Launch of Steven Friedman's New Book on Harold Wolpe - 17 March 2015

Poor need to be heard rather than spoken for

Steven Friedman, Business Day

HAVE millions of citizens found a voice — or are we about to see the birth of yet another movement that will speak about these citizens but never listen to them?

In theory, the United Front, which was initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), and which met last month to prepare for its launch, should fill an important gap in our politics — the fact that millions have a vote but no voice.

SACP helped push Numsa’s expulsion from Cosatu

Steven Friedman, Business Day

THERE was a time when the South African Communist Party (SACP) terrified supporters of a market economy. Today, it is more likely to frighten the left.

By expelling the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu’s) central executive committee seems to have slapped the African National Congress (ANC) in the face: it ignored the appeal by its task team, led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, for unity.

Why Memory Matters: Gaza, Recent History & the Campaign Against Truth

Religions & Peace in an age of invasions, occupations, and emppire

Middle East: a blind spot for liberals

Steven Friedman, Business Day

IT IS hard to convince many in the Middle East that liberal democracy can work for them when the headlines from Israel and Palestine signal that liberalism now insists that all people should enjoy equal rights — unless they are Palestinian.

The Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians has been a blind spot for liberals here and abroad for years. Liberals, who believe in the right of all to vote in free elections, did not protest when the winners of Palestinian elections were rewarded with Israeli and US sanctions and military action, a signal that Palestinians can elect who they like as long as the Israelis like them too.

Voters have good reasons for choices they make

Steven Friedman, Business Day

WAS a recent cartoon’s real "mistake" that it was too honest about the contempt in which many opinion-formers hold most voters?

The African National Congress’s (ANC’s) present battle with media is largely politicking: its ANC Youth League marched on a weekly newspaper because a mild editorial suggested that readers vote for other parties. Publishing cartoons that are rude about politicians is a democratic right and public figures should expect to be ridiculed. But, when cartoons express a deep prejudice against millions of people, we should worry — particularly when their bias is deeply ingrained in the national debate.

South Africa's Real Ticking Time Bomb: The Black Middle Class

Steven Friedman

Steven Friedman, SACSIS

OUR real ‘ticking time bomb’ may be not poverty, but what it always has been – race. Our angriest people may not be those forced to survive on much less than they need, but the black middle class.

Poverty is our biggest problem: it affects most people and imposes huge economic and social costs. But the frequently heard claim that poor people are about to rise up and destroy the economy ignores reality: poverty usually forces people to be more pragmatic because more is at stake. The poor are not yet organised enough and still too isolated from economic power to change society.

Seminar: Steven Friedman on 'Phrases We Often Hear and Use Which Undermine Democracy'

The Department of Political and International Studies and the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University invite you to attend the following lecture:

Title:            Steven Friedman on Phrases We Often Hear and Use Which

Undermine Democracy

Venue:      Boardroom, Africa Media Matrix

Date:       20 August 2013

Time:       6pm

Workers' Power Thrives On Unity

Steven Friedman

Steven Friedman, RU Perspectives

The Durban strikes of 1973 empowered workers and helped destroy apartheid.

This month 40 years ago, South Africa learned an important truth which shaped our future - that people without power can challenge those who have it, but only if they act together.

The lesson was taught by the Durban strikes of 1973; they began a process which shifted power to working people and played an important role in defeating apartheid.

Whose Liberation? A Partly-Forgotten Left Critique of ANC Strategy and Its Contemporary Implications

By Steven Friedman, 2012

At the beginning of the 1980s, a group of left intellectuals and activists sought to press the then-exiled African National Congress (ANC) to adopt a change of strategy which would have given priority to the organized collective action of workers and the poor: they were expelled and their proposed remedies ignored. But, while it had little impact on political practice at the time, the implied debate between the dissidents and the ANC raised issues crucial to understanding the challenges which face South African democracy today. Although the dissidents’ approach was based on a flawed analysis of the processes which produce social change, it did highlight an aspect of anti-apartheid resistance strategy which has made achieving a more egalitarian and democratic South African more difficult.

Dark corners of the state we're in

Church Land Programme, Padkos

Just after the attacks on Kennedy Road in 2009, S'bu Zikode, then President of the shack-dwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo said: "This attack is an attempt to suppress the voice that has emerged from the dark corners of our country. That voice is the voice of ordinary poor people. This attack is an attempt to terrorise that voice back into the dark corners. It is an attempt to turn the frustration and anger of the poor onto the poor so that we will miss the real enemy. ... "Our crime is a simple one. We are guilty of giving the poor the courage to organise the poor. We are guilty of trying to give ourselves human values. We are guilty of expressing our views. Those in power are determined not to take instruction from the poor. They are determined that the people shall not govern. What prospects are there for the rest of the country if the invasion of Kennedy Road is overlooked? ... Our message to the movements, the academics, the churches and the human rights groups is this: We are calling for close and careful scrutiny into the nature of democracy in South Africa" (29th September 2009).

Building Tomorrow Today

 by Steven Friedman, 1987

The twentieth century, we are told only began in Europe in 1914, when world war swept away its old, complacent rulers. The 1970s began for South African employers early on the morning of January 9, 1973, when 2 000 workers at the Coronation Brick and Tile works on the outskirts of Durban gathered at a football field and demanded a pay rise. 

Click here to download chapters two and 16 of Steven Friedman's Building Tomorrow Today (Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1987)