21st Khanya College Winter School
The 21st Khanya College Winter School will take place from 9-14 June 2019. This year the theme of the Winter School is Movement Building, Organising and the Role of Media. The School uses popular education methodology to assist participants to draw on their own experiences and collectively understand the world in which we live. For example, as activists there are key questions that concern us: South Africa is a wealthy country, yet why is it that education and service delivery works for the rich but not for the poor and the working class? Why is it that unemployment is increasing despite so many promises and that work available tends to be largely casual and precarious? Why has social inequality increased under democracy? The school provides the opportunity for participants to search for answers for these and many other questions, to engage the underlying reasons and make sense of the social relationships that have constructed and maintain the world the way it is. If we don’t begin to analyse these fundamental questions we will not be able to respond and organise ourselves appropriately, and bring about the necessary social change.
Theme of the Winter School
This year’s theme focuses on understanding the role of media under capitalism in South Africa today and the concentration and ownership of media. In any given society, the ruling class dominates and decides how society is organized and the ideas which dominate how society is understood. Yet, the limits and controls of capitalist exploitation gives rise to working resistance and struggles and this is reflected in the alternative media. During the anti-apartheid struggle an alternative media of newspapers, journals and newsletters etc. arose. How does this take place? How do working people develop the skills to have their own newspapers? What is the role of alternative newspapers for the working class and its struggle against capitalism? These and other related issues will be pursued over the next few days.
The Winter School will focus on the following sub-themes over the next few days:
- Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas
- The social basis of working class alternatives to capitalism
- Organising and Working Class Media
- Skills for Working Class Media
- Writing, Networking & Support for Working Class Media