by an ethics of care, another future is possible.
Open Access Link: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/94492/1/9789004692268.pdf