The Geneva Convention

Article 13:

"Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. ...no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."

The Johannesburg Moment – “a fractious and turbulent set of social contestations”

At the recent Mail & Guardian Johannesburg Literary Festival Professor Karl Von Holdt presented an important paper on ‘The Johannesburg Moment’ – a concept for exploration and debate that he is working on and that will form an aspect of a forthcoming book.

What is the ‘Johannesburg moment’? The first idea is that Johannesburg, and indeed South Africa more broadly, can be viewed as a place, in time, that is characterised by a comprehensive contestation of ideas and power for influence and control – over spaces, organisations, institutions and sectors. The contestation can be defined in different ways, and manifests itself in many guises, and impacts on all our lives and forms of organisation in different ways. Perhaps the essence, however, is that previously accepted certainties do not prevail and every issue or idea, large or small, is open for debate, review or conflict.

This can be seen as a wonderful manifestation of a new democratic society, as well as being characterised by what Von Holdt refers to as “a historic rupture, the end of white political domination”. So may sacred cows are upended in such a moment – what are the new ways to organise and run a society as the old order comes to an end and a new one struggles to be born?

Von Holdt argues that the second aspect of the Johannesburg moment is an “intellectual and cultural project” to interrogate and reconstruct the Western lenses through which we understand and make meaning of our situation and context.

Bringing together these two ideas offers the opportunity to create new ideas about how we design and construct our spaces of engagement – not drawing on existing models and frameworks but creating new, socially connected and democratic spaces where work and art can co-exist, where politics and business become integral together to how we think and work, and where new conceptions of society and power can lead to a re-drawing of our idea of ‘organisation’ that can integrate ideas of productivity, learning and playfulness. Real progress.

Critical to this process will be the establishment of a shared sense of our history and identity as a people (a history that itself has been contested) and a new sense of where we want to go. In this sense the political changes that took place in the early 90s represent just a starting point, rather than an ending or a solution.