History Matters

ADOPTED BY THE FIRST NATIONAL CONFERENCE 20-23 January 2011 Post-apartheid capitalism is leaving a trail of hunger, poverty, anger and misery. The wealthy elite, the bosses and their hangers on refuse to concede a single inch to the urgent needs of the majority. They label even the most modest reforms as the thin edge of [...]

Yesterday I returned home after participating in the ‘All African Moot’ competition. This competition, which was expertly organised and run by the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, saw the coming together of 73 universities from around the continent. The students were required to draft memorials, which are in essence one’s argument in written [...]

Attacks on sexuality rights are undermining constitutionalism, writes Raymond Suttner May 30, 2010 11:05 PM | By Raymond Suttner While noting government indecisiveness, especially at the top, we must recognise that much is still happening below and above the surface that might have far-reaching effects and require attention beyond this period. One way of addressing [...]

Dear friends, The crackdown and blackout on Iran’s streets and internet is silencing the voices of protesters. Iranians urgently need internet access to communicate with each other and world – let’s fund simple, cheap tools to help them freely access the internet: TAKE ACTION NOW! The brutal crackdown on Iran’s streets is succeeding. Lethal shooting, [...]

Rob Peterson 20th June 2009 This is an extract of a letter circulated by Rob Peterson which raises some interesting issues regarding the Justice Hlophe saga. […] some elementary thoughts: 1) What is quite striking about the Hlophe camp (from which he in no way dissociates himself) is its nakedly political campaigning character. This is [...]

Sokari Ekine and Firoze Manji 2009-06-11, Issue 437 http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/56914 With Shell having agreed an out-of-court settlement of $15.5 million with the families of the Ogoni Nine activists killed in 1995, Sokari Ekine and Firoze Manji argue that a victory should not be confused with justice. Though representative of an emerging movement in bringing a multinational [...]

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}   Johannesburg, 3 June 2009   Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs today [...]

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement Tuesday, 19 May 2009 Now that the election is over and the politicians have finished hunting for positions they are running away from the people. It is impossible for a poor community to get a meeting with a politician. They only send in the police to break the people’s homes and [...]

A friend sent me an sms as she was going into the voting booth on April 22nd. “Going to hold my nose and vote”, she said. She was voting for COPE nationally and ID provincially only because she was sure they would not be in government. She detested many of the personalities in Cope, disagreed [...]