During my lunch break on 26 February 2013, I walked past a worker, resting in his wheelbarrow with a bottle of Coca Cola in his hand, beneath a sign that reads, “Stock wanted”.
Gregory Solik
News | 27 February 2013
In stygian depths 4km and more below the surface of the earth gold continues to be
harvested, but by fewer miners and with the aid of more—and increasingly efficient—mechanisation.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 20 February 2013
This is a debate between Professors Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings and the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU).
GroundUp Staff
News | 14 February 2013
Workers in Kwazulu-Natal clothing factories have made allegations of abuse against factory owners in affidavits provided to GroundUp.
Issa Saunders
News | 13 February 2013
In and around Colesberg, a small historical town on the N1 mid-way between Cape Town and Johannesburg, I met a group of impoverished sheep shearers living in abject poverty, surviving in tiny tin shacks on the verges of public roads. Only recently, in the last 15 years, have they become a settled, sedentary people.
Timothy Gabb
News | 6 February 2013
Eight years ago Bongani Ndlazi started collecting old bicycles and making them new again. He has turned his talent into a business that puts food on the table.
Nokubonga Yawa
News | 6 February 2013
Yesterday, exactly 40 years ago, the modern trade union movement arrived on the
South African scene. Its birth was heralded by a wave of strikes in Durban that had
gestated over 22 days from the time 2,000 workers at Coronation Brick and Tile
downed tools.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 5 February 2013
Hundreds of farmworkers in the De Doorns area have been fired after the end of the farmworkers strike in the area on 22 January. The strike had been called off by COSATU the week before, but the seemingly dominant union in the area, the Bawsi Agriculture Workers Union of South Africa (Bawusa), suspended the strike days later. Clashes between police and protesters resulted in at least one death, many injuries and 181 arrests of striking farmworkers.
Ben Fogel
Opinion | 30 January 2013
Farm workers began the centennial year of the 1913 Land Act with a continuation of the most militant industrial action in the sector in decades. On January 9th, various Western Cape farming towns were turned into warzones as protestors demanding an increase to a minimum R150 per day for farm workers, blockaded highways and set vineyards alight with police using rubber bullets and tear gas.
Niall Reddy
News | 24 January 2013
GroundUp journalist Mihle Pike received a call this morning that employees at Cash Paymaster Services had gone on strike. She went to see what was going on. Here is her account.
Mihle Pike
News | 23 January 2013
South Africa has continued to fail the children of the poor and is once again reaping
the results of that failure. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recurrent violent
eruptions in the fruit and wine farm regions of the Western Cape.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 16 January 2013
With one man confirmed dead in De Doorns as well as further allegations of police brutality and coercion on the one hand and striker intimidation on the other, the ongoing farm worker protests continue in the Western Cape wine and fruit-growing region.
Kate Stegeman
News | 16 January 2013
Employees of Cash Paymasters Services (CPS) are fed up with their working conditions. The company handles the reissuing of the new social grant cards for the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA).
Mihle Pike
News | 16 January 2013
With one man confirmed dead in De Doorns as well as further allegations of police brutality and coercion on the one hand and striker intimidation on the other, the ongoing farm worker protests continue in the Western Cape wine and fruit-growing region.
Kate Stegeman
News | 16 January 2013
Tensions between the De Doorns community and the police flared into open confrontation, as day one of the now thrice resumed strike turned into a running battle between striking workers and the police.
Ben Fogel
News | 10 January 2013
GroundUp spoke to Sipho Mfengwana, owner of Faku Tasty Chicken in Khayelitsha.
Mihle Pike
News | 12 December 2012