Mercia Andrews — This article seeks to respond to the questions: where is the South African Left, what has happened to it, and why has it become so fragmented and marginal?
South Africa
Amandla! Collective — Where is the Left? The Left exists. It is present in many of today’s struggles. But over time it has become quite marginal and isolated. A rebirth of the Left needs to start with coming to terms with this reality.
Dale T McKinley — It is unfortunately all too predictable that some on the left are consistently calling for imperial nations/the West to stop objectifying the people of the Global South, while refusing to apply the same to the majority of people and the left in Ukraine and Russia.
Early March 2022 provided a surprising reflection of the extent to which dominant Western norms of international finance could retain hegemony, even as the world’s North-South polarisation suddenly worsened. The Shanghai-based New Development Bank (NDB) was set up by five countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) – at a 2014 Brazilian conference of presidents.
By Dale T McKinley
June 26, 2021 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — There can be little argument that the world of work in South Africa, and indeed globally, is in the throes of a deep, systemic crisis, made all the worse by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. However, if we allow ourselves, we can see the current and coming period as heralding a different kind of transition, one of possibility.
By Shawn Hattingh
July 7, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it often seems as if we are stuck in a dystopian movie. In this movie death is stalking us, hospitals overflow with the sick and dying, and the grave diggers are at work. We know more victims will soon die as the folly of millions of workers being forced by circumstances to return into cramped mines, banks, factories and warehouses is so evident. Those that are no longer needed by the billionaires who own the companies are marshalled daily by the police and military dishing out violence and on occasion, humiliation, to underline their power and the power of their bosses. It all feels so unreal, a ghastly movie playing out before our eyes.