South Africa

S. African Poet Helping Maryland Church Protect Historic Black Cemetery

November 13, 2017 Andrew Bossone, pbs.org Resist! Black Churches, Maryland, South Africa

By Andrew Bossone for PBS NewsHour - Shauna Sorrells, a spokesperson for the county’s housing opportunities commission, said the county knew when it drew up design plans for the parking lot that a cemetery existed in the area, but “had no notion that there were human remains on the site.” The county passed a bill at the end of October to maintain records of burial sites for the first time. Tucked beside large commercial and residential developments, the Macedonia church barely holds a few dozen in its chapel. The church, founded in 1920, is the last reminder that an upscale neighborhood today was once a rural community of African-Americans who purchased parcels of land after slavery was abolished. As big buildings went up, church members and historians have testimony that bulldozers moved the bodies in the graveyard and covered them with what is now a gravel parking lot and tree-lined hill. “It’s just like it was a town, and a big gust of wind came and just leveled it to the ground,” said Harvey Matthews, who grew up in the community and has been a member of the church for 51 years. “Everything else was gone. Bulldozed away. You see all the industry out here, the buildings. All that came in. So that’s how they got rid of it. Kids [born after 1970] don’t know anything about a little black colony being here. But there was a black community here.”

Domestic Workers Movement Is Growing

August 14, 2017 Myrtle Witbooi, www.opendemocracy.net Organize! Class Struggle, Domestic Workers, South Africa, Workers

By Myrtle Witbooi for Open Democracy - So the question is, how did I come from my humble beginnings to where I am now? My life in this field started in 1966, when I became a domestic worker. I was working for a family, in 1967, and I remember I was pregnant and had a baby that same year. I also remember that, during the apartheid times, there was an article in the newspaper about how some employers didn't allow the friends of domestic workers to visit the property. The question that a came to my mind was what are we? And why are there no rights for us? So I questioned the situation. I wrote a letter and I sent it to the newspaper without thinking. I just wrote my frustration: why are we different? Why are there no laws to protect us? Why are we not seen as people? And then, three days later, a reporter from the newspaper came to the door and was looking for the maid, the servant. This reporter decided that I educated and asked me why I kept my ideas to myself, instead of speaking out. I became a spokesperson for both sides, and that is where I discovered a certain talent I have: I have the ability to speak. So we called a meeting in 1968, here in Salt River (Capetown, South Africa), in a big hall for garment workers.

New Netanyahu “Peace” Plan Is Straight Out Of Apartheid South Africa

August 3, 2017 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Apartheid, Israel, Palestine, South Africa

By Ali Abunimah for The Electronic Antifada - Benjamin Netanyahu is proposing that Palestinian citizens of Israel be stripped of their citizenship under a “peace” deal that would place them in a future Palestinian entity. The Israeli prime minister recently told American officials, according to a report in Haaretz, that “Israeli-Arab communities could move under Palestinian control” as part of a final status agreement. “In exchange,” the Tel Aviv newspaper wrote, “Israel would annex some West Bank settlements.” Commonly referred to as “transfer,” this proposal amounts to ethnic cleansing. It is not a new idea, but Netanyahu’s broaching it represents a further step in the Israeli government formally adopting policies once considered taboo even by many Israelis. The area Netanyahu has in mind – at least initially – is Wadi Ara, a region in the north, including the major town of Umm al-Fahm. Some 1.5 million Palestinians have citizenship in Israel. They are the survivors and their descendants of the Nakba, the Zionist ethnic cleansing of the vast majority of the Palestinian population from what became Israel before and after it was established in 1948. The idea that this would be an “exchange” is clearly absurd since none of what Netanyahu proposes to swap is Israel’s to begin with: West Bank settlers live on land stolen from Palestinians in violation of international law.

Political Analysis Of South Africa By The SA Communist Party

July 22, 2017 Staff, www.sacp.org.za Educate! Communism, South Africa

By Staff of SACP - We, 1, 819 Communist militants, have met over the past five days as delegates to the SACP's 14th National Congress in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng. We are drawn from over 7, 000 SACP branches from across our country and from the ranks of the Young Communist League of South Africa. As delegates, we represent 284, 554 SACP members. Five years ago, at our 13th National Congress, we proudly announced that our membership had grown massively to over 150, 000. We have nearly doubled once again. We are well aware that this surging popularity of the Party imposes responsibilities upon all of us. Our Congress occurs at a time when South Africa's monopoly-dominated capitalist economy, with its colonial and apartheid legacy features, continues to reproduce crisis levels of unemployment, inequality and poverty - all of which are strongly marked by racial, gendered and spatial features. At this Congress we have taken resolutions which both reaffirm our principled strategic posture as well as advancing specific interventions that need to be undertaken. We are reaffirming our strategic commitment to a radical second phase of the National Democratic Revolution as the most direct route to a socialist South Africa. To reinforce and give practical content to this strategic perspective we have also resolved on many specific interventions.

South Africa Writhes In New Political-Economic Birth Pains

April 15, 2017 Patrick Bond, www.counterpunch.org Resist! Politics, South Africa

By Patrick Bond for Counter Punch - Indeed there is no doubt that at least one profound problem with the recent whitelash against Zuma is its class character. Even though the poor – who number more than 60% of the population nearly all black – have been most adversely affected by his policies, while the top 1% have maintained the worst inequality in the world, it is in Zuma’s looting of parastatal agency coffers that established white businesses feel threatened. The electricity supplier Eskom is most often cited, potentially for a $100 billion Russian nuclear deal which Gordhan had opposed. There are also unending mining-related Eskom boondoggles that favour a new breed of coal capitalists, especially the controversial Gupta brothers. The three Indian immigrants are regularly accused of brazen ‘state capture,’ e.g. in a long critique by EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu. In the first wave of resistance, on April 7, the main public face of the ‘Save South Africa’ movement coordinating the protests was Sipho Pityana. But the firm he chairs – AngloGold Ashanti – is amongst apartheid’s most notorious. Its origins date a century, to Harry Oppenheimer’s control of Johannesburg gold in the same tradition as De Beers’ founder Cecil John Rhodes...

Anti-Apartheid Leader Ahmed Kathrada Died

April 1, 2017 Staff, www.polity.org.za Educate! Activists, Apartheid, History, South Africa

By Staff of Polity - Sad as the passing of Ahmed Kathrada is, we need to use these occasions to draw lessons from his life. Kathrada is one of the last of a generation of political figures who built the Congress Movement, consisting of the ANC, Indian Congresses, South African Congress of Trade Unions, Congress of Democrats and the South African Coloured People’s Organisation. It was a mighty force that stressed the need to unite all the people of South Africa experiencing oppression or, as whites, willing to combat oppression and build a united democratic South Africa. Initially the alliance that was built was referred to as multi-racial, but gradually the term non-racial came into existence, envisaging that the basis for unity would not be separately organised people, though this separate organisation did persist.

Protesting Students Clash With Police In South Africa

October 6, 2016 Staff, www.aljazeera.com Resist! Education, Protests, South Africa, Student Protests

By Staff of Al Jazeera - South African police have used tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades against students protesting for free education in Johannesburg. Two students were arrested and another and one staff member were injured in the violence on Tuesday at the University of the Witwatersrand, or Wits. Similar unrest has occurred since last month at other financially struggling South African universities, forcing a number, including Wits, to close.

How Apartheid Haunts A New Generation Of South Africans

September 26, 2016 Kenichi Serino, www.theatlantic.com Organize! Africa, Apartheid, South Africa

By Kenichi Serino for The Atlantic - When 24-year-old Nyiko Lebogang Shikwambane left her home on the outskirts of Johannesburg to begin her law degree at the University of Witswatersrand in 2011, she brought with her the aspirations of a family of teachers and nurses—the only esteemed professions most black people living in South Africa could aspire to during the time of apartheid.

After Protests, South African School Ends Anti-Afro Policy

August 31, 2016 Staff, www.telesurtv.net Resist! Protests, South Africa, Student Activism

By Staff of Tele Sur - Government officials struck down the school’s dress codes that many complained “pandered to whiteness. A South African school was ordered Tuesday to suspend hairstyle regulations after Black students complained that the restrictions singled them out and that they had been called monkeys by teachers for wearing banned "afros." Local education authorities in the Gauteng province gave Pretoria High School for Girls 21 days to re-assess its rules after protests by students triggered a public dispute over the racist policies.

From South Africa To Ireland, #BlackLivesMatter Finds Solidarity Worldwide

July 13, 2016 Nika Knight, www.commondreams.org Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Ireland, South Africa

By Nika Knight for Common Dreams - As the U.S. reels from multiple shootings that made international headlines last week, the country's grassroots movement for racial justice and against police brutality has been met with solidarity around the world. Denouncing the recent fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, people marched and rallied over the weekend and through Tuesday for the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

South Africa’s ANC Corrupted By Capitalism Faces Political Crisis

June 24, 2016 Ben Morken, www.marxist.com Create! Capitalism, Crisis, South Africa

By Ben Morken for In Defense of Marxism - In the politically sensitive province of Kwazulu-Natal tensions are boiling over. After a bruising leadership battle, the former premier Senzo Mchunu has been recalled by the National Working Committee and the provincial leadership. Mchunu, who was part of the big business faction of Cyril Ramaphosa, has been replaced by Sihle Zikalala who is close to president Zuma. In line with the practice of recent years, the entire losing faction is now being marginalised.

Soweto Uprising: Four Decades On, South Africa Still Struggles

June 20, 2016 Andrew Faull, www.theconversation.com Educate! South Africa, State Violence, Uprising

By Andrew Faull for The Conversation - June days in South Africa can be dark, cold and short. The sun rises late and sets early. Highland frosts feel their way through blades of blemished veld; mists mask roads ahead and behind. The month brings with it the year’s mid-point and shortest day; a chance to reflect on what has been, and what may lie ahead. Five days before the equinox South Africa celebrates Youth Day. Forty years ago on 16 June 1976, thousands of school children in Soweto, Johannesburg, braved the Highveld cold to protest the apartheid government’s decision that they be educated in a strange tongue: Afrikaans.

The Soweto Schoolchildren’s Revolt That Shook Apartheid

June 18, 2016 Baruch Hirson, www.roarmag.org Educate! Apartheid, Children, Schools, South Africa, Uprising

By Baruch Hirson for ROAR Magazine - In this exclusive extract from Year of Fire, Year of Ash: The Soweto Schoolchildren’s Revolt that Shook Apartheid, re-published this month by Zed Books (US/World), Baruch Hirson describes the socio-political and economic backdrop to the 1976 Soweto Uprising, which kicked off exactly forty years ago today. Tens of thousands of school children took part in the uprising that started off as a protest against the proposed introduction of compulsory tuition in Afrikaans

South Africa’s EFF: Julius Malema And Struggle To Continue Revolution

June 2, 2016 Marsha Cole, www.blackagendareport.com Resist! Revolution, South Africa

By Marsha Cole for Black Agenda Report - For many South Africans, Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters are the answer to the neoliberal policies of the ruling African National Congress. The EFF charges that the ANC transitioned the country “from one phase of apartheid to another, neo-colonial phase where the majority of blacks are poorer than ever.” The Freedom Charter, says Malema, is “the bible” of the South African revolution. “Any deviation from that is a sellout position.”

S. African Economic Freedom FIghters Radical Mood Before Elections

May 4, 2016 Ben Morken, www.tmarxist.com Create! Elections, Radicals, South Africa

By Ben Morken for In Defense of Marxism - The rally took place at a capacity crowd of more than 56,000 people at Orlando Stadium in Soweto, a township with deep revolutionary roots and immense historic and symbolic significance to the South African working class. It is not only the biggest township, but also the country’s biggest working class area. The event was held near the site where the Soweto Uprisings of 16 June 1976 began. Those uprisings started when the police opened fire on protesting students.

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