Category Archives: John Mchunu

SA’s road to freedom is stalked by death

Richard Pithouse, Mail & Guardian

The political assassination is not a phenomenon that is restricted to KwaZulu-Natal. But there is no doubt that it is overwhelmingly concentrated in that province. Until the establishment of the Moerane commission in October 2016, the scale of political violence in the province received very little national media attention, and was not generally understood to be a national crisis.

Academics, activists and journalists elsewhere in the country seldom grasped just how routine death threats, armed intimidation and murder had become in KwaZulu-Natal, or how brazenly local power- brokers, such as ward councillors, police officers and business interests — often entwined in mutually enabling forms of gangsterism — participated in the organisation of local forms of violent despotism.  Continue reading →

Serious Threats Made Against our Movement by Leaders in the eThekwini ANC

Thursday, 14 June 2018

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Serious Threats Made Against our Movement by Leaders in the eThekwini ANC

At the Executive Committee meeting of the eThekwini Municipality on Tuesday, 12 June, the Mayor and the Chief Whip made disturbingly undemocratic, authoritarian and threatening statements about our movement, and about S’bu Zikode. In light of our past experiences, and the current climate of intimidation and violence in KwaZulu-Natal, which includes the ongoing murder of our leaders, we take these threats very seriously. We are sending out an urgent call for solidarity, and for urgent action to be taken against the senior leaders in eThekwini ANC who are a serious threat to democracy, and our safety. Continue reading →

SACSIS: Keeping It Real

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/1391

Keeping it Real

Richard Pithouse

The distance between the stated aspirations of a protagonist on the political stage and the realities of its actual practices can sometimes mark a genuine attempt at internal contestation. It would, for instance, be a good thing if a group of people in the ANC insisted that the party was seriously committed to the principle that every child has a full, equal and immediate right to an education that could nurture their talents and then backed this affirmation up with real action, including effective action against the people and interests within the party that are responsible for, and even profiting from, the education crisis. But when there is no real acknowledgement that stated aspirations mark out values and goals that are clearly different to those guiding the actions that are actually taken we are dealing with ideologies – ideas that legitimate rather than guide or question the exercise of power.  Continue reading →

Mercury: It’s about the Poor, not Politicians

Leave a reply

It’s about the Poor, not Politicians

by Imraan Buccus

As courageous journalism brings more and more information into the public domain about how some under our last municipal regime behaved like “Chicago gangsters”, it’s becoming increasingly clear just how bad things were. The Manase report seems to show the extent to which our municipal coffers were plundered, but it’s the investigations into the power that people like the late John Mchunu wielded over the municipality that explains how it actually happened.

One symptom of what went so wrong in Durban has been the political assassinations that have so shamed the city. Who would have thought that what the premier bravely referred to as the confluence of politics, business, and crime would have led us to this point in the democratic era? If we stay on the current path we’ll end up more like Colombia than the society envisaged in our constitution.

M&G: Darkness visible in JZ’s kingdom by the sea

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-19-darkness-visible-in-jacob-zumas-kingdom-by-the-sea

Darkness visible in JZ's kingdom by the sea

by Niren Tolsi

With the African National Congress beset by factionalism, is the province still 100% Jacob Zuma? Niren Tolsi investigates.

"Wherever I go I carry a gun these days," a longtime ANC member from the eThekwini region in KwaZulu-Natal said, "not because I am afraid of thugs or political opposition, but because I am afraid of my own."

Continue reading →