Niren Tolsi
Niren Tolsi is a freelance journalist whose interests include social justice, citizen mobilisation and state violence, protest, the Constitution and Constitutional Court, football and Test cricket.
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/ 16 February 2007

‘We’re not asking for handouts’

A three year old boy, naked from the navel down, squats and defecates outside the ramshackle crèche at Jadu Place, a shack settlement housing more than 3 000 people near the suburb of Puntans Hill in eThekwini (Durban). His is a tiny contribution to the malodorous thickness where the pit latrines are found and around which snotty-nosed kids run.

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/ 9 February 2007

Stolen cars slip through porous border

The relentless heat is made more unbearable by the strong smell of dried fish hanging on the fence at the KwaPuza border post between northern KwaZulu-Natal and Mozambique. A handful of soldiers and policemen on the South African side watch without interest from the shade as people move through a gap in the fence at “Gate Six”.

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/ 26 January 2007

Airport grounded

An unresolved 1999 appeal to the KwaZulu-Natal premier’s office by a local council opposed to the re-zoning of its land will further stall construction starting on the proposed R2,5-billion King Shaka International Airport at La Mercy, north of Durban. This could jeopardise its completion in time for the 2010 World Cup.

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/ 19 January 2007

Skinstad to give Sharks some bite

The Tongue is back and licking his lips for a new adventure in rugby. This week Sharks coach Dick Muir confirmed that former Springbok captain Bobby Skinstad has been training with the Durban-based team and has been included in their Super 14 squad for the upcoming season.

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/ 18 December 2006

‘Report glosses over tsotsi politics’

Niren Tolsi’s “On the far side of left” (December 8) fails to delve into the events that culminated in the “invasion” of the national meeting of the Social Movements Indaba (SMI) by some members of Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), writes the SMI national coordinating committee.

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/ 8 December 2006

On the far side of left

Mass Action 101 User’s Manual: Chanting ”Down Babylon!” is to be encouraged — but not when directed at fellow far-left activists. Chanting members of the KwaZulu-Natal shack-dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape’s Anti-Eviction Campaign raised major hackles when they invaded the Social Movement Indaba’s five-day annual pow-wow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.