Burkina Faso: Echoes of a Revolution Past by Ernest Harsch, December 22nd, 2014

21 January 2015

Burkina Faso: Echoes of Revolution Past

Ernest Harsch discusses the enduring appeal and influence of the revered revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara.

There is probably no time when people are more aware of history than when they are in the midst of making it. In Burkina Faso, President Blaise Compaoré had scarcely fled from huge crowds of angry demonstrators when protesters and commentators alike began drawing parallels with other momentous uprisings.

To understand SA's History Curriculum change in Democracy, lets first look at this change during Transformation by Maluleka Paul, 15 January 2015, news24.com

15 January 2015

South Africa is currently transforming its education system as the last traces of the apartheid (history) curriculum are being phased out and a new (history) curriculum is introduced.

Neo-patrimonial politics in the ANC by Tom Lodge

1 January 2014

Following Jacob Zuma's ascension to the presidency in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has been dogged by rumours of escalating corruption and the personalization of power. This article documents these trends and explores three ways of understanding neo-patrimonialism in South Africa's ruling party. First, the article addresses the possibility that such political habits have a long history within the ANC but were restricted during its years in exile and have begun to resurface now that the armed struggle is over.

Numsa's United Front: Forward to the Past? by Jane Duncan

19 November 2014

The country’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has expelled the National Union of Metalworkers’ of South Africa (Numsa), for not supporting the African National Congress (ANC). Anyone in South Africa who doesn’t know this news must have been living under a rock for the past week.

When the split hits the fan: Vavi’s future at a crossroads by Stephen Grootes

10 November 2014

The expulsion of metalworkers’ union NUMSA is a seismic event. It will eventually rock the foundations of our politics and will probably become the split of COSATU. As predictable and well-signposted as Friday night’s decision was, the shockwaves are still reverberating. One person whose future is now at a crossroads is obviously Zwelinzima Vavi. As General Secretary of COSATU, he appears to have sided with the union that was expelled, and Numsa’s prediction that he could be next is probably accurate. But he also has a choice to make himself.

Numsa unleashed and full throttle: Welcome to the ANC’s biggest nightmare by Ranjeni Munusamy

10 November 2014

Imagine an alliance or political front featuring Irvin Jim, Julius Malema, Zwelinzima Vavi and Joseph Mathunjwa. If “Pay back the money!” made President Jacob Zuma hide from Parliament, there will be no place for him, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande and Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini to run, should this attack force line up. Following the expulsion of Numsa from Cosatu in the early hours of Saturday morning, there is renewed determination from the union’s leaders to change the political alignment of the country and come back fighting.

How do we talk about the memory of Apartheid

16 October 2014

In 1966 the South African government declared District Six—a high-density, mostly coloured residential area intrinsic to the fabric of downtown Cape Town for at least a century and situated on prime land beneath Table Mountain —to be a white “Group Area.” The state promptly set about forcefully removing District Six’s “non-white” residents (eventually about 60,000 of them) to land up to 30 miles further to a flood plane known as the “Cape Flats,” which consisted of mostly swamp land and sand dunes populated by invasive vegetation.

Vavi's plea to S'dumo

12 November 2014

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has written a two-page letter to the union federation's president, S'dumo Dlamini, pleading with him to save it from collapse following the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA.

Vavi, who was not present at a press briefing yesterday where Cosatu justified its reasons for expelling Numsa, said it was not too late to save the federation.

"If we do not do everything we can, history will judge all of us extremely harshly," he said.

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