South Africa on the Global Occupy Map

01:33 Download: Occupy South Africa:Ayanda Kota:KPFA:November-13-2011.mp3

KPFA Weekend News, 11.13.2011

Transcript:  KPFA Weekend News 

Host:  South Africa is the only African nation yet to appear on the Global Map of actions by the Occupy Movement. KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to Ayanda Kota, Chair of the Grahamstown, South Africa Unemployed Peoples' Movement about Occupy South Africa.

Nine Important Things

by Christopher McMichael, Mahala

I ran as an independent candidate in the local Makana Muncipality elections (Ward 12), a newly demarcated voting zone, including Rhodes University, in May this year. Representing the Students for Social Justice (SSJ), a recently formed non-hierarchical campus-based organisation, supported by the Unemployed Peoples Movement and the Democratic Left Front. On voting day, the DA won. I managed 130 votes. It may not sound like a lot but in actuality a bunch of students, without money or the support of a political party, missed coming second in the election (and beating the ANC) by just 8 votes.

Shit Slinging, the Media and Occupy#South Africa

by Chris McMichael,  Mahala

The local versions of occupywallstreet# were treated by the mainstream SA media as having no bearing on our social context. As if protesting against political and economic elites, who are privatising the future, has no relevance to South Africa. The admittedly small occupations were treated as incomprehensible: lacking a program and painted as the meaningless boutique protests of a spoiled, confused middle class.

Occupy Grahamstown: A photographic essay by Timothy Gabb

Dispatch from South Africa

Occupy Grahamstown. Picture by Timothy Gabb

by Benjamin Fogel, The Jacobin

October 15th marked the official “Occupy Everywhere” day in in 952 cities located in 82 countries. The message even reached my sleepy university town of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. I joined a group of my fellow students and marched to the town square marked for Occupation to join with comrades from the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) and the Rhodes-based Students for Social Justice (SSJ).

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya. Grahamstown?

by Tristan Gevers, The Daily Dispatch

TODAY - October 15 - has been declared World Revolution Day and various
groups have organised "occupation" in many cities around the world,
including in South Africa.

According to the Occupy South Africa webpage, "occupation" will occur from
about 8am on World Revolution Day, and there will be "movements" in
Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Grahamstown and East London.

Occupy Grahamstown!

13 October 2011
Unemployed People's Movement Press Statement

Occupy Grahamstown! Recapitalise the Poor!

As a movement of the poor we have taken great inspiration from the rebellion that has spread from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Syntagma Square in Athens, the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and now Liberty Plaza in New York. Our comrades in Students for Social Justice have been just as inspired by the growing spirit of rebellion that is jumping, like a fire, from country to country.

On the Wall Street Occupation

by Richard Pithouse, CounterPunch

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's novel about the Great Depression, Tom Joad, the novel's central character, a man who has been made poor and who is on the run from the law, tells his mother in the climactic scene that: “I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together....”