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Jobs at Khayelitsha District Hospital that were advertised via social media have been withdrawn.
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The numbers of those infected by the coronavirus in Khayelitsha are growing alarmingly as residents fail to practice social distancing while they queue for food parcels and submit applications for jobs.
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In a curious take on easing the hard lockdown, the government has imposed a curfew. Co-operative Governance Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in Wednesday’s briefing mostly avoided using the word curfew, instead saying: ‘When you come back from work you have to be at home…’
MARIANNE MERTEN | DAILY MAVERICK
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We must ask President Ramaphosa what happened to the science of the pandemic. The state is throwing away the science in order to protect the fabulous wealth of capital. On the day when the country registered the highest number of daily infections (318), Ramaphosa announces the easing of the lockdown.
JOHN APPOLIS | KARIBU
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The ANC’s access to state power has not been used to honour the commitments the organisation made to the people who gave it their trust. Oppression has spread, like a virus.
NEW FRAME EDITORIAL
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The UN Human Rights Office highlighted the “heavy handed” and “highly militarised” law enforcement response to Covid-19 in several countries, inclusing the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
AZARRAH KARRIM | NEWS 24
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Five independent monitors visited the Strandfontein internment camp for street people. They’ve written very damning report (linked) on the camp which has finally been published today after having been submitted to the SAHRC.
Click here to download the report.
ESSOP,, VAN HOLDT | BUSINESS DAY
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Although Covid-19 the disease has malicious preferences for the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, the virus itself doesn’t discriminate in its infectiousness. If you are a human being, you are at risk. It’s a great leveller of artificial denominators based on class, gender and colour.
MARK HEYWOOD | DAILY MAVERICK
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Domestic workers network Izwi Domestic Workers Alliance has urged the Department of Employment and Labour to compel all employers to pay domestic workers their wages regardless of their Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) registration status.
ETHABI MADIBA | CREAMER NEWS |
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The heavy-handed, top-down approach during the lockdown has not worked; NGOs, coalitions and community networks have.
ESSOP,, VAN HOLDT | BUSINESS DAY
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We show that a wealth tax on the richest 354,000 individuals could raise at least R143 billion. That equates to 29% of the announced R500bn fiscal cost of the relief package.
CHATTERJEE, GETHIN, CZAJKA | THE CONVERSATION
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When people call South Africa the most unequal country in the world, they’re talking about income. Now, we have a clear picture of how unequally the country’s wealth is distributed.
DENNIS WEBSTER | NEW FRAME
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Largely reliant on demand from China, the west coast village of Steenberg Cove has to cope with the closure of markets.
BARRY CHRISTIANSON | AL JAZEERA
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The week of unrest was sparked by a child’s death after allegedly being hit by a police vehicle.
NTWAAGEA SELEKA | NEWS24
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A visit to a spaza shop to buy electricity became a nightmare for a 33-year-old Ladysmith man who was shot in the head and neck with rubber bullets, allegedly by police officers.
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Major General Leon Rabie reported these figures to the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police and the Select Committee on Security and Justice.
NTWAAGEA SELEKA | NEWS24
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Pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline confirmed the number on Saturday, four days after the labour department said production and operations at the Epping factory must be suspended.
IDAVE CHAMBERS | TIMES LIVE
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The protest comes after a patient tested last Tuesday was confirmed to have Covid-19 on Friday, If there is no personal protective equipment, don’t resume any duties, says union.
THAMSANQA MBOVANE | GROUNDUP
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The chaotic situation in Machibini village, where there is virtually no policing or army boots on the ground, is threatening to realise the health authorities’ worst nightmare about a virus explosion in the province’s rural areas.
FENI, FUZILE, PILISO | DISPATCH
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Mineworkers’ high rates of lung disease and cramped working conditions are just some of the reasons experts believe their return to work will risk widespread infections and death.
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An economic crisis is beginning to bite in South Africa. The government has announced a number of measures to cushion the impact, but even these are spread very thin.
CARIN RUNCIMAN | THE CONVERSATION
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Despite a court victory against the R1-trillion nuclear energy deal, the government is continuing to invest in this outdated, failed technology – which has no place in a healthy future, much like coal and oil.
FRANCESCA DE GASPARIS | DAILY MAVERICK
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A day after state-owned regional airline SA Express announced it had been placed in provisional liquidation, the country’s largest non-food retailer, Edcon, announced it had applied for voluntary business rescue. Landlords, lenders and the PIC are the biggest losers.
SASHA PLANTING | BUSINESS MAVERICK
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The public have until May 17 to comment on the City’s proposed amendments to the streets, public places and the prevention of noise nuisance by-law.
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As the world is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, it is also “on the brink of a hunger pandemic” that could lead to “multiple famines of biblical proportions” said the WFP head.
AP
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People must go back to work on 11 May at all costs, Macron asserts. Are there scientific reasons for this decision, a dramatic decline of the pandemic? No.
DANIEL GLUCKSTEIN | SOCIALIST ORGANIZER
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Workers, in large numbers, are voting with their feet and refusing to come to work under the current conditions. This blog post recounts workers’ refusal to accept exposure at work to the coronavirus.
ANGRY WORKERS OF THE WORLD BLOG
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Just think of when, in the debates with Bernie, Sanders during the spring, you had Biden, and Klobuchar keep saying, ‘What we’re paying for Medicare-for-All will be $1 trillion over 10 years.’ Well here the Fed can create $1.5 trillion in one week just to buy stocks. Why is it okay for the Fed to create $1.5 trillion to buy stocks to prevent rich people from losing on their stocks, when it’s not okay to print only $1 trillion to pay for free Medicare for the entire population?
MICHAEL HUDSON | MODERATE REBELS |
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The class nature of pandemics is revealed by the fact that in the flu pandemic of 2009 three times as many of the poorest died compared to the richest despite both groups having the same level of infection.
PETER WINDELER | INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST LEAGUE
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Chile’s Professors College refused to resume the educational year in May, bringing the union into disagreement with the Chilean president’s administrative decisions.
TELESUR
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The pandemic and the near-total shutdown of our economic life will undoubtedly shift our views about the work and lives that we value, and role of the state to provide aid to those who we see as a part of our community.
MANOJ DIAS-ABEY | BOSTON REVIEW
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The system is rotten to the very core and the Covid-19 pandemic has, again, made this truth apparent to all of us.
AFZAL MOOLLA | DAILY MAVERICK
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Human rights center B’Tselem said that Israeli settlers have stepped up their attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during April despite the coronavirus crisis.
B’TSELEM | DAYS OF PALESTINE
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NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW FORMS OF LABOUR
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JESSICA BURSZTYNSKY | CNBC
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Coronavirus is a historic crisis, but it is also producing new forms of social organisation. Whether a better world emerges from this era will depend on our ability to respond to its challenges collectively
DAVID HARVEY | TRIBUNE MAG
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We’ve been here before: a pandemic, inequality, economic stagnation and climate change brought down Medieval Europe.
ADAM MCBRIDE | SALON
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In unequal countries like South Africa, where settler colonialism normalised the massification of debility for black people, we are not astonished at the high rates of injury and illness experienced by black people. The value of poor, black people is in their disposability and the vastness of the reserves of black labour that can be used up and discarded.
KHARNITA MOHAMED | CORONA TIMES
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Although uncompromising opposition to the First World War subjected Rosa Luxemburg to the pitiless “social distancing” of imprisonment, she felt compelled, as always, to analyze and to organize against the oppression and violence of the capitalist system.
PAUL LE BLANC | SPECTRE JOURNAL
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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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