Thapelo Tselapedi

Abahlali BaseMjondolo (AbM), the acclaimed, leftist shack dwellers’ movement which erupted onto the public arena in 2005, recently decided to give its electoral support to the opposition, centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) in South Africa’s 2014 National and Provincial Elections.

A few months ago, unsurprisingly ignored by other media outlets, the Mail & Guardian (M&G) did a facelift by changing the guard. Without much media hype, Nic Dawes, outgoing editor-in-chief of Mail & Guardian, was replaced with the papers outgoing online editor, Chris Roper.