Month: July 2011

Good news from South Africa today. No, the news isn’t that Nelson Mandela is 93 today. It’s something far more in keeping with Mandela’s spirit and struggle.

The Kennedy 12 – twelve men accused of a range of crimes, including murder – have been acquitted. It’s becoming increasingly clear that they were framed. The government couldn’t stand the idea of poor people in the poorest areas of the city thinking and organizing for themselves, and so they used the party apparatus, the police, thugs and state power to first terrorize a shack settlement, and then to use that terror as an alibi to lock up the innocent. It has taken three years to clear the names of the Kennedy 12. The Unemployed Peoples Movement, Bishop Michael Vorster, Bishop Ruben Philip and Abahlali baseMjondolo themselves have shared the news already.

Continue reading “Dear Mandela”

Last month, La Via Campesina held an agroecology training workshop in Zimbabwe. Most of the time was spent, as you’d expect, learning about what agroecology actually means, but they also drafted a declaration, the full text of which is here, and from which this paragraph makes an economic case for sustainable farming methods. Continue reading “Agroecology Round Up”