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Dr Tshepo Moloi co-edits new book on guerrilla radios

11 January 2021 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Supplied

Guerrilla Radios_Cover pages_web read more — The new book that Dr Tshepo Moloi has co-edited puts a spotlight on liberation struggle radios.

Dr Tshepo Moloi from the Qwaqwa Campus Department of History is the co-editor of a new book called Guerrilla Radios in Southern Africa: Broadcasters, Technology, Propaganda Wars, and the Armed Struggle.

This book is a collection of eleven essays on the histories of the radios attached to the armed wings of the liberation movements in the region. “This book is a shift from a parochial approach, which tended to analyse guerrilla radios within the framework of the nation state. It focuses on the experiences of the broadcasters and listeners during the era of the armed struggle. Using archival sources such as sound recordings of the guerrilla radio stations, together with interviews conducted with former broadcasters and listeners, the essays contained in this volume ask complex questions about the social histories of these stations,” said Dr Moloi.

Dr Moloi added that the essays explore the workings of propaganda and counter-propaganda and probe the effects that the radios had on the activists and supporters of the liberation movements – and, on the other hand, on the colonial counter-insurgency projects. They examine the relationships that these radios have forged at their multiple sites of operation in host countries, and also look at international solidarity and support, specifically for radio broadcasting initiatives.

Role played by guerrilla radio

“Our volume pushes the frontiers of knowledge production beyond exploration of broadcast content towards a more nuanced conception of radio as a medium formed by social and political processes. Guerrilla radio broadcasting, we argue, became a very powerful technology for disseminating insurgent propaganda messages of the liberation movements and for mobilising African workers, peasants, students and youth in the struggle against white minority domination in the entire region. From Angola to Mozambique, and from Zimbabwe to Namibia through to South Africa, the modern technology of radio has provided the liberation movements in exile with a platform for an aural or sonic presence among the followers of the liberation movements back home. It has become an effective instrument for propagating the ideologies of the liberation movements, as well as for countering the propaganda messages of the oppressive white minority regimes,” he added.

Conceptualisation of the book

He also revealed the thinking behind the book. “The concept arose from the realisation that despite the explosion of research on liberation struggles in Southern Africa, such as memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies of prominent leaders of the movements, as well as a scattering of (auto)biographies of the foot soldiers, there remained a dearth of studies on the media that the liberation movements employed, particularly radio.”

Other editors are Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi, a professor of History at Wits University and Prof Alda Romão Saúte Saíde from Pedagogic University in Maputo, Mozambique. The project was funded by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ (NIHSS) Catalytic Research Project.

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Extending new discoveries in the deep subsurface – UFS paper published in Nature Communications

2015-11-30

Scanning electron microscopy of some of the Eukarya recovered from two different mines. (a) Dochmiotrema sp. (Plathyelminthes), (b) A. hemprichi (Annelida), (c) Mylonchulus brachyurus (Nematoda), (d) Amphiascoides (Arthropoda). Scale bar, 50 µm (a,b), 100 µm (c), 20 µm (d).

Following the discovery of the first Eukarya in the deep subsurface (Nature, 2010) by a research group from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State (UFS) and their international collaborators, intense interest has developed in understanding the diversity of more complex organisms living in these extreme environments.

Prof Gaetan Borgonie from Extreme Life Isyensya, together with a group of UFS researchers, took this research further, resulting in a paper on this research released in Nature Communications – impact factor 11.47. This paper is an extension of the first reports of more complex life at great depths, and their abilities to survive these harsh conditions.

Ten authors from the UFS contributed with the array of expertise needed to define this discovery. The group was supported by staff from the different mining groups, long-term leading collaborators from the USA and Canada, and the idea specialist driver of the paper, Prof Borganie.

“After a sampling campaign that lasted more than two years, we identified that Platyhelminthes, Rotifera, Annelida and Arthropoda are thriving at 1.4 km depths in fissure water up to 12,000-years old in the South African mines of Driefontein and Kopanang,” said Prof Borgonie, who was appointed as associated researcher in the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology.

This paper really opens a “can of worms” so to speak. According to Prof Esta van Heerden from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the UFS they extended to define protozoa and fungi. “However, they are present in low numbers,” she said.

Characterisation of the different species reveals that many are opportunistic organisms. In house-adapted video equipment was used to film inside the fissure for the home of the organisms.

This is the first-known study to demonstrate the in situ distribution of biofilms on fissure rock faces using video documentation. Calculations suggest that food, not dissolved oxygen, is the limiting factor for population growth. The discovery of a group of complex multicellular organisms in the underground has important implications for the search for life on other planets in our solar system.

More articles

The strange beasts that live in solid rock deep underground
A microscopic ‘zoo’ is found deep, deep underground

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