Justice Now For The Marikana Workers and Communities!

Democratic Left Front

On the 16th August 2012, post apartheid democracy lurched into a horror. It was estimated 34 mineworkers at the Lonmin Mine in the North West province were brutally gunned down by police and in total over 70 workers have been injured. The death toll at this stage is still not completely verified, with the community still reporting loved ones missing and not accounted for in official body counts. 

Towards a Truly Democratic Left: An Anarchist Assessment of the DLF at COP17

by Jonathan Payn, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

Failures of democracy have been a big part of the history of the DLF. We in the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) have had to raise such challenges several times (see “DLF structure: concerns and proposals” by ZACF). We have long been troubled by the lack of proper democratic structures, by a leadership that consists far more of middle-class intellectuals than of grassroots militants, and by a programme that seems to be determined in advance by the academic and NGO interests of these intellectuals instead of by the immediate needs of the workers and the poor.

Ten Theses on Democracy

Unemployed People’s Movement

Grahamstown

Ten Theses on Democracy

A contribution to the discussion at the Democratic Left Front Meeting, Johannesburg, Friday 2 September 2011

Is the SACP still relevant?

by Mazikbuko K. Jara, The Sunday Times

The South African Communist Party can be faulted on many fronts, but its sterling contribution to defeating apartheid and challenging capitalist exploitation was personified in the principled socialist morality and selflessness of Chris Hani, Joe Slovo and others.