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KEF says it’s still unsafe for learners to return to schools

The Khayelitsha Education Forum says that the Western Cape Education Department has no plan to deal with COVID-19 as the schools re-open while shifting responsibilities to schools.

Parents picket against school re-opening

When the Minister of Education announced last week that Grades 7 to 12 learners would be returning to school from 1 June, Bishop Lavis Action Committee sounded the alarm that schools were not ready and called for a boycott.

tembinkosi qondela

Hamba Kahle Tembinkosi Qondela

Thembinkosi Qondela, a longstanding socialist activist, died this week due to COVID-19 related complications. He was a lifelong activist for social justice who worked on the mines for a year in the early 1990s and thereafter moved to Cape Town and worked at various NGOs and socialist organisations.

Read Tembi’s reflections on Cuba after returning from a visit there in 2007.

                SOUTH AFRICA

Top activist Ayanda Kota fears for his life

The leader of the Unemployed People’s Movement is in hiding after being warned about a plan to assassinate him. It is no idle threat in a province where political murders are rife.
ANNA MAJAVU | NEW FRAME

Covid-19: Only 488 of over 5,000 artists who applied for relief were paid

Just 488 artists seeking relief from the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture have been paid out, eight weeks after Covid-19 relief funding for artists and athletes was announced.
STEVE KRETZMANN | GROUNDUP

“Our people cannot be treated like napkins”: public works programme challenged in court

Johannesburg Expanded Public Works Programme workers want to be made permanent.. They were contracted by the Department in 2014 for jobs such as cleaning schools and security services, and given three-month contracts that were repeatedly renewed.
ELNA SCHüLTZ | GROUNDUP

Dunoon explodes after shacks demolished

SANDF soldiers were deployed in Dunoon after protests erupted because of continued shack demolitions.
PETER LUHANGA | GROUNDUP

Covid-19 dispatches: “It doesn’t affect reclaimers only but also the environment”

GLC interviewed Steven Leeu, a waste reclaimer and organiser for the African Reclaimers’ Organisation about how Covid-19 has disrupted their work and organising, what demands they are making during the crises, and what is happening to their pre-Covid campaigns.
GLOBAL LABOUR COLUMN

Pressure mounts on families holding out against coal mine expansion

Many of Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisaiton’s members are subsistence farmers. They complain that coal dust from the Somkele mine pollutes their crops, turns their white chickens grey and the intestines of their goats black.
FRED KOCKOTT AND MATTHEW HATTINGH | GROUNDUP

Reserve Bank loses court battle over apartheid-era financial crimes documents

The South African History Archives Trust has scored a major victory in its six-year legal battle with the South African Reserve Bank over access to records that may shed light into foreign exchange fraud, Eskom bonds and gold smuggling during apartheid years. 
IOL

           POLICE VIOLENCE | The killing of George Floyd

Brazil surges past 600,000 cases as death toll jumps Italy’s; New York governor urges protesters to be tested; Turkey imposes weekend lockdown.
ALISON ROURKE | THE GUARDIAN

Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis

America’s persistent political dysfunction and racial inequality were laid bare this week, as the coronavirus death toll hit a tragic new milestone and as the country was served yet another reminder of how black people are killed by law enforcement in disproportionately high numbers.
WASHINGTON POST

Violence Never Works? Really?

The moralizing has begun. Those who have rarely been the target of organized police gangsterism are once again lecturing those who have about how best to respond to it.
TIM WISE | MEDIUM

The class character of police violence

Police violence and the murder of black people in the United States have provoked outrage and protest around the world, including on the continent. But, why is there so little outrage over police violence in African countries?
WILLIAM SHOKI | AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

US Law Enforcement Are Deliberately Targeting Journalists During George Floyd Protests

Journalists have been shot with rubber bullets, targeted with stun grenades, tear gassed, physically attacked, pepper sprayed and arrested.
NICK WATERS | BELLINGCAT

“America’s Moment of Reckoning”: Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of “Empire Imploding”

There is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally. Same is true in terms of the seed of hatred, of white supremacy, hating Black people: anti-Blackness hatred having its own dynamic within the context of a predatory capitalist civilization.
DEMOCRACY NOW

A Class Rebellion: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on How Racism & Racial Terrorism Fueled Nationwide Ange

These are the consequences of the failures of this government and the political establishment, the economic establishment of this country to resolve those crises, and so they build and accumulate over time. And we are watching the boiling over of that.
DEMOCRACY NOW

It’s Class War Now Too

The upheaval taking place across the country is now as much about class as it is about racial injustice and police brutality.

JOSEPH FRANK | COUNTERPUNCH

The Second Longest War in the United States

The only war that has gone on longer than this war is the one against the people who were here when the Europeans first arrived.
RON JACOBS | COUNTERPUNCH

Justice For George Floyd Requires Power To The People

The Black masses in Minnesota have taken to the streets to not only call for justice for Floyd and his family but also to stand up to centuries of state sanctioned white supremacist violence. If George Floyd teaches us anything, it is that COVID-19 is not the only contagion in the U.S. that needs to be eradicated.
DANNY HAIPHONG | AH TRIBUNE

Update From General Strike 2020 – Upcoming Actions

With the unconscionable murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis this past week, we’re reminded of the importance that the fight against racism plays in our struggle. We’ve seen admirable solidarity in those who have taken to the streets to protest police brutality against African Americans in this country.
GENERAL STRIKE 2020

NYC Bus Drivers Union Refuses To Transport Protesters For NYPD

Workers for New York City’s bus service are refusing to transport people arrested during protests in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
JASON KOEBLER | VICE

US cops shoot anti-apartheid hero at point-blank range

SA struggle veteran bludgeoned, shot in groin during LA protest against the killing of George Floyd.
TIMESLIVE

               INTERNATIONAL

Spain approves national minimum income scheme

The Spanish government would pay the monthly stipend and top up existing revenue for people earning less so that they receive at least that minimum amount every month.
KATE NG | THE INDEPENDENT

Exclusive: U.S. taxpayers’ virus relief went to firms that avoided U.S. taxes

A U.S. government program that has provided emergency loans to millions of businesses hit by the coronavirus has been pouring money into corporations, not the small businesses it’s meant to save.
REUTERS

Mining company was given permission to blast Juukan Gorge cave in Australia, which provided a 4,000-year-old genetic link to present-day traditional owners.
CALLA WAHLQUIST | THE GUARDIAN

The rot in Australian media is already advanced. We need to understand the damage wrought in 2020

Increasingly Australia is served by newspapers in metro areas as regional and community newsrooms shrink or close down.
JASON WILSON | THE GUARDIAN

               OPINION

The Treason Of The Ruling Class

The ruling elites no longer have legitimacy. They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state. We are serfs ruled by obscenely rich, omnipotent masters.

CHRIS HEDGES | SCHEER POST

               ISRAEL / PALESTINE

‘Being Black in America Shouldn’t Be a Death Sentence.’ What About Being Palestinian?

A few days after Minneapolis, on Saturday morning, in Jerusalem’s Old City, Eyad Hallaq, a 32-year-old autistic man, was on his way to the Elwyn Center for disabled people. When Border Police called out for him to stop, he started running. The penalty was death. The Border Police fired some 10 bullets into Hallaq as he fled.
GIDEON LEVY | HAARETZ

On the racial basis of Zionism

Why is the coupling of religion and nationality so important for Zionist Jews? Is Judaism a religion, or a race, or a people? Either way, once the state is by definition Jewish, any criticism of the Jewish state is viewed as criticism of Jews for being Jewish, and such critics are immediately called antisemitic.
SIVAN TAL | MONDOWEISS

Cameraman who criticized PA fired from Associated Press

Eyad Hamad, a veteran Palestinian cameraman, received threats from PA security officials who told him that they would see to it that he gets fired from AP.

KHALED ABU TOAMEH | JERUSALEM POST

               HISTORY

Amazemtiti: The making of a native bourgeoisie class in colonial SA

Most people are unaware of how black elites in the colonial era were formed and are also not aware that many liberation heroes actually came from this then very privileged group of people. SIYABONGA HADEBE | IOL

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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.