On 17 November 2017, the Minister of Labour of South Africa announced the state intends to carry out a new round of attacks on workers and their rights. The attacks come in the form of three labour bills currently being considered by parliament: the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill, the National Minimum Wage Bill and the Labour Relations Amendment Bill. If passed, the changes to the labour laws these bills propose will be a major attack on workers’ rights, won through decades of struggle, and will further deepen and entrench inequality and roll back important democratic gains.

On this May Day 2018, mass demonstrations across the United States of America and the world focus on the current economic crisis and workers’ struggle to defeat austerity. 

In view of the historic May Day, 1st May, analysts from Monthly Review, the famous independent socialist magazine, identify tasks the working classes should press with. In the following interviews, conducted in early-April, John Bellamy Foster, Professor and Editor of Monthly Review; Fred Magdoff, Professor Emeritus, and one of Monthly Review’s closest associates, and Michael D. Yates, Professor Emeritus and Associate Editor of Monthly Review, provide answers (presented in alphabetical order) to a number of questions as well as slogans to be raised by the working classes on May Day in 2018. 

On 28 April 2018, a day after Freedom Day, 90 years old struggle stalwart and anti-apartheid activist affectionately known as the “Mother of Azania”, Mama Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, will be awarded the Order of Luthuli: Silver by South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. Her son and the Executive Director at the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust, Dini Sobukwe, will receive the award on her behalf due to old age.

This paper seeks to examine Somaliland’s foreign policy goals and decision-making as they evolved under the leadership of Somaliland’s previous four presidents. Doing so involves presenting how these respective administrations dealt with Somaliland’s neighbouring states as well as regional and other global organisations. The paper will also focus on the present foreign policy challenges. It will conclude by offering recommendations with respect to current foreign policy arrangements.

A doctor pushing for the legalisation of FGM told a court on Thursday that she was tired of "unending expert witnesses".Tatu Kamau told a Machakos court that she had been receiving affidavits from these witnesses by email almost every day. It has become difficult to respond to them, she said when the case was mentioned, noting they have been sent since she filed her petition.

The African National Congress Western Cape Provincial Secretary Comrade Faiez Jacobs, Muslim Judicial Council Deputy President Mawlana Abdul Khaliq Allie, Chairperson of the National Coalition 4 Palestine Reverend Edwin Arrison and others held a press conference, which, among others things, announced that there would be a public protest march on 15 May 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa to the Parliament of South Africa. The march will be in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s #GreatReturnMarch as well as in protest against Israel’s recent killing of over 30 Palestinians including youth and journalists. We will be demanding decisive action to be taken by our government starting with the implementation of the downgrade of the South African Embassy in Israel to a liaison office. 

Among the titans of dignified defiance to white settler apartheid rule, was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela  – who not only kept the name of Nelson Mandela alive in the international public consciousness for 27 years – but was a charismatic leader in her own right who remained committed to the people of Azania/South Africa. 

The property relations of a city in South Africa are a phenomenon that has its roots on the colonial interruption of our history and they, today, affect the political economy of higher education generally and the living experiences of students in particular. The fact that universities, old and new, are buildings with a physical address stationed in cities, they are, therefore, not immune from the overall economic challenges facing the nation and how these structurally impact the daily life of a people. 

Almost 24 years after the creation of “New South Africa,” there are loud and angry voices that the constitution of South Africa must be amended and there is a strong demand that there be expropriation of land without compensation. If the constitution is amended, the author demonstrates why it is important that another mistake is not made with regard to the country’s constitution on the fundamental issue such as land. 

Organisers of the upcoming Women’s March on the Pentagon are calling on the Democratic Party-sponsored Women’s March and March for Our Lives to expand their message to include the eight billion lives on the planet, all of which are imperilled by US weapons and wars. I spoke to Riva Enteen, a former National Lawyers Guild Programme Director and a member of the steering committee for the October Women’s March on the Pentagon.

Post-1994 South Africa has a theatrical crisis of selective amnesia and partisan remembering of history. History telling, whether at school, university, in the media or public celebrations and commemorative events, is biased towards a singular political trajectory and one particular school of thought that is portrayed as the sole agents of the socio-economic and political transformations that have apparently occurred in the past 24 years. 

Edwin Madunagu argues that Nigeria needs a people's manifesto that would borrow from the political left's thinking and be a representative of the people's really demands.  

Oxfam has been successful in highlighting the gross and rapidly growing inequalities in the world in international fora, but their approach of asking the rich elites and their allies in governments to do the right thing is not bringing change and worse it is perpetuating the myth that we have no alternative other than to depend on large corporations. It is in people’s everyday practices, not from the elites that we are far more likely to find meaningful solutions to inequality and the seeds of a more human economy.

With ending autocratic tendencies of Governor Okorocha, there is only so much the people of Imo State of Nigeria can endure. It is, nevertheless, comforting that the Imo Peoples Action for Democracy has declared 2018 a year of rage! Now that the heat is on, those who aspire to lead Imo State in 2019 must stand up and be counted. 

The failure of most of the African leaders, intellectuals and activists both on the African continent and in the diaspora to call out Barack Obama when he was insulting and marginalising Africans, some even making all sorts of excuses to justify his actions because he is one of “our own,” might have emboldened Donald Trump to insult Africans. 

After the ascendancy of Cyril Ramaphosa to the presidency of the African National Congress (ANC) last month, it is vital to understand deep structural barriers that prevent South Africa’s achievement of desperately needed socio-economic justice.

“We urge the Department of Higher Education and Training to work towards improving conditions of service for educators, believing that as long as conditions of service for educators are not improved, addressing quality, just and equal education will remain a dream.”

Following the 8 August 2017 elections whose results are disputed, the Government of Kenya embarked on a crackdown on selected non-governmental organizations. There have also been reports of killings and sexual harassment by police and suspected state-sponsored gangs especially in urban slums assumed to be support bases of the opposition NASA coalition.

When Helena Terra heard that ProSavana, a giant agribusiness project proposed for northern Mozambique would be presented for “judgment” at the Permanent People´s Tribunal in South Africa, she was convinced that their struggle against the project was gaining momentum.