The only time change has taken place, it is in response to global events such as World War II. This government faces the changes that the Covid-19 pandemic will bring
Marikana
Posted inGeneral
#FeesMustFall is unravelling SA’s founding pact
Post-1994 South Africa is founded on the principle of progressive access to privilege. This principle implies that those in the suburbs will continue to live there while those in shacks will be progressively admitted into the ranks of those with houses and amenities. It also implies that those that earn decent salaries will continue to […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Health, News/Politics
People of colour carry the burden of environmental racism in a post-racial era
Videos depicting the senseless murders of unarmed people of colour have given birth to a new social movement, #BlackLivesMatter, while bringing to light a reality incomprehensible to white communities: the lives of people of colour have systemically been deemed disposable. To collectively realise the inherent value of black life we must think locally and globally, […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Marikana: Moment of reckoning with whole extractive system
Marikana widows want BASF to admit its complicity as part of the platinum supply chain. The extractive sector in post-apartheid South Africa remains a hotbed of labour and environmental exploitation, with people still working underground in unsafe, unhealthy conditions. Mining communities continue to be excluded from having a fair share of the wealth accumulated from […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Lest we forget: What Marikana means to me
Your blood asks, how were the wealthy and the law interwoven? With what sulphurous iron fabric? How did the poor keep falling into the tribunals? How did the land become so bitter for poor children, harshly nourished on stone and grief? So it was, and so I leave it written. Their lives wrote it […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time for Riah Phiyega to swallow the medicine she signed up for
Three years ago, with the massacre of 44 people at Marikana, Riah Phiyega proved that she lacked the mettle needed to head one of the most vital organs of state, the police. Last week, when in response to a personally damning Farlam Commission report she did not resign as national police commissioner but instead pleaded […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Farlam Commission is being unfairly targeted
The final report of Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the events at Marikana, released last week, has been widely lambasted in the press. Equally scathing about commission’s “failure to get justice” for the 34 miners killed by the SA Police Service, has been the social media commentariat. The amount of criticism directed at Judge Ian […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time to say bye-bye Phiyega?
It’s going on almost three years since the South African Police Service (SAPS) shot dead 34 striking miners and wounded 78 others at Marikana. And it’s now a full month since President Jacob Zuma was handed the findings of the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into those deaths. Given that the inquiry dragged on for more […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protecting Zuma by force: A dishonourable Parliament
Last night ANC MPs showed South Africa how far they were willing to go when others attempted to hold them to account. In the hours of bedlam, heckling, and howling[1] the ANC managed to push South Africa’s democracy to the brink. The ANC not only voted to protect President Jacob Zuma, who according the Public […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Crime’s wake-up call…
My five days back in SA from the UK: one foiled armed carjacking, one petrol bomb hurled at a house, an armed carjacking and house robbery — all within a 400m radius of my house. Let’s not forget an alleged dealer’s friend looking to intimidate me within earshot of the cops. I live in a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time to pull thumb, Mr President
Some of President Jacob Zuma’s top people were all thumbs this week. First up was deputy Defence Minister Kebby Maphatsoe, who also heads the party’s Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Military Veterans’ Association. Speaking at a Soweto memorial service, he accused the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela of being an agent for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Marikana widows shed tears in Women’s Month
This Women’s Month marks two years since the Marikana massacre. The widows of the workers killed by the South African Police Service in 2012 have since received their deceased husband’s provident fund dues, but still wait for justice while the media and public attention has long since transferred from their plight to the Farlam Commission. […]