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?
Mohamed Motala -
In recent years, strikes in South Africa have become turbulent. Today the Farlam Commission is hearing evidence of the 2012 strike on the platinum belt that was characterised by extreme use of violence on all sides. Mining companies, Lonmin, AngloPlat and Implats, assisted by the South African police, displayed aggressive behaviour towards striking mineworkers, which resulted in an elaborate show of force culminating in the biggest post-apartheid massacre in the history of South Africa....
Leonard Gentle -
Two issues that journalists file under “labour news” continue to make headlines – the one inspirational, the other ludicrous. They show two very different faces of the now tired refrain of “20 years of democracy”.
In the one corner is the on-going platinum workers’ strike in which 70,000 workers lead a struggle to bury the tradition of cheap migrant labour that has been the cornerstone of wealth accumulation in this country. On the other is the spectre...
Following the ANC's robust win at the polls in South Africa's 2014 General Elections, on 22 May 2014, SACSIS and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation hosted a panel discussion to probe the question: "Will the ANC rule until Jesus returns?"
The primary impetus for this question was the fact that the ANC won the 2014 General Election despite its leader being tarnished by major corruption scandals and the party's service delivery record being less than exemplary. Meanwhile South...
Attending an event hosted by SACSIS on 22 May 2014, NUMSA's Dinga Sikwebu, education officer and the co-ordinator of its newly formed "United Front" said that the union "recognised that the shadow of the ANC is going to be with us for a long time."
The remark was made in response to the question that framed a discussion, which evaluated the outcome of South Africa’s 2014 General Election: "Will the ANC rule until Jesus returns?"
Sikwebu took the...
In a wide ranging interview covering the massacre in Marikana, a turning point in South Africa's history, Prof. Patrick Bond of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu Natal talks to Paul Jay of the Real News Network about the shifting sands of South African politics, workers' struggles and metalworker’s union, Numsa's new initiative to establish a movement for socialism as well as launch a workers' party. According to Bond, a workers' or labour party could emerge to...
Dale T. McKinley -
Messy alliance politics are clouding issues in the run up to the 2014 general election, but community organisations and other civil society formations across the country have welcomed promising moves by National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) to forge an independent and anti-capitalist united front of the broad working class.
For the first time in the history of a democratic South Africa, a COSATU-aligned union, and its largest one at that, has openly declared that it no...
