In Senegal a manipulated ruling to allow power hungry President Abdoulaye Wade to run for a third term, in Nigeria fuel price increases that spurred a national crisis, general strikes and violent state repression, secession struggles in Mali in which scores have been...
democratic
Chile: The student return to politics | by Carlos Torres
2011 will be remembered as the year of the Arab spring, Spain’s indignados and Occupy Wall Street and the thousands of other social mobilisations which coalesced around the dissatisfaction with the multiple crises of capitalism. A social model that incessantly and...
South Africa pushed to the limit: The political economy of change | by Colin Bundy
Hein Marais, London: Zed Books, 2011 Reviewed Hein Marais has produced a sustained, rigorous and compelling analysis of the political economy of post-apartheid South Africa. It is has no rival as an overview of the country’s trajectory since 1994. The first five...
Interview with Ramy Essam, the revolutionary singer | by Andre Marais
Ramy Essam began the 25 January revolution in Egypt purely as participant, a responsibility he felt happy to undertake. But he was soon called upon by his fellow protestors to provide the soundtrack to their struggles and was quickly labelled ‘the singer of the...
Romance, grace and football | by Mark Espin
When people write about football they often employ a series of overstated adjectives and nauseating hyperbole. The death of Sampaio de Sousa Vieira de Oliveira in December last year required that football writers be much more careful about their use of language when...
ANC 100 years: looking ahead | by Z. Pallo Jordan
In 1956, in an article in the journal Liberation, Nelson Mandela explained aspects of the Freedom Charter: The breaking up and democratisation of these monopolies will open up fresh fields for the development of a prosperous Non-European bourgeois class. For the first...
Boris Kagarlitsky: Economic policies after the death of neoliberalism | by Boris Kagarlitsky
The international economic system that took shape after the collapse of the Soviet Union is not dead yet, but it is dying. We see that daily, not only in reports on the crisis but also in other news from around the world that tells the same story: the system isn’t...
Why the attempted remilitarisation of Africa will fail | by Horace Campbell
Kenya’s foray into Somalia, led from behind by US Africa Command (AFRICOM), ‘represents a heightened threat to peace and reconstruction in Africa, especially East Africa’, argues Horace Campbell. AFRICOM’s attempts at remilitarisation will not solve Africa’s problems,...
Democracy Triumphs in Tunisia’s First Free Elections | by Stuart Schaar
Despite attempts to demonise Tunisia’s Al-Nahda, the Islamist party emerged as the most important in the elections held last month. Tunisia, where the Arab spring began, has shown what the ballot box can achieve.The atmosphere was celebratory, almost like being at a...





