Today, 1 May, South Africa celebrates Workers’ Day. In the third and last in a series of articles, Leonard Gentle argues that a new labour movement will have to be part of a broader social movement.
Leonard Gentle
Opinion | 1 May 2015
Cosatu’s biggest union, Numsa with 340,000 members, has been expelled from the federation. Half of Cosatu’s affiliates have allied themselves with Numsa and are operating outside Cosatu’s fold. But does the crisis in Cosatu matter? Does it make any difference to class struggle in defending and promoting working class interests?
Martin Jansen
Opinion | 30 April 2015
Tomorrow, May 1, South Africa celebrates Workers’ Day. In the second of three articles, Leonard Gentle analyses the recent history of the labour movement in South Africa.
Leonard Gentle
Opinion | 30 April 2015
For over five years, the Social Justice Coalition in Cape Town has called for expanding access to safe and clean sanitation facilities in Khayelitsha and other townships in the city. Despite the overwhelming need for such services, the municipal government has yet to fulfill its duties to provide them at the requisite scale.
Gregg Gonsalves, Edward Kaplan and David Paltiel
Opinion | 29 April 2015
On Friday 1 May South Africa will celebrate Workers’ Day. In the first of three articles on the current state of the labour movement, Leonard Gentle explains the history of this holiday.
Leonard Gentle
Opinion | 29 April 2015
In the winter of 2014 I interviewed six young men who lived on the streets of Cape Town’s Central Business District.
David Cowan
Opinion | 28 April 2015
Faced with what appeared to be a veritable swamp of ideology at a “socialist movement” conference in Boksburg last week, the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) has embarked on the process of creating a “Marxist, Leninist, revolutionary working class” political party. However, Numsa also facilitated the Boksburg conference, where representatives from 11 political groups or parties and a number of trade unionists and individuals made up the approximately 150 attendees.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 27 April 2015
On 25 April, the Mayor tabled the draft budget in council, challenging residents to find evidence that it is not pro-poor.
Axolile Notywala
Opinion | 24 April 2015
South Africa is often branded as a country with a high incarceration rate. In certain respects, this is true. For with 290 people per 100,000 imprisoned, it has the highest incarceration rate in Africa. But there is much more to prison population rates than a national head count of bodies behind bars.
Clare Ballard
Opinion | 22 April 2015
Much has been written about why the recent wave of xenophobic attacks took place. But it's more complex than the usual reasons given, argue the authors.
Matthias Krönke and Mpho Raboeane
Opinion | 21 April 2015
News on the labour front over the recent past — and the past week — has involved ongoing infighting, death threats, an assassination, and the petrol bombing of a union president’s house. Little wonder then that an important labour law development has gone largely unnoticed.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 20 April 2015
Craig Oosthuizen describes the dramatic events in Parliament over the past two days that have put Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega's position under severe pressure.
Craig Oosthuizen
Opinion | 16 April 2015
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), campaigning groups and labour supporting members of the European parliament this month launched protests about the continued harassment and jailing of trade unionists and democracy campaigners in Swaziland. ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow has noted that, in Swaziland, “Violations against the fundamental rights of workers have become systemic.”
Terry Bell
Opinion | 13 April 2015
A Land Claims Court judge could opt to jail the Director-General of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Mdu Shabane, for contempt of court. Such a decision, however, may still be too late for Zabalaza Mshengu, who turned 101 in January, and has waited 14 years for his claim to land as a labour tenant to be processed. The case also raises uncomfortable questions about how far government will go to push judicial tolerance in order to avoid implementing constitutional rights.
Donna Hornby
Opinion | 13 April 2015
Equal Education’s recently concluded sleep-in protests in three cities have shown how disturbingly difficult it has become to hold legal protests, even for organisations fortunate enough to have access to resources and legal expertise.
Doron Isaacs
Opinion | 10 April 2015
The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) has asked the Mayor for a plan to deal with sanitation in informal settlements. We have a plan – one that has already been and continues to be implemented as part of this administration’s commitment to making this a city that delivers services to all our residents. Perhaps that is why so many people flock here from other parts of the country every year. After all, no one packs up their family and leaves their hometown for a worse life!
Ian Neilson
Opinion | 8 April 2015