Black Africans continue to face racial prejudice in Australia By Mandisi Majavu A 51-year-old white Australian woman, Michelle Veronica Jacobsen, who subjected a black African family to a nasty racist attack and threatened them with a crowbar, has been charged with assault, going armed in public as to cause fear, disorderly conduct and conduct likely…
What we eat and where we get our food from are outcomes of a hidden and problematic food system that must change to enable us to we eat well affordably By SALIEM FAKIR The US is putting pressure on South Africa to agree to favourable terms for its poultry producers before it is willing to include…
By STEVEN FRIEDMAN If that well-worn cliché about never wasting a crisis applies to anything, it is the labour movement today. Contrary to some current rhetoric, the movement does not need to return to what it was: it needs to become something different. Deepening tensions in Cosatu, which saw the departure of the National Union…
Does the ANC intend to expropriate land in South Africa any time soon? President Jacob Zuma doesn’t appear to care for the landless at all. He doesn’t seem to believe that landlessness is even a problem. Zuma caused alarm last week when he claimed that South Africans were going hungry and living in squalid conditions…
Is Google Trying to Kill the “News Scoop” with it’s new Algorithm? By JANEK SZYMANOWSKI An email dropped into my inbox this Friday with a report that Google intends to introduce a new algorithm. This will, it says, be part of Google’s on-going algorithm development to make the Internet more user-friendly and relevant. I subscribe…
A commitment to changing society must include an openness to the unexpected moment in which new modes of politics appear By RICHARD PITHOUSE If you’re up early in Dakar and decide to take a walk along the shorefront before the day gets going you may see fishermen setting out on a raft cobbled together from…
By MANDISI MAJUVA who asks if Black South Africans are expected to talk about colonialism in a manner that doesn’t cause discomfort to Whites It has taken the University of Cape Town (UCT) 15 years to seriously consider the views of its black students concerning the statue of Cecil John Rhodes. Way back in 1999, Melissa…
By GLENN ASHTON Both the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party and the South African flag have prominent splashes of green featuring in their respective colour schemes. After 1994 the new government was keenly focussed on demonstrating its green credentials in line with our constitutional commitment to environmental protection and sustainable use of our diverse…
South Africa transfers just over R50 billion a year to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland with no strings attached By ALEXANDER O’RIORDAN The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) is most easily identifiable in Botswana’s, Lesotho’s, Namibia’s and Swaziland’s (BLNS) use of the South African Rand as the basis for their own currencies, albeit through printing…
By ANNA MAJAVU After almost 21 years, affirmative action has not taken root in South Africa and most sectors of the economy, including academic institutions, remain “untransformed”. The most recent Commission for Employment Equity’s annual report noted that whites continued to retain the vast majority of the top positions in South Africa (over 62 percent…
