The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
The relationship between democracy and governance and the realisation of socio-economic rights is an important issue for debate. SACSIS seeks to understand this relationship and identify issues that act as barriers to pro-poor democracy.
Steven Friedman -
South African democracy spans two very different worlds. In one, people complain loudly but enjoy full democratic rights – in the other, most remain unheard and battle for the right to speak. In both, life is difficult for those who do not conform.
Among political scientists - and many of the South Africans who can speak - it is fashionable to label this country’s democracy a ‘party dominant system’. Democracy, is, in this view, limited by the iron grip of the...
Alexander O'Riordan -
Last night Sepp Blatter resigned after seventeen years in the position, as president of football’s global governing body, FIFA. The resignation was to be expected since American criminal investigators last week indicted a host of FIFA executives on charges related to corruption and wire fraud. Notably, these charges allege that South Africa paid over a hundred million rand in bribes to secure its 2010 World Cup Bid. In South Africa this should hardly be breaking news: one would be hard...
Alexander O'Riordan -
Reuters, amongst other news agencies, directly links South Africa’s xenophobic violence to King Goodwill Zwelithini’s incendiary statements: “Let us pop our head lice. We must remove ticks and place them outside in the sun. We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and be sent back."
However horrific and objectionable these statements are for migrants, they are also illustrative of the anxieties of the Zulu royal house. Lice and ticks are scavengers that...
Eddie Cottle -
When South African security services prevented a Cape Town girl from boarding a plane allegedly to join ISIS, many South Africans were pleased but at the same time surprised at how swift the reaction of our security services were. How come the same reaction is not applied to South African Zionist Jews serving in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)?
The swift action of the South African security services was carried out in terms of the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act (RFMA),...
Richard Pithouse -
In recent days and weeks the liberal consensus on which the post-apartheid order was founded has been burnt away like morning mist giving way to the heat of the rising sun. From our liberal universities to the streets of Durban and Johannesburg liberal values have been spurned. This is not a new phenomenon. When popular organisation arrogates for itself the right to occupy land outside of the mechanisms endorsed by the state and the market, or when the ANC mobilises against a painting, or...
Fazila Farouk -
Analysts argue that the expulsions of Zwelinzima Vavi and Numsa from Cosatu, by a faction sympathetic to President Jacob Zuma, have clear consequences for a major re-alignment of labour in South Africa. Perhaps more importantly it forces to the fore significant consequences for the re-alignment of politics in South Africa.
Numsa, the radical metalworkers’ union, is in fact hosting a “Conference for Socialism” this very week to determine whether the ground in South Africa...
