This article was first published by SACSIS and also published in the Cape Times.

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3695463

A government that is a danger to the people

February 26, 2010 Edition 1

Richard Pithouse

THE degeneration of the ANC has reached the point where it poses a clear and present danger to the integrity of society.

Julius Malema is one of the more flamboyant examples of how a movement committed to national liberation has become, in the words of Frantz Fanon, "a means of private advancement". But Malema is hardly alone. The Communication Workers Union is entirely correct to have diagnosed an "embedded and deep-seated Kebble-ism" within the ANC.

Reposted from SACIS but published in newspapers in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Taking Democracy Seriously

Richard Pithouse

The democratic ideal, the idea that the people should rule themselves, is grounded in equality. It recognises that everyone is capable of thought and it is committed to the right of all people to shape society via free and equal participation in deliberative processes. Because democracy is a politics of equality it is a fundamental rejection of the idea that people should know or be forced to accept their place in society.

This article was also published in the Cape Times.

FIFA Will Not Redeem us from the Burdens of History

Date posted: 15 December 2009
View this article online here: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/400.1

The 2010 World Cup is being sold to us as a moment of collective redemption. Patriotism and theological sentiments are being mobilised to persuade us that a moment of millennial grace is at hand. Africa's time, we are told, has come.

Constitutional Water Rights Judgment Gets It Wrong

Date posted: 21 October 2009
View this article online here: http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/373.1

On 08 October 2009, the Constitutional Court handed down its first water rights judgment. The case – Mazibuko & Others v City of Johannesburg & Others – was brought by five impoverished residents in Phiri, Soweto, on behalf of themselves, all similarly-situated residents and everyone in the public interest. The applicants challenged the City’s free basic water policy for being insufficient to meet the basic needs of large, poor, multi-dwelling households. They also challenged the lawfulness of prepayment water meters, which had been installed against their will and result in automatic cut-off of the water supply following the exhaustion of the free basic water supply unless additional water credit is purchased.

Hard Choices Ahead

Date posted: 13 August 2009
View this article online here: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/334.1

In recent weeks people have been willing to risk arrest, violence and in some cases death at the hands of our habitually brutal police force to assert a whole range of demands. These demands have included an insistence on the right to the cities, the right to an income, the right to a decent education and the right to a living wage.

The issuing of these demands has often, in direct contrast to the legalism of much of civil society, taken the practical form of the assertion of rights via direct and immediate appropriation, such as land occupations, rather than a request for an abstract recognition of rights in principle.

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/328.1

What the State's Response to the Anger of Protesting Communities Is Not Telling Us

By Ibrahim Steyn

As many poor working class communities continue to protest against the post-apartheid state’s failure to meet their material expectation of democracy, the only real difference between Mbeki and Zuma’s responses to the protesting voices is that whereas the former has been callous the latter seems more sympathetic. The fact that Mbeki hardly commiserated with protesting communities during his tenure and obstinately denied that South Africa was experiencing a so-called "service delivery" crises in 2007, doesn't mean he will necessarily disagree with Zuma's recent statement to the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry that the concerns of the protestors are genuine and that there are problems with the state's delivery apparatus.

South Africa and the World Development Report: Urbanisation or Balanced Growth?

Date posted: 24 July 2009
View this article online here: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/322.1

The World Bank’s recently released 2009 World Development Report - titled Reshaping Economic Geography - suggests South Africa may be out of step with mainstream thinking on economic development approaches. But what is this ‘mainstream’ thinking, and is South Africa really so out of step with it? In the report, the Bank argues that successful development will result from increasing economic concentration in urban areas, and that the role of the state is to enable urbanisation and the integration of their economies with ‘world markets’.

This article was also published in the Cape Argus as 'It's the state that is flouting the law' on 27 May 2009.

Land Occupation and the Limits of Party Politics

Date posted: 25 May 2009
View this article online here: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/290.1

In the recent election the DA, together with COPE, made much of their intention to defend the rule of the law. But while the dust thrown up in that election is still settling, the City of Cape Town is already engaged in violent and unlawful behaviour towards its most vulnerable citizens.