The Editorial Collective of Umsebenzi Online would like to wish you a deserved rest during this festive season. In essential and basic services such as healthcare; electricity generation, transmission and distribution; defence, safety and security; etc., there are many workers who will remain on duty 24 hours every day of the week in accordance with their respective shift patterns looking after the nation. The spirit of service to the people and the struggle for better conditions of employment, income to lead a decent life and better working conditions in line with the agenda of decent work must all continue and intensify. At the heart of this struggle is and must be the ultimate objective to end the exploitation of one class or person by another and to answer the immediate questions of the day.

The triple challenges of class inequality, unemployment and poverty which are ravaging the working class and the poor are the conditions and levers of economic exploitation and its direct results as a means of the accumulation of wealth on a capitalist private basis. In South Africa, these challenges are racialised and gendered, with the overwhelming majority, but by no means exclusively, of those who are directly affected being black people – and women generally the worst. This is because capitalism in South Africa – imposed from outside – was the base upon and for which colonialism and apartheid, involving national oppression and gender domination were built and mercilessly carried out.

The struggle to liberate and de-colonise South Africa from the jaws of imperialism and the legacy of colonialism and apartheid is, despite the massive progress that we have achieved since our democratic breakthrough in 1994, therefore incomplete, and needs to intensify. The perspective of a second, more radical phase of our transition must answer the many pressing questions on taking this struggle forward.

Umsebenzi Online Editorial Collective would like to take this opportunity, as you ponder on these questions, to wish you success in the coming period.

Our next issue of Umsebenzi Online will be on Thursday 15 January 2015.