New Frame archive | by the workers, for the workers

Editorial

New Frame steps back

After close to four years of intense work we must now reimagine how journalism can and should be done in a moment when the coils of social and political crisis squeeze ever more tightly.

New Frame
4 July 2022

Behind Day Zero is a metro that has failed to care

When the taps run dry in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, it will be the failures of the political class that plunge more than one million residents into disaster.

New Frame
24 June 2022

Abandon all hope that the ANC cares for us

With a government that fails to provide the much-needed relief available to a population that is increasingly desperate, the onus is on ordinary South Africans to hold the country together.

New Frame
10 June 2022

Decent and dignified healthcare for all

The proposed National Health Insurance scheme is, in principle, an excellent initiative. The problem is that no one in their right mind trusts the ANC to implement it.

New Frame
3 June 2022

Food sovereignty is a bulwark against desperation

As food prices and the cost of living soar globally, the crisis of hunger in South Africa is rapidly escalating. Action must be taken, and swiftly.

New Frame
27 May 2022

Let them have a ridiculously large luminous flag

The ANC is so out of touch with reality that it is now firmly ensconced in the realm of farce. The need for credible alternatives could hardly be more urgent.

New Frame
20 May 2022

Murder most foul

Political killings have become an all too common tool of control in South Africa. It is essential that this grim reality is recognised and opposed.

New Frame
13 May 2022

Another assassination in Durban

As political killings continue in the city, claiming the lives of activists exposing ANC rot and failures, serious questions need to be asked of our democratic commitments.

New Frame
6 May 2022

Marking Workers’ Day in dispiriting times

Previously, millions of people were mobilised in the hope of a better future on May Day. Now, amid mass unemployment and the collapse of an emancipatory vision, that optimism is absent.

New Frame
29 April 2022

Rebuilding Durban will require the state and society

The ANC’s repeated failures to manage public money with integrity and social purpose are not the only cause for concern as relief efforts get under way in Durban.

New Frame
22 April 2022

Devastation in Durban

The floods that have wreaked havoc in the shacklands of Durban are another searing indictment of the social abandonment of the majority by a predatory political elite.

New Frame
14 April 2022

The imperative of political hope

The widening separation between the nationalist imagination and emancipatory hopes is turning the former into an alibi for increasingly dangerous forms of reactionary politics.

New Frame
8 April 2022

Fascism spoken softly does not soften its blows

As xenophobic mobilisation escalates, democracy appears increasingly fragile. A new vision of emancipation rooted in a politics of solidarity is needed now more than ever.

New Frame
1 April 2022

Fascism spoken softly does not soften its blows

As xenophobic mobilisation escalates, democracy appears increasingly fragile. A new vision of emancipation rooted in a politics of solidarity is needed now more than ever.

New Frame
1 April 2022

The liberal order never loved us

Powerful actors in the South African public sphere assume that Western domination of the world is something virtuous, something to be uncritically defended. It is a deeply flawed world view.

New Frame
18 March 2022

The slow Marikana

The scale and intensity of the repression against popular dissent in Durban is staggering. If left unchallenged it will, in time, arrive in the suburbs.

New Frame
11 March 2022

The sorrow of war

The invasion of Ukraine must be opposed. But war cannot be effectively opposed by presenting the most dangerous and violent force on the planet as a benevolent guarantor of order.

New Frame
4 March 2022

Clover strike takes on shades of Marikana

Tensions are rising as negotiations fail to progress. In the absence of a national emancipatory vision and amid an escalating social crisis, violence is tightening its hold.

New Frame
25 February 2022

Power to the people

Punishing impoverished and working-class residents for their inability to pay for electricity is unjust and immoral, especially when wealthy debtors have been getting a free ride for years.

New Frame
18 February 2022

A darkness more than night descends on SA’s people

Punishing impoverished and working-class residents for their inability to pay for electricity is unjust and immoral, especially when wealthy debtors have been getting a free ride for years.

New Frame
18 February 2022

An admission of failure, a turn to the Right

The president veered sharply towards a pro-business position in his state of the nation address, moving against the demands of the largest organisations of the working class.

New Frame
11 February 2022

The hard road after Zondo

As we seek to gauge the full significance of the Zondo commission’s second report, a critical question arises: Where do we go from here?

New Frame
4 February 2022

The ugly side of the beautiful game

Football cannot cure all ills. Fans and spectators need to take back control of the narrative around matches and expose those who would manipulate crowds for political and personal gain.

New Frame
28 January 2022

The EFF surrenders a key progressive principle

The party’s reckless descent into xenophobic politics is an alarming development. Building a counter-politics of solidarity is essential.

New Frame
21 January 2022

A predatory elite aims for further licence

When the kleptocrats gun for the Constitution and judiciary, they cynically dress their wholly destructive desire for elite impunity in the language of general emancipation.

New Frame
14 January 2022

CAF must stand up to European bullying

The 2021 Afcon has generated the same old voices expressing the same old reluctance to release their African players for the continental showpiece. The time for tolerating this disdainful treatment…

New Frame
7 January 2022

Renewing hope after another bad year

As our social crisis escalates year after year, we are perilously close to an entirely unviable situation. There is a way out, but it can only be built in the realm of the popular.

New Frame
31 December 2021

A plague on both their houses

Neither the kleptocrats nor the liberals offer a viable or a just way forward. But we should not be fooled into thinking they are our only choices.

New Frame
24 December 2021

A crisis of leadership in South African football

The Premier Soccer League keeps on stumbling from one blunder to the next. And while its leaders can be replaced, the question is whether the damage they are causing can be fixed.

New Frame
17 December 2021

Xenophobia never rests

The possibility that thousands of Zimbabweans will find their presence in South Africa rendered illegal within a year demands a response rooted in organised solidarity.

New Frame
10 December 2021

Our veins do not end in our bodies

Covid can only be contained with global solidarity. Shutting borders is as irrational as it is prejudicial.

New Frame
6 December 2021

Go to hell, Shell

The explosion of rage in South Africa in response to the multinational company exploring for oil and gas in the ocean off the Wild Coast is entirely justified.

New Frame
26 November 2021

Emancipatory hopes run out of road

The outcome of the recent elections and the searing testimony at the Human Rights Commission inquiry into the July riots illuminate the collapse of an emancipatory vision.

New Frame
19 November 2021

A little man in a big moment

FW de Klerk presided over a bloody transition from apartheid. This history, and his failure to reckon with it, leave a legacy that is irredeemably compromised.

New Frame
12 November 2021

The wheel turns again

This week’s election marks significant shifts in electoral politics. As support for the ANC and the DA ebbs, the Left is absent and a new Right slouches into plainer view.

New Frame
5 November 2021

All of them must go!

Monday’s elections offer scant hope for a way out of our escalating crisis. Reality demands a rigorous pessimism of the intellect if we are to generate a viable optimism of the will.

New Frame
29 October 2021

Solidarity with the eKhenana land occupation

The eKhenana Occupation has received strong international support following abuse it has endured from the state, including the arrest of its leaders on false charges.

Noam Chomsky
14 October 2021

Injustice stalks dissent

As three activists walked free after six months in jail, it was again clear that the ANC, in cahoots with the police and justice system, keeps grinding popular dissent against the rock of repressio…

New Frame
1 October 2021

Not even the dead

Our history of violence accumulates into the present as time slips by, and taints the future too. There must be decisive action against all political murders, old and new alike.

New Frame
17 September 2021

Escalating Sinophobia in SA’s media

The recent eruption of Sinophobia in the national media has been a shameful illustration of the weakness of our public sphere. We need to do better.

New Frame
10 September 2021

Political assassinations must be stopped

The use of murder to advance political contestation, and the kleptocratic practices enabled by access or proximity to political office, must be brought to an end.

New Frame
3 September 2021

Vaccines are a collective asset for all humankind

Medical science has often been used as a tool of elite power mediated through class, race and gender. But it emerges from shared learning and should be owned in common and used for the public good.

New Frame
27 August 2021

Imperialism and its discontents

The United States has wreaked destruction across the planet and bringing an end to its reign of terror is urgent. But an organisation such as the Taliban offers only new forms of oppression.

New Frame
20 August 2021

Democracy must be radicalised if it is to endure

The hopes nurtured as apartheid fell have crashed repeatedly on the rocks of violent and authoritarian realities. Sustaining them will require a genuinely popular democratic project.

New Frame
13 August 2021

Hunger is the story of our time

Hunger continues to kill every day, around the world. This global failure to sustain humanity stems from the very nature of capitalism.

Prasanth Radhakrishnan
12 August 2021

Stuck in the colonial mire

For as long as we treat some lives as disposable, we will not escape the colonial logic that continues to mutilate society and corrode possibilities for a just and viable future.

New Frame
6 August 2021

The politics of a basic income

With a basic income grant well and truly on the cards, the kind of grant South Africa might get is as important as whether we get it at all.

New Frame
30 July 2021

A future without illusion

For too long we have understood South Africa in terms of myth rather than history, fantasy rather than reality. Now we must take full measure of who and where we are.

New Frame
23 July 2021

The fire this time

It is unclear how the state will respond to the recent tumult in KwaZulu-Natal. Leadership will have to come from within society.

New Frame
16 July 2021

A moment of rupture

There can be no return to business as usual after the rapidly mutating rupture in recent days. What happens in the months and years to come is of critical import.

New Frame
13 July 2021

End game for Zuma and Mswati

Like the former South African president, the king of eSwatini is destined to fall from grace and power. But as the wheel of history turns, it is imperative to think about viable routes into a just …

New Frame
9 July 2021

Oppression and resistance in eSwatini

Two New Frame journalists were swept up in the tumult in eSwatini. They are now safely across the border, but opposition to the dictatorship continues to face severe repression.

New Frame
6 July 2021

Law and riot, riot and law

The law has no absolute character and always reflects the balance of social forces at the time it was written. It is a terrain of struggle, not a replacement for struggle.

New Frame
2 July 2021

Organise or die

The Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t brought South Africa’s health system to its knees. Instead, it has simply exposed on a wider scale the systematic failures that were already there.

New Frame
25 June 2021

The dark side of sport’s power

There are alarming examples all around us of sport, its heroes and those who milk its cash cows being cloaked in admiration when they deserve our harshest scorn.

New Frame
18 June 2021

Johannesburg in decay

South Africa’s largest city is a world city, the home of jazz, art, politics and insurgent popular aspirations. But it is in precipitous decline, making now the time to act.

New Frame
11 June 2021

A place weeping

The social devastation of mass unemployment renders South Africa a non-viable society for millions. Something must give.

New Frame
4 June 2021

Tyres burn as road runs out for Zuma

Jacob Zuma is finally having his day in court. But while there is deep popular opposition to corruption, the criminal justice system requires urgent reform if it is to sustain credibility.

New Frame
28 May 2021

ANC government must impose sanctions on Israel

Condemning Israel while continuing to do business with the state is a cynical attempt to spin optics when what Palestinians need is decisive action.

New Frame
14 May 2021

Building real alternatives to ANC’s degeneration

The political decay in the ruling party is so pervasive that weeding out a few leaders will not be sufficient to rebuild the possibility of real social hope

New Frame
7 May 2021

The urgency of universal healthcare

Giving everyone access to quality medical treatment can no longer be treated as an unrealisable dream. In these dangerous times, it is simply vital to make it a reality.

New Frame
30 April 2021

Blowing the whistle on football’s culture of greed

Football was broken long before the European Super League. But the united effort that dismantled this money-grubbing venture has to be sustained to fix the other ills in the beautiful game.

New Frame
23 April 2021

A promising move against impunity

It may have taken 34 years, but the decision to bring the murderers of Thomas Sankara to book is an important warning to assassins and their backers.

New Frame
16 April 2021

Data is not a luxury but a necessity

South African network providers MTN and Vodacom have been exploiting their customers for decades, from high SMS prices to exorbitant data costs. They need far more than just a slap on the wrist.

New Frame
9 April 2021

Long Read | Senzeni Na?

The South African state and the society from which it stems and governs are systemically violent. It is time to break this cycle of violence with a politics rooted in a commitment to healing.

New Frame
2 April 2021

A fleeting sense of national solidarity

Trust in the state and the ANC has declined precipitously since the initial lockdown began, making it urgent to look beyond shallow political dramas and see what is driving the country’s crisis.

New Frame
26 March 2021

King Zwelithini’s reckless use of personal power

It would be remiss not to acknowledge the Zulu King’s complicity with apartheid machinations, political violence, homophobia, sexism and xenophobia – and the exploitative Ingonyama Trust.

New Frame
19 March 2021

The rising threat of political gangsterism

Jacob Zuma’s tea parties and the new political alliances and ideological projects being created suggest a dangerous intensification of authoritarian, ultra-nationalist and ethnic politics.

New Frame
12 March 2021

Women under fire

As International Women’s Day approaches, we need to affirm the right of women – all women – to full and free participation in the public sphere.

New Frame
5 March 2021

Traditional Courts Bill denies democratic rights

A fabricated idea of tradition legitimates the way in which the bill enforces subordination to traditional courts, with no possibility to opt out.

New Frame
26 February 2021

Motshekga and language that authorises rape culture

The minister of basic education’s recent statements about rape, civilisation and sophistication need to be considered in ways that take the makings of culture and function of language seriously.

New Frame
19 February 2021

Zuma faction’s last stand endangers all of SA

With the legal net tightening around Jacob Zuma and his key allies, the political temperature will escalate rapidly in the ANC and society. Analytical and political clarity is an urgent imperative.

New Frame
12 February 2021

Zuma faction’s last stand endangers all of SA

With the legal net tightening around Jacob Zuma and his key allies, the political temperature will escalate rapidly in the ANC and society. Analytical and political clarity is an urgent imperative.

New Frame
12 February 2021

Sport has a rape culture problem

Like racial abuse, the ingrained use of rape as sporting terminology is unacceptable and all those involved in sport need to stop condoning such language.

New Frame
5 February 2021

Xenophobia marks SA’s ongoing decline

The anti-Chinese posts that flooded social media in response to Xiaomei Havard taking office are loathsome.

New Frame
29 January 2021

Zuma, the once invincible chess hustler exposed

Revelations about the former president’s abuse of the intelligence arms of the state to secure power and riches for himself and his cronies are profoundly disturbing.

New Frame
29 January 2021

Biden is an inadequate response to the rise of the Right

Defeating right-wing authoritarianism means rejecting the neoliberal status quo and replacing it with an emancipatory agenda driven by popular organisation.

New Frame
22 January 2021

Alcohol industry and government have to do better

The three sales bans the government has imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic have placed South Africans’ alcohol abuse and the booze industry’s predatory nature firmly in the spotlight.

New Frame
15 January 2021

Trumpism will fester into the future

American voters really only had two choices at the polls, and diversity at the helm is not enough to put the US firmly on the road to inclusivity.

New Frame
8 January 2021

The revolutionary promise of New Year’s Day

In 1804, enslaved Africans seized their freedom on the Caribbean island that became Haiti. It came at an unthinkable cost, but it remains an inspiring example of what popular commitment and organis…

New Frame
1 January 2021

A year of global crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic remains a worldwide crisis. An adequate response to it, and to the crises to come, will require forms of progressive organisation with a global reach.

New Frame
18 December 2020

SA is failing to meet the challenge of a second wave

The intersection of the second wave of Covid-19 infections with the festive season poses real risks for society – risks that the government seems unable or unwilling to address.

New Frame
11 December 2020

More authoritarianism will escalate social violence

South Africans live in constant fear. Many of the responses proposed to deal with the crisis of endemic violence are themselves a threat to social solidarity and the prospect of a just peace. Howev…

New Frame
4 December 2020

Urgent action is required to oppose xenophobia

Both ANC factions have chosen to incite xenophobia to sustain consent for their authority, but popular organisations can and must create grassroots opposition in solidarity with migrants.

New Frame
27 November 2020

Eastern Cape health woes expose government failures

Covid-19 has highlighted what South Africans already knew about the Eastern Cape’s health system: it’s dysfunctional and on the verge of collapse, and a remedy is needed urgently.

New Frame
20 November 2020

More to corruption fight than arresting Magashule

Corruption in all its forms is the predatory enrichment of a minority at the expense of the impoverished majority, and should not be tolerated.

New Frame
13 November 2020

Fight the Trumpism that will outlast Trump

Joe Biden offers only breathing room in the United States, not a long-lasting solution enabling prosperity and dignity for the vast majority of the people.

New Frame
6 November 2020

The politic of blood

The repression and abandonment of impoverished people continues unabated in South Africa, consigning them to lives that cannot flourish and deaths that pass unnoticed among the elite.

New Frame
30 October 2020

A culture of impunity in Nigeria’s police must stop

The world was watching when soldiers and police officers shot into a crowd of #EndSARS protesters, killing more than ten and highlighting police brutality in Africa’s most populous country.

New Frame
23 October 2020

New social grants are more than money

Converting grants introduced during the Covid-19 lockdown into permanent ones is not only about securing the bare conditions for life, the prospects for even a limited progressive state are at stak…

New Frame
16 October 2020

A new unity on the streets

Organisations that represent the working class and impoverished people are stepping into the political vacuum left by the warring factions of the ANC.

New Frame
9 October 2020

The oppressed must organise or starve

The social catastrophe in which the country finds itself after months of lockdown has left impoverished people with the imperative to build their power against an increasingly hostile state.

New Frame
2 October 2020

A heritage to call our own

Blessed with many peoples, cultures and languages, South Africa can mould a heritage that takes the best from the past, nurtures it in the present and preserves it for the future.

New Frame
25 September 2020

Murder is a routine tool of social control

The scale at which grassroots activists, and participants in strikes and protests, have been murdered is a major threat to democracy, a threat which is seldom taken seriously in the elite public sp…

New Frame
18 September 2020

EFF sexism and authoritarianism make a toxic mix

The party cannot be allowed to continue threatening, harassing and deriding women if it is serious about addressing urgent injustices in South Africa.

New Frame
11 September 2020

Mobilising against southern Africa’s ruling-party rot

Breaking the grip of southern Africa’s predatory ruling parties, which exist only to serve their own selfish needs, will require a collective vision backed by popular solidarities.

New Frame
21 August 2020

Dispatches from a province at the peak of the virus

As we celebrate our second birthday with intimate portraits of life in Gauteng as Covid-19 rages, New Frame commits anew to fair, accurate journalism that constantly questions the status quo.

New Frame
14 August 2020

State looting calls ANC legitimacy into question

Early admiration in South Africa for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has quickly dissolved with representatives of the state stealing emergency funds on a massive scal…

New Frame
7 August 2020

We need to talk about classical liberalism

A history of enslavement, colonialism, wars and coups by so-called liberal states refutes the notion that this political ideology is the true home of inclusion and non-racialism.

New Frame
31 July 2020

Amid despair, grounds for new hope

In this moment, it is essential to take full measure of both how bad things are and the possibilities for developing a more viable and humane alternative.

New Frame
24 July 2020

SA reaps what it has sown as Covid-19 rages

Among the growing list of coronavirus symptoms is social inertia. We simply cannot afford it as thousands fall ill by the day and jobs are slashed.

New Frame
17 July 2020

Brutal evictions worsen South Africa’s urban crisis

The ANC and DA are both imposing militarised evictions, ruling in neocolonial fashion as if the people were the enemy. A progressive approach would embrace the social value of land occupations.

New Frame
10 July 2020

Sport must dismantle systematic racism in its ranks

Various sporting codes have rallied behind Black Lives Matter. But instead of flashy public relations exercises, they should show their support by addressing the racism rife in their midst.

New Frame
3 July 2020

Is the Freedom Charter a thorn in the ANC’s side?

The Freedom Charter, which has become a measure of the growing gap between political hopes and social realities, is still used from below, often against the ANC.

New Frame
26 June 2020

Gender violence: From grief to rupture to movement

High rates of femicide make South Africa one of the most dangerous places to be female. With the government failing to protect women, it’s time for a movement that will change the status quo.

New Frame
19 June 2020

The toppling of racist statues is historical poetry

With powerful energies moving against racism across the planet, opportunities are arising to question its enduring assumptions of civilisational superiority and undo its normalisation.

New Frame
12 June 2020

Protests in the US hold promise for the world

The rebellion against racist police violence in the United States opens the prospect for a global rethink on policing.

New Frame
5 June 2020

From Minneapolis to the world

As the globe was colonised, the count of who was considered human narrowed, first along religious, then racial lines. Now, the fires of rebellion against this system are burning again.

New Frame
1 June 2020

South Africa faces a stark political choice

As the intersecting health and economic crises deepen, the country will have to choose between a politics rooted in social solidarity and a politics rooted in exclusion and containment.

New Frame
29 May 2020

Food production must change to beat hunger

The political consequences of exacerbated hunger during the Covid-19 lockdown are not yet clear. But historically, mass hunger has frequently led to a breakdown in consent for the established order…

New Frame
22 May 2020

Xenophobia on the rise as Covid-19 roils the planet

Racist and xenophobic politicians have abused the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent national lockdowns to bang the drum for their chauvinism and propaganda.

New Frame
15 May 2020

The urgency of critique

In this time of crisis in which many hard-won rights have been limited, it is vital that free and open debate be encouraged – including when it is critical of the state.

New Frame
8 May 2020

Freedom not yet

The ANC’s access to state power has not been used to honour the commitments the organisation made to the people who gave it their trust. Oppression has spread, like a virus.

New Frame
27 April 2020

Imagining the new normal after Covid-19

The global pandemic could either further entrench neoliberal structures or create an opening for radical change. Either way, life as we know it is over.

New Frame
17 April 2020

Covid-19 brings rubber bullets and water for the poor

The pandemic has pushed the state towards effective action, but this is simultaneoulsy taking both repressive and potentially progressive forms.

New Frame
10 April 2020

Lockdown must not lead to creeping mass eviction

As South Africa navigates the uncharted waters of its lockdown, what it holds for people confined to densely populated and under-serviced shack settlements is of grave concern.

New Frame
27 March 2020

Coronavirus and the crisis of capitalism

The viral pandemic is exposing the weakness and unsustainability of the global economic system.

New Frame
13 March 2020

Zero hours contracts are a poverty sentence

In South Africa’s long history of worker exploitation, zero hours contracts are the likely next chapter. But workers cannot afford to sit out a protracted legal process to expose them for what they…

New Frame
6 March 2020

Budget speech: Our rulers will not save us

It appears we will not get the bold, macroeconomic framework we need to address economic, social and ecological issues. This will have to be achieved through sustained popular pressure from below.

New Frame
28 February 2020

Politicians’ words diminish gender-based violence

Accusations of wife-beating in Parliament diminish the gender-based violence crisis in South Africa, which extends to murdered girls such as Tazne van Wyk who often get lost in statistics.

New Frame
21 February 2020

Viral racism

As yet officially unnamed, the coronavirus is being dubbed the China Virus by some news outlets, spurring anti-Chinese sentiment and an all-too-familiar xenophobia.

New Frame
7 February 2020

Resisting the far-right and its trolls

White supremacists use the internet to spew myths of victimisation that legitimise racist ideologies. Their attempts to silence critical voices in the South African media must be opposed.

New Frame
31 January 2020

The aftermath of injustice

Only two inquests into detainee deaths under apartheid’s Security Branch have been reopened, but the values of the more than 70 activists who died at John Vorster Square live on.

New Frame
24 January 2020

All change and no change in South African cricket

Race and class dynamics continue to dominate the sport while Cricket South Africa still has no discernible plan to transform the game and promote black players.

New Frame
17 January 2020

The tiring matric pass rate chorus

The ‘increasing’ matric pass rate, celebrated year after year, does not take into account the number of pupils who didn’t make it that far, covering up a much deeper crisis in our education system.…

New Frame
10 January 2020

In neoliberalism’s end, a new world’s beginning

This decade saw the seeming death spiral of the neoliberal world order. Now is not the moment for apocalyptic despair but for embracing the antidote of collective power.

New Frame
1 January 2020

The about-turn of Aung San Suu Kyi

The Lady, once revered for her stance on human rights, presented a sombre defence of the Myanmar military’s treatment of the Rohingya people in The Hague.

New Frame
20 December 2019

Data costs must fall, and it’s now likely they will

It’s taken 50 years for access to the internet to be considered a basic human right, but the cost of the resource has further compromised the impoverished.

New Frame
6 December 2019

Notes on gender-based violence and fear

The murder of Precious Ramabulana, after news of violent repression and killings in South America, raises the simmering anger and fear among women and LGBTQIA+ people to boiling point once again.

New Frame
29 November 2019

Labour and capital face defining moment over SAA strike

Rhetoric advocates cost-cutting and privatisation, both catastrophic for the working class.

New Frame
22 November 2019

History batters indigenous Bolivians yet again

The overthrow of the democratically elected president is an attempt to restore a centuries-long history of racist domination and exploitation.

New Frame
15 November 2019

Remember, remember, the fifth of November…

The mask inspired by Guy Fawkes has become a global symbol of protest, the kind that will multiply as more and more stand up to those clinging to power in an unsustainable system.

New Frame
8 November 2019

Rebellion in Haiti

As popular protest gathers momentum in Haiti, a society long denied basic democratic rights by imperialism, solidarity is an urgent imperative.

New Frame
1 November 2019

Will the DA become an anglicised FF+?

With the resignation of its top leaders, values are swiftly shifting for South Africa’s main opposition party, reinforcing perceptions that it cannot abide black people in power.

New Frame
25 October 2019

Rational debate must prevail in economic questions

Ignoring empirical evidence, the elite want to impose discredited austerity measures in response to South Africa’s deepening economic crisis, a move that will further impoverish the majority.

New Frame
18 October 2019

Rugby needs to polish its image

SA Rugby’s response to the serious allegations levelled against Eben Etzebeth and his participation in the Rugby World Cup have taken the shine off the Springboks in Japan.

New Frame
11 October 2019

Stopping strikes strips workers of rights

When the banking sector protest was interdicted by the Labour Court, workers lost their major instrument in raising demands and bargaining with their employers.

New Frame
30 September 2019

If we burn, you burn with us

Millions across the globe took to the streets to agitate for climate action, igniting a revolutionary spark against capitalism in the battle for the future.

New Frame
23 September 2019

Sport must fight gender-based violence

Clubs and sporting bodies have to do a better job when it comes to holding players to account for violence against women – because the law seldom does.

New Frame
16 September 2019

Affirm the Earth as a global commons

The current environmental cataclysm is entangled in a worldwide political crisis in which a small elite fight to viciously encircle land and resources that belong to all humanity.

New Frame
2 September 2019

Who will speak for the Amazon?

The Amazon is being devastated, deepening the global climate emergency. The world must save this life-giving rainforest and, in doing so, help to preserve life on Earth as well.

New Frame
26 August 2019

The dying SABC is crippling South African sport

The abysmal state of the public broadcaster is not only devastating for its thousands of staff. It could destroy sport in this country.

New Frame
19 August 2019

New Frame one year on

The social justice media project that is New Frame turns one today. It has come a long way from its launch, but is looking forward to the long and challenging way to go.

Richard Pithouse
16 August 2019

How Toni Morrison can help us fight xenophobia

Xenophobia is festering in South Africa, stoked by the actions of the state itself. How do we stop violence against migrants? The thoughts and words of the late Toni Morrison can help.

New Frame
12 August 2019

Time for the ANC to pay its debt to history

Alexandra, Kliptown and Sharpeville – three names that ring with resistance and pride in South African liberation history. Yet despite their historical importance, these are neglected places in 201…

New Frame
5 August 2019

Boris Johnson, the logical outcome of a long history of liberal racism

Although it is in crisis, liberalism has attained its logical destiny. More than ever, it is a system that benefits the privileged few at the cost and exclusion of the many.

New Frame
29 July 2019

South Africa must shed its illusions

South Africans must set aside the fantasy of exceptionalism that assumes that the country is something more than an ordinary place, and face the hard realities of our past and present.

New Frame
22 July 2019

Militarisation is no solution to the crisis of Cape gang wars

The thousands of gang-related deaths on the Cape Flats are as much a result of the state neglecting its basic duties to its citizens as gangsters’ bullets and blades.

New Frame
15 July 2019

Political killings on the rise in Port Elizabeth

True democracy requires the right to organise freely. But the scale of political assassinations, and the impunity with which they occur, seriously compromises democracy in South Africa.

New Frame
8 July 2019

We must resist death-dealing borders

Borders are not merely barriers to movement. As inscriptions of colonial projects and power, intended to spatialise race and racialise space, they must be contested and rethought.

New Frame
1 July 2019

Resistance and repression in Sudan

As repression rains down on a courageous popular struggle in Sudan international solidarity is an urgent imperative.

New Frame
18 June 2019

ANC gridlock blocks progress

The stalemate in the ANC between the Ramaphosa and Magashule factions is keeping South Africa in its spiral of racialised impoverishment.

New Frame
10 June 2019

New Cabinet is the sun setting on a progressive ANC

With a xenophobe, an authoritarian, and an admirer of the Kagame dictatorship, the 2019 Cabinet offers no hope for a progressive resolution of our escalating social crisis.

New Frame
3 June 2019

Populism isn’t that popular in South Africa

South Africa is not faced by the prospect of a populist government run by a far-right leadership. Nevertheless, the majority must brace itself for another cycle of economic devastation.

New Frame
27 May 2019

The crisis in local government

President Ramaphosa has promised a ‘new dawn’ with an emphasis on improving the quality of public services to achieve transformation. But there will be pushback from within his own party, and parti…

New Frame
20 May 2019

Democracy exceeds electoral politics

Now that the votes have been counted, the poisonous idea that money and property are more important than people must be countered by popular democratic organisation – the most effective way to rein…

New Frame
13 May 2019

Now is the time for an emancipatory alternative

South Africa needs to develop a viable route towards a genuinely democratic and egalitarian society. Cyril Ramaphosa does not offer a meaningful alternative.

New Frame
6 May 2019

State action to deregister Amcu is undemocratic

Despite the questionable internal democratic practices of the mineworkers’ union, state attempts to deregister it can be ascribed only to political motives.

New Frame
30 April 2019

Hold the democratic line

In a true democracy, popular democratic action would be respected and regarded as legitimate and everyone would have the right to engage freely and safely in public debate.

New Frame
15 April 2019

Black footballers alone in fighting against racism

The authorities have failed black footballers, who are racially abused in numerous stadiums across Europe. This is why they will have to take matters into their own hands.

New Frame
8 April 2019

Popular solidarity is an urgent imperative

The state is separating the South African-born from migrants born elsewhere in Africa. Such exclusion and xenophobia can be fought only by cultivating horizontal forms of solidarity.

New Frame
1 April 2019

Political assassinations: A call to action

Legal repercussions for those accused of political murders are a ray of democratic hope after years of escalating assassinations, mostly carried out with impunity.

New Frame
25 March 2019

Taking Joburg from division to inclusion

South Africa’s biggest city stretches over the horizons, instead of into the skies above it. New policies offer part of the solution to this apartheid hangover.

New Frame
18 March 2019

Act against trolling, sexual harassment and abuse

Across the planet social media has been effectively exploited by the new set of authoritarian and often demagogic political leaders on the far right. Fake news is one important aspect of this.

New Frame
11 March 2019

Blood in the backstreets

When impoverished people trying to access water or land are killed by the police, the whole of society is complicit in these contemptuous murders committed by the state.

New Frame
5 March 2019

Caster Semenya and the IAAF witch-hunt

The association put the South African athlete through a humiliating gender-verification ordeal when she broke on to the circuit in 2009. Ten years later, not much has changed.

New Frame
25 February 2019

How Eskom can benefit people and the environment

Electricity must be seen as a social entitlement rather than a commodity, and ‘Eishkom’ should be central to an ambitious and equitable project of progressive social transformation.

New Frame
18 February 2019

The casspir haunts our present

The purchase of casspirs, always a tool of colonial domination, to contain land occupations and road blockades in Durban offers a deeply disturbing insight into the state of the nation.

New Frame
11 February 2019

Reserve Bank head is steering us to economic ruin

The Reserve Bank governor has been making extraordinarily bad interest rate decisions, but will he be held to account and replaced when his term ends in October?

New Frame
4 February 2019

Party politics sinks into the xenophobia gutter

As electoral politics veers to the right across the world, South African politicians follow with election promises focused on combating ‘illegal immigration’.

New Frame
28 January 2019

Afro-pessimism can be defeated by an African Spring

Ordinary people in Africa are bringing to birth, by their own sweat and blood, just societies that oppose unethical and often murderous regimes.

New Frame
21 January 2019

Liberal democracy in crisis

The liberal consensus forged at the end of the Cold War is in rapid retreat. In South Africa new social forces, with new ideas, are required if we are to find a viable path into a better future.

New Frame
14 January 2019

This is who we aim to be as New Frame

New Frame aims to write from, and in conversation with, the growing popular ferment in South Africa, and elsewhere.

Richard Pithouse
16 August 2018