In the past decade South Africa has witnessed an upsurge in negative labelling of informal settlements in policies and programmes, the removal of informal settlements from strategic positions in the city, and even legislative amendments to facilitate such...
people
Who was Walter Rodney?
A brief introduction to his life and works Walter Anthony Rodney, known to many as Walter or Brother Wally, was born on 23 March 1942 in Guiana, a British colony on the northern coast of South America. His father Edward was a tailor and his mother, Pauline, a...
The Antinomies of Democracy in Durban | by Richard Pithouse
Originally published at The South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS) In the last days of June, Nkululeko Gwala was assassinated in Cato Crest - a shack settlement in Durban that is in the process of being upgraded with formal housing. Just over three...
The View From Gezi Park | by Olivia Walton
Over a month has passed since police first attacked peaceful protestors in Istanbul's Gezi Park in June 2013. Already analysts are trying to explain, predict, and measure the protests that were triggered across Turkey by that moment. The international press suggested...
Mandela’s Democracy
By Andrew Nash from Monthly Review The Tribal Model of DemocracyIn his speech from the dock, at his 1962 trial for inciting African workers to strike and leaving the country without a passport, Nelson Mandela described the initial formation of his political ideas....
People’s Assembly Land, Race and Nation Conference declaration
People’s Assembly Land, Race and Nation Conference 22 June 2013 Declaration Preamble Nearly twenty years after the end of apartheid, the 1913 Natives’ Land Act continues to haunt the South African countryside. The land question, which was so central to the struggle...
The Weapon of Theory- Amilcar Cabral
Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January, 1966 by Amilcal Cabral If any of us came to Cuba with doubts in our mind about the solidity, strength, maturity and vitality of the...
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...




