Institute for Economic Justice🇿🇦 Co-Founder, Senior Policy Specialist. Former unionist. Politics~Economics🌍 Progressive alternatives✊ Music🎼

South Africa
Good people. Don't let the climate deniers, the exploiters, the oligarchs, the wreckers of people & planet 👉demoralise you 👉defeat you Goodness, solidarity, decency, can prevail. But only if we refuse to despair. Resist! For the sake of humanity & our children.
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South Africa should we follow Brazil's banning of online gambling?
BRAZIL PRESIDENT LULA CRACKS DOWN on BETTING before ELECTION — BANS online betting operations CONCERN: GAMBLING draining HOUSEHOLD INCOME as INDEBTEDNESS RISES
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President Lula's rationale for doing this. What do you think?
Hoje o Brasil virou o jogo. Assinei uma Medida Provisória que proíbe todas as apostas esportivas e cassinos online no país. Uma medida dura, drástica e necessária. As bets tinham se tornado um câncer. Ou a gente tirava esse tumor ou ele ia acabar com a gente. As muitas conversas com especialistas e vítimas me fizeram lembrar dos tempos do surgimento do crack. O vício gerava endividamentos em série e as pessoas perdiam o limite da responsabilidade. Vendiam tudo em casa. Com as bets é parecido, mas num grau maior porque é no celular. Ouvi gente que perdeu bens materiais. Perdeu sonhos. Horizontes. Familiares. As bets afetaram a saúde mental de milhões de pessoas inocentes. Criadas no governo Temer, elas cresceram sem lei na gestão Bolsonaro. Quando assumimos, estavam em dezenas de engrenagens. Não tinham restrições nem para evitar o uso por crianças e adolescentes. A sociedade ficou desprotegida. O país que sempre foi contra cassino, briga de galo, rinha, trouxe o cassino para dentro de casa. Para a cozinha, para a sala. Regulamentamos. Criamos regras. Eliminamos mais de 65 mil sites ilegais. Restringimos o uso por beneficiários do Desenrola e do Bolsa Família. Criamos possibilidade de autoexclusão. Redes de proteção. Mas a verdade é que, na balança, os prejuízos para o povo são bem maiores que os ganhos econômicos. Não é brincadeira. É coisa muito séria. Não vamos permitir que empresas de apostas lucrem às custas da renda e da vida de famílias brasileiras. Do dinheiro do leite, do pão, da refeição. Fizemos o que tinha de ser feito: acabar com as bets. Alem disso, assinei um projeto de lei para definir conceitos e punições para crimes relativos às apostas de quota fixa e anunciamos o Desenrola 3.0. Nesta fase, o Governo vai comprar, em leilão, as dívidas de brasileiros com até 90% de desconto, e repassar depois esse desconto ao devedor, que poderá quitar a dívida à vista ou parcelar o saldo remanescente. 📸 @ricardostuckert
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STATEMENT | SARB’s 25-basis-point rate hike deals another blow to a struggling economy. It will not resolve imported fuel, fertiliser, or food-price pressures, but will deepen the burden on workers, households, small businesses, and the unemployed. Read: iej.org.za/press-room/statem…
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Neil Coleman retweeted
publish the models for public scrutiny!!!
Replying to @NeilColemanSA
TREASURY AND MINISTER RESPONSES Treasury official claims in the medium term their modelling shows that lower inflation targeting will actually increase domestic demand!
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Neil Coleman retweeted
Replying to @haugejostein
This seems to me to be an unnecessarily dogmatic and one-sided formulation, presumably in response to the narrative about Chinas 'excessive focus' on investment, and it's supposed inadequate focus on consumption. While this quote draws attention to the importance of the development of the productive forces, an equally important question is what is the dialectical relationship of investment to consumption in different historical periods and specific social realities; and how should this relationship evolve over time? The relationship cannot be static or fixed. This is a critical question for example in the current South African context, where deindustrialisation and lack of investment is combined with widespread poverty and underconsumption. A policy response to this deep stagnation therefore has to combine a stimulus to investment and consumption. A one-sided focus on either element will create it's own perverse consequences. Having said that a focus on productive investment is indispensable.
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Neil Coleman retweeted
No dia 4 de outubro, o Brasil vai às urnas para decidir seu futuro. A democracia brasileira pertence aos brasileiros. O Brasil continuará sendo soberano. Ninguém nos afastará desse caminho. 🇧🇷
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Neil Coleman retweeted
Israel is blatantly defying international law and the UN as a whole. Sign the petition urging UNGA President Rahman to suspend genocidal Israel from the UN ➡️ loom.ly/HrqDS8M
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🤔 *Adversaries* of the working class will celebrate the postponing of @_cosatu 's Congress 🤔 *Independent commentators* will, legitimately, ask searching questions about what has led to this situation 🤔 *Friends of the working class* will ask, given this serious setback, what can they do to support and strengthen our trade union movement, while raising issues that need to be addressed if this objective is to be advanced. The South African labour movement is the product of decades of struggle. It is not only critical for defending and advancing worker issues, but is fundamentally important for our democracy. In the midst of COSATU's current challenges this should not be forgotten.
[BREAKING] COSATU has postponed its elective congress indefinitely amid infighting among delegates over the status of Deputy President Mike Shingange. Tune in to #eNCA #DStv403.
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Neil Coleman retweeted
Never thought I'd be this proud to have studied at a British University! I studied at the University of Essex in 1982 under the great South African academic and activist Harold Wolpe- & was in temporary exile to avoid conscription into the apartheid military. The University was no hotbed of activism, & is situated in the parochial & sleepy town of Colchester. This graduation ceremony in support of the Palestinian people demonstrates how powerful and irreversible the Palestinian solidarity movement has become, occupying nearly every nook and cranny of the global community; and that while the situation may appear utterly desperate now, the liberation of Palestine is a matter of time.
I want to see this in every ceremony.
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Neil Coleman retweeted
I watched NAZA. (Unlike 99% of people expressing their very strong opinions on this website). 🧵 So here are my takes, which will make a lot of you very angry:
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Neil Coleman retweeted
Chilling. Even apartheid, with all it's decades of propaganda, was unable to instill such hatred. A psychotic, deeply disturbed society.
A well-known Israeli comedian goes to Israeli schools to talk to students. What he discovered there is that they wish to kill every Muslim on earth. A shocking conversation that shows you what the next generation of Israeli voters are like.
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Neil Coleman retweeted
If you are opposed to the continued bombing of children and civilians in Gaza, please sign this petition to stop the shipment of 40 000 bombs to Israel by the US government. @Avaaz secure.avaaz.org/en/campaign…
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Neil Coleman retweeted
Replying to @GoodVibePolitik
This clip makes it clear that attacks on the film makers for 'appropriation of Palestinian pain' are infantile and lack a basic understanding of the critical importance of building the broadest possible coalition against an evil system, to bring it down. This is a lesson we learned well in our struggle to defeat the apartheid system. And it worked. piped.video/shorts/dFpSPoVcD…
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Neil Coleman retweeted
🤔 *Adversaries* of the working class will celebrate the postponing of @_cosatu 's Congress 🤔 *Independent commentators* will, legitimately, ask searching questions about what has led to this situation 🤔 *Friends of the working class* will ask, given this serious setback, what can they do to support and strengthen our trade union movement, while raising issues that need to be addressed if this objective is to be advanced. The South African labour movement is the product of decades of struggle. It is not only critical for defending and advancing worker issues, but is fundamentally important for our democracy. In the midst of COSATU's current challenges this should not be forgotten.
[BREAKING] COSATU has postponed its elective congress indefinitely amid infighting among delegates over the status of Deputy President Mike Shingange. Tune in to #eNCA #DStv403.
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Neil Coleman retweeted
Perfection ✨
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I hope this important address will be streamed. #SaslawConference @Zwelinzima1
MEDIA ALERT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 16 SEPTEMBER 2026 VAVI TO ADDRESS SASLAW CONFERENCE ON SOUTH AFRICA’S DEEPENING CRISIS SAFTU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi will tomorrow, Thursday, 17 September 2026 at 09:00, address the 29th Annual Conference of the South African Society for Labour Law (SASLAW) at The Forum, The Campus, Bryanston, Johannesburg, under the theme: “South Africa on the Precipice: Law, Rights and the Unfinished Struggle for Economic Freedom — A Working-Class Perspective.” Vavi will reflect on the contradiction between South Africa’s progressive constitutional and labour-rights framework and the lived reality of mass unemployment, poverty, inequality, deindustrialisation and deteriorating public services. He will examine the abandonment of the Freedom Charter’s redistributive economic vision, the state of the NDR, and the trajectory through GEAR, neoliberalism, austerity and Operation Vulindlela. Vavi will also reflect on the crisis confronting the historic motive forces of the 1994 democratic breakthrough — the ANC, SACP and organised labour — including the collapse of COSATU’s 15th National Congress, and argue for urgent working-class unity based on the Labour School Declaration. The address will ask whether constitutional democracy can remain sustainable without fundamental economic transformation and redistribution. DATE: Thursday, 17 September 2026 TIME: 09:00 VENUE: The Forum, The Campus, Bryanston, Johannesburg EVENT: 29th SASLAW Annual National Conference
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