How Toni Morrison can help us fight xenophobia
Xenophobia is festering in South Africa, stoked by the actions of the state itself. How do we stop violence against migrants? The thoughts and words of the late Toni Morrison can help.
Stories by: New Frame
Time for the ANC to pay its debt to history
Alexandra, Kliptown and Sharpeville – three names that ring with resistance and pride in South African liberation history. Yet despite their historical importance, these are neglected places in 2019.
Boris Johnson, the logical outcome of a long history of liberal racism
Although it is in crisis, liberalism has attained its logical destiny. More than ever, it is a system that benefits the privileged few at the cost and exclusion of the many.
South Africa must shed its illusions
South Africans must set aside the fantasy of exceptionalism that assumes that the country is something more than an ordinary place, and face the hard realities of our past and present.
Militarisation is no solution to the crisis of Cape gang wars
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.
Political killings on the rise in Port Elizabeth
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.
We must resist death-dealing borders
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.
Resistance and repression in Sudan
As repression rains down on a courageous popular struggle in Sudan international solidarity is an urgent imperative.
ANC gridlock blocks progress
The stalemate in the ANC between the Ramaphosa and Magashule factions is keeping South Africa in its spiral of racialised impoverishment.
New Cabinet is the sun setting on a progressive ANC
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.
Populism isn’t that popular in South Africa
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.
The crisis in local government
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.
Democracy exceeds electoral politics
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.
Now is the time for an emancipatory alternative
South Africa needs to develop a viable route towards a genuinely democratic and egalitarian society. Cyril Ramaphosa does not offer a meaningful alternative.
State action to deregister Amcu is undemocratic
Despite the questionable internal democratic practices of the mineworkers’ union, state attempts to deregister it can be ascribed only to political motives.
Hold the democratic line
In a true democracy, popular democratic action would be respected and regarded as legitimate and everyone would have the right to engage freely and safely in public debate.
Black footballers alone in fighting against racism
The authorities have failed black footballers, who are racially abused in numerous stadiums across Europe. This is why they will have to take matters into their own hands.
Popular solidarity is an urgent imperative
The state is separating the South African-born from migrants born elsewhere in Africa. Such exclusion and xenophobia can be fought only by cultivating horizontal forms of solidarity.
Political assassinations: A call to action
Legal repercussions for those accused of political murders are a ray of democratic hope after years of escalating assassinations, mostly carried out with impunity.
Taking Joburg from division to inclusion
South Africa’s biggest city stretches over the horizons, instead of into the skies above it. New policies offer part of the solution to this apartheid hangover.
Act against trolling, sexual harassment and abuse
Across the planet social media has been effectively exploited by the new set of authoritarian and often demagogic political leaders on the far right. Fake news is one important aspect of this.