Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS

WHEN South Africans head to the polls later this year, they will be faced with a ballot offering myriad choices — from the governing African National Congress (ANC) to the opposition Democratic Alliance and its assorted new bedfellows, and new formations like RISE Mzansi and the Jacob Zuma-backed Umkhonto we Sizwe party.
One major political force, however, will remain off the ballot. The South African Communist Party (SACP) has been part of the ruling Tripartite Alliance since the dawn of democracy. Leading SACP members have been part of every cabinet since the end of apartheid in 1994, but they enter parliament — and government — as members of the ANC.
The SACP will nonetheless play a prominent part in the election campaign. They will mobilise for a seventh ANC majority, in an election many predict could see the governing party dip below 50 per cent for the first time since it was unbanned.

The shared path of the South African Communist Party and the ANC to the ballot box has found itself at a junction. SABINA PRICE reports

The charter emerged from a profoundly democratic process where people across South Africa answered ‘What kind of country do we want?’ — but imperial backlash and neoliberal compromise deferred its deepest transformations, argues RONNIE KASRILS

RONNIE KASRILS pays tribute to Ruth First, a fearless fighter against South African apartheid, in the centenary month of her birth