South Africans are deeply disturbed by the character assassination and threats levelled against Leila Khaled, an icon of anti-colonial struggle, writes South African human rights activist, Salim Vally.
Johannesburg
Patrick Bond and Mary Galvin report on the recent catastrophic floods in Durban, which have exposed the Cyril Ramaphosa government’s criminal negligence and failure to take action on climate change.
Climate Justice puts the people most affected by the crisis at the centre of the solution. Health Justice must do the same, argues Rehad Desai.
Opponents of the Xolobeni titanium mining project on South Africa's Wild Coast have frequently been victims of intimidation and assault, reports Hali Healy. Most incidents go unreported out of fear of retribution.
Right from the start, agreements and plans for the development of COVID-19 vaccines were going to privilege a profit-generating and market-based approach, writes Dale McKinley.
Pandemics have their roots in environmental change and ecosystem disturbances. Understanding their foundational causes can provide fertile ground for the systemic changes we so desperately need, writes Dale McKinley.
The World Social Forum’s “Thematic Forum on Mining and Extractivism” convened from November 12-15 here in Johannesburg, just after the Southern Africa People’s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations.
The World Social Forum’s “Thematic Forum on Mining and Extractivism” convened from November 12-15 here in Johannesburg, just after the Southern Africa People’s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations.
Last week a conceptual barrier carefully constructed by South Africa’s elites since 2015 was suddenly cracked at the University of the Witwatersrand Great Hall, by two of the country’s leading economic personalities: Pravin Gordhan, who served as a pro-business finance minister for seven years until being sacked in March, and super-consultant Iraj Abedian, who in 1996 co-authored the country’s post-apartheid structural adjustment programme. Two more solid bourgeois representatives would be hard to find.
It is arguably the most important political development of South Africa’s post-1994 era. In the early hours of November 8, South Africa’s largest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), was expelled from South Africa’s largest union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
The political significance of NUMSA’s expulsion derives from three key, interrelated areas of impact.
ANC-led alliance
The Anti-Privatisation Forum — an organisation that unites trade unions, township residents' groups, left-wing parties, anarchists and social justice activists — has forthrightly rejected the South African government's plan to privatise the country's electricity utility, Eskom.