Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the interplay between urban and rural influences in the consciousness and self-imagination of Pan Africanist youth formations.

Paper long abstract:

At Marikana in 2012 we saw migrants crouched on a hill cloaked in blankets that concealed pangas and sticks. They were preparing to face the might of the South African police. It was a startling image which was projected across the world, as they fell to police bullets. Their bodily dispositions and the cultural orientations seemed strangely archaic, like footage from an old movie reel from yesteryear, something out of the historical archive of 1960 Mpondo, or earlier moments of African primary resistance.

So what is the relationship then between the urban and the rural in Africanist politics, identity and cultural formation in South African cities? Are we right to assume that ANC- aligned formations have embraced progressive modernist politics and identities, while Africanists have generally turned back to their rural and traditional roots, as the migrants at Marikana did, as a cultural compass and source of strength, inspiration and imagination of freedom. This paper explores the complex issues in the formation of Africanist urban politics in South Africa. I focused particularly on what I call "cowboy revolutionaries", youth who spent their days in bioscopes watching westerns and in their township shacks plotting a revolution to overthrow the South African state. To understand the connections between leisure and politics, consciousness and social action it is fundamental to reflect on the question of "encounter" and "distanciation" in the urban setting.