EASTERN CAPE HAS FACED DRASTIC droughts since 2005 due to the global crisis of climate change, with dams reaching all-time lows. This of course has impacted the quality and cleanliness of drinking water, which requires our municipalities to make a concentrated effort...
TEN YEARS AGO, IN JUNE 2012, AT the Rio+20 global climate talks in Rio de Janeiro, trade unions attending the meeting raised the critical need for an alternative narrative to the “green growth” model of addressing climate change. Those discussions were the beginning...
ON 31ST OCTOBER 2021, A WEEK before COP27 in Egypt, South Africa’s oldest standing coalf ired power station, Komati, was closed. Commissioned in the early 1960s, Komati, rated at 1GW, formed part of the extensive network of coal-fired power stations which account for...
AT THE LEVEL OF THE UN, THE North long ago acknowledged its ecological debt to the South, and its responsibility to channel finance towards the South to help developing countries both reduce their emissions and adapt to a warming world. The North has nevertheless...
JUST WEEKS BEFORE THE BEGINNING of COP27, Inger Anderson, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, made a staggering assessment of the global response to the climate crisis: “We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over....
ONE OF THE KEY RESOLUTIONS OF Numsa’s 2013 special congress was to bring into existence a United Front to act as a popular, working class-based alternative to the ANC. By 2016 it had run its course. In 2018, following a successful one-day strike, Saftu initiated the...
The latest edition of Amandla is out! Issue 85/86 of Amandla magazine has a special feature on the Just Transition. Highlights of some of the articles: According to Andile Zulu, AIDC Energy Democracy Officer, South Africa’s climate finance deals, and its current...
DURING THE WINTER OF 2010-2011, the Tunisian people rekindled a flame that was thought to have been extinguished forever - that of a popular revolution against corrupt and dictatorial regimes. The shock wave spread in the region (Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Yemen,...
This is an edited version of an article first published in Daily Maverick. THE 27TH MEETING OF THE UN’S Conference of the Parties – otherwise known as COP – is now only months away. So it is timely to ask: who benefits from these gatherings of world leaders who...
The elections 2022, and the recent history of Brazil, are an example of how social constructions such as political parties are able to survive and succeed over long periods of history. They can do this if they are rooted in the social, economic and political structure...
ON 5TH SEPTEMBER 2022, THE Supreme Court of Kenya upheld President William Ruto’s victory in the recently concluded general election that was held on 9th August. Ruto’s main competitor, Raila Odinga, stood as the candidate of the Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Coalition....
IT WAS AUGUST 18TH, SIX DAYS before the election. Incumbent President João Lourenço was delivering a speech to a rather apathetic public in Benguela province, southwestern Angola. In it he described the country’s unaligned civil society as “lumpens and thieves”. Such...
Brazilian politics have been polarized between Lula and Bolsonaro. The urgency to defeat the latter has been invoked to close off critical thinking. However, Bolsonaro embodies social forces that will not go away with an electoral defeat, while an eventual Lula...
THE RECENT CORONATION OF Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini was witnessed by people well beyond South Africa’s borders and widely welcomed by commentators. However, few reflected on what it might mean for rural residents living on land held under the Ingonyama...
HOW DID THE END OF APARTHEID affect South Africa’s white workers? An excellent question. And the answer can go a long way towards explaining some of the more virulent politics evident today. But the question is rarely asked because – so the assumption goes – there are...
AS WE EMERGE FROM THE pandemic, the impact of Covid-19 has exacerbated the converging social, economic, and ecological crises, which emerge from the systemic and colonial legacy of extractivist patriarchal capitalism. These crises include climate, ecological and...
WHEN WE THINK OF NORTH stars, we think of a destination we feel we are striving for. The South African Left lacks a north star today. The truth of contemporary South African politics is that the anti-apartheid struggle was the great unifier of progressive forces. It...
HOW DO WE MAKE OUR CHOSEN representatives more accountable to the country’s general populace? That has been the focus of most of our conversations about electoral reform. Our current system of proportional representation is designed to ensure that every vote cast in...
After a crushing defeat of its proposed constitution, Chile’s Left must regroup around universal material reforms. CHILE’S CAPTIVATING PROCESS OF systemic change has derailed. A mass rebellion forced politicians to concede a constituent process, after elections gave...
IN 2017, THE 14TH NATIONAL Congress of the SACP adopted a resolution “SACP and state and popular power” which resolved that: the 14th Congress mandates the Central Committee to establish a Road Map that must be adopted, with clear, indicative time-lines, by the...
The Working Class Summit bounces back LAST MONTH, 600 ACTIVISTS packed into a Johannesburg hall for the first meeting in several years of the Working Class Summit. It was a welcome sight for the many sore eyes on the South African Left. The WCS’s main convener is the...
DOZENS OF SOUTH African civil society organisations, trade unions, academic and research bodies –and influential observers like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development - have been calling on the government to phase in a universal basic income by...
THE NATIONAL SHUTDOWN OF 24th August 2022 highlighted the potential of the Working Class Summit (WCS) to mobilise trade unions and community movements behind a campaign against the multiple attacks on the lives of the poor majority. In this sense, it built on the...
A key element of the crisis of politics in South Africa lies in the great levels of disillusionment and apathy toward politics of millions of working class people. The “protagonists of the revolution” don’t believe politics is for them. Many believe today that “all...