29 June
On this day in 1949, a year after assuming power in South Africa, the Nationalist Party introduced apartheid with the passage of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. The Group Areas Act, determining where people can live according to their race, was passed the following year.
On the same day in 1986, Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi denounced a US bill proposing sanctions against the apartheid regime. His words, asserting that blacks ‘want more jobs, not less jobs. They want more investment, not less investment’, were seized upon by US president Ronald Reagan, who urged western governments to ‘resist this emotional clamour for punitive sanctions’. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher lined up alongside Buthelezi and Reagan, and against the ‘terrorist’ Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.
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#232: Rue Britannia ● The legacy of the British Empire ● An interview with Priyamvada Gopal ● The People’s Olympics ● An interview with Neville Southall ● Agribusiness in India ● Deliveroo’s disastrous IPO ● Latest book reviews ● And much more!
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The Socialist Olympics of 1936
Radical workers’ sporting organisations and the 1936 People’s Olympiad illustrate the role of sport in fighting oppression, writes Uma Arruga i López.
Review – You’re History: The Twelve Strangest Women in Music
Lesley Chow argues for a new kind of music criticism that re-evaluates women musicians and "meaningless" music, writes Rhian E Jones
Lying through their legacy-speak
Olympic ‘legacy’ has greased the path for enormous, upward transfer of wealth to the global propertied classes, writes Jules Boykoff
SWexit: What are exit schemes for sex workers missing?
If earning money is a fundamental reason for entering the sex industry, it is also essential to leaving it, writes Marin Scarlett.
Failure to deliver
Major financial institutions have cited Deliveroo’s employment practices for its disastrous public share launch. Alice Martin and Tom Powdrill look at what went wrong and what it might mean for workers’ rights
Power on the picket line: remembering the Burnsall Strike
Almost 30 years on, Sarbjit Johal recalls supporting the strike, which consisted of mostly Punjabi women workers
