Warren McGregor

Drawing on a network of transnational activists, this paper argues that a new type of regional network internationalism has emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa. Initiated by the Global Labour University (GLU), through a short two-month residential course called Engage, it has been able over the last seven years to develop the skills for a new type of union organiser, one who understands the global context, but is rooted in their local community. This network works at forging links of solidarity across national borders and regional frontiers. Their solidarity work aims at sharing knowledge and experience between activists and worker organisations and the development of meetings and campaigns to strategize and put into action these new forms of transnational solidarity.

ABSTRACT Post-1994 South Africa is usually seen and promoted as a country of moral and political exceptionalism. The spawn of negotiations between the bourgeois nationalist and voluntarily neo-liberal African National Congress (ANC) under the guidance of Nelson Mandela and the hierarchy of the vicious apartheid state, post-apartheid South Africa was to provide a shining example of reconciliation and socio-economic progress. During a few dark days in September 2009 and May 2010, these claims were finally and mercilessly put to rest. So it seems and has been for those who survive in and who are social activists at the layer of society most subject to the oppressive nature of the state and capital: the working class and poor. The Abahlali BaseMjondolo (September 2009), an organisation of poor shack dwellers based primarily in the Kwazulu-Natal province, and Landless People's Movement (May 2010), a shack and rural township dwellers organisation based in the Gauteng province, suffered attacks at the hands of their fellow community members. These attacks were designed by local political and business elites to expel and even murder prominent local activists of both organisations and to destabilise both organisations and their constructive community work. Most of their activism is directed against the state and its representatives at a local and municipal level. The attacks on social movements and activists should be viewed within a socio-economic context that sees South Africa as one of the most unequal societies on the planet. This inequality persists, bred during the last century and exacerbated by the ANC government's grasping at neoliberalism. Added to this cauldron of inequality was the morally criminal and immense spending by the state in hosting the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup which revealed what the staging of the event was designed as and who it ultimately will benefits - a capitalist and corporate state project for the benefit of the very few (domestically and globally).

Movements for ecological awareness and protection, such as those against climate change, are making important contributions to social understanding regarding the effects of industrial production and consumption. However, many arguments and analyses against ecological destruction and for environmental protection are seemingly not based on a class analysis and not informed by the lives of working class people. Thus many of these analyses do not question the systems of domination that lie at the root of social inequality and ecological devastation: capitalism and the nation state. What follows is an anarchist analysis of a way forward for linking environmental awareness and protection to working class and poor people’s issues (as do movements for environmental justice), as an attempt to make these relevant to the majority in our society. In doing so, I argue that ecological protection must be intrinsic to any fight for social, political and economic freedom, as ecological destruction i...

When we celebrate May Day we seldom know or reflect on why it is a holiday in South Africa and in many parts of the world. Sian Byrne, Warren McGregor and Lucien van der Walt tell the story of powerful struggles that lie behind its existence and of the organisations that both created it and kept its meaning alive.

Post-1994 South Africa is usually seen and promoted as a country of moral and political exceptionalism. The spawn of negotiations between the bourgeois nationalist and voluntarily neo-liberal African National Congress (ANC) under the guidance of Nelson Mandela and the hierarchy of the vicious apartheid state, post-apartheid South Africa was to provide a shining example of reconciliation and socio-economic progress. During a few dark days in September 2009 and May 2010, these claims were finally and mercilessly put to rest. So it seems and has been for those who survive in and who are social activists at the layer of society most subject to the oppressive nature of the state and capital: the working class and poor. The Abahlali BaseMjondolo (September 2009), an organisation of poor shack dwellers based primarily in the Kwazulu-Natal province, and Landless People's Movement (May 2010), a shack and rural township dwellers organisation based in the Gauteng province, suffered attacks...

"Movements for ecological awareness and protection, such as those against climate change, are making important contributions to social understanding regarding the effects of industrial production and consumption. However, many arguments and analyses against ecological destruction and for environmental protection are seemingly not based on a class analysis and not informed by the lives of working class people. Thus many of these analyses do not question the systems of domination that lie at the root of social inequality and ecological devastation: capitalism and the nation state.

What follows is an anarchist analysis of a way forward for linking environmental awareness and protection to working class and poor people’s issues (as do movements for environmental justice), as an attempt to make these relevant to the majority in our society. In doing so, I argue that ecological protection must be intrinsic to any fight for social, political and economic freedom, as ecological destruction impacts immediately on all our lives and especially those of the working poor. However, it is only a working class-led social revolution against social and economic domination that can ultimately guarantee a world that not only meets all our needs"

Post-1994 South Africa is usually seen and promoted as a country of moral and political exceptionalism. The spawn of negotiations between the bourgeois nationalist and voluntarily neo-liberal African National Congress (ANC) under the guidance of Nelson Mandela and the hierarchy of the vicious apartheid state, post-apartheid South Africa was to provide a shining example of reconciliation and socio-economic progress. During a few dark days in September 2009 and May 2010, these claims were finally and mercilessly put to rest. So it seems and has been for those who survive in and who are social activists at the layer of society most subject to the oppressive nature of the state and capital: the working class and poor.