Popular Politics
About
The Popular Politics programme at SWOP considers the popular and the political broadly. Popular Politics covers work on protests, the movement landscape, the shaping of political alternatives, representative politics and democracy. The programme has covered three main projects over the last five years; Movement Landscapes – focusing on deepening this concept through the study of cycles of protest since 1994 – , Mapping the Fault-lines in the Rising South – that looks at popular politics in the BRICS countries – , and Contentious Democracy – looking at the relationship between protest, electoral politics and democracy.
People
Langelihle Nyuswa
Her research focuses on the unrest that unfolded in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in July 2021, looking specifically at the events in Vosloorus, Gauteng. Masego has experience
Masego Mafata
Her research focuses on the unrest that unfolded in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in July 2021, looking specifically at the events in Vosloorus, Gauteng. Masego has experience
Lindiwe Malindi
Lindiwe Malindi is a PhD student based in the Department of Sociology at Wits. She is interested in questions of subjectivity and relationality, futurity, labour/work, language and
Karl von Holdt
Karl von Holdt is a professor at the Society Work and Politics Institute. His current research interests include popular politics, movements, violence, the political economy of cor
Tasneem Essop
Tasneem Essop is a researcher at SWOP, where she has been based since 2017. She works on the Popular Politics programme where she has conducted research on community protests as we
Langelihle Nwusywa
Langelihle Nyuswa is a Labour, economic and development sociology masters student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where she currently resides. She was born
Masego Mafata
Placeholder for Masego Mafata (student, popular politics)
Projects
Re-membering Movements
This year, 2025, SWOP will be hosting and facilitating a project on Re-membering Movements.
Popular Politics in the BRICS – Mapping the Fault-lines
The Mapping the Fault Lines project investigates both popular and social mobilisations from below and the nature of their interaction with authorities and elites in each of the BRI
Popular Politics in South Africa
The work on South Africa aims to understand the complexities of democracy since 1994 through research on different cycles of protest undertaken by social and community movements; a
Events
Re-membering the Anti-Privatisation Forum
Please see invitation as below to this Special Dialogue on the Anti-Privatisation Forum.
Re-membering Movements
This year, 2025, SWOP will be hosting and facilitating a project on Re-membering Movements.
Re-membering Fees Must Fall: Final Session
Re-membering Fees Must Fall - final session and a sonic remembrance by iPhupho L’ka Biko on the 27th of September
Re-membering Fees Must Fall: Session 3 and 4
Join us for the next two sessions of our Re-membering Fees Must Fall programme, 30 August, 10am.
Re-membering Fees Must Fall: Opening Session
Join us for the opening session of our Re-membering Fees Must Fall programme.
SWOP Lunch Break: After the rainbow: South Africa’s interregnum through Brazil’s lens
SWOP Lunch Break: After the rainbow. South Africa's interregnum through Brazil's lens with Fabio Luis
The Price of Solidarity (part of the Why Germany series)
Thinking transhistorically across anti-colonial, anti-war and anti-apartheid solidarity movements: Noor Nieftagodien, Ulrike Kistner, Jo Bluen and Bettina Malcomess.
Re-membering Politics — a discussion with Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos and Rama Salla Dieng
SWOP invites you to a seminar on the 22nd of May, presented by Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos and Rama Salla Dieng, as part of the Re-membering Politics programme.
The art of politics…the politics of art – silkscreen workshop and discussion on democracy
What makes Politics today? An election? And what makes an election? A cross on a ballot? A vote to be counted? To be counted as being … Political? Being politically?
