Tuesday, 27 July 2021
Niren Tolsi is a freelance journalist whose interests include social justice, citizen mobilisation and state violence, protest, the Constitution and Constitutional Court, football and Test cricket.
The past week’s violence and looting – and the potential for an orchestrated race war in the province – have evoked haunting scenes from a bitter and bloody history.
So-called political solutions were offered, some subtle and others cynical and blatant, but the Constitutional Court’s ruling carried the day. This averted a ‘Marikana’ of South Africa’s soul.
In their ruling that Jacob Zuma is guilty of contempt of the Constitutional Court, the justices have honoured the letter and spirit of both the country’s founding document and their institution.
Ex-police commissioner Riah Phiyega hoped to quash findings including colluding in a cover-up and misleading the public about what happened at the platinum mine in 2012.
Testimony about the events of 13 August 2012, when five people died at Marikana, has provided new details of the police’s incompetent handling of the striking mineworker situation.
Who ordered tear gas and stun grenades to be fired at striking mineworkers, which led to five dead in a skirmish at Marikana in 2012? Rarely has the SA justice system been more lethargic.
The family members of mineworkers killed during the Marikana massacre in 2012 have yet to see a police officer held to account, and police testimony thus far appears unclear.
The South African activist and man of letters used language as a weapon to defend the marginalised and reflect upon the people, places and culture that defined him.
Many activists who were at the forefront of the fight against apartheid are not household names. Mokoape too. Yet, alongside Sobukwe and Biko, he fought. And only death stopped him.
Events of the past week have proven that the Zondo commission investigating state capture cannot conclude its work without former president Jacob Zuma’s honest testimony.
Curators and directors of South African and international film festivals speak about creating platforms for diverse voices while remaining committed to gender equality.
The icon who died on 25 November 2020 was more than just the greatest footballer of all time. From Argentina to Palestine he represented the experiences of the outsider, the oppressed.
The former president’s escapades at the commission of inquiry into state capture are a far cry from Nelson Mandela’s response when summonsed to testify in the high court.
With the renowned advocate’s death on 9 September, South Africa has lost a man of immense morality and a tireless campaigner for the downtrodden and the traumatised.
A film about the human rights lawyer from Cala, free to watch online during the Encounters Documentary Festival, chronicles the deep sense of justice that shaped his life.
The lawyer, whose sense of justice stayed with him till his death, was an unassuming but essential part of South Africa’s ongoing struggle for equality – and he never forgot his roots.
The reaction to Lungisani Ngidi’s call for CSA to acknowledge that black lives matter was unsurprising. The sport still has racist elements in its midst, including beneficiaries of apartheid.
The past, present and future collided powerfully at this year’s National Arts Festival, which bore the signature of our times as subjugated voices took centre stage.
Near Makhanda is a cricket pitch with claims to being the oldest in the country. Watered by blood and trauma, rolled with frontier nostalgia and contemporary paranoia, how does it play?
Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s founding member, who died this week, took his music from hostel rooftops to music’s grandest theatres and, now, to the skies.
From tales of good demons to the quirks of bunny chow fillings and ordering beef in Bangalore, there are many ways to stick it to the Brahmins and the BJP in India.