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.
Walden Bello -
Ever since the beginning of the current global economic crisis, the focus of both critical analysis and public odium has been speculative capital. In the populist narrative, it was the breathtaking shenanigans of the banks in an atmosphere of deregulation that led to the economic collapse. The “financial economy,” characterized as parasitic and bad, was contrasted to the “real economy,” which was said to produce real goods and real value. Resources flowed into...
Glenn Ashton -
The South African tourism industry has grown tenfold over the past two decades. Tourists appreciate a benchmark to assist them in their choice of accommodation, for two reasons: First to indicate a consistent set of standards and second, to maintain these over time. However there are fundamental problems with the South African national tourism grading process, which require urgent attention.
The body responsible for assessing the quality of tourist establishments in South Africa is the...
Susan George -
"'All for ourselves and nothing for other people' seems in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind," wrote Adam Smith in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, universally considered the first comprehensive inquiry into the nature and practice of capitalism.
The masters of mankind are still with us: I call them the Davos class because, like the people who meet each January in the Swiss mountain resort, they are nomadic, powerful and...
Ben Zala -
Not long ago the World Economic Forum (WEF) found itself in the sights of the global economic justice movement. At the turn of the last century, before anyone was “occupying” public spaces in protest at the growing inequalities between the top strata of society and the rest, a broad global coalition of environment, development, and peace activists were targeting the public meetings of major institutions such as the WTO, the IMF, and the G8. In September 2000, activists shut down...
Saliem Fakir -
The ANC’s next hundred years depends quite distinctly on what happens at its July 2012 policy conference in Mangaung and more importantly, on its implications for the South African economy as a whole.
The Achilles heel of the ANC has always been the economy with the last 17 years proving to be a mixed blessing for the party, which has not been convincing in its ability to make the economy work for the country’s majority who remain economically disenfranchised -- also...
Leonard Gentle -
First they came for Papandreou - and I didn't speak out because I thought the Greeks are just lazy tax-dodgers.
Then they came for Berlusconi - and I didn't speak out because I thought he was just a racist and sexist old roué.
Then they came for Zuma - and I didn't speak out because he can’t apply his mind, and he’s still running the show.
Then they took away my vote - and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Some may feel that it may be a stretching it...
