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Backyarders from Makhaza who occupied land near Empolweni were evicted and their houses demolished by law enforcement.
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Wastepickers are one group of informal economy workers who have been hit hardest by the lockdown and lack of planning by government to provide relief for the poor in South Africa.
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Elitsha interviews wastepickers in Khayelitsha. They speak about the hardship of the work, compounded under conditions of the Covid-19 lockdown, and the pain of not having their work recognised by the municipality. |
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President Cyril Ramaphosa has informed Parliament he had authorised the deployment of an additional 73 180 members of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to assist the police in battling the spread of Covid-19.
PIETER DU TOIT | NEWS24
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I witnessed Red Ants work a man over with a crowbar. An elderly man was shot point-blank in the neck by the cops, the rubber bullet lodging in the flesh above his collar. Red Ants destroyed another man’s house, took his phone, his stove, his furniture. They showed him no paperwork. There was no explanation. Why would they need to explain anything, anyway?
RICHARD POPLAK | DAILY MAVERICK
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Almost 575 shacks and at least a dozen brick and mortar structures housing an estimated 1,000 men, women and children in settlements south of Johannesburg have been violently demolished and allegedly looted over two days by the Red Ants.
DIANA NEILLE | DAILY MAVERICK
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Hundreds of Red Ants descended on Kokotela to execute an eviction order obtained by the City of Johannesburg, which says it is clamping down on illegal land invasion.
NTWAAGAE SELEKE | BUSINESS MAVERICK
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As the lockdown enters its fourth week, communities struggle to feed their families. With grant payments set to be delayed, many fear starvation at home and chaos in the queues.
AMANDA KHOZA | NEW FRAME
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The mobilisation of 73,000 additional South African National Defence Force personnel signals that the state has abandoned its attempts to enlist the country’s support for measures to contain the spread of the virus, and elected to do so by force, rather than through social solidarity and social justice.
RUTH HALL | DAILY MAVERICK,
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The mobilisation of 73,000 additional South African National Defence Force personnel signals that the state has abandoned its attempts to enlist the country’s support for measures to contain the spread of the virus, and elected to do so by force, rather than through social solidarity and social justice.
RUTH HALL | DAILY MAVERICK,
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Nearly one month into South Africa’s lockdown, the vast majority in society faces tremendous suffering and hardship. We have no income, we are scrounging for food, we are harassed by the police and SANDF, we are subjected to violence in the home. And only now the government responds with a social and economic policy.
CRY OF THE XCLUDED PRESS STATEMENT,
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We have heard it before: ‘The world has changed forever.’ We heard it after 9/11, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same. This time it’s different. Future histories may well be written as ‘BC and AC’: Before Corona and After Corona.
BRYAN ROSTRON | DAILY MAVERICK
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As the government grapples with finalising a plan to feed a growing number of desperately hungry people amid the Covid-19 national lockdown, shelters say they are seeing starving people who have not eaten for up to a week.
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Reports commissioned by the South African Human Rights Commission into the conditions of the City of Cape Town’s temporary Covid-19 homeless site in Strandfontein have recommended the facility be shut down.
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President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to deal “harshly” with those found to be involved in corruption in the distribution of food parcels meant for the poor during the ongoing lockdown. His statements amplify just how impotent Ramaphosa is in the face of his party’s corruption, and how he cannot survive politically without allowing it to continue.
JUSTICE MALALA | FINANCIAL MAIL
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This paper examines South Africa’s strategic options for addressing the COVID-19 epidemic. Given the protracted nature of the risk posed by the epidemic, this paper seeks to address the need to identify a pathway forward that matches the health prevention approach with the maintenance of a viable economy.
ALEX VAN DEN HEEVER | DAILY MAVERICK
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We were in serious economic trouble before Covid-19. Now, households are running out of food. Children who were fed at school are now at home and need to eat.
LYNETTE MAART | GROUNDUP
A central bank-financed UBI can fill the debt gap, providing a vital safety net while preventing cyclical recessions.
ELLEN BROWN | WEB OF DEBT BLOG
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Most of the communal toilets in parts of Burundi informal settlement in Mfuleni, Cape Town, are blocked and filthy, leaving hundreds of shack dwellers to use three toilets.
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A troubled Chinese-owned gold producer in SA has signalled it might retrench thousands of workers.
ED STODDARD | DAILY MAVERICK
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We argue that South Africa needs to urgently prioritise its mass testing and contact tracing capacity, which gives it the best chance of saving the nation’s health and economy.
8 WITS UNIVERSITY ACADEMICS | THE CONVERSATION
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Ghana’s president has earned praise from the African community on social media following his announcement that his government will foot the water and water bills of all Ghanaians for the months of April, May and June.
NAHASON MUSUNGU | NAIROBI NEWS
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As the death toll climbs, workers deemed “essential” have staged at least 75 walkouts, sickouts, sit-ins and, most recently, car and social-distance pickets. beverage bottling, nursing home care and more.
MARTHA GRAVEVATT | WORKERS WORLD
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CounterSpin interview with Mike Elk, a senior labor reporter on frontline labor action.
JANINE JACKSON | FAIR
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America’s public education system, under successive administrations, continues to be segregated along racial lines, and what is taught often shaped by business goals and ideas. Chris Hedges interviews Noliwe Rooks on the threats to public education in the U.S. |
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The coronavirus pandemic is the catalyst that just pushed the economy into a global recession. The capitalist crisis that has shaken the foundations of the world since 2008 is on its way to becoming the most acute, in historical terms. Before the onset of the pandemic, the world economy was so fragile that any accident could have pushed it toward the precipice. The coronavirus gave it that final push.
REVISTA EL PORTENO (CHILE) – CORRIENTE SOCIALISTA MILITANTE (ARGENTINA)
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On March 31, the US Secretary of State issued a press statement proposing a “pathway” by which all Venezuelans would live happily ever after. Mike Pompeo “call[s] on all Venezuelans to consider this framework carefully and seriously.” Seriously?
NINO PAGLICCIA | ONE WORLD PRESS
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The money has been transferred from a Venezuelan Central Bank account at Citibank to an account at the US Federal Reserve.
PAUL DOBSON | VENEZUELA ANALYSIS
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Once again it appears that big business will get bailed out while the American people get sold out.
ALAN MACLEOD | MINTPRESS NEWS
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As we emerge from this pandemic, substantial tax increases are inevitable. Central to the program should be a tax that limits the hoarding of wealth by the billionaire class.
BOB LORD, CHUCK COLLINS | INEQUALITY.ORG
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A shocking investigation from Clean Clothes Campaign and Germany based Bread for the World reveals that around 120,000 labourers across Europe are being forced to work in high risk environments in spite of workplace closures globally.
CLEAN CLOTHES CAMPAIGN
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According to the United Nations Charter, only the Security Council may impose sanctions. No individual nation may do so. Nevertheless, the United States currently imposes economic sanctions on 28 countries.
JOHN SCALES AVERY | TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE
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Governments around the world are scrambling to bail out their economies with huge stimulus packages amid the coronavirus crisis. Denmark and Poland are the first to exclude firms that incorporate themselves in famous tax havens, meaning they can avoid domestic business taxes.
BILL BOSTOCK | BUSINESS INSIDER
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The global capitalist system has produced fabulous wealth and so-called “development” for a handful of nations and their citizens along with degrading and dehumanizing poverty, violence and war on the vast majority of humanity.
BLACK ALLIANCE FOR PEACE
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The COVID-19 pandemic could almost double the number of people suffering acute hunger, pushing it to more than a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020, the United Nations World Food Programme warned today as it and other partners released a new report on food crises around the world.
WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
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It has always been known that the oil and gas industry only survives by way of debt financing. Fracking is capital intensive, and very few companies involved ever actually even turn a profit in excess of the cost of capital.
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The rich want to end the lockdown. But before any government does this we need mass testing, proper equipment for essential workers and real protections for the most vulnerable.
JONATHAN NEALE | THE LEFT BERLIN
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There are a number of possible futures, all dependent on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath. Hopefully we will use this crisis to rebuild, produce something better and more humane. But we may slide into something worse. SIMON MAIR | THE CONVERSATION
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Numerous governments have exploited the virus to take away a staggeringly long list of freedoms, one that grows by the week. Covid-19 is going to cause societal disruptions for years.
RAINER SHEA BLOG
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As people live in fear and uncertainty of the unfolding crisis’ impact, governments and corporate capital are seizing the opportunity to tighten their control and generate profit.
WHO PROFITS
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Though the COVID crisis may be an “exceptional” moment in recent world history, the conditions to which Palestinians are subjected reminds us that the Nakba is not a fact of the past, but is ongoing.
G.N. NITHYA | SOCIALIST PROJECT
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In the aftermath of Israel’s 2002 invasion of the West Bank, a number of things became “normal:” nightly Israeli raids, endless Israeli blockades, radical restrictions on movement due to “security” and the demolition of homes with barely a protest. My fear is that once this coronavirus threat passes, some measures will also be normalized this time.
GDIANA BUTTU | ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
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The US secretary of state’s threats to sanction two employees working for the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and their families last month may have been the opening salvoes of a new US-Israel war against the justice body in The Hague.
MAUREEN CLARE MURPHY | ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
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NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW FORMS OF LABOUR
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Amazon-owned Whole Foods is quietly tracking its employees with a heat map tool that ranks which stores are most at risk of unionizing
JAY PETERS | THE VERGE
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it might be difficult to see how capitalism relies on our labour. Yet, without us working, capitalism as a system would shut down. For example, we can see this playing out for the moment during the COVID-19 crisis. As more of us are forced to work from home or are unable to work because of closures, the world economy is slowly grinding to a halt.
NOTES FROM BELOW
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The world is a better place because of V. I. Lenin. An outstanding 20th-century working-class leader and revolutionary, he helped change history. The revolution in St. Petersburg, which Lenin helped lead in 1917, opened the door to a new era.
JOE SIMS | PEOPLES WORLD
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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is intended to serve as a channel of special and alternative news, information and knowledge source for all those interested in issues relevant to promoting political, social and economic equality and the eradication of poverty. The articles contained herein are obtained from various electronic media platforms and do not necessarily reflect the views of WWMP.
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