The Quintessential Freedom Fighter: It’s Time to Reclaim the Meaning of ‘cadre’

Dec 3, 2021

The CHR is pleased to share “The Quintessential Freedom Fighter,” written by CHR Research Associate Seelan Naidoo and published in Daily Maverick.

The quintessential Freedom Fighter: It’s time to reclaim the meaning of ‘cadre’

At the height of struggles against fascism, it was those who called themselves partisans who fought and died for freedom in Spain, France and many other countries. At the height of apartheid in the 1980s, it was the cadres who were on the frontlines of an intensified struggle for freedom in South Africa. It is time to reclaim the meaning of the word.

Seelan Naidoo is a research associate of the Centre for Humanities Research. He works at the intersection of organisation studies and philosophy and pursues questions of organisation, organisations, organising, and the organised. He has a PhD from the University of St Gallen (HSG). He has been a lecturer at Stellenbosch University, a research supervisor at the University of South Africa, head course tutor for the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a visiting researcher at the Centre for Humanities Research (UWC) and at the department of the philosophy of management and organisation (PMO) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.