As we mark 20 years since the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy, there is a deep rupturing of the post-apartheid social consensus in the face of intensifying class struggle. The signals for its end are the Marikana massacre, the great mineworkers' strike...
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From Durban to Marikana: A new trajectory of the worker’s movement
In January 1973 dockworkers in Durban embarked on a wave of wildcat strikes against low wages, in total some 61000 workers took part in these strikes. The Durban moment not only smashed the industrial relations framework that had been established after black trade...
Responses
Sakhela Buhlungu: It has taken more than 20 years for the dominant current of South Africa's labour movement to begin to emerge from stasis resulting from its embeddedness within the ruling political block led by the African National Congress. The massacre of...
EFF and the left | by Benjamin Fogel
In Gill Hart's excellent new book Rethinking the South Africa crisis, she points to a rather curious phenomenon as part of her engagement with the figure of one Julius Malema and the 'populist' turn he represents. She notes that for a change the far left and liberal...
The Third Intifada? | by Uri Avnery
Is this the third intifada? This question was raised this week by a number of Israeli security experts. And not only by them – their Palestinian colleagues were almost as perplexed. All over the West Bank, Palestinian youth threw stones at Israeli soldiers. All the...
‘We cannot walk freely’| by Jeanne Hefez
Voices from Marikana: Lonmin workers speak It's nearly four months after the Marikana massacre, and the atmosphere in and around Lonmin is still one of fear in the face of a de facto state of emergency. As Amandla! goes to press, police continue to use excessive force...
Michael Moseki, strike leader
Michael Moseki, an elected strike leader at Samancor Western Chrome Mine, sits inside his tin shack and talks about the challenges of raising his five children on R4,700 a month. Just like other mine workers, strike leaders at various mines in the North West province...
Marikana and the New Politics of Grief by | Jon Soske
In July 1981, 1,700 workers at the Penge asbestos mine in the Northwestern Transvaal struck after a bitter, two year struggle for recognition by the Black Allied Mine and Construction Workers Union. After four days, the mine owners fired all of the workers, who then...
Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s moving reflections on the occupation’s 45th birthday | by Henry Norr
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, daughter of a prominent Israeli general and mother of a suicide bombing victim, and her brother Miko Peled have long been among the most courageous Israeli critics of their nation's treatment of the Palestinians, but this year they're really on a...


