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Renewing the Left: Not just doom and gloom

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: Prospects for a new Left

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.

Cyril Ramaphosa relaunches neo-liberalism: After Jacob Zuma’s firing, South Africa risks budget austerity

Change in South Africa's president: Out with the old, in with the not so new

“Zuma Must Fall” and the Left: Lessons from Zimbabwe

South Africa's ANC: Mistaking consequence for cause

By Dale T. McKinley May 12, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Pambazuka News — President Jacob Zuma’s recent Cabinet reshuffle is nothing more and nothing less than the latest instalment of a long-running story of the capture of the ANC and the post-1994 democratic state it has politically run. It is but a component consequence of a political, economic and social crisis that has been forged and fed by the ANC (and its Alliance partners) as a whole, in conjunction with capital. That crisis is not the result of actions taken by a small collection of conspirators, a select group of bad people or an individual.

South Africa: Mass protests follow cabinet reshuffle as Zuma impeachment vote looms

By Patrick Bond

April 28, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On South Africa’s political left, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party dominated recent news by leading a mass march on President Jacob Zuma’s office in Pretoria, following a government power shift seen as amplifying corruption. The move also catalysed a ‘junk’ rating by two neoliberal credit ratings agencies. And an impeachment process on the immediate horizon represents the first real parliamentary threat to Zuma’s eight-year reign.

South Africa’s corporatised liberation: A critical analysis of the ANC in power

By Dale McKinley

March 31, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Pambazuka News — The ANC has become the key political vehicle, both in party and state form, of corporate capital; both domestic and international, both black and white, both local and national, and constitutive of a range of different ‘fractions’ of capital.

In South Africa, enter stage left: Jacob Zuma’s ‘Radical Economic Transformation’ alternative factoids

South Africa’s junk credit rating was avoided, but at the cost of junk analysis

By Patrick Bond December 9, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Standard&Poors (S&P) gave South Africa a fearful few hours of anticipation last Friday, just after dust from the political windstorm of the prior week settled. The agency downgraded the government’s securities that are denominated in the local currency (the rand) although refrained from the feared junk status on international securities. It was a moment for the ruling business and political party elites’ introspection, but in heaving a sigh of relief they are not looking far enough.

Sudáfrica: Las privaciones y depravaciones de Jacob Zuma

[Original in English here] Por Patrick Bond November 14, 2016 — Traducido por Enrique García para Sin Permiso — Esta semana quizás sea recordada como el punto de inflexión política de Sudáfrica más importante desde que en septiembre de 2008 su propio partido, el ANC, obligase a dimitir al presidente Thabo Mbeki. Su torturador principal era en aquella época Jacob Zuma, que - después de un breve período transitorio - ha gobernado el país de una manera cada vez menos convincente desde mayo de 2009.

South Africa’s deprivations and depravations revealed in Jacob Zuma’s meltdown