Activists Make Last-Minute Bid To Stop Blasting In Whale Breeding Grounds

Activists have made a last-minute bid to stop Royal Dutch Shell from exploring for oil and gas in whale breeding grounds off the coast of South Africa.

The fossil-fuel giant had planned to search for oil and gas reserves by setting off underwater explosions along a stretch of South Africa known as the Wild Coast, according to MSN. The explorations were slated to begin December 1. However, four environmental and human rights organizations filed a legal challenge Monday night to stop the blasting, Greenpeace Africa said.

“Shell’s activities threaten to destroy the Wild Coast and the lives of the people living there,” Greenpeace Africa senior climate campaigner Happy Khambule said in a statement about the challenge.

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Black Radical Internationalist Traditions

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, it became a juxtaposition of highly educated workers for the most advanced productive forces on the planet, but developed within the unresolved, deeply violent, four hundred year-long colonial and racist architecture of the US. It was externally influenced by the period of the explosion of national liberation socialism that began with the Chinese revolution and was punctuated by the defeat of the US empire by the Korean and Chinese revolutions and at great costs to their peoples. The 1950s were capped off by the historic 1959 victory in Cuba, whose significance reverberates to this day in all of our lives.

Many of the most significant and radical intellectual and revolutionary formations of the US were born between the years 1959 to 1967.

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160,000 Metalworkers In South Africa Are On Strike

On October 5, the South African National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA) called for an indefinite strike (a strike without a set end date) to demand an 8-percent increase in wages — and 160,000 workers in the steel and engineering sector answered the call. The union, South Africa’s largest, represents 400,000 workers in total.

The massive strike continues the tense social crisis that has rocked the country since riots broke out in July in two provinces over the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma.

“We’re suffering,” Sapelo, a metallurgy technician, told Radio France International. “I’ve been at this job for 13 years with no gratitude. The salary I get isn’t enough. I’m in debt, and I have to support my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters. They all depend on me.”

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Indefinite Strike Hits South Africa’s Engineering Sector

The first day of the indefinite strike in South Africa’s engineering sector on Tuesday, October 5, saw workers in red T-shirts hit the streets in thousands demanding a wage hike. Marches and rallies were witnessed in Kaserne, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Western Cape. 

In Johannesburg, thousands marched to the office of the Metals Engineering and Industries Bargaining Council (MEIBC), where the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) delivered a memorandum to all the employer associations in the sector. Representing 155,000 of the estimated total 300,000 workers in the sector, NUMSA is leading the strike, which is also supported by other unions.

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A Milestone For South African Shack Dwellers Movement

The shack dwellers’ movement of South Africa marked 15 years of struggle for land, housing and dignity on October 4. It held a seminar, Sifike kanjani la? (How did we get to where we are?) and, the following day, relaunched the eKhenana branch of the movement.

The celebration of the 15th anniversary of the formation of AbM was held at the eKhenana Occupation in Cato Manor, Durban. This occupation has an office, a farm, a recreation center and a political school, which is called The Frantz Fanon Political School. The first seeds for the farm were received from the MST (Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil.

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Tell The People That The Struggle Must Go On

Young children marvel at an obvious contradiction in capitalist societies: why do we have shops filled with food, and yet see hungry people on the streets? It is a question of enormous significance; but in time the question dissipates into the fog of moral ambivalence, as various explanations are used to obfuscate the clarity of the youthful mind. The most bewildering explanation is that hungry people cannot eat because they have no money, and somehow this absence of money – the most mystical of all human creations – is enough reason to let people starve.

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South Africa: Lives Over Profits! Bread Not Bullets!

The C19 People’s Coalition was born a month ago and includes 250 organisations from across civil society in all provinces, including community-based organisations, social movements, non-governmental organisations, research institutions, faith-based organisations and others. It is the broadest grouping of civil society that has come together to address the current crisis. We have developed a Programme of Action (POA). 

Our rationale is that government alone cannot combat a health crisis of this scale; community and wider societal participation is critical if the measures that medical science requires us to undertake are to implement in a just and equitable manner. The failure of government and the state to fully align itself with this approach has shone a light on acute societal problems that as a matter of urgency now need to be addressed.  

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How The Cuban Peoples’ Fight Against Colonialism Prepared It For The Coronavirus

Bill Cosby was always a rapist monster. That much, hindsight and evidence make clear. Still, moored in our “Me Too” moment, it’s easy to forget how profound and influential the man, and the network smash hit, The Cosby Show, once was. Much beloved—though he long had critics—“America’s Dad” had a global fanbase. Furthermore, with his sitcom’s socio-political undertones, Cosby then seemed something like a national conscience.

The Cosby Show “conscience” had a distinct international component. Enter South Africa—an apartheid nation so repressive it had no television until 1976—where it was the era’s most popular sitcom. This was “ironic,” according to a local black high schooler: “that a show by somebody who was very explicitly an opponent of apartheid was shown in South Africa.”

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2019 Protests From North, West, East And Southern Africa

2019 had her fair share of protests from North, West, East and Southern Africa.

The reasons for these protests were largely political, followed by economic and then demand for human rights in some instances not to forget issues of ethnic tensions and insecurity.

The protests toppled two long serving presidents, Sudan’s Omar al Bashir and Algeria’s Abdul Aziz Bouteflika. Two dogged movements swept away a combine 50-years of presidential rule.

We look back at how these protests were started, what they achieved and their current statuses.

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A Fight For The Right To Breathe Begins In South Africa

South African environmental justice advocates are suing the government to force it to clean up the air in the country’s Mpumalanga Highveld region. In the mid-1990s, South Africa’s post-apartheid government overhauled the nation’s constitution. Among the reforms, the country’s leaders adopted a bold, sweeping protection for the land and its people: the right to a healthy environment. Now, as scientists warn that all countries must take bold, sweeping action to avert the worst effects of a climate crisis, South African environmental justice advocates are testing that constitutional right. They are suing the government to force it to clean the dirty air that smothers South Africa’s Mpumalanga Highveld region.

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How South Africa’s Shack Dwellers’ Movement Is Fighting Back—And Growing—Despite Waves Of Repression

In one of few appearances since he was forced to go underground, S’bu Zikode, a founder and leader of the Shack Dwellers Movement of South Africa (Abahlali baseMjondolo), spoke at the People’s Forum in New York this month. This is not his first time in hiding—he has faced threats and attempts on his life throughout the years—and many leaders of his movement have been assassinated. In New York, S’bu spoke of the struggle of his people and how they are moving forward in the face of brutal repression. How, in his words, they are not only living but marching forward “in the shadows of death” despite frequent raids, evictions, and assassinations. Despite what he faces at home—violence, separation from his family and his community, betrayal by his comrades—S’bu is calm, collected and kind.

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We Build Your Homes, But Have No Homes Ourselves: Diary Of A South African Land Occupation

Talitha and Johanna work as maids. They earn R150 per day, which is the price of a gallon of milk, a pound of cheese, a loaf of bread and four oranges (1 Rand is about 5 Rupees). They could just about eat for a day, but that’s about it. They smile at me when I ask them how they manage to get by. Johanna says, ‘barely’. They live in Good Hope Settlement, a congested piece of land in Germiston – just outside Johannesburg (South Africa). Their homes are temporary, called ‘shacks’ in this part of the world. These shelters abut each other. They have no protection from the rain and offer no privacy. The lack of sanitation facilities means that sewage runs through their narrow lanes. It also means that illness is a constant worry.

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