e-News bulletin 14 September 2018

Freedom Isn’t Free: The Freedom Charter Today – documentary film review

By Carilee Osborne
First published in Amandla magazine

In the year of the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, Martin Jansen’s Freedom isn’t Free: The Freedom Charter Today couldn’t be more relevant. It comes at a time when many South Africans are questioning not only the legacy of their famous founding father and the party that he represented, but also that of the transition more broadly. Despite this, Mandela is barely present in the film. Jansen chooses rather to focus on a diverse range of voices to tell the history and contemporary resonance of the Freedom Charter.

Communist Party of Swaziland: All Power to the teachers, students protesting Mswati’s crisis-ridden rule

The Communist Party of Swaziland fully supports the protest march to the US embassy demanding that the autocrat Mswati be returned from the US, where he is currently at the UN, to face the music in his crisis-ridden country.

The protest is being led by the teachers’ union SNAT and has been joined by students and others.

Swaziland is in meltdown. It is increasingly clear that the regime cannot hold onto power indefinitely. Its grip is already slipping. More and more workers are ready to act against the autocracy and to make it unworkable.

Read more about the article Unpaid Benefits Campaign media statement on the Constitutional Court’s decision to dismiss Rosemary Hunter’s application

Unpaid Benefits Campaign media statement on the Constitutional Court’s decision to dismiss Rosemary Hunter’s application

Media statement issued 20 September 2018

The Constitutional Court today closed the door on the skeletons that the Financial Services Board has been trying to hide in its judgement on Rosemary Hunter’s application for the cancellations by the FSB of 4,600 funds to be investigated. Beside the R250-million of Nkandla, the R5-billion graft of the arms deal or the billions lost to Gupta-ite capture, the pillaging of potentially hundreds of millions of rands of workers’ savings in provident and pension funds that are unpaid will remain hidden for now. The Court judged that the FSB (now known as the Financial Sector Conduct authority, FSCA) had done enough to review the cancellations and had acted in good faith, despite: