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.
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Imagination is absent in the conventional spaces of South Africa’s economic growth path.
Conventional wisdom equates increasing economic growth to around 7%, as an important target. In political speak, the growth target is of course a “necessary” and not a “sufficient” condition. What it In fact does is reflect orthodoxy. This policy stance is premised on the fiction that we can grow ourselves out of a situation of high unemployment, poverty and inequality.
The...
Anneli Rufus -
Worth $50 billion in the U.S. alone, with Asia a close second and gaining speed, the $170 billion beauty industry conspires to convince women that our fates depend on our looks which depend on what we spend. In this equation, ugliness -- as society sees it -- can be remedied like a disease, if you just spend enough. Refuse to buy? Your face and fate are your own fault.
But is a MAC Haute & Naughty Lash mascara really worth $18? When industry meets beauty, what does "worth" even...
Saliem Fakir -
The recent Mozambican food and fuel riots raise the spectre, in general, about food insecurity and social unrest in the future.
We certainly have the capability to feed all of the world’s population, but the political economy of agriculture, food production and distribution somewhat has a greater influence as to whether people can feed themselves or not.
Food security though is not limited to good rainfall, soils, or the ingenuity of breeding the right strains of crops. Food security...
Liepollo Pheko -
Women's month in South Africa has come and gone without much fanfare, and perhaps rightfully so, since African women continue to be confronted by institutions, policies and systems within an economy that entrenches patriarchy and a fundamentalist brand of neoliberalism.
The broad context is that African women pay the price for failing states and a hostile political economy that deepens poverty and widens inequalities in many societies of the global South, while polarising social and living...
Saliem Fakir -
President Jacob Zuma’s trip to China happens in the context of China having just overtaken Japan as the second largest economy in the world. By 2030 it may well be the largest.
This trip also follows Zuma’s very recent trip, with an entourage of officials and businessmen, to India. Both countries are held as examples by the government worthy of emulating their growth and development strategies.
This is reinforced by the fact that our own planning commission has drawn from both...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Sixteen Rand is not much. It’s what a single shot of espresso at an upmarket hotel in Cape Town might cost. However, poverty estimates reveal that over 20% of the population attempt to meet not only their food needs, but every other need with less than R16.00 a day.
At an upmarket hotel, a Minister could live, what is called in popular parlance, a “caviar lifestyle.” Consider this: for the estimated half a million Rand one Minister actually did spend at a hotel, one...
