Shameful complicity in the name of ‘human rights’
As eSwatini’s armed forces continue killing and crippling pro-democracy protesters and ordinary citizens, powerful actors muddy the waters.
Editorial
Defend journalists and media freedom in eSwatini
Journalists are censored through cruel and illegitimate detention, torture and the removal of means to disseminate information to citizens crying – and dying – for it.
Anti-intellectualism festers
The fiasco at the Judicial Service Commission shows that the anti-intellectualism of the kleptocrats retains a hold on important sites in public life.
Solidarity with the eKhenana land occupation
The eKhenana Occupation has received strong international support following abuse it has endured from the state, including the arrest of its leaders on false charges.
Democratic degeneration
South Africa’s once grand hopes have collapsed into pettiness, cynicism and a lack of emancipatory vision. Renewal can only come from a democratic reconfiguration of the popular.
Injustice stalks dissent
As three activists walked free after six months in jail, it was again clear that the ANC, in cahoots with the police and justice system, keeps grinding popular dissent against the rock of repression.
Not even the dead
Our history of violence accumulates into the present as time slips by, and taints the future too. There must be decisive action against all political murders, old and new alike.
Escalating Sinophobia in SA’s media
The recent eruption of Sinophobia in the national media has been a shameful illustration of the weakness of our public sphere. We need to do better.
Political assassinations must be stopped
The use of murder to advance political contestation, and the kleptocratic practices enabled by access or proximity to political office, must be brought to an end.
Vaccines are a collective asset for all humankind
Medical science has often been used as a tool of elite power mediated through class, race and gender. But it emerges from shared learning and should be owned in common and used for the public good.
Imperialism and its discontents
The United States has wreaked destruction across the planet and bringing an end to its reign of terror is urgent. But an organisation such as the Taliban offers only new forms of oppression.
Democracy must be radicalised if it is to endure
The hopes nurtured as apartheid fell have crashed repeatedly on the rocks of violent and authoritarian realities. Sustaining them will require a genuinely popular democratic project.
Hunger is the story of our time
Hunger continues to kill every day, around the world. This global failure to sustain humanity stems from the very nature of capitalism.
Stuck in the colonial mire
For as long as we treat some lives as disposable, we will not escape the colonial logic that continues to mutilate society and corrode possibilities for a just and viable future.
The politics of a basic income
With a basic income grant well and truly on the cards, the kind of grant South Africa might get is as important as whether we get it at all.
A future without illusion
For too long we have understood South Africa in terms of myth rather than history, fantasy rather than reality. Now we must take full measure of who and where we are.
The fire this time
It is unclear how the state will respond to the recent tumult in KwaZulu-Natal. Leadership will have to come from within society.
A moment of rupture
There can be no return to business as usual after the rapidly mutating rupture in recent days. What happens in the months and years to come is of critical import.
End game for Zuma and Mswati
Like the former South African president, the king of eSwatini is destined to fall from grace and power. But as the wheel of history turns, it is imperative to think about viable routes into a just future.
Oppression and resistance in eSwatini
Two New Frame journalists were swept up in the tumult in eSwatini. They are now safely across the border, but opposition to the dictatorship continues to face severe repression.
Law and riot, riot and law
The law has no absolute character and always reflects the balance of social forces at the time it was written. It is a terrain of struggle, not a replacement for struggle.