Remembering Thomas Sankara, the EFF’s muse By Rebecca Davis

5 November 2013 — Daily Maverick 

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 an austere personal lifestyle, and the total emancipation of women. By REBECCA DAVIS.

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South Africa’s ‘sub-imperial’ seductions By Patrick Bond

9 May 2013 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

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 summit opens in Cape Town: is Pretoria a destructive sub-imperialist power? Continue reading

BRICS: ‘Anti-imperialist’ or ‘sub-imperialist’? By Patrick Bond

20 March 2013 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

“We reaffirm the character of the ANC as a disciplined force of the left, a multi-class mass movement and an internationalist movement with an anti-imperialist outlook” — so said Jacob Zuma, orating to his masses at the year’s largest African National Congress celebration, in Durban on January 12, 2013.[1]

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Can't you hear the thunder? By Jay Naidoo

22 August 2012 01:09 — The Daily Maverick
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The headlines scream ‘Marikana Massacre’; ‘Killing Fields of Rustenburg’. Radio and TV Talk shows and social media all display the anger and expose the psyche of a nation badly wounded. The bloodiest security operation since the end of apartheid has left us shocked and asking what went wrong? The reality is, many things went wrong. Way too many things went wrong, for way too long now. 

Lonmin, the 'unacceptable face of capitalism' By Sipho Hlongwane

20 August 2012 — Daily Maverick

The company that preceded Lonmin was once dubbed ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ by a British prime minister. Tiny Rowland, man who turned the company into an international colossus, wore the slur happily. In the aftermath of the Marikana shootings, it seems like not much has changed since his day. By SIPHO HLONGWANE. Continue reading

South Africa: Lonmin's Killing Fields By Greg Nicolson

14 August 2012 — Daily Maverick

Background
Johannesburg — Two police officers were hacked to death at a Lonmin platinum mine on Monday, where workers have been protesting. Already at least seven people have been killed. The arrival of senior police commissioners at the scene appears futile in the latest instalment of a turf war over union power.