The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Steven Friedman -
If that well-worn cliché about never wasting a crisis applies to anything, it is the labour movement today. Contrary to some current rhetoric, the movement does not need to return to what it was: it needs to become something different.
Deepening tensions in Cosatu, which saw the departure of the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) and now general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, have inevitably conjured up nostalgia for its past. As the Cosatu central executive abandons internal...
Steven Friedman -
Why is an idea, which featured in Marxist debates decades ago now thrown about by all sides in mainstream public debates? Why is it used by both sides in the dispute wracking Cosatu? Because it touches on a core issue facing our society.
The idea - or slogan - is ‘national democratic revolution’ (NDR). Both those who supported Numsa’s removal from Cosatu and Numsa itself say they support the NDR - Numsa complains it is ‘not on track’ while its opponents say...
Back in March 2012, a good five months before the Marikana massacre exposed the internal weaknesses of the South African trade union sector, SACSIS’ Fazila Farouk interviewed labour expert, Ighsaan Schroeder, who said that Cosatu was well on its way to demise and could collapse within a mere 15 years due to serious structural weaknesses in the trade union sector. Soon after the Marikana massacre, Schroeder revised his prediction saying that he gives Cosatu just another five years before...
Dale T. McKinley -
It is arguably the most important political development of South Africa’s post-1994 era. On Friday, South Africa’s largest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) was expelled by the majority of the leadership belonging to South Africa’s largest union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
The political significance of NUMSA’s expulsion derives from three key, inter-related areas of impact.
On the ANC-Led...
Leonard Gentle -
The COSATU Central Executive Committee (CEC), the decision-making body of affiliate leaders, which meets between the more representative Congresses and Central Committees, held a meeting last week to decide on the fate of its biggest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA) and to discuss the report of its General Secretary, Zwelenzima Vavi, himself the subject of dispute.
This CEC was the consequence of a decision at a postponed CEC in April this year at which time the ANC...
In an extensive interview, Numsa’s general secretary, Irvin Jim, talks to Fazila Farouk of SACSIS about Numsa’s current strike, alliance politics as well as its United Front and Movement for Socialism. In response to a question about building greater solidarity between the middle class and the poor, Jim argues that Numsa’s movement for socialism is not only for people who are “red”. He says that the middle class has a right to live the kind of life that it...
