Big Tsek: Joburg’s Private Surveillance Network and our Public Deficit

INTRODUCTIONFor the Ruth First Fellowships, of which African Studies is a sponsor, we seek new, younger voices to address pressing, current issue in tradition First’s activist research. In 2021, asked applications for Fellowship speak following key question: What do radical changes public sphere enabled by power Big Tech mean sphere? We hoped tease out meaning, paradoxes and contradictions impact big technology companies their instruments with regard sphere.Murray Hunter responded proposal produce an essay – part narrative, analysis meditating on why private giant seem largely be treated as more palatable benign than state power. And, equally importantly, what need about it. At hybrid event hosted live at The Forge Braamfontein online, delivered 2021 Memorial Lecture January 2022, keynote Nanjala Nyabola, writer, political analyst, based Nairobi, Kenya.