COSATU
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South Africa: Blame for May Day’s bare whimper
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. Continue reading
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SA — still awaiting a workers’ party By Terry Bell
One interesting result of South Africa’s May 8 national and provincial poll was the effective demolition of an enduring myth, beloved of many bosses and union-bashing free marketeers: that union bosses call the shots and members blindly follow. This is a claim trotted out at the time of almost every major strike. Continue reading
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South Africa: What about the workers? By Terry Bell
While there has been much media debate about what “black middle-class” voters will do today, there has been nothing about where the votes of unionised workers may go as South Africa completes its sixth non-racial election. This is perhaps because it is widely assumed that, in terms of labour voting patterns, nothing much has changed… Continue reading
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Cyril Ramaphosa relaunches neo-liberalism By Prof. Patrick Bond
Cyril Ramaphosa’s soft-coup firing of Jacob Zuma from the South African presidency on 14 February 2018, after nearly nine years in power and a bitter struggle to avoid resignation, has contradictory local and geopolitical implications. Amidst general applause at seeing Zuma’s rear end in the society, immediately concerns arise about the new president’s neo-liberal, pro-corporate… Continue reading
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Will New ANC President Ramaphosa Bring Real Change to South Africa?
Cyril Ramaphosa, who was recently elected to head South Africa’s ANC, is closely associated with major economic interests in South Africa, such as the Lonmin Mining Company, and is thus unlikely to bring about real change says Patrick Bond (inc. transcript) Continue reading
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Anti-ANC vote campaign initiated in South African general election By Thabo Seseane Jr.
Anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu has added his voice to a campaign championed by senior members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to get the electorate to vote against the party in the May 7 general election. Continue reading
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South Africa: COSATU: In the eye of the storm By Jay Naidoo
All these years later, I still sometimes go back to the intoxicating days of 1985. The workers of South Africa had a dream. They dreamt that one day we would walk out of the cold night of apartheid’s tyranny. They dreamt that the sun would shine down on the new democracy. We dreamt of a… Continue reading
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Numsa's Big Fat United Front: social movements, mineworkers welcome – maybe even the EFF By Ranjeni Munusamy
So it has finally happened. The militant metalworkers union Numsa is now actively campaigning against the ANC government and has issued a call to South Africans to join its “United Front” – a mass movement for socialism and radical economic change. Numsa will soon be hosting provincial consultative conferences to bring together left-leaning organisations and… Continue reading
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Mandela Eulogies: Reinventing His Disturbing Legacy By Stephen Lendman
They infest world governments. They run America. They inflict enormous harm. Mandela exceeded the worst of South African apartheid injustice. He deserves condemnation, not praise. White supremacy remains entrenched. Extreme poverty, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, malnutrition, and lack of basic services for black South Africans are at shockingly high levels. They’re much worse than under apartheid. Continue reading
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South Africa: “Manifestos and Reality”
I speak to you today with a powerful and united mandate from 341,150 metalworkers. They made their views extremely clear in our workers’ parliament in December last year – the parliament we called the NUMSA Special National Congress. In that parliament there was vigorous debate. Every delegate knew that they would have to account to… Continue reading
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South Africa: Forging a New Movement – Numsa and the Shift in SA Politics By Leonard Gentle
The decision of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) to cut ties with the African National Congress (ANC) has received poor analysis. Comment has tended to focus on the possibility of a new political party in 2019 or whether all this means that Zwelenzima Vavi will get his job back. As… Continue reading
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Red tide rising: Numsa in attack mode By Ranjeni Munusamy
Elections 2014 will come and go, the ANC will be top of the pops, and a new bag of Liquorice Allsorts will fill the parliamentary benches. The great shake-up in South African politics looks set to happen after the elections – and metalworkers’ union Numsa is likely to play a big role in the new… Continue reading
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The African National Congress: The Rise and Tragic Fall of a Revolutionary Movement By Anthony Monteiro
Black “rule” in South Africa is illusory. “White supremacy without the obvious hand of white people is the form of social and political control, which replaces legal apartheid.” The revolution was derailed. “The road from the Freedom Charter, to the Morogoro Consultative Conference, to the 1994 elections, to the murder of 34 miners at Mirikana… Continue reading
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Democratic Left Front: Together, a new South Africa is possible
There is a spectre haunting the ruling class and government in South Africa: it is the radical anti-capitalist movement that the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has given birth to at its historic special national congress held last week. The Democratic Left Front (DLF) congratulates NUMSA for this congress that united metalworkers… Continue reading
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South Africa Under the ANC: A Flawed Freedom By John S. Saul
Has the time come when it might be possible to move past the well-deserved praise-song phase of the marking of Nelson Mandela’s death in order to strike a more careful balance sheet on the meaning for present-day South Africa of his storied career? Continue reading
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How the ANC Sold Out South Africa’s Poor By Ronnie Kasrils
South Africa’s young people today are known as the Born Free generation. They enjoy the dignity of being born into a democratic society with the right to vote and choose who will govern. But modern South Africa is not a perfect society. Full equality – social and economic – does not exist, and control of… 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
The New Dark Age 