Can Pretoria’s delegation to the Conference of the Parties COP19 in Warsaw – the annual UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit which opened on Monday and closes on November 22 – make a convincing statement that one of the world’s highest per-capita greenhouse-gas polluters is reforming?

Despite government and ruling party hype, South Africa remains a country in which the capitalist class and their small minority of middle class and political hangers-on ride the ‘world class’ gravy train while telling the rest of the people to cram into the ‘third class’ carriages

The definition of black today is from what the founder of Black Consciousness, Steve Bantu Biko, said it was: ‘a reflection of a mental attitude.’ It is different, diversified, multiple and more complicated than what was the case in the 1960s

Given the injustices of apartheid, heritage has become a surrogate for the black majority in the country to attempt an earnest conversation with a historically privileged minority (whites) and underprivileged minorities (coloureds, Indians, and other Asians) that reaffirms the value and merit of Africanness in South Africa

There is persistent misrepresentation of the South African Left, that it did little while the Congress Movement engaged in the struggle against the apartheid regime. The historical record needs to be set straight