The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Leonard Gentle -
Over the past weekend, the striking mineworkers of Amplats gathered at a mass rally in Rustenburg and howled their defiance of a series of ultimatums issued by the company. At De Doorns, farm workers are on a wildcat strike - the latest of a series that has become a feature of the South African landscape over the last three months, knocking Mangaung off the front pages. Something is stirring from below…and it is time we got beyond the fear and trepidation that have become the stock...
Richard Pithouse -
Only the crudest propagandist would dare to deny that the ANC is an increasingly predatory and authoritarian excrescence on society rather than a democratic expression of society. It is equally clear that the party confronts what is arguably the highest rate of sustained popular protest anywhere in the world, has overwhelmingly lost the support of the intelligentsia and is increasingly resorting to violence and other forms of repression to contain dissent.
COSATU, unlike the SACP which...
Leonard Gentle -
In the run up to the September COSATU Congress, the media began to float the story that Zwelenzima Vavi’s position as General Secretary was going to be challenged by NUM, NEHAWU and SADTU because of his perceived opposition to Jacob Zuma. A subtext to this was the idea of the congress as some kind of debating forum where workers would reflect seriously on critical issues facing the labour movement and where there would be the rough and tumble of debate and contestation.
But two...
The shadow of the Marikana massacre hangs over Cosatu as its 11th Elective Congress takes place a month after the police brutally killed more than 34 miners who worked at Lonmin mine. Ighsaan Schroeder, Director of the Casual Workers Advice Office talks about the meaning of Marikana for Cosatu and trade unions in general. This interview was recorded on September, 17, the opening day of Cosatu's 2012 congress.
Schroeder argues that Marikana signals the death rattle for Cosatu. He is not...
Richard Pithouse -
In her recently republished autobiography Emma Mashinini, the grand old lady of the trade union movement, ascribes the deep roots of her steadfast political commitment to a desire to assert that: “I am human. I exist. I am a complete person.”
This may strike some people as naïve in a country where many of the discourses contending for influence in the elite public sphere are frequently weighed down with the dead hand of stolid jargon, mediated through everything from...
Leonard Gentle -
The story of Marikana runs much deeper than an inter-union spat. After the horror of watching people being massacred on television, Marikana now joins the ranks of the Bulhoek and Sharpeville massacres, and the images evoked by Hugh Masekela’s Stimela, in the odious history of a method of capital accumulation based on violence.
But this is not just a story of violence and grief. To speak in those terms only would be to add the same insult to the injury perpetrated by the police on...
