The probable expulsion of Numsa from Cosatu marks the beginning of a profound re-organisation and possible renewal of the workers' movement. The most likely outcome will be the emergence of a new federation organised around Numsa, along with the eight other unions...
union
Ukraine
The crisis that has erupted in Ukraine following the right-wing coup engineered by the United States and Germany and the intervention of Russia into Crimea has created the most dangerous international confrontation since the end of World War II. Almost overnight, in a...
Interview with Irvin Jim
At NUMSA's Special Congress in December you voted to hold socio-economic strikes, the first of which is coming up on 19 March to oppose the Employment Tax Incentive. Could you describe what a socio-economic strike is and why NUMSA is opposed to the tax incentive? I...
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...
Numsa and the crisis in the Cosatu: What now?
by Benjamin Fogel During the 1980s the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) was the figurehead of the so-called 'workerist' tendency within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and has always been on the left in Cosatu. Although Numsa...
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...
Taking Politics beyond the Factory Seriously
by Richard Pithouse Numsa's's resolve to break with both the ANC and the authority that the SACP has tried to exert over the union movement carries the potential for a real political opening. The union's commitment to work with other struggles, including community...
The phony war in Ukraine
By Boris Kagarlitsky March 4, 2014 Why, do you suppose, war has not yet broken out between Russia and Ukraine? The answer is very simple: no one plans to go to war, and no one can. Kiev for practical purposes does not have an army, while the government that has...
Amandla Issue 33
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