Tensions remain following dismissals of workers in De Doorns

my latest for Groundup

 

Hundreds of farmworkers in the De Doorns area have been fired after the end of the farmworkers strike in the area on 22 January. The strike had been called off by COSATU the week before, but the seemingly dominant union in the area, the Bawsi Agriculture Workers Union of South Africa (Bawusa), suspended the strike days later. Clashes between police and protesters resulted in at least one death, many injuries and 181 arrests of striking farmworkers.

Numerous groups of farmworkers returned home early throughout the day on Thursday 24 January, walking amongst the debris of the previous week’s clashes, on the way back from farms across the Hex River Valley. Speaking to a group of about 12 women that morning the Daily Maverick found that they had arrived at the farm only to find the gates barred and to be told they had been replaced by ‘loyal emergency workers’ from the nearby towns of Touws River and Worcester.

British TV news airs footage refuting South African police claims about murdered Marikana miners. Where was the South African media?

published at Africa is a Country

Five months after the Marikana Massacre in South Africa, footage of police action at the ‘killing koppie‘ [“hill”] has finally reached the public. This footage somewhat predictably wasn’t brought to our attention by the local media, who have long since moved on to other things since the Marikana story stopped selling. Rather, it was Channel 4 in the United Kingdom who brought this footage to light. Why then did it take so long for the footage to reach us and why did it reach us in such a manner? Was it deliberately suppressed or is there a police whistleblower? One can reasonably speculate that the police were ordered to delete the evidence collected on their mobile phones in the aftermath of the massacre, but surely more footage has survived the culling of a cover-up.

Four months after the story of the killing koppie was brought into the mainstream media(working off the research of a group of University of Johannesburg sociologists) by Greg Marinovich and South African web-based publication Daily Maverick, cellphone footage taken by police at the scene of the massacre appears to provide further evidence to support Marinovitch’s claims of ‘execution style killings’.

Sounds of the South: Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan

from the latest edition of Amandla

Sounds of the South (SOS) is a cultural movement based in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township that uses hip hop to fight against oppression They talked to Amandla! about their new project, the Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan, an educational and musical exploration that will take SOS to six African cities in February and March, traveling from the collective’s South African base to the 2013 World Social Forum in Tunisia.

Since hip hop was born on the streets of the Bronx in New York City in the 1970s, it has grown into both a global cultural movement and a billion-dollar industry.

My work over the last month

I wrote three columns for Africa is a Country which stirred quite  a bit of controversy

–  http://africasacountry.com/2012/12/12/renouncing-the-rhino/

– http://africasacountry.com/2012/12/21/the-cult-of-leaders-in-south-africa/

–  http://africasacountry.com/2013/01/22/renouncing-the-rhino-part-2-the-rhino-conservation-complex/

And I spent most of my time covering the Farmworkers strike in De Doorns for the Mail and Guardian, Groundup and the Daily Maverick

–  http://groundup.org.za/content/battle-de-doorns-round-three

–  http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-01-14-de-doorns-a-community-enveloped-by-fear-and-anger

– http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-18-00-de-doorns-police-action-breeds-hostility