
Murder most foul
Political killings have become an all too common tool of control in South Africa. It is essential that this grim reality is recognised and opposed.
Political killings have become an all too common tool of control in South Africa. It is essential that this grim reality is recognised and opposed.
As political killings continue in the city, claiming the lives of activists exposing ANC rot and failures, serious questions need to be asked of our democratic commitments.
Previously, millions of people were mobilised in the hope of a better future on May Day. Now, amid mass unemployment and the collapse of an emancipatory vision, that optimism is absent.
The ANC’s repeated failures to manage public money with integrity and social purpose are not the only cause for concern as relief efforts get under way in Durban.
The floods that have wreaked havoc in the shacklands of Durban are another searing indictment of the social abandonment of the majority by a predatory political elite.
The widening separation between the nationalist imagination and emancipatory hopes is turning the former into an alibi for increasingly dangerous forms of reactionary politics.
As xenophobic mobilisation escalates, democracy appears increasingly fragile. A new vision of emancipation rooted in a politics of solidarity is needed now more than ever.
Some tough decisions need to be made if football is to thrive as an industry in South Africa, starting with putting fans front and centre.
Powerful actors in the South African public sphere assume that Western domination of the world is something virtuous, something to be uncritically defended. It is a deeply flawed world view.
The scale and intensity of the repression against popular dissent in Durban is staggering. If left unchallenged it will, in time, arrive in the suburbs.
The invasion of Ukraine must be opposed. But war cannot be effectively opposed by presenting the most dangerous and violent force on the planet as a benevolent guarantor of order.
Tensions are rising as negotiations fail to progress. In the absence of a national emancipatory vision and amid an escalating social crisis, violence is tightening its hold.
Punishing impoverished and working-class residents for their inability to pay for electricity is unjust and immoral, especially when wealthy debtors have been getting a free ride for years.
The president veered sharply towards a pro-business position in his state of the nation address, moving against the demands of the largest organisations of the working class.
As we seek to gauge the full significance of the Zondo commission’s second report, a critical question arises: Where do we go from here?
Football cannot cure all ills. Fans and spectators need to take back control of the narrative around matches and expose those who would manipulate crowds for political and personal gain.
The party’s reckless descent into xenophobic politics is an alarming development. Building a counter-politics of solidarity is essential.
When the kleptocrats gun for the Constitution and judiciary, they cynically dress their wholly destructive desire for elite impunity in the language of general emancipation.
The 2021 Afcon has generated the same old voices expressing the same old reluctance to release their African players for the continental showpiece. The time for tolerating this disdainful treatment is over.
As our social crisis escalates year after year, we are perilously close to an entirely unviable situation. There is a way out, but it can only be built in the realm of the popular.
Neither the kleptocrats nor the liberals offer a viable or a just way forward. But we should not be fooled into thinking they are our only choices.