History Matters

May 6 2012 at 09:36am By Donwald Pressly. Comment on this story Independent Newspapers Declaring that her ministry was not “a Hollywood” set, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson instigated a trail of destruction through her department on Friday by suspending the acting deputy director-general in charge of the fisheries sub-department, allegedly on the [...]

Recent calls for nationalisation of mines and expropriation of land  without compensation have  evoked a sense of anxiety  and discomfort in  sections of  South African society,  the international financial sector and observers of South Africa’s policy processes. These ideas are said to be to be based on the Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People, on [...]

Newspaper article from Daily Dispatch: Xolobeni – red card greed by NOMBONISO GASA Uhlohlesakhe-khe-khe-khe-khe….! The big voice boomed from the wireless radio of my childhood signalling the beginning of a radio drama about a man who only stuffed his own stomach. That voice had the authority of ringing bells of a Christian church calling believers to pray on a Sunday morning. We, [...]

State of the Nation Address by His Excellency JG Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa, Joint Sitting of Parliament, Cape Town 3 June 2009 Honourable Speaker; Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces; Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP; Deputy President of the Republic, Kgalema Motlanthe Former [...]

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 [...]

On average in South Africa over the last five years there are ten shack fires a day with someone dying in a shack fire every other day. Shack fires are not acts of God. They are the result of political choices, often at municipal level. Shack settlements are a poor people’s solution to a lack [...]

The advent of a new democratic order on 27 April 2007 resulted in an effort to reverse the adverse inequalities in the land ownership patterns in our country. Such efforts were complemented by a plethora of laws and legislations to give effect to this noble yet complicated process. However, such a process would not put [...]

“This is one country where it would be possible to create a capitalist black society, if whites were intelligent, if the nationalists were intelligent. And that capitalist black society, black middle class, would be very effective … South Africa could succeed in putting across to the world a pretty convincing, integrated picture, with still 70 [...]

There has been considerable discussion after the announcement that the eThekwini Municipality is considering expropriating land from Tongaat-Hulett to finally move ahead with the long promised Cornubia development. We all know that in Durban, as in cities around the country, the question of housing is the biggest source of conflict between poor people’s organisations and [...]