Geography Archives: South Africa

  Paul Nugent.  Africa since Independence: A Comparative History. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  xix + 620 pp.  $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-333-68272-2; $35.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-333-68273-9. This is a masterful work of usable academic history.  By sharply delineating diverse trends in scores of countries, it applies expert analysis to sub-Saharan Africa, “the continent which has been […]

Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (Yale University Press, 2009). This book is a disgrace. It is difficult to understand why a reputable publisher like Yale University Press would wish to have its name on a book that is so dishonest, ill-informed, and pursues an obvious political agenda.  Perhaps the clue […]

  Countless academics have sought to measure the tangible benefits of being a union member.  The difference between union and non-union wages, often referred to as the “union premium,” can be calculated in many different ways.  It’s a profoundly complex field. . . .  Here’s a classic example of the poop one has to wade […]

JOHANNESBURG, 11 May 2009 (IRIN) — Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel.  An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer.  On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused […]

Ronald Aronson, Living without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided, Counterpoint Press, 2008. Something unprecedented happened in American publishing in the last four years.  Books explicitly advocating atheism became bestsellers.  It happened despite (or because of) the theocratic drift in our politics.  In 2005, Wayne State University professor Ronald Aronson called […]

  22 April 2009 — On Wednesday, Scotland joined Ireland and South Africa when the Scottish Trade Union Congress, representing every Scottish trade union, voted overwhelmingly to commit to boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.  This is the third example of a national trade union federation committing to BDS and is a clear indication that, […]

  The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended the conference to condemn the Israeli government’s brutal and repressive policy against the Palestinians.  The European delegates walked out when he called the government of Israel “racist,” but the Latin Americans stayed.  The United States and eight other countries boycotted the event. The Israeli government’s stance against […]

Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law.  The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come.  Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions.  While […]

Washington, DC (April 2) — The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and allied organizations participating in a national boycott campaign against Motorola welcomed news that Motorola Israel Ltd. has sold its Government Electronics Department, which made several products that enable Israel’s military occupation of and human rights abuses against Palestinians. The reported sale […]

  The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement: Investigate the Israeli Missile Contract The Rs. 10,000 crore missile production deal with an Israeli company, the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has now been exposed as a deal involving massive kickbacks besides being an unnecessary contract.  The Left parties […]

Background Raymond Deane, “A Public Stoning in Germany,” Electronic Intifada, 6 March 2009; and Yossi Bartal, “The German Left and Israel,” Alternative Information Center, 18 March 2009. We are peace activists of Jewish background.  Some of us typically identify in this way; others of us do not.  But we all object to those who claim […]

Murali Balaji, The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, New York:  Nation Books, 2007. W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson have been poorly served by their biographers.  David Levering Lewis and Martin Duberman found these two US communist revolutionaries about as congenial […]

  Since February 2003, Iran’s nuclear program has undergone what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself admits to be the most intrusive inspection in its entire history.  After thousands of hours of inspections by some of the most experienced IAEA experts, the Agency has verified time and again that (1) there is no evidence […]

  Joel Kovel holds the Alger Hiss chair in social studies at Bard College and is the author of Overcoming Zionism among other titles.  He has recently been informed by the college that his contract will not be extended beyond July 1.  In the statement below, he argues that the termination is due to his […]

Introduction Over the last two months, cholera has broken out in a number of provinces in South Africa.  Thousands of people have been infected and over fifty people have already died.1  Initially, a number of politicians, including parliamentarians from the right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA), tried to blame Zimbabweans — who were fleeing the economic meltdown, […]

  The Middle East has always been a difficult challenge for Western human rights organizations, particularly those seeking influence or funding in the United States.  The pressure to go soft on US allies is in some respects reminiscent of Washington’s special pleading for Latin American terror regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.  In the case […]

  After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008).  Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions.  The […]

  6 February 2009 The Congress of South African Trade Union is pleased to announce that its members, dock workers belonging to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), achieved a victory last night when they stood firm by their decision not to offload the Johanna Russ, a ship that was carrying Israeli […]

In the last few weeks, following the recent military attack on Gaza, we have seen an increase in calls for boycott of Israeli institutions in general, and academic institutions in particular.  A general boycott strategy can be useful indeed in mobilizing solidarity with Palestinians and undermining support for Israeli war crimes internationally and within the […]

please keep in mind as you prepare to pass sentence you may at some time be in need of a presidential pardon and I may, understandably, be reluctant to grant it. Dennis Brutus is a South African poet.  Active against Apartheid, he was arrested in 1963 and imprisoned for 18 months on Robben Island.  After […]