The man who walked into the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church with a gun and murderous intent may well end up on death row. But white terror against black people goes back many centuries. It won’t be over until the material basis for inequality, in terms of the exercise of economic and political power, is undone.

When white South Africans see themselves as having a special connection to global whiteness they often succumb to the narcissistic fantasy that their presence in this society, in Africa, constitutes a unique and precious gift.

The assertion that people under 40 have lost nothing to apartheid is one of the most extraordinary statements from the mouth of a cabinet minister since 1994. The pretense that apartheid’s consequences came to an end in 1994 is sheer denialism that is so out of touch with reality.

Murder as a tool for political containment is back in South Africa, as the country is gripped by a largely unacknowledged paroxysm of popular ferment. A new authoritarianism is in the making, organised in the name of tradition and patriotism, and mediated through a shift in power to the police, intelligence and traditional authority.

President Zuma’s speech seemed to equate criticism of the government with disloyalty. The path to national glory has been laid out and no one should ask any questions

It's not only money and military power that count in this world. Popular mobilisation can transform societies from below and it can strengthen states against private and imperial interests.

‘The ANC has had its shameful moments but it has also had its glorious moments; and it has often been far closer to the best of the spirit of the age than any of the forces it opposed.’

‘Fifty years on, Fanon remains an extraordinary example of an intellectual willing to commit to a living politics waged with and not for the damned of this earth,’ writes Richard Pithouse.

Richard Pithouse reflects on the recent five-year suspension of the outspoken South African president of the African National Congress Youth League, Julius Malema, and sees in the disciplinary action traces of the powerful ANC’s hostility to popular organisation outside of its control.

The occupation of Wall Street, which incited other occupations, indicates a crucial realisation that for too long society has been subordinated to capital, writes Richard Pithouse. The only realistic route to achieving meaningful change is sustained organising from below to shift power relations

The recent acquittal of members of a leading South African social movement showed up the undemocratic tendencies of the ANC. Those committed to democracy will have to stand firm, writes Richard Pithouse.

The Kennedy 12 have been acquitted on all charges. No defence was led as no case was made against any of the 12 by the prosecution. However, clear evidence of a police frame-up did emerge and the only two credible witnesses (an ANC leader and a police officer) both testified to the correctness of the Abahlali account of what happened back in September 2009. A great day.

More details to come. Now we celebrate.

‘On 6 December 2011, 50 years will have passed since the death of Frantz Fanon. Around the world people are getting together in universities, trade union offices, shack settlements, prisons, church halls, and other places where people try to think together, to reflect on the meaning of an extraordinary man for us and our struggles here and now,’ writes Richard Pithouse.

South Africans are told that voting is all about making their ‘own choice’, but in most cases, it’s ‘a very limited choice between two competing factions of the elite that are equally invested in scaling back people’s legitimate aspirations for a just society into an insanely unequal society contained with state violence, new forms of spatial segregation and “service delivery”’, observes Richard Pithouse.

© Abahlali.org© Abahlali.orgIf decisive action is not taken to persuade South Africa’s police that their job is to facilitate rather than repress the right to protest, we may have to add more names to those of Solomon Madonsela, murdered by the police in Ermelo in February, and Andries Tatane, murdered by the police in Ficksburg last week, writes Richard Pithouse.

In the wake of the crises and revolutions of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, European claims to moral leadership look highly dubious, says Richard Pithouse.

With 'service delivery protests' a common occurrence in South Africa, Richard Pithouse exposes some of the myths associated with the phrase.

We live in a violent society, Richard Pithouse writes, but this very fear of violence is used to justify other forms of violence such as racism, xenophobia and fear of the poor. ‘… the presence of self-organised poor people in civil society is often received as a threat by all kinds of constituencies, including some of those that, be they liberal or radical, assume a right to enlighten and lead poor people from above,’ Pithouse argues.

South Africa’s media could soon be working under tighter restrictions if a new ANC bill restricting press freedom is approved, writes Richard Pithouse. The bill proposes to give government bodies the right to withhold information from the media, the creation of media tribunals and the publication of a new pro-ANC newspaper, removing the right of any media to critique government policies and leaders. ‘If the ANC was committed to the democratisation of society it would be working to democratise the media by legislating for real diversity, generous subsidies for autonomous community media and serious state support for genuinely public broadcasting. What they are doing, instead, is trying to bully the media into submission to an increasingly authoritarian and conservative regime,’ says Pithouse.

As South Africa’s Freedom Day rolls around each year, it has become something of a cliché for pundits and politicians to observe that while the country has political freedom, the majority of its people have yet to attain economic freedom. But this platitude masks an extraordinarily anaemic view of political freedom, writes Richard Pithouse.