Niall Reddy is a researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies in Johannesburg.
The South African left today is dominated by parties of patronage and corruption and small sectarian groupings. If the Left is to rebuild itself, it needs to break with these elements and forge a movement committed to emancipatory working-class politics.
After losing its parliamentary majority for the first time, South Africa’s African National Congress is scrambling to form a coalition government. Its options are bleak.
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa's ANC has held a firm grip on power. In recent years, the party, plagued by accusations of clientelism and corruption, has been met with opposition from populist forces seeking to advance an ethno-nationalist agenda.
A popular new South African book insists racism is primarily to blame for social polarization. But describing South African inequality as “the new apartheid” obscures the central role that class and capitalism play in reproducing hierarchies.
The recent unrest in South Africa wasn't an expression of progressive politics. The Left will have to find a way to channel popular discontent into mass left movements — or we'll get nativism, and, inevitably, authoritarianism instead.
In only a few months, the Sudanese revolution ended Omar al-Bashir’s authoritarian rule and won an unprecedented transition to a civilian government. We spoke to one of the revolution’s many women leaders about the mass civil disobedience that defeated the regime.