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.
Charlene Houston -
There are never any winners when people and their real issues are sacrificed at the altar of politics. Sadly, this is what took place in the battle for Rondebosch Common, which could also be referred to as the “battle of the egos”.
We live in a time of shared awareness and a shift in global developments - many people have realised that regardless of which political party is in power, whether it’s the ANC or the DA, their material conditions remain the same.
Ordinary...
Richard Pithouse -
When the African National Congress was founded in Bloemfontein in 1912 Sol Plaatje, then a newspaper editor, was elected as its first Secretary General. Plaatje, along with some other mission educated African intellectuals, had been optimistic about the new country that had come into being with the Union of South Africa in 1910. But within a year it was clear that segregation was going to be at the heart of the union, the white union, that followed the Boer war, its concentration camps and...
Dale T. McKinley -
The ANC might be about to turn 100 years old but when it comes to its contemporary politics, the last four years seems like a lifetime of its own. It was four years ago, almost to the day, that the ANC gathered at the now infamous Polokwane Congress and when it was all over the general view both inside and outside the ANC that it marked a fundamental ‘turn’ for the ANC and the country; not simply in respect of a new national and ANC leadership but more crucially, in respect of the...
Jane Duncan -
In a 2005 interview with academic Sandy Africa for her PhD thesis, the-then chair of the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, Siyabonga Cwele, lamented the fact that the intelligence services classified virtually all their information. This was in spite of the fact that the Intelligence Services Oversight Act only required classification of information about the identity of operatives, informants and operational methods. Cwele went on to express concern about the ways in...
Richard Pithouse -
Julius Malema, unlovely as he is, is a symptom, a morbid symptom to be sure, of the crisis that we face. Any assumption that his effective expulsion from the ANC allows us to continue with business as usual will guarantee the emergence of more symptoms, different but equally morbid.
The real roots of our crisis lie in the fact that the post-apartheid deal has not only allowed elites to flourish while the people at the bottom of society have been pushed further into desperation but...
Dale T. McKinley -
If one has been relying solely on more recent mainstream press coverage and associated NGO-academic interpretations to understand and analyse South Africa’s foreign policy/diplomacy then it would only be a slight exaggeration to say that the overwhelming conclusion would have to be that China has become our new foreign ‘master’. Whether it’s the Dalai Lama saga, the Libyan conflict, the situation in Zimbabwe, trade issues, general North-South politics or diplomatic...
