The strike bound South African Post Office (Sapo) has been badly damaged. And not by greedy workers and belligerent unions, but by mismanagement, corruption and a total lack of planning and foresight. The strike in its eleventh week is not a cause, but a symptom of the malaise.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 27 October 2014
Platinum mining giant Lonmin could have found the money to meet rock drillers’ pay demands instead of shifting funds between subsidiaries, possibly to avoid tax.
GroundUp staff
News | 16 October 2014
The question of class came to the fore this week with that arch free marketeer Ann Bernstein and the Centre for Democracy and Enterprise (CDE) hailing the potential growth of a global middle class, among them teachers. At the same time, the Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) concluded its conference, declaring teachers to be “revolutionary professionals, agents of change...in pursuit of socialism”.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 13 October 2014
Cape Town-based think-tank Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), which was stopped by Lonmin from holding a press conference about the platinum company’s accounts, intends to hold the conference “very soon”.
GroundUp staff
News | 10 October 2014
Once again we are having calls from a number of trade unions for the private sector to exercise “social responsibility” in order to help build “a developmental state”. It is a far cry from 1996 when the combined labour movement presented alternative economic policy proposals.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 6 October 2014
The Gauteng High Court has ruled that the expulsion of ten Samwu provincial office bearers by the union between April and June this year was unlawful.
Daneel Knoetze
Brief | 30 September 2014
Wednesday was a public holiday: Heritage Day. And carnivore commercialism seems largely to have claimed it. For many — if not most — South Africans who could afford it, this was a day to indulge in and enjoy chisa nyama, the ubiquitous braai.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 29 September 2014
Is South Africa on the brink of a clash between the egalitarian concepts embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the demands to retain undemocratic, feudal and colonial hangovers of the past? If so, it may be Swaziland that will provide the catalyst.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 22 September 2014
There is no reason people with HIV shouldn't be soldiers, says Tim Flack, who served in the navy and is the Western Cape representative for the South African National Defence Force Union.
Tim Flack
Opinion | 16 September 2014
Every month since January, Khayelitsha’s refuse collectors and street cleaners in QA and PJS Section go in large groups to camp outside the supervisor’s office so they can get what is due to them.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 15 September 2014
Deputy defence minister Kebby Maphatsoe this week withdrew his claim that public protector Thuli Madonsela was a “CIA spy” and apologised for the statement. But the issue continues to reverberate throughout the body politic.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 15 September 2014
Car guards outside the Old Biscuit Mill have been left without an income after the newly operational Salt River Business Improvement District (SRBID) told them to leave.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 12 September 2014
Our justly praised Constitution and the institutions it created have taken something of a verbal battering over the past week and more — and often for the wrong reasons. In the process, the office of the public protector has become something of a surrogate battleground for the opposing factions in Cosatu.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 8 September 2014
Andries Joostenberg, the retired farmworker who was evicted along with his family from a farmhouse in which they had lived for 26 years, has applied for urgent leave to appeal the court order which legalised the eviction. Papers were filed by family lawyer Johan van der Merwe in the Land Claims Court (LCC) on Wednesday.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 5 September 2014
The opening salvoes have again been fired in another round in the war about a national minimum wage. And on both sides there are accusations of the selective choice of research to bolster arguments.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 1 September 2014
This week in political activism we look at calls for help from Grahamstown, the plight of coal communities, a symposium on gender equality, and documenting the struggles of four informal settlements in South Africa.
Thembela Ntongana
News | 27 August 2014