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.
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa has one of the highest rates of drug abuse in the world. The most commonly abused drugs are alcohol and dagga (cannabis). The abuse of chemical stimulants such as tik (methamphetamine) has recently soared. Other synthesised drugs like cocaine, heroin and mandrax remain deeply problematic, both to users and society.
The drug scourge is an historical international problem linked to globally connected and well resourced criminal enterprises. Russian, Italian, Columbian, Chinese,...
Glenn Ashton -
Book: The Spirit Level
By Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
Published by Allen Lane/Penguin
ISBN: 978-1-846-14039-6
You know how you feel when you see a new product that seems so intuitive, so obvious, you wished you had invented it?
Some time ago I found myself wondering why nobody has yet managed to put together, in a convincing way, the thesis that unequal societies are far more prone to social ills than those with greater financial equality.
Even before I...
Saliem Fakir -
On June 3, 2009 Constitutional Court Judge, Albie Sachs, ruled in favour of a public interest NGO, Biowatch, in a case that tested how costs are awarded. The ramifications of the ruling will be far reaching for civic organizations and the defence of public interest causes.
The details of the judgement have been glanced at superficially and fleetingly in the mainstream media. They deserve a deeper appraisal.
If anything, the intent of the judgement is to cover ground wider than the nature of...
Richard Pithouse -
From the Communist Party across to the corporate spin-doctors and down to the Development Committees in the shack settlements, more or less everybody in South Africa speaks the language of development. In some ways this is a good thing. It indicates a hard won agreement that the realities of inequality in our society are so cruel and perverse that any social project can only be credible if it will ameliorate these divisions and the suffering they cause.
But one of the key problems with...
Democracy Now -
A number of Western countries are joining the United States and Israel in boycotting the United Nations (UN) World Conference on Racism, which hosted by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, opened in Geneva, Switzerland on 20 April 2009. Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and New Zealand all announced they would boycott the conference soon after the US announced its formal decision not to attend Saturday. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the opening session he was...
Saliem Fakir -
The issue of immigrants and expatriates came up as a topic in a recent election speech given by ANC president Jacob Zuma at a meeting hosted by the labour union, Solidarity. Zuma spoke to concerns about South Africa's brain drain and the need for South Africa either to attract skills back into the country or encourage immigration.
The topic is unlikely to disappear for elections to come. If ever there was a need for a good immigration policy, it is now. But controlled immigration needs to be...
