SOUTH AFRICA

National Treasury and the financial services sector: Whose interests are really being served?

Hundreds of thousands (potentially millions) of poor and destitute ex-workers and their families have lost their confidence in the integrity and ‘reputation’ of the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and its Treasury parent, to perform their functions in a just, equitable and efficient manner. dailymaverick.co.za/

What will Mboweni do?

Ahead of his first budget policy statement, AIDC calls on the finance minister to radically break from neoliberalism. South Africa requires massive state-led investment strategy. These include a mass housing programme, linked to a rural industrialisation strategy based on land and agrarian reform aimed at securing the country’s food sovereignty. This can be done through a socially-owned renewable energy programme that powers a massive expansion of public transport. aidc.org.za/

Open Letter to Cyril Ramaphosa: Demand for Emergency Parliamentary Sitting on UN 1.5°C Report

The recent UN report on Global Warming of 1.5°C draws attention to the rapidly changing science on global climate change. It underlines the imperative of bringing down carbon emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change through a 1.5°C overshoot. The report is clear that we are running out of time and decisive leadership is needed. safsc.org.za/

2018 service delivery protests reach an all-time annual record – Municipal IQ

According to Municipal IQ’s Municipal Hotspots Monitor, the number of service delivery protests as of the end of September 2018 set a new record for protests measured by quarter – 198 protests against a previous record of 191 in 2014. municipaliq.co.za/

NEHAWU threatens to “close” Eastern Cape

Thousands of National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union supporters marched in a Day of Action to the office of Eastern Cape Premier Phumulo Masualle on Wednesday afternoon because of a dysfunctional provincial health department. groundup.org.za/

Strike in Ngcobo put on hold after two weeks

Services at Engcobo Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape were at a standstill for two weeks due to a strike. Municipal workers went on strike in solidarity with 86 casual workers who are demanding permanent positions. groundup.org.za/

Fear Stalks Township Streets of South Africa Murder Capital

Nyanga is at ground zero of the explosion of crime in South Africa, where the scourge ranks among the world’s worst — the national murder rate of 35.2 per 100,000 people is more than six times higher than that of the U.S. and the highest in nine years. During March in Nyanga, police logged 308 murders, 1,910 assaults and more than 2,000 robberies. bloomberg.com/

Umlazi United Front activists harassed for ANC internal murder

eThekwini municipal councillor S’bu Maphumulo was killed on the evening of 18 October, after a march by the South Durban United Front had ended at his office earlier in the day. Police subsequently sought to connect the United Front to his murder by beating one of the march organisers and bullying his family, and detaining the two other organisers for questioning. wwmp.org.za/

SABC probes VBS scandal coverage

Allegations that the public broadcaster’s newsroom in Polokwane was compromised are to be investigated to establish whether or not the coverage of the VBS Mutual Bank story had breached its ethics and editorial codes. sowetanlive.co.za/

South African journalism’s problems are bigger than ethics: they’re about ethos

Editor of the Sunday Times in South Africa, Bongani Siqoko, published an apology in the newspaper earlier this month that went far beyond correcting a mistake or retracting a story. In effect, it told readers that a specialist investigative unit within the newspaper was so manipulated by its sources that some of its reports contributed to devious efforts to overthrow proper, accountable governance in the country. That’s a whopping admission. theconversation.com/

The hidden cost of Corn Flakes

Kellogg’s was to permanently employ 116 casual workers – some of whom have worked for the company for 39 years – as ordered by the Constitutional Court judgement on the limits to temporary employment. Instead of assuming their new-found rights and benefits, however, the workers were retrenched. newframe.com/

The ‘Buy SA’ job creation myth

At the Jobs Summit, President Cyril Ramaphosa presented “the most direct way” to create jobs was “for South Africans and South African companies…to buy only South African products”. For those in the labour movement with longer memories, this was a case of déjà vu: it was exactly the same message preached in 2001. fin24.com/

The State of Public Healthcare

In this week’s Workers on Wednesday radio slot, we looked at the state of public healthcare and how it affects working class people. For several years, many of us have lamented the state of public healthcare. Inequality in healthcare is also well-known, with only those who can afford medical aid schemes and private medical care having access to top-class treatment and care. For over a decade the government has promised to address this with new policy and the National Health Insurance (NHI). But where are we now? wwmp.org.za/

INTERNATIONAL

Why Do Yemen’s Dead Not Merit the Attention of Jamal Khashoggi?

The apparent murder of Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a shocking crime that merits the international attention it has received, but nonetheless it is impossible not to wonder why the death of a single person receives vastly more coverage than ongoing Saudi atrocities in Yemen. counterpunch.org/

Saudi War on Yemen: World’s Worst Famine in a Century Could Claim 13 Million

The United Nations coordinator for Yemen has warned that the world has only 3 months to halt the slide toward catastrophe in Yemen. mintpressnews.com/

Israel lobby wants Saudis to get away with Khashoggi murder

With ever more gruesome details emerging about the slaying and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, fingers of blame are pointing squarely at Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. This is a huge problem for Israel and its lobby who see MBS as their key regional ally. electronicintifada.net/

European parties urged to agree Israel boycott tactics are antisemitic

A conference in Brussels backed by the Israeli government is to push for all European political parties to sign up to “red lines” that declare boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) tactics to be “fundamentally antisemitic”. theguardian.com/

Neoliberalism in the Age of Pedagogical Terrorism

Any dissatisfaction with injustice necessitates combining the demands of moral witnessing with the pedagogical power of persuasion and the call to address the tasks of emancipation. We need individuals and social movements willing to disturb the normalization of a fascist politics, oppose racist, sexist, and neoliberal orthodoxy. counterpunch.org/

Daphne Caruana Galizia: Top investigative reporter killed by car bomb in Malta

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist whose investigative work focused on corruption and who played a major role in the Panama Papers case, has been killed in Malta. A car bomb blew her vehicle to pieces. independent.co.uk/

Philippine President Duterte’s War on Workers

NEW TECHNOLOGIES / NEW FORMS OF LABOUR

‘We’ll have space bots with lasers, killing plants’: the rise of the robot farmer

The Spark is the homepage of the YouTubers Union which is a community-based movement that fights for the rights of YouTube Creators and Users. Our core demands are: monetize everyone…disable the bots… youtubersunion.org/

CULTURE

David Goldblatt in “Johannesburg”

Considered the dean of South African photography, David Goldblatt’s near-six-decade-long career chronicled and critiqued the country’s tumultuous modern history. Interspersed with scenes of Goldblatt touring the sites of past and current photographs, this short video surveys the artist’s extensive body of work. art21.org/

There is no God; no one directs our fate: Stephen Hawking in final book

“There is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate,” celebrated physicist and a known atheist Stephen Hawking writes in his final book, which also covers important existential questions such as creation of the universe, alien intelligence, space colonisation and artificial intelligence. hindustantimes.com/

Mike Davis on the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism

Mike Davis’s book Late Victorian Holocausts challenges the notion that historical crimes were the preserve of socialist states. Capitalism has an enormous death toll of its own. If famines are the yardstick we’re using to measure the suitability of a global economic system, then capitalists have a lot to answer for. jacobinmag.com/

Yes, wars are messy and incredibly complex. But it is important to recognize, that although Russia, China, North Korea and all the other nations accused of bloodshed are guilty in their own rights, the United States must share a large part of the responsibility. anonhq.com/

The Karl Marx of Music

Composer Hanns Eisler was a lifelong communist and self-described Jacobin. His music provided the soundtrack for both the tragedies and triumphs of German antifascism. jacobinmag.com/

ENVIRONMENT

Billionaires Are the Leading Cause of Climate Change

As the world faces environmental disaster on a biblical scale, it’s important to remember exactly who brought us here. Your individual choices are probably doing very little to the world’s climate. The real impact comes on the industrial level, as more than 70 percent of global emissions come from just 100 companies. gq.com/

David Suzuki: Aboriginal people are our best bet for protecting the planet, not environmentalists

Our healthy future depends on protecting those fundamental needs, which amazingly enough, are cleansed, replenished and created by the web of life itself. So long as we continue to let the economy and political priorities shape the discussion, we will fail in our efforts to find a sustainable future. nationalunitygovernment.org/