Racial Capitalism Youth Curriculum and Workshops
This project aims to support impactful racial equity advocacy in South Africa through a youth activist-focused curriculum and workshop programme resulting in a co-created ‘activist guide’. It provides practical advocacy and political education skills aimed at transforming local governance and the political economy of South African racial capitalism. Participants will be encouraged to apply these critical skills in different advocacy programmes in their communities to enhance state accountability to those communities.
The workshops will be guided by the following core racial equity policy themes (feminist political economy perspectives will be woven into and amplified throughout each workshop):
Alternative political economy and development models
Youth political agency and citizenship in the digital era
Work, livelihoods and just economic transitions (digital and low carbon)
Environmental racism
The law, constitution and human right
PROBLEM ANALYSIS:
South African racial capitalism continues to shape the articulation of intersectional identity relations in dynamic ways. But the evolving race, class, and gender relations have not altered the fundamental structure of South African society. The underlying differences in socioeconomic status and livelihoods persist notwithstanding the social mobility of small black middle and capitalist class cohorts.
One cannot fully comprehend racism or racial capitalism in South Africa without documenting the experiences of young black people, especially women. In addition, South Africa’s racial capitalist social structure continues to reproduce the country’s ecological crisis, which distributes environmental costs along racial and gender lines whilst concentrating the benefits of extraction.
The past 27 years of democratic post-apartheid rule illustrate that these structural racial inequities will persist if society does not move beyond anti-black racism and the racial capitalism it informs. Intersectional inequalities are driven by a persistent racial capitalist political economy and social structure.
Impact
There are several key markers for our impact in this project.
Firstly, we achieved our intended impact of developing a research-based curriculum, which is inspired by our anti-racism political paradigms.
Second, the participatory workshop methods provided attendees with opportunities to learn various facilitation tools for future workshops.
Thirdly, workshop participants obtained some knowledge about links between national policy debates and local community socio-economic and political issues.
Fourthly, the content of the workshop broadened the participants understanding of racial redress and equity. The themes covered in the workshop illustrated that structural racism has multiple outcomes in several social institutions.
Partnering with Youth Lab was an aspect which maximised our ability to reach workshop participants who were actively leading NPOs / NGOs or less formal community projects in their own communities. This maximised the impact of our workshops and allowed us to focus on the creation of content and the presentation thereof. Additionally, the participants are empowered to facilitate further sessions in their communities.
The workshop content, facilitation methods and curriculum content are useful tools for building activists’ facilitation skills. We hope to secure future funding to deepen this aspect of the project, with a specific focus on the policy areas that participants are actively working on. Building connections between national policy discussions and participants lived experiences was equally effective. This illustrated different opportunities for workshop attendees to influence transformative socio-economic and governance discussions within local municipalities.
