South Africa: dying for change In early 2012, Ayanda Kota, leader of the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) in the Eastern Cape, made his way to the Grahamstown police station. As an activist, he’d had an eventful year – to the extent that he had won some local fame, featuring in reports in Grocotts Mail, a community newspaper. His visit to the station that day, however, had nothing to do with his public life; he was there to attend to a personal matter. Kota had misplaced some books he’d borrowed from Rhodes University sociology lecturer Dr Claudia Martinez-Mullen, who…
