The recent acquittal of members of a leading South African social movement showed up the undemocratic tendencies of the ANC. Those committed to democracy will have to stand firm, writes Richard Pithouse.

The Kennedy 12 have been acquitted on all charges. No defence was led as no case was made against any of the 12 by the prosecution. However, clear evidence of a police frame-up did emerge and the only two credible witnesses (an ANC leader and a police officer) both testified to the correctness of the Abahlali account of what happened back in September 2009. A great day.

More details to come. Now we celebrate.

‘On 6 December 2011, 50 years will have passed since the death of Frantz Fanon. Around the world people are getting together in universities, trade union offices, shack settlements, prisons, church halls, and other places where people try to think together, to reflect on the meaning of an extraordinary man for us and our struggles here and now,’ writes Richard Pithouse.

South Africans are told that voting is all about making their ‘own choice’, but in most cases, it’s ‘a very limited choice between two competing factions of the elite that are equally invested in scaling back people’s legitimate aspirations for a just society into an insanely unequal society contained with state violence, new forms of spatial segregation and “service delivery”’, observes Richard Pithouse.

In the wake of the crises and revolutions of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, European claims to moral leadership look highly dubious, says Richard Pithouse.

With 'service delivery protests' a common occurrence in South Africa, Richard Pithouse exposes some of the myths associated with the phrase.

We live in a violent society, Richard Pithouse writes, but this very fear of violence is used to justify other forms of violence such as racism, xenophobia and fear of the poor. ‘… the presence of self-organised poor people in civil society is often received as a threat by all kinds of constituencies, including some of those that, be they liberal or radical, assume a right to enlighten and lead poor people from above,’ Pithouse argues.

As South Africa’s Freedom Day rolls around each year, it has become something of a cliché for pundits and politicians to observe that while the country has political freedom, the majority of its people have yet to attain economic freedom. But this platitude masks an extraordinarily anaemic view of political freedom, writes Richard Pithouse.