Tag: nationalism

On the night of 30 October 2002, eight bomb blasts tore through Soweto. The explosions left one woman dead and damaged vital infrastructure. A far-right white Afrikaner separatist group called the Boeremag carried out the attacks. Their stated aim was to overthrow the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government, rid the country of black people and reinstate a new Boer-administered republic.

With its impressive tradition of left politics, South Africa was the hope of the world. At the heart of post-apartheid politics was a revolutionary nationalist ANC, the oldest Communist Party in Africa, the SACP, and one of the most militant labour union federations in the world, COSATU.

Why do so many South Africans prefer taking the law into their own hands to relying on the police? Why are those who do so often cheered or sympathised with? Of the unprecedented 27 000 recorded murders in South Africa in 2022, at least 1 894 – or 7 per cent – were attributed to mob justice and vigilantism, more than double the number from five years before.

As the new year unfolds, many business leaders across Africa are assessing the 2023 year to chart an increasing resilient path ahead. Last year, major key events unfolded that had global repercussions on supply chains, businesses and the leaders of those businesses.

Political theorist Steven Friedman addresses how and why the current language around anti-Semitism in Israel has been distorted and weaponised to serve the political objectives of the Israeli state. Friedman’s critique examines what this implies for the fight against racism in South Africa and India, and in other parts of the world.

Working with key concepts developed by Gillian Hart, this book argues for a critical ethnographic approach to advance social justice movements for a radically different world. It offers an invaluable toolkit for activists and scholars engaged in sharpening their critical concepts for social and environmental change.

The book explores how declining fertility rates globally will lead to a shrinking workforce, and more importantly, to a reduced number of “essential workers”, which could massively disrupt everyday lives. Essential jobs maintain the structure that upholds society – think of plumbers, truck drivers, healthcare workers and farmworkers – and when these workers are in short supply, society could start to fray.

2021 will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and today’s South African Communist Party (SACP) will be extremely fortunate to have the milestone marked by a scholarly work of this calibre.

The proposal for a universal basic income grant (BIG) has been on the table for almost 20 years. It was first recommended by the Committee of Inquiry (Taylor Committee) into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa in 2002, after a number of civil society organisations had petitioned for it on account of persistent poverty and structural inequality.

The people of Africa have been subjected to multiple injustices, slights, and violence. The list of things inflicted on Africans is endless and has no modern equivalent, except for Asia in geographical terms and the Jews in ethnic terms.