In the last two decades of his life, Nelson Mandela was celebrated as a model of how to liberate a country from the colonial yoke without succumbing to the temptation of dictatorial power and anti-capitalist posturing. In short, Mandela was not Mugabe, South Africa remained a multi-party democracy with free press and a vibrant economy well-integrated into the global market and immune to hasty Socialist experiments. Now, with his death, his stature as a saintly wise man seems confirmed for eternity: there are Hollywood movies about him — he was impersonated by Morgan Freeman, who also, by the way, played the role of God in another film; rock stars and religious leaders, sportsmen and politicians from Bill Clinton to Fidel Castro are all united in his beatification. ... read full story / add a comment

Disclaimer: These are some impressions of life, politics and social movements in South Africa (and to a lesser extent Namibia, which shares many of the same historical and social conditions). My ideas are based on a few weeks of travel, and some limited participation as an Australian outsider in political actions. For much better analysis, check out zabalaza.net - a great resource of anarchist news and analysis from South Africa. ... read full story / add a comment

The Swazi state is so worried about how the international community will view the Global Day of Action for democracy in Swaziland tomorrow (7 September 2010), it has barred foreign journalists from the kingdom. ... read full story / add a comment

While 2010 Organising Committee CEO, Danny Jordaan, compares the staging of such an event to a "second liberation", we shouldn't be surprised if those who are struggling for a meaningful notion of citizenship continue their public protests during the tournament. Undoubtedly, they will be deemed unpatriotic for disrupting the whole PC-PR-Potemkin village atmosphere. They will horrify the press whose accreditation with Fifa hangs on not engaging in conduct that detracts from the sporting focus. The police will, as is routine, shoot at them with buckshot, rubber bullets and teargas. ... read full story / add a comment

The article looks at how the state and the rich are using Eskom to subsidise giant corporations with cheap electricty in South Africa and are making the working class pay for this. The impact of this on people has been devastating, cut-offs have risen, prices have sky-rocketed and jobs have been slashed. The article goes on to argue that only direct action by the working class can reverse this. It then provides some thoughts on how struggles for immediate gains, like electricity, could be used to build a movement that could fight to replace the state and capitalism with an anarchist communist society . ... read full story / add a comment

It really is a sorry state of affairs when a country that has produced so many remarkable people and movements is reduced to abandoning its national political stage to the spectacle of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) and Julius Malema publicly shitting on our democracy. ... read full story / add a comment

While excitement around South Africa's forthcoming World Cup continues to build, South Africa's poor are seeing none of the supposed economic benefits associated with hosting the tournament, argue Azad Essa and Oliver Meth. ... read full story / add a comment

Oukasie, Sharpville, Orange Farm, Siyathemba: images of violent protest action against poor service delivery have dominated the news in the past few weeks, signalling growing frustration with the Jacob Zuma administration’s failure to address the implosion of services in parts of South Africa.

Residents are marching with increasing frequency, protesting against poor service delivery and crime. But, state non-responsiveness is radicalising protest action, prompting a shift in tactics from legal to illegal forms of protest, as protestors conclude that lawful protest will get them nowhere. ... read full story / add a comment

The press conference celebrating 100 days before the World Cup kick-off left the big question unanswered, argues Azad Essa: How will South Africans benefit from the World Cup? For Essa ‘only the dim-witted, government or FIFA communication officers walked away feeling that the World Cup was really about anything more than ending Afro-pessimism and stroking a couple of shiny suits'. ... read full story / add a comment

The lives of the unemployed youth in Grahamstown may seem to be a world apart from those of the students. For us the only choices are to accept defeat and to sink into depression or to organise and fight for a place in this society. For you it seems that there is a clear path to a good life.

But capitalism is not a stable system. You may find yourself unemployed after you graduate. You may also find yourself sitting at home waiting for your life to begin. In fact some of you may find yourselves excluded from the university before you graduate if you cannot pay your fees ... read full story / add a comment

On Thursday, Jacob Zuma promised us a government that will work "faster, harder and smarter." It sounded a little like the old Standard Bank slogan, "Simpler. Better. Faster." The ANC's 2009 election slogan was "Working Together We Can Do More," which was just a word away from the British cell phone company's advertising campaign, launched the year before, that declared "Together we can do more." But the slogan was good for a smile when activists in Jo'burg took the opportunity to grab cans of spray-paint and stencils and conclude it with words like 'corruption' and 'evictions' when it appeared on election posters. ... read full story / add a comment

For as long as Eskom continues to see public utilities as an opportunity for private profit, and electricity as a commodity for private consumption rather than a common good, civil society should invoke the tradition of civil disobedience and support communities and popular movements to resist state repression while they organise to appropriate electricity on a non-commodified, safe and carefully disciplined basis. ... read full story / add a comment

A paper delivered by the Convenor of the Unemployed People’s Movement at the meeting held at Rhodes University, Politics Department, Grahamstown on the 22 January 2010. ... read full story / add a comment

The November 2009 issue of "Struggle Continues", the newsletter of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, is available online. ... read full story / add a comment

This report - produced for the General Agricultural & Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe [GAPWUZ] by the Research and Advocacy Unit [RAU] and the Justice For Agriculture [JAG] Trust - presents the findings of preliminary quantitative and qualitative surveys of workers on commercial farms in the wake of the catastrophic "Land Reform" policy in Zimbabwe. Whilst the companion reports produced from this series of projects have received some attention, this report is the first to deal solely with data gathered from the farm workers themselves. It represents the views of only a small section of the 1.8 million people that lived and worked on Zimbabwe's commercial farms. However, the continued gathering of data means that in time we will be able to paint a detailed picture of the lives of farm workers across the country, as they struggled over the last nine years with State-sponsored invasions, torture, violent assaults, murders, rapes, evictions and other violations of the law and their rights. For the moment, though, the data presented here makes no claim to be statistically representative. ... read full story / add a comment

Richard Pithouse, the much arrested philosopher from Abahlali baseMjondolo, takes apart the ongoing naivety around the achievement of 'democracy' in South Africa. ... read full story / add a comment

Even if the meanings we give to measurements of time are most often overblown, there is something about the mark of a new decade. In the case of South Africa, 1990 marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid system, ushering in a period pregnant with new hopes, possibilities and dreams. When 2000 rolled around it heralded not only a once in a lifetime turn of a century but carried with it the delayed weight of majoritarian expectation of an age of progress and plenty. So what are our 'inheritances' as we begin the new decade? Where do things stand? What is the mark of 2010?

No doubt, the most obvious and widespread association with 2010 in South Africa is the upcoming soccer World Cup. The amount of work, money, media coverage and public propaganda expended in the last few years on this month-long event is unparalleled in our short post-apartheid history. Indeed, the sporting showpiece, is being presented as South Africa's defining moment, the crowning glory of the political, social and economic standing of a nation, confirmation that South Africa is on the right path and has 'arrived' as a 'world class' country. Anything to the contrary is to be seen and treated as unpatriotic, negative and inherently treasonous ('counter-revolutionary' can't be far away ...).
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All are welcome to join us this Sunday 15 November at 10am in Soweto, Protea South, Peace Makers Ground. We will be celebrating and reflecting on the meaning of our court victory. ... read full story / add a comment

28 November 2009 will mark an historic day in the struggle for democracy in Swaziland . On this day organisations representing the overwhelming majority of the oppressed and struggling people of Swaziland, and organisations supporting their cause here in South Africa, will jointly gather in Johannesburg to formally launch the Swaziland Democracy Campaign. ... read full story / add a comment

For two days this past week the ruling elite in Swaziland has been engaged in what it likes to call a ‘Smart partnership’. In theory everyone who wanted to came together to discuss openly (without fear or favour etc) what ails Swaziland and what can be done about its problems. ... read full story / add a comment