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 embraces a rights based approach to development, which views poverty as a denial of human rights.
Darla Bardine -
She was told she would go to school and learn a trade. In fact, she rarely gets to leave the one room she lives in and she has never even seen a school building. All she sees are men that pay to violate her and sometimes her captor gives her shots to make her better. At least that is what she is told the shots will do.
“Human trafficking in South Africa is a serious problem and warrants intervention on all fronts,” notes the Human Sciences Research Council. Victims are mostly...
Loren B. Landau and Tara Polzer -
For the past three months civil society organisations, academics and even some government officials have been warning that a new round of xenophobic attacks are coming soon after the World Cup has ended. Over the last two weeks, many of these same people have seen their world cup fever give way to a feverish effort to prevent (or at least prepare for) the forthcoming melee. No one has been readying themselves more fervently than migrants, many of whom have started packing and making their way...
Glenn Ashton -
Rumours are circulating that when the World Cup is over, foreigners will be expelled. But surely it must be clear by now that South Africa has long been a melting pot and that our immigrant population is here to stay?
We must ask ourselves whether xenophobia is perhaps just a label we have slapped on a phenomenon that has been inadequately analysed or understood. Are our beliefs around xenophobia perhaps just lazy thinking?
Do we really collectively hate outsiders to the extent that...
Imraan Buccus -
One hundred and fifty years ago the first indentured Indians were brought to South Africa to work in sugar cane fields. They were soon joined by ‘passenger Indians’ who came of their own free will to trade.
The indentured Indians were not the first Indians to be brought to South Africa. On the contrary, a significant number of Indians were brought to the Cape Colony as slaves, but their descendents became part of the groups classified as White and Coloured under apartheid.
But,...
Jane Duncan -
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema is a fool. He represents the dumbing down of South African politics, and the country is ill served by him remaining in a leadership position.
His repeated chanting of ‘Shoot the Boer’ is opportunistic, as it allows him to portray himself as a ‘revolutionary bull’ - in the words of ZANU PF’s Saviour Kasukuwere – to deflect attention away from his shady business and personal affairs.
But does this mean that the North...
Robert Jensen -
In the struggle for racial justice, it’s time to pay more attention to the fears of white people.
In a white-dominated world, that may seem counterintuitive. In the racial arena, what do we white people have to be afraid of?
There are lots of things to fear in this world, of course; race is not the only aspect of life in which people face injustice and inequality. A majority of people of all colors (including working-class and poor whites) struggles economically in a...
