South Africa

Robert Fine, who died on 9 June 2018, was a socialist writer unafraid to stand up to much of the left’s received wisdom on the questions of Israel, Palestine, and antisemitism.

He opposed the “absolute anti-Zionist” standpoint that one should unreservedly object to (a) Israel’s very existence, rather than the oppressive practices of the Israeli state, and (b) any feelings of Jewish communal or national identification with Israel, even when such feelings are accompanied with harsh condemnation of the Israeli government or genuine horror at the Palestinians’ suffering.

An abridged version of this appeared in Solidarity505.

I started in athletics as a 15 year old middle distance runner in 2009, meaning Caster Semenya was incredibly formative to me, serving as a huge inspiration and becoming one of my heroes. I watched the Berlin World Championships, so famous for Usain Bolt’s world record display, but while I greatly admired the best sprinter of all time, it was Caster Semenya that made me fall in love with athletics.

One of the numerous commendable causes to which the late Robert Fine committed many years of his life was anti-apartheid activism. Accordingly, our series of book reviews to commemorate Fine continues with Beyond Apartheid: Labour and Liberation in South Africa (Pluto Press 1990). Fine embarked on this project in collaboration with Dennis Davis during the final years of apartheid. Although both are credited as authors, Fine wrote the text itself, whilst Davis helped shape the main contours and ideas of the project, and commented on the drafts.

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela died aged 79 on 23 January following a recurrence of prostate cancer. He was famous internationally for his playing and singing; for blending South African musical styles with jazz and pop; and as a prominent anti-apartheid activist. Born in Witbank, a mining town near Johannesburg, Masekela started his musical career in a school run by the British anti-apartheid priest Trevor Huddleston.

As Solidarity goes to press on 13 February, the ANC, the ruling party, has officially asked Jacob Zuma to step down as President of South Africa. Zuma has been under increasing pressure to resign since December, when deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was narrowly elected leader of the ANC at its conference.

After Germany in 2014, South Africa looks like becoming the next country to scrap university tuition fees. And more and more people are determined to add England and Wales to the list.

The African National Congress (ANC), the party that has been in power since 1994 when majority rule was established in South Africa, is coming apart at the seams. This is in a context of radical student struggles, protests against austerity, and a growing rank-and-file movement in the unions and the ANC itself.

South Africa has seen some of its largest protests in two decades in the last month as tens of thousands of students, many activists affiliated with the "Fees Must Fall" movement, faced off with police and university authorities to demand a cheaper university system.

Battles have been raging at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where officials used tear gas to subdue protestors, at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban and at the University of Cape Town.

The governing party of South Africa, the ANC, has been shaken by a powerful student movement, and has been forced to make significant concessions.

In South Africa, the governing African National Congress (ANC) considers itself the only legitimate voice of the poor. Self-organising among the poor is met with brutal repression by the state and its organs.

Christoph Plutte and Anja Hertz talked to Ndabo Mzimela and S’bu Zikode of Abahlali base Mjondolo, a grassroots organisation of people living in informal settlements in South Africa who struggle for the dignity of shack dwellers and against evictions and repression by the state and its organs.