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.
Saliem Fakir -
One can take a cynical view of the world. In the absence of a fundamental restructuring of the economy, all we end up doing is tinkering with the art of state philanthropy both on the side of social safety nets and as far as job creation goes.
If the market is unresponsive to job creation due to its interest in rent seeking, then our government will have to continue doing what it has been doing for the last 10 years: escalate the level of public sector employment. This is more than the...
Charlene Houston -
It is winter in South Africa and this means it is also bargaining time for union leaders and employers. Strikes and deadlocks at bargaining councils have been dominating news headlines in recent weeks.
Agreements between employers and workers have been reached in the metal and steel industry, petroleum sector and most recently with the 200,000 gold miners that also went on strike.
Not all strikes and negotiations have ended. At the time of writing, union representatives of...
Saliem Fakir -
The debate on foreign direct investment (FDI) follows the same superficial rhetoric that gathers around the debate on nationalisation.
This issue has gathered somewhat of a storm following Walmart’s acquisition of Massmart. The South African government has appealed the Competition Tribunal’s decision to grant the merger on what it perceives to be a deal on the cheap.
It wants a more expansive commitment from Walmart so that the merger leads to deep roots rather than shallow...
Christian Parenti -
What can a humble loaf of bread tell us about the world?
The answer is: far more than you might imagine. For one thing, that loaf can be “read” as if it were a core sample extracted from the heart of a grim global economy. Looked at another way, it reveals some of the crucial fault lines of world politics, including the origins of the Arab spring that has now become a summer of discontent.
Consider this: between June 2010 and June 2011, world grain prices almost doubled....
Glenn Ashton -
During the peak of the anti-apartheid disinvestment campaign the Anglo-American Corporation took full advantage of the situation and snapped up disinvesting companies. By the 1990's Anglo American controlled 85% of the companies and over 60% of the wealth of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, making it the biggest economic beneficiary of apartheid.
Through its diversified holdings it controlled vast sectors of the economy. Besides mining it was involved in forestry, paper, retail, car...
Saliem Fakir -
A while back, Deputy Minister of Transport, Jeremy Cronin penned a column in Umsenbenzi, the online publication of the South African Communist Party, where he wrote that perhaps we should be thinking about the ‘socialisation’ of wealth, rather than the nationalisation of assets.
Cronin was positing the idea that the nationalisation of assets, for all intents and purposes, is not the only device for dealing with income inequality, unemployment and widespread poverty. He...
