11 May, 2021 — Terry Bell Writes
May Day 2021 has come and gone, without much of a whimper, let alone a bang. And it is the novel coronavirus that is only marginally responsible. Because there would not have been much of a bang even without the pandemic.
7 May, 2021 — Peoples Dispatch
George Mqapheli Bonono, the deputy president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, was arrested on May 4. The movement maintains that it is a politically motivated attempt by the police to discredit the organization at the behest of the ruling ANC
George Mqapheli Bonono addressing the AbM’s heritage week celebration in 2019. Photo : New Frame
13 April 2021 — NetPol
PHOTO: Splento
Since the confrontational crackdown by the Metropolitan Police on women holding a vigil for Sarah Everard at Clapham Common on 13 March, a growing movement has condemned police intolerance to the right to protest and warned this will only become worse with the passing of the government’s 307 page Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
So what exactly does the bill propose?
Continue reading
25 February 2021 — Peoples Dispatch
Photo : SAFTU via Twitter
2 September 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
Click image to download Charter (pdf)
“As Africans, we live together on a vast and beautiful continent where the human story began. All of us are linked to the first human who walked upright, dreamed, thought and co-existed with plants, animals, rivers, oceans and forests. Today this common humanity and its future is in serious danger. South Africa cannot ignore this challenge. The continued use of oil, gas and coal to power our economy and society is making our world unlivable for all life.”
20 August 2020 — Tricontinental
Thami Mnyele (South Africa), untitled, pen and ink, Gaborone, Botswana, 1984.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Young children marvel at an obvious contradiction in capitalist societies: why do we have shops filled with food, and yet see hungry people on the streets? It is a question of enormous significance; but in time the question dissipates into the fog of moral ambivalence, as various explanations are used to obfuscate the clarity of the youthful mind. The most bewildering explanation is that hungry people cannot eat because they have no money, and somehow this absence of money – the most mystical of all human creations – is enough reason to let people starve. Since there is ample food to eat, and since a lot of people do not have enough money to buy food, the food must be protected from the hungry people.
20 November 2020 — Youtube
SHAYA! is Documentary about Amapiano music, lifestyle and culture in South Africa. The inside story about the culture and how certain things became the way they are. This 26 minute documentary features: Kabza De Small, MFR Souls,Tall Arse Tee, DJ Jaivane, JazziDisciples, Papers 707, Dimpie Dimpopo, Mbali Sibeko, Dinho Cafe, Kwiish SA, Pencil, Stokie and more…
Continue reading
4 August 2020 — Tricontinental
An Anti-Eviction Campaign activist gazes at the construction site of the Delft transit camp, a ‘temporary relocation area’ for people evicted from shacks closer to the city. March 2009.
Kerry Ryan Chance
9 July 2020 — Mail & Guardian
Oliver Reginald Tambo
On October 29 1985, Oliver Tambo gave a speech at Chatham House in London. In it, he urged a reluctant British government to support the fight against apartheid — and expertly dissects the hypocrisy in not doing so. For decades, the speech was buried in the Chatham House archives. For its centennial celebrations, the think tank has made the speech publicly available for the first time, in partnership with the Oliver & Adelaide Tambo Foundation. Tambo’s daughter, Nomatemba Tambo, will be discussing the speech on a Chatham House webinar on Friday, July 10. This is an edited version of Tambo’s address.
1 July 2020 —The New Dark Age
George Hallet, one of a group of immensely talented (and, I might add, brave) South African photographers who documented Apartheid, and post-Apartheid South Africa, died today after a long illness. In 2012 George came to London for a brief stayover, on his way to somewhere else and we hung out for a short time. I took him to St. Paul’s in the City, where the Occupy movement had set up a tent city in the square in front of the Cathedral.
A beautiful human being and thankfully, he has left us an indelible and moving record of the strength of the human spirit.
Hamba Kahle, George
George outside St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Occupy 2012
Photo by Madelene Cronje/New Frame
By: Raymond Suttner
As we mark the anniversary of the June 16 1976 uprising, many young people are experiencing hunger and there is widespread violence emanating from security forces. While it is understandable that many problems of the “state of disaster” could not be anticipated, there is an element of indifference that is cause for disquiet.
16 April 2020 — Solidarity
Patrick Bond
Shoppers queue outside a grocery store during a 21 day nationwide lockdown, aimed at limiting the spread of Covid-19 in Soweto, South Africa, March 30, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko)
It’s hard to imagine a more worrying place to watch Covid-19 hit a society than Johannesburg, South Africa.
This is, after all, the world’s most unequal major city, serving as economic headquarters for the most unequal country. In spite of a poverty rate (at $2.80/day) of more than 60 percent and a national unemployment rate of 40 percent before the current crisis, the labor movement is now considered (by corporate elites) to be the world’s third most militant (although its political divisions are profound). And the capitalist class is rated (by PwC) as the world’s third most crime-prone and corruption-riddled.
