Posted inNews/Politics

The Marikana Files

Social Justice Journalist and Filmmaker, Sipho Singiswa, takes us inside Marikana to meet the miners and community members who live in the impoverished settlements around the Lonmin Mining operation. He also interviews Head Researcher of the Bench Marks Foundation David Van Wyk on the issue of socioeconomic transgressions that this community is forced to deal […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Lynching black men

On March 1 we watched in disbelief and horror as a young Mozambican man, Mido Macia, was forcibly handcuffed to the back of a police van and dragged behind the vehicle as he cried out for them to stop. When the car eventually arrived at the police station eyewitnesses say he was further beaten by […]

Posted inNews/Politics

South Africa and that Time cover

Alex Perry’s story about Oscar Pistorius and South Africa’s culture of violence has inevitably attracted a great deal of attention from the Twittering classes. The general consensus is that the piece, which draws a link between Pistorius’s shooting of Reeva Steenkamp and the endemic violence that characterises our national culture, is poor journalism and full […]

Posted inNews/Politics

They say critics of the ANC are racists, unpatriotic traitors

It’s ironic (but understandable, given his position as a senior government official in the department of arts and culture) that Sandile Memela’s article “They say government-sponsored artists are traitors” focuses primarily on the contribution of Wally Serote (former head of the ANC’s department of arts and culture and former chairperson of the parliamentary committee on […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Amplats’ restructuring reflects broader trends

By Niall Reddy Anglo’s platinum operations are not “unprofitable”, rather they are not “profitable enough”. Plans to restructure will jeopardise the income of 14 000 workers and more than 100 000 dependants. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union’s (AMCU) call to nationalise in response reflects the growing consensus on the need for drastic redirection in the […]

Posted inBusinessNews/Politics

The old plight of workers in the new South Africa

Pictures of labourers with raised fists, chanting liberation slogans are now commonplace in South Africa. We’re notorious for industrial protests, dubbed “the protest capital of the world”. For many, the only serious cause for concern is the unsightly violence of industrial protests. The world watched in awe as the police showered (allegedly) armed Marikana miners […]

Posted inGeneral

Rethinking the police

From the infamous LAPD to London’s notorious Special Patrol Group and even further back — two centuries ago to the first ever newspaper reports of “police brutality” — all police forces exist along a continuum of violence. Leaving corruption aside South Africa’s police tend towards the direst part. We may not have the death penalty […]