South Africa's 2016 Budget has come and gone — and has done little or nothing to assuage the anger felt in many sections of the embattled trade union movement. If anything, it has given added impetus to a move by those unions set to convene a “workers’ summit” to seek new directions both for the labour movement and the country.
February 20, 2016
South Africa's State of the Nation Address (SONA) on February 11 and the subsequent debates all seem long on rhetoric and somewhat short on realistic plans that take cognisance of the world of the 21st Century.
December 8, 2015
As South Africa's major labour federation, Cosatu, goes into its fourth decade, it does so carrying all the damaging detritus of the past that the leadership continues not to confront.
July 25, 2015
A façade of unity and cohesion continues to be promoted by Cosatu and, even more interestingly, by the SA Communist Party that is itself under pressure break from the ANC-led alliance. This pressure comes members who believe that party offers a radical alternative. But perhaps the SACP's red flag is now just "palest pink".
April 28, 2015
Faced with what appeared to be a veritable swamp of ideology at a “socialist movement” conference in Boksburg this month, the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) has embarked on the process of creating a “Marxist, Leninist, revolutionary working class” political party. However, Numsa also facilitated the Boksburg conference, where representatives from 11 political groups or […]
November 30, 2014
The smallest member of the ANC-led tripartite alliance, the SA Communist Party, looks likely to be the biggest loser in the ongoing and bitter fracas in South Africa's major union federation, Cosatu. That party’s “ten-year plan” looks close to being in tatters.
November 24, 2014
Where in the world has a ventriloquist’s dummy been sued for defamation and won a gagging order in court? Why, in South Africa, of course. This is among the increasingly bizarre contradictions emerging in this once widely hailed “rainbow nation”.
February 28, 2016
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