South Africa
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Nelson Mandela dies
6 December 2013 South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has confirmed the death of Nelson Mandela. In a special press conference, he said the 95-year-old had “passed away peacefully”. Hamba Kahle Madiba Continue reading
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South Africa: Tongaat Mall Collapse – the Boomerang Effect By Richard Pithouse
In 1961 Frantz Fanon described the colonial world as “cut in two”, divided into “compartments …. inhabited by different species”. For Fanon the creation of different kinds of spaces was central to the creation of different types of people and their ordering in a hierarchy of value. Almost twenty years after apartheid our society remains… Continue reading
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Terry Bell's 'Right to Fight' download
Now available for download (as pdfs – below) is this selection of 17 years of Inside Labour columns, illustrated by 19 Zapiro cartoons that summarise developments between the watershed years of 1996 (the SA Constitution) and 2012 (Marikana). [Brilliant cartoons by Zapiro. WB] Continue reading
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Terry Bell’s ‘Right to Fight’ download
Now available for download (as pdfs – below) is this selection of 17 years of Inside Labour columns, illustrated by 19 Zapiro cartoons that summarise developments between the watershed years of 1996 (the SA Constitution) and 2012 (Marikana). [Brilliant cartoons by Zapiro. WB] Continue reading
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Monsanto, Pioneer, Cargill, Tiger Brands: GM Maize Cartels Gorge Profits on South Africa’s Poor
The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) has today released its new research report titled ‘GM Maize: Lessons For Africa-Cartels, Collusion And Control Of South Africa’s Staple Food’ showing how a select group of companies, including Tiger Brands, Pioneer and Premier Foods who have previously fixed the price of bread and maize meal, commandeer the entire… Continue reading
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Remembering Thomas Sankara, the EFF’s muse By Rebecca Davis
Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters have invoked the legacy of former Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara as a model of governance they apparently wish to emulate. And indeed, Sankara remains one of the least-remembered, but most creative and principled, of post-independence African leaders. Malema and his fighters might particularly like to remember Sankara’s commitment to… Continue reading
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Where do broken ANC hearts go? By By Ranjeni Munusamy
For people who have been in the ANC from during the liberation struggle, it is no easy choice to leave the organisation, no matter how disappointed and angry they get with it. But as the 2014 election approaches, there might be a whole batch of ANC leaders, members and supporters wondering what they will do… Continue reading
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South Africa: Sectarian shame of the SACP By Terry Bell
Shortly after the column below was written and blogged, the SA Communist Party issued its statement on Marikana that reveals the deep and dangerous sectarianism of this organisation. Here, I feel, is exposed one of the roots of the problem. I include here the final paragraph of that statement as an introduction to a repeat… Continue reading
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Video: South Africa's Largest Union on the Verge of Major Split
Patrick Bond: South Africa trade unions become magnets for capital as an ideological confict masked as a sex scandal threatens to fracture union behind the one-year-old massacre (inc. transcript) Continue reading
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South Africa: Licenced to Kill By Richard Pithouse
There is no properly researched body count but a quick internet search throws up media reports of nearly forty people having being killed by the police during protests since the killing started on a university campus in Durban in 2000. The Tatane murder became so well known for the simple reason that it was captured… Continue reading
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Nelson Mandela’s Final Battle: Dying With Dignity By Danny Schechter
As thousands of South Africans hold prayer sessions outside “his” Pretoria hospital, and with the world media still on an escalating ‘death watch,’ inside, there’s been a clash among and between family members, government officials trying to control and spin health information, and, even, doctors who have been cited, wrongly, in court battles about his… Continue reading
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Mandela's greatness may be secured, but not his legacy By John Pilger
When I reported from South Africa in the 1960s, the Nazi admirer Johannes Vorster occupied the prime minister’s residence in Cape Town. Thirty years later, as I waited at the gates, it was as if the guards had not changed. White Afrikaners checked my ID with the confidence of men in secure work. One carried… Continue reading
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Obama in South Africa: Political and Media Disconnect By Michael Shaw
If anything, we need to understand these protest images in S. Africa more in terms of current and similar photos from Brazil and Turkey. The public, in other words, is more sensitive these days to when they’re being patronized. Continue reading
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Obama in South Africa: Washington tells Pretoria how to ‘play the game’ in Africa By Patrick Bond
US President Barack Barack Obama’s weekend trip to South Africa may have the desired effect of slowing the geopolitical realignment of Pretoria to the Brazil-India-Russia-China-South Africa (BRICS) axis. That shift to BRICS has not, however, meant deviation from the hosts’ political philosophy, best understood as “talk left, walk right” since it mixes anti-imperialist rhetoric with… Continue reading
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Obama in South Africa: Washington tells Pretoria how to ‘play the game’ in Africa By Patrick Bond
US President Barack Barack Obama’s weekend trip to South Africa may have the desired effect of slowing the geopolitical realignment of Pretoria to the Brazil-India-Russia-China-South Africa (BRICS) axis. That shift to BRICS has not, however, meant deviation from the hosts’ political philosophy, best understood as “talk left, walk right” since it mixes anti-imperialist rhetoric with… Continue reading
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How the ANC's Faustian Pact Sold Out South Africa's Poorest By Ronnie Kasrils
A veteran of the South African freedom struggle and its Black-led government says the African National Congress’ soul “was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we ‘sold our people down the river.’” Continue reading
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South Africa: Since 1994, a massive wealth shift from already poor to the 'uber-rich' By Dale T. McKinley
Every time the annual South African season of wage negotiations is about to begin, as it is now, representatives of capital unleash a tsunami of propaganda about workers’ “high and unaffordable” wage demands. Dire warnings of destructive social unrest/conflict, high inflation rates, poor competitiveness and generalised economic devastation roll off their silver-lined tongues. Continue reading
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South Africa’s ‘sub-imperial’ seductions By Patrick Bond
Thanks are due to an odd man, the brutally frank Zambian vice-president Guy Scott who last week pronounced, “I dislike South Africa for the same reason that Latin Americans dislike the United States”. Thanks are also due to South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma for forcing a long-overdue debate, just as the World Economic Forum Africa… Continue reading
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Video: Unhinged: Surviving Joberg: The Complete Video
An irreverent documentary charting the love-hate relationship people have with Johannesburg – a hot-bed of hope, fear and opportunity. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 