Economy
Allegations of abuse in clothing factories
Workers in Kwazulu-Natal clothing factories have made allegations of abuse against factory owners in affidavits provided to GroundUp.
Issa Saunders
News | 13 February 2013
The poorest of the poor: The Karretjie Mense of the Great Karoo
In and around Colesberg, a small historical town on the N1 mid-way between Cape Town and Johannesburg, I met a group of impoverished sheep shearers living in abject poverty, surviving in tiny tin shacks on the verges of public roads. Only recently, in the last 15 years, have they become a settled, sedentary people.
Timothy Gabb
News | 6 February 2013
Renting out recycled bicycles
Eight years ago Bongani Ndlazi started collecting old bicycles and making them new again. He has turned his talent into a business that puts food on the table.
Nokubonga Yawa
News | 6 February 2013
Unions: getting back to first principles
Yesterday, exactly 40 years ago, the modern trade union movement arrived on the
South African scene. Its birth was heralded by a wave of strikes in Durban that had
gestated over 22 days from the time 2,000 workers at Coronation Brick and Tile
downed tools.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 5 February 2013
Tensions remain following dismissals of workers in De Doorns
Hundreds of farmworkers in the De Doorns area have been fired after the end of the farmworkers strike in the area on 22 January. The strike had been called off by COSATU the week before, but the seemingly dominant union in the area, the Bawsi Agriculture Workers Union of South Africa (Bawusa), suspended the strike days later. Clashes between police and protesters resulted in at least one death, many injuries and 181 arrests of striking farmworkers.
Ben Fogel
Opinion | 30 January 2013
Farm strikes: Radical changes needed
Farm workers began the centennial year of the 1913 Land Act with a continuation of the most militant industrial action in the sector in decades. On January 9th, various Western Cape farming towns were turned into warzones as protestors demanding an increase to a minimum R150 per day for farm workers, blockaded highways and set vineyards alight with police using rubber bullets and tear gas.
Niall Reddy
News | 24 January 2013
Cash Paymaster Services go on strike - company accused of racism
GroundUp journalist Mihle Pike received a call this morning that employees at Cash Paymaster Services had gone on strike. She went to see what was going on. Here is her account.
Mihle Pike
News | 23 January 2013
The Boland upheaval and failing the children of the poor
South Africa has continued to fail the children of the poor and is once again reaping
the results of that failure. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recurrent violent
eruptions in the fruit and wine farm regions of the Western Cape.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 16 January 2013
Allegations and counter-allegations in farm strike
With one man confirmed dead in De Doorns as well as further allegations of police brutality and coercion on the one hand and striker intimidation on the other, the ongoing farm worker protests continue in the Western Cape wine and fruit-growing region.
Kate Stegeman
News | 16 January 2013