Thursday, 19 September 2019
The thousands of gang-related deaths on the Cape Flats are as much a result of the state neglecting its basic duties to its citizens as gangsters’ bullets and blades.
The Vietnamese people did the seemingly impossible in defeating the might of the United States. Venezuela is now battling a similar imperial onslaught, but will the country triumph?
True democracy requires the right to organise freely. But the scale of political assassinations, and the impunity with which they occur, seriously compromises democracy in South Africa.
Egypt’s darling Mohamed Salah, adored by millions at home and abroad, picked the wrong side to support when he defended a teammate accused by numerous women of sexual harassment.
Borders are not merely barriers to movement. As inscriptions of colonial projects and power, intended to spatialise race and racialise space, they must be contested and rethought.
Attacks on truck drivers are more than xenophobia, they are part of a political project to further personal agendas and create new centres of power amid a breakdown in trust in the rule of law.
With ties to big business that admits to gaining from disruption in the Middle East, key men in the US seem hellbent on regime change in Iran – using any and all means necessary.
Sporting bodies were united against Icasa’s proposed broadcasting rights amendments, which will affect their revenue and players. Some vowed to challenge the matter up to the highest court.
Doors have opened for the Timol, Simelane and Aggett families but doubts still linger about the National Prosecuting Authority’s behaviour and culpability.
As repression rains down on a courageous popular struggle in Sudan international solidarity is an urgent imperative.
US sanctions against Venezuela are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of citizens, constituting a breach of the fourth Geneva Convention’s definition of collective punishment.
Botswana’s decriminalising LGBTQIA+ sexual relations could undo entrenched beliefs that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’; now being black, queer and African are to be celebrated without fear.
The liberal democracy set up after apartheid is reverting to “tribalising” the rural poor in the form of two bills waiting to be made law.
The stalemate in the ANC between the Ramaphosa and Magashule factions is keeping South Africa in its spiral of racialised impoverishment.
With a xenophobe, an authoritarian, and an admirer of the Kagame dictatorship, the 2019 Cabinet offers no hope for a progressive resolution of our escalating social crisis.
The ANC has, again, appointed a minister of the arts with very little interest in the arts.
Remain-minded Brits turned to a new form of political protest involving milkshakes to express their feelings towards leave supporters standing as candidates in the EU parliamentary elections.
South Africa is not faced by the prospect of a populist government run by a far-right leadership. Nevertheless, the majority must brace itself for another cycle of economic devastation.
As the media speculates on the new Cabinet and about whether the president will be ousted by one or other faction, the crucial question goes unanswered. How to address the economy’s real weaknesses?
President Ramaphosa has promised a ‘new dawn’ with an emphasis on improving the quality of public services to achieve transformation. But there will be pushback from within his own party, and particularly at the local government level, already mired in a systemic crisis.
Now that the votes have been counted, the poisonous idea that money and property are more important than people must be countered by popular democratic organisation – the most effective way to rein in liberal hubris.