Blame government not the homeless for fatal fire in Johannesburg

Picture: EFF Gauteng, Twitter.

Committees organising grassroots struggles are springing up and spreading. People have joined major protests across Syria against poverty and calling for the downfall of the governing regime. [...]

Simunye Workers Forum (SWF) and Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO)Joint Press Statement Press Statement: SWF activists and a CWAO board member shot with live ammunition in Germiston yesterday. [...]

Governments, corporations, news outlets and social media reacted differently to two sea vessels’ tragedies, over the last two weeks. The first incident took place on 14 June. Over 500 migrants [...]

The government hasn’t raised wages for public workers in a while. They should receive a decent pay increase for their significant job. Public workers keep society running. They run home [...]

Sunday 12th February 2023 . We declare our solidarity with all the victims of the terrible earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday 6 February. This is a huge human catastrophe. [...]

On September 26–29, 2022, COSATU convened its 14th National Congress. This congress happened during a period in which the working class was facing multiple attacks from the ANC Government and the [...]

We shouldn’t grieve for a dead queen. We should remember the victims of her empire. Murder, rape, ­pillage, famine, partition and exploitation. These are the legacy of the British [...]

Rival trade union federations Cosatu and Saftu united to combat the cost of living crisis. A shutdown led by trade unions in South Africa was major success on Wednesday. It showed that after [...]

Greenwash and lies cause disaster, while government promotes coal and methane Floods have again ravaged South Africa’s third-largest city, Durban, killing at least 300 residents on Monday, [...]

1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February was an act of imperialist aggression and a violation of the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination. For Ukrainians it is a war of [...]

Prices are beginning to rise so much that social collapse in Russia is almost inevitable An onslaught on the front lines always leads to an onslaught on the home front, and the [...]

Socialists everywhere in the world support vaccination against the COVID-19 virus. We are in total support and encourage people to vaccinate against the COVID-19 virus. Vaccination although not [...]

I would like to say that FW De Klerk’s death left me cold, to borrow a phrase, but in truth, it was an emotional moment. I was enraged, frustrated and grumpy that he died without ever facing [...]

The crisis over Ukraine has brought Europe closer to a terrifying war. In its essence it is a conflict between the most powerful imperialist bloc in the world, the United States and its European [...]

The truth is, capitalism in South Africa uses the principle of economic war on Immigrants to shift local citizens’ attention from the heart of the problem. The true nature of that problem is that [...]

By Leonard Gentle “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto“, “I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.” Terence (ex-African Slave turned Roman playwright [...]

“The SRD grants were introduced as short-term relief but drew over 7 million of the unemployed who applied for it. It became clear that it is a priority for the possibility of fighting for [...]

Some eco-socialists still look to China as a hope in a hopeless world, impressed by the President’s words and advancements made in China to change its energy producing balance away from [...]

September 11th marked the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. While the United Nations Security Council agreed that this was a terrorist attack, many critics are [...]

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its latest report on the state of the climate crisis. The report comes at a time when the African continent [...]

Since the start of the Covid 19 in South Africa in March 2020, politicians and capitalists peddled the messages of “we’re all in this together”. At the same time, they praised workers [...]

Since the pandemic, we’ve heard several government officials saying that the ‘township economy’ is ‘vital to South Africa’s recovery’. Following a xenophobic clause in the Gauteng government’s [...]

Keep left statement What started as a protest against the arrest of former African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma has turned into the most extreme looting ever imagined in our [...]

Ten years ago this month, protests erupted across Syria against the security forces’ brutality, inspired by the wave of uprisings around the region which had already brought down dictators in [...]

The working class is under attack again, this time with the brutal murder of Mthokozisi Ntumba during student protests over financial exclusion, decolonized education and for free education. The [...]

Seeing footage of widespread protests and strikes in the years prior to 2011 helped Egyptians to overcome their fears of the regime and start a revolution. The Egyptian revolution, which flared [...]

Statement on Covid via Keep Left/Socialism from below Covid is on the rampage in South Africa. The country has recorded more than 1.4 million cases of coronavirus cases and at least 40 574 deaths [...]

‘Doubtless, flooding this scenario with alcohol can be like squirting lighter fluid on a fire. But remember that some 40% of the cases in the domestic abuse study above happened without the [...]

On Wednesday 21st Oct some 500 people from the area surrounding Eldorado Park converged on Johannesburg city centre. They marched in a lively formation to the office of the Gauteng Premier David [...]

Adjure te spiritus requissime per Deum omnipotentem(I adjure thee, most evil spirit by almighty God). You are more likely to encounter this phrase when an exorcism is being performed by a priest [...]

Since coming into power in a 2017 military coup and a disputed 2018 election, Mnangagwa has sustained the authoritarian state and violent repression overseen for thirty seven years by his [...]

On Saturday 25th July Keep Left together with Spar Angelo labour desk, Coronavirus campaign had a demonstration at Nigel Super-Spar. The demonstration was held on the backdrop of encouraging the [...]

A call to action to protect our people Keep Left is revolutionary socialist group. We are pleading with our trade union federations and respective affiliates to step up and meet the acute [...]

As we are being abruptly rushed back into workplaces and schools and shared transport even while infections rise – or hustled out of employment with no social support as the economic [...]

The magnificent uprising taking place across the US is historic. Mass demonstrations following the police murder of George Floyd have now continued for more than two weeks. The [...]

Keep Left South Africa condemns the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department and the murder of Collins Khosa by the SANDF (South African Defence Force). extend our deepest [...]

The Stalinist legend The ideas of every generation are closely connected with those before them. It is therefore important to revisit the ideas that had strong roots in Russia before Marxism and [...]

The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is generally presented as a “natural disaster”. But this is quite untrue. This is a capitalist pandemic. There have been various virus outbreaks (SARS, MERS, [...]

Africa was the last region of the world to be sucked into the pandemic and thus far appears to be the least affected. By mid-April the total number of recorded Covid-19 cases in sub Saharan [...]

“Their death was gruesome. They were coughing, racked by pain, high fevers. Some of them were bleeding from their eyes, nose, mouth and ears,” explains author and historian Kenneth C Davis “And [...]

One thing that has been conclusively proved by the Covid pandemic is just who the ‘essential’ workers are. This May Day, John Molyneux asks if workers could ever go one futher – could they run [...]

As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in the global, government across the globe are trying hard to rescue the economy and ensure all is back to normal. In doing so, it is expected that most [...]

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw United States funding for the World Health Organisation symbolises how the coronavirus pandemic has been dominated by national responses to what is [...]

Pandemic is triggering what may be the deepest economic crisis of our lifetimes As its most essential level, capitalism, as Marx pointed out, is based on a circuit. Capitalists use their capital [...]

Coronavirus is wreaking havoc across the world, killing people, hospitalizing countless others and spreading fear. Covid-19 has killed more than 40 000 across the world and has possibly infected [...]

1. The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is generally presented as a “natural disaster”, an “external shock” to the normal functioning of the capitalist system. But this is quite untrue. There [...]

“Reducing health inequities is … an ethical imperative. Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.” Capitalism embodies and sustains an Enlightenment agenda of freedom and [...]

The emancipation, liberation of women can be accomplished only through the emancipation of the working class–and therefore of all society by a socialist revolution, the establishment of the [...]

The broad sense of disappointment in post-apartheid South Africa is not just a matter of sentiment. It’s an undeniable fact that millions are unemployed and millions languish in poverty. The most [...]

We can no longer turn a blind eye to this epidemic. The three largest metropolitans in the country are seeing an overwhelming rise in homelessness with Johannesburg CBD accounting for about [...]

The word catastrophe is being used more and more by institutions reporting on the effects of extreme weather in the two regions of Africa, Southern and South Eastern Africa, and of late [...]

The bushfires in Australia are now so big that they are generating their own weather, in the form of giant thunderstorms that start more fires. They have burned six times the size of the 2019 [...]

Bolivia’s president Evo Morales has been forced out by a coup. It was orchestrated by the army and police—and backed by Donald Trump and the US. His demise after nearly 14 years as [...]

With huge anti-government movements erupting across the globe, Sadie Robinson looks the root cause of these protests and how these struggles have the potential to win An ­inspiring wave of [...]

Workers, cleaners and security, remained undeterred by the blistering hot sun on Friday afternoon 18 October during a strike outside the University of Johannesburg. Walking towards the [...]

With the unemployment rate in South Africa increased to 27.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018 from 26.7 percent in the previous period. The number of unemployed rose by 103 thousand to 6.08 [...]

Course is chowing. Course is demanding. Course is stressing. These are just some of the most popular phrases you hear around university campuses. There’s a hidden meaning behind these phrases. [...]

The first day of Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) occupation of London on Monday was shaped by resistance—and police repression. The sound of samba bands filled Westminster as thousands of [...]

A brutal show of force from the Metropolitan police on Saturday saw cops swoop in on one of Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) warehouses, confiscate equipment and arrest activists. Ten rebels were [...]

Ten years ago, at the Copenhagen summit, South Africa made a commitment to reduce its massive carbon emissions by 42 percent by 2025. But two years later it started building two of the biggest [...]

More than 6 million people took part in protests and strikes demanding global action to end the climate crisis, during a “Global Week for the Future”. This took place across 4,500 cities and [...]

The state perpetuated Xenophobic outbreaks and it must be held accountable and responsible. From the S.A. Soccer World Cup 2010 dreams and political rhetorical speeches on empowerment & [...]

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists, 21 September 2019 Whatever the outcome of the demonstrations we are witnessing, and whether or not you stand with them or against them, it is certain [...]

The National Treasury under Tito Mboweni (finance minister) recently released the 77-pages openly neo-liberalism document, with the title, Economic transformation, inclusive growth and [...]

Joint statement of International Socialist Tendency organisations in Africa International Socialists across the African continent categorically condemn the wave of xenophobic violence which [...]

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a topic that has received increasing attention again due to the increasing numbers of women and children dying in the hands of men. Therefore, 2018 was marked as [...]

The #BlackLivesMatter movement in 2015 was historic – raising global awareness on the systematic repressions of blacks by the US police. One of the originators of the movement, Opal Tometi, [...]

Part 1-2 Battle of ideas, battle of leadership In Zanu PF there were two factions fighting between the nationalists led by Mugabe and the neoliberals led by Ed Mnangagwa, which resulted in Mugabe [...]

The magnificent women’s protests in Cape Town in early September 2019 were a raging fire of hope in a dark time. The rape and murder of UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana should once and for all put [...]

Mass protests continue for democratic change, at times up to two million, some quarter of the population has participated in the recent protests. China sends out propaganda which portrays the [...]

He promised a lot of things but his only achievement thus far is his tax cut that has greatly benefitted his billionaire and millionaire friends ironically he achieved this by increasing the [...]

At this moment Caster Semenya stands to be discriminated against in the sporting fraternity because her body produces more testosterone than expected from a female body and it is seen as an [...]

Protesters smashed into Hong Kong’s main government building, the Legislative Council, on Monday – and ramped up the crisis facing its rulers. “For the longest time we wanted to get in [...]

Socialism is a society based on meeting the needs of people and planet, not maximising the profits of the rich. It would mean a radically democratic society, with ordinary people [...]

Sudan’s ruling class is desperately trying to reassert control as protests continue demanding fundamental change. And these protests are showing new forms of defiance, resistance and cooperation. [...]

What is more remarkable than Miriam Makeba condensing thepolitical-economic history of South Africa into a song, is how smoothly racial capitalism naturalised the giant theft of labour power [...]