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...
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Hugo Chávez and Me | by Tariq Ali
Once I asked whether he preferred enemies who hated him because they knew what he was doing or those who frothed and foamed out of ignorance. He laughed. The former was preferable, he explained, because they made him feel that he was on the right track. Hugo Chávez's...
The Weirdness Closes In
On the face of it, Mamphela Ramphele's long political Calvary has not seemed so strange. It has been clear ever since she returned to South Africa, flushed with neoliberal propaganda and plugging effortlessly into the right-wing smear campaign against President Mbeki,...
After the World Ended (III): A Qualified Franchise
February 14, 2013 Hurrah for the University of Johannesburg Trots! They have launched the first ultra-left political party since the 1994 elections! Isn't this what the Creator has been calling for all along? Well, yes and no. It hasn't been launched or even...
Marikana mine massacre: why British lawyer has joined fight for justice
James Nichol explains his decision to volunteer to represent forgotten families of dead strikers When South Africa's apartheid police massacred 69 people in Sharpeville in 1960, the revulsion spread as far as northern England. James Nichol, then 15, took part in his...
We don’t want your development
The people of Mpondoland are determine theird to save their land from mining by an Australian company which wants to tear apart their pristine coastal dunes to mine titanium. Four years ago, they succeeded in reversing a decision to allow the destruction of the Wild...
What the Fuck?
It is not usual to use an expletive in a publication like this, especially one as outrageous as the f word ... but WTF is going on with the post-apartheid state? First 34 mineworkers are killed, many, it would seem from new investigations, murdered in cold blood. And...
Q&A with Public Protector Thuli Madonsela
At a time when people's trust in the body politic is eroding fast, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has emerged as a national heroine, almost universally revered for her refusal to bow to political pressure and a dedication to her office that few can emulate. Even in...
Voices from Marikana
"They killed us with hippos" Eyewitness account (interpreted from SeTswana): 'They killed us with Hippos. These Hippos arrived here, ran over people. People ran the opposite side (gestures towards 'Killing Koppie')...and the police still went and shot them. When they...






