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...
urban
Interview with police Major General Jeremy Vearey
In this extract from a longer interview conducted by Amandla! Vearey outlines a brief history of policing methodology in Cape Town and a critique based on the intersection between class/capital/space in terms of how crime arises and policing functions in Cape Town A!:...
Marikana and the crisis of Migrancy | by Micah Reddy
The Marikana massacre and unrest on South Africa's mines in 2012 elicited a flurry of analysis, much of it superficial and too hastily produced to be of any real use. One of the more authoritative accounts, however, came from former trade unionist Gavin Hartford, now...
The Missing women of Marikana | by Camalita Naicker
Often when the history of 'big' events is recorded, after a while, the stories with specific details are eroded and obscured. It is made to fit easily into a certain kind of analysis that endures over time. So much so that what is subsumed under these theoretical...
Farmworker Housing | by Benjamin Fogel
The housing crisis is not merely confined to the cities and towns of South Africa; it is at the heart of political struggles in rural areas as well. Farmworkers not only face the same types of issues as those who dwell in urban areas, but also face some that are...
Marie Hutchzermeyer cities with slums
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...
The housing crisis
As demonstrated in these pages the housing crisis is complex and multi-layered and cannot be separated from the wider social malaise facing South Africa. The causes of this crisis include policy confusion, market-based mechanisms for service provision, and the...
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...
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...

