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It’s our environment, stupid! |
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 AMANDLA ISSUE 22 | EDITORIAL : It’s our environment, stupid!
Global collision of the ecological and economic crises
The financial crisis that broke out in 2008 is a symptom of a much wider crisis of the global system. It is not only a crisis of the neoliberal model, but also a deeper crisis of the over-productivist, endless-growth, financial-speculative model which puts humanity and the planet at great risk. We are confronted by a simple but stark reality, namely, that an economic system based on unlimited growth contradicts a limited planet.
This dilemma is increasingly evident as humanity and the biosphere are confronted by a series of intersecting crises. Crises around energy, food, water and the climate place resource depletion and constraints at the forefront of global attention. It is not just that we are facing peak oil and peak carbon – the problem is that we are, metaphorically speaking, two minutes to midnight and the clock is ticking.
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AMANDLA ISSUE 21 | EDITORIAL |
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AMANDLA ISSUE 21 | EDITORIAL :We face a deepening crisis. Mining, manufacturing and agriculture, key employments sectors of the South African economy, have declined dramatically, almost certainly condemning many more thousands of people to the unemployment scrapheap. Although some commentators attributed the collapse of output to recent strikes, the South African economy is inching towards another recession as part of a spluttering global economy.
Europe, one of SA’s major trading partners, is deeply embroiled in part two of the global financial crisis, now taking the form of a national debt crisis. It is not just the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) that are in trouble. The financial crisis is spreading to Italy, one of Europe’s biggest economies. Even the powerful French banks are being targeted by speculators. The turn to austerity is leading to the contraction of the European economies. The ongoing economic decline in the USA is exacerbating these problems and threatening a second recessionary wave or what commentators call ‘the double dip’.
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Decent work and a living wage: slogans for our time |
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 AMANDLA ISSUE 20 | EDITORIAL : The ideologues of business have started a systematic and sustained campaign against the wages and the laws that protect workers. The job crisis is central to their campaign and deregulation is their leading mantra. Opinion pieces, columnists and letters in the business press appear as voices of the same choir conducted by a single-mindedness to attack the alleged rigidities of the labour market and other regulations that undermine so-called economic freedom. So sustained seems this attack that Business Day of 13 June has Michael Bagraim of the Cape Chamber of Industries writing an op-ed piece, ‘Why Vavi’s socialist jobs ideas are bound to fail’, on one page and a letter on the opposite page titled ‘Unions creating fear’.
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Verwoerd’s last laugh |
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 AMANDLA ISSUE 19 | EDITORIAL : The DA is a party that primarily exists to protect the privileges of the wealthy that monopolise the land, industry and finance in South Africa. Solidarity is a trade union that similarly exists to defend the interests of that section of the working class that was privileged by apartheid.
That they have ulterior motives in exposing the racial prejudices of Jimmy Manyi is difficult to dispute. Local government elections will take place in a few weeks and the DA cannot make gains by depending only on the historically empowered elites. It needs the votes of the so-called minorities –“Coloureds” and “Indians” to break out of their narrow electoral limits. Yet this way of thinking is part of the problem. Race thinking continues to dominate our entire society almost two decades after the end of Apartheid. We operate through the prism of race and continue to organise our society through racial categories. Even how we envisage dealing with the impact of racism and racial inequality reinforces race consciousness, ensuring that people see themselves first as “Coloureds”, “Indians” or “Africans” before we see ourselves as people of one single nation. “Africans” no longer means people from Africa, but a racial category of people conferring entitlements.
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Climate jobs for SA? |
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AMANDLA ISSUE 17 and 18 | EDITORIAL : Climate jobs for SA?
South Africa, especially its transition from apartheid, faces many challenges. It is impossible to build a united and cohesive society with current obscene levels of inequality so firmly in place. Two worlds separate township and suburban life and an even greater divide separate life in the former Bantustans from the major urban centres. We face extreme difficulties in dealing with mass unemployment and poverty. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is still devastating in its spread and impact, even if the age of AIDS denialism is over. Nor can we stay aloof from the crises in our education, health, water and housing systems. No wonder that crime and violence continues to shake our society.
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Viva COSATU Viva |
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AMANDLA ISSUE 16 | EDITORIAL : Viva COSATU Viva
The Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), the publisher of Amandla!, is a founding member of the Right 2 Know campaign and is vigorously opposed to the idea of a media tribunal and other censorship. However, when reading the anti-union and anti-worker sentiments splashed across our dailies during the public sector strike, a natural urge to reach for the censorship spray gun and black out the rubbish had to be consciously suppressed.
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