SOUTH AFRICA
South African Policing Union president, Mpho Kwinika, was arrested on trumped up charges and taken to the Sunnyside police station in Pretoria where eight police officials beat him for several hours. They broke his arm, burst his eardrum and he has suspected broken ribs – statement by SAFTU. The police’s possible motives for the assault is a subject for speculation. saftu.org.za/
The Western Cape equality court has ruled that poverty constitutes grounds for unfair discrimination in finding that the allocation of police resources in the province unfairly discriminated against black and poor people on the basis of race and poverty. mg.co.za/
Police Minister Bheki Cele on Thursday said the task team investigating political killings in KwaZulu-Natal has to date made 161 arrests. dailymaverick.co.za
Environmental and human rights defender, Sikhosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Rhadebe, was shot dead in front of his teenage son in 2016. Authorities are still failing to share the details of their investigation and bring suspected perpetrators to justice. amnesty.org.za/
On Wednesday the Boipatong community united with members of the SRWP, the United Front, and NUMSA members who are on strike at Arcelor Mittal to march to the local municipality to demand answers over the fact that they have been without electricity for three weeks. wwmp.org.za/
The council’s primary concern is the provisions on how previous empowerment transactions are not recognised in the renewal and transfer of mining rights so that mining companies would have to top up their BEE shareholding after such changes. dailymaverick.co.za/
Mining communities have long complained about getting a raw deal. A new report by Corruption Watch details how the system of royalty payments is failing them. dailymaverick.co.za/
Eskom’s cluster of 12 coal-fired power stations in Mpumalanga is the biggest source of nitrogen dioxide pollution in the world, according to Greenpeace. health-e.org.za/
Residents of Lower Crossroads in Philippi, Cape Town, brought construction of a new school to a halt on Tuesday, demanding more jobs for women and for residents. groundup.org.za/
About 200 community health workers organised by NUPSAW marched to the Western Cape Health Department in Cape Town on Tuesday. groundup.org.za/
Top executives in at least 24 government-funded agencies were paid more than R3-million in the 2017/18 financial year — more than the salary allocated to Jacob Zuma in his final year as state president. groundup.org.za/
This brief by the Economic Justice Programme of AIDC focuses on the failures of tax policy in South Africa to function as a redistributive tool where the more you earn, the more tax you ought to pay. The reasons for government’s failure to undo income inequality through taxation are linked to compromises made during the 1994 negotiated settlement. aidc.org.za/ |
With Michael Löwy, a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is the author of books on Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Liberation Theology, György Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Lucien Goldmann and Franz Kafka. 
