19 June 2013

- By Walton Pantland Today is the 100 year anniversary of the passing of the Native Land Act in South Africa. At the time the brilliant South African intellectual Sol Plaatje, the first general secretary of the organisation that would become the ANC, wrote: “Awakening on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native [...]

19 June 2013

Protests in Turkey and Brazil, the UK’s banks, and land rights in South Africa. Watch the video: Or download the podcast:     Download Protests in Turkey are ongoing and the international trade union movement has called for days of action against the Turkish government on Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22nd of June. [...]

14 March 2013

by Samantha Ritchie Watch this short documentary: South Africa: Inside the Cycle of Rape   Twenty-eight percent of girls have HIV in South Africa. The Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has stated that South Africa must take a “stance against ‘sugar daddies’ because they are destroying children.” Mr Motsoaledi stated that some pregnant girls between the [...]

6 March 2013

- By Walton Pantland   Here are two stories with a resonance on two continents: two trade union leaders, both charged with corruption, both most likely the victims of political campaigns against them. These stories demonstrate the difficulty senior trade unionists face in balancing their relationships with governments and with their members. To deliver for [...]

12 February 2013

We are very proud to announce that the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) has become the latest union to endorse USi. SAMWU is a COSATU affiliate with a proud history of fighting for local government employees, for public services and social justice. SAMWU has fought very hard against the privatisation of essential public resources. [...]

8 February 2013

A seventeen year old girl has been found raped and murdered on a construction site 80 miles east of Cape Town in Bredasdorp, South Africa. The young woman named Anene Booysen and was out with friends last Friday evening before she was attacked. Anene was allegedly lured away by her ex boyfriend and taken to [...]

5 February 2013

The past three months have seen wide-scale unrest in the fruit and wine farms of the Western Cape province in South Africa. This is part of a much larger wave of industrial action which has swept the mining sector and other parts of the South African economy for the past year. At the root of [...]

28 January 2013

  As we have reported previously, wine and fruit farms in South Africa’s Western Cape have been hit by a wave of industrial unrest over the past few months. At the heart of the matter is low wages, as well as a host of other issues, including lack of security of tenure for workers who [...]