challenges

Venezuela

Venezuela is once again in the grip of violent protests, targeting the post-Chavez administration of Nicholas Maduro and which have claimed at least 19 lives as of writing. The official reasons for these protests range from a high crime rate (particularly violent...

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Marikana: 1 year later | by Benjamin Fogel

Just over a year has passed since the Marikana massacre and the amount of critical reflection on the worst act of state violence since the end of apartheid is minimal at best. Other scandals have dominated the news cycle, from Nkandla to Guptagate, along with endless...

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Blaqpearl: The new voice of the Cape?

WHY THE NAME BLAQPEARL? Back in the day I was part of a hip hop group called Insidious Inc. The three males in the group, including my late brother, Mr Devious, all had stage names – of course I also wanted one! So being rarely aware of myself from a very young age...

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A Hundred Years after the 1913 Land Act

A Hundred Years after the 1913 Land Act

By Richard Pithouse  In 1652, the year that Jan van Riebeck first stepped on to these shores, Gerrad Winstanley, an English radical, published a pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform. Three years earlier he had led a land occupation on St. George's Hill in...

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COSATU at the crossroads

COSATU at the crossroads

This feature of Amandla! lays bare the conflict unfolding in COSATU. Tensions in SA's biggest labour movement play themselves out over the failure of the Polokwane project. The ANC's 2007 Polokwane Conference, which adopted a host of progressive policies, was supposed...

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