Rick Turner was a South African academic and activist who rebelled against apartheid at the height of its power and was assassinated in 1978 when he was 32 years old, but his life and work are testimony to the power of philosophical thinking for humans everywhere. Turner chose to live freely in an unfree time and argued for a non-racial, socialist future in a context where this seemed unimaginable. This book considers Rick Turner's challenge that political theorising requires thinking in a utopian way. Turner's seminal book The Eye of the Needle: Towards a Participatory Democracy in South Africa laid out potent ideas on a radically different political and economic system. His demand was that we work to escape the limiting ideas of the present, carefully design a just future based on shared human values, and act to make it a reality, both politically and in our daily lives. The contributors to this volume engage critically with Turner's work on race relations, his relationship with Steve Biko, his views on religion, education and gender oppression, his model of participatory democracy, and his critique of poverty and economic inequality. It's an important contribution to contemporary thinking and activism.

Michael Onyebuchi Eze (Editor)
Michael Onyebuchi Eze is Research Associate and lectures in Philosophy at Leiden University.


Lawrence Hamilton (Editor)
Lawrence Hamilton is the Chair at the SA-UK Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.


Laurence Piper (Editor)
Laurence Piper is Professor of Political Science at the University of the Western Cape, and University West.


Gideon van Riet (Editor)
Gideon van Riet is Associate Professor in Political Studies at North-West University.