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.
Jane Duncan -
In a few weeks time, South Africans will go to the polls to vote in the local government elections. It is almost a foregone conclusion that the Democratic Alliance (DA) will increase its support during these elections.
The DA under the leadership of Helen Zille is a political phenomenon. It is winning more hearts and minds, including in working class communities that had previously shunned the party. Many people are desperate for an electoral alternative to the ANC. But as tempting as it may...
Saliem Fakir -
Political misdemeanours don’t come with a light touch but are systemic problems engulfing the entire governance of state and electoral politics.
The indulgence sees no end and whether it will end depends on whether the ANC values its party and the people who support it. What it confesses in public, as a set of beliefs and morals, live far apart from the reality of its practice.
It is clear that just being a struggle hero alone is insufficient a credential for the self-policing of...
Richard Pithouse -
There are moments when a society has to step back from the ordinary thrum of day to day life and ask itself how it has become what it has become. There are times when a society has to acknowledge that it cannot go on as it is and ask itself what must be done to set things on a new and better course.
The historians of our children and grandchildren’s generation will write the history of our failure to redeem the promise of our democracy and the struggles that brought it into...
Dale T. McKinley -
Secrecy has always been one of the most dangerous enemies of democracy. Any meaningful democracy, by its very nature, demands openness, transparency and accountability - these are the currencies of democratic freedom. On the other hand secrecy, as human history has so often shown, is the currency of authoritarianism (whatever the ideological variety), of social, economic and political control by those for whom the securing and maintenance of power is the ultimate goal.
And yet, despite...
Richard Pithouse -
The local government elections are just over a month away and there is an astonishing degree of ferment. Various groups have announced a no vote position, others are running independent candidates, there are new electoral alliances and in some parts of the country, like the Eastern Cape, the contest between the parties is more keenly felt than ever before.
Even within party politics, a new fluidity is discernable. Some former social movement activists have given up trying to occupy land and...
Richard Pithouse -
A forensic investigation has concluded that more than R500 million has been misspent from the housing budget in Durban and recommended that criminal charges be brought against top officials, including the city’s manager Mike Sutcliffe.
It’s also emerged that tenders worth more than R80 million have been awarded to the immediate family of the city’s mayor, Obed Mlaba, and that the Mlaba Family Trust was part of an attempt to seize a tender worth R3 billion. There has also...
