New Frame steps back
After close to four years of intense work we must now reimagine how journalism can and should be done in a moment when the coils of social and political crisis squeeze ever more tightly.
Stories by: New Frame
Behind Day Zero is a metro that has failed to care
When the taps run dry in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, it will be the failures of the political class that plunge more than one million residents into disaster.
From courage to collapse
The disintegration of the ANC’s integrity and its capacity to drive a social project is part of a wider crumbling of progressive politics.
Abandon all hope that the ANC cares for us
With a government that fails to provide the much-needed relief available to a population that is increasingly desperate, the onus is on ordinary South Africans to hold the country together.
Decent and dignified healthcare for all
The proposed National Health Insurance scheme is, in principle, an excellent initiative. The problem is that no one in their right mind trusts the ANC to implement it.
Food sovereignty is a bulwark against desperation
As food prices and the cost of living soar globally, the crisis of hunger in South Africa is rapidly escalating. Action must be taken, and swiftly.
Let them have a ridiculously large luminous flag
The ANC is so out of touch with reality that it is now firmly ensconced in the realm of farce. The need for credible alternatives could hardly be more urgent.
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.
Another assassination in Durban
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.
Marking Workers’ Day in dispiriting times
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.
Rebuilding Durban will require the state and society
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.
Devastation 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 imperative of political hope
The widening separation between the nationalist imagination and emancipatory hopes is turning the former into an alibi for increasingly dangerous forms of reactionary politics.
Fascism spoken softly does not soften its blows
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.
SA football will die if things don’t change
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.
The liberal order never loved us
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 slow Marikana
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 sorrow of war
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.
Clover strike takes on shades of Marikana
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.
Power to the people
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.
An admission of failure, a turn to the Right
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.