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?
SACSIS promotes the principle of just economies. We are opposed to economic development that violates social and economic rights and increases inequalities in the pursuit of economic growth.
Anna Majavu -
The latest electricity price hike of 14.6% will hit the poor hard - as usual - but in fact it is the least of their worries.
Despite South Africa’s sunny and windy climate, and the availability of huge areas of deserted land where wind and solar power farms could be erected, the ruling party is continuing its love affair with the Russian, French and Chinese nuclear corporations currently trying to sell us their nuclear power stations. Once the poor get saddled with the interest...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
The fisticuffs around the concept of a “Second Transition” have defined debates in the run-up to the African National Congress (ANC) national policy conference. The drafters of The Second Transition: Building a National Democratic Society and the Balance of Forces in 2012 argue, “The time has come to build a new national consensus for the next 50 years. The consensus should lay the basis for a second transition of social and economic transformation, building on the...
Richard Pithouse -
More than half of our young people are unemployed. For many of these people there is no formal route through which they can develop their energies and creativity and have them rewarded with a passage into autonomy and adulthood. Time becomes circular rather than linear and as life moves in descending and tightening spirals rather than up and forward, pain and panic set into the bones.
Some people are able to keep their spirits up with the support of family, friends and congregations that...
Saliem Fakir -
A sign of a government that cares about its citizens is reflected by the degree of effort it puts into thinking about the future rather than just the demands of the present.
As South Africans we are not there yet, but we may be getting there soon.
In October 2012, the National Treasury is looking to publish a document on long-term fiscal planning (LTFP). The idea was first mooted by Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, in his October 25, Medium Term Budget Policy Speech last year.
It...
Leonard Gentle -
The spectacle of the blows between a Democratic Alliance-led crowd and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) would have been the stuff of farce if it weren’t so tragically unedifying. The DA has every right to march and be “provocative”. COSATU’s response betrays its own hard-won struggles in the past for the right to march, assemble and protest.
This was no kristalnacht or fascist street gang about to storm the workers’ movement. This was a DA...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa has some of the highest levels of obesity in the world, together with exceptionally high rates of poverty. These two issues are linked in a vicious, attritional cycle.
At first glance it appears counter-intuitive to consider that poverty and obesity could be associated. The fact is that poverty is intimately correlated to several non-communicable diseases. Numerous international studies have shown how obesity and its morbid fellow travellers, hypertension and diabetes, stalk...
