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.
Democracy Now! -
AMY GOODMAN: Breyten Breytenbach is one of South Africa’s most famous poets. He’s also an award-winning writer and painter, well known as an anti-apartheid activist, outspoken advocate for justice around the world.
The exiled poet was born to an Afrikaner or white South African family in 1939. He moved to Paris in the early ’60s and became deeply involved with the anti-apartheid movement. In 1975, Breyten Breytenbach returned secretly to South Africa under a false...
Richard Pithouse -
When the post-apartheid deal went down, the demands for social justice that survived the negotiations were written into the rights enshrined in our new legal order. At the same time, the popular struggles that had forced key issues onto the national agenda were demobilised. It was often assumed that because the rights that had been won were backed by the law, the rule of law over the messiness of social life would ensure that these rights would be prescriptions rather than aspirations.
But...
Davinder Kaur -
As the United Nations seeks increased financial assistance from donor countries to help meet the flagging Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the inadequacy of international aid and fairer trade agreements has never been so clear. In 2007 alone, aid to developing countries fell by 8.4%, leaving huge challenges ahead to meet the Gleneagles G-8 target of doubling aid to Africa by 2010. In July, the Doha round of trade talks collapsed again for the third time as developing countries...
Marlese von Broembsen and Dennis Davis -
Early in its new democracy, South Africa successfully rose to the challenge of ensuring political justice. It developed a progressive and ground-breaking constitution enshrining rights for all of its citizens.
Much attention, debate and litigation has taken place around civil and political rights, and these have been further interpreted and secured. However, the expectations of many of the country’s poor and marginalised for a better life have been largely unmet, and the...
Fazila Farouk -
In June this year, the United Nations (UN) extended, Special Representative on Human Rights and Business, John Ruggie’s mandate to continue finding solutions to bridge the gap between business and human rights.
Ruggie’s work is largely aimed at addressing the perils of globalisation given the increasing mobility of big companies marching across the planet in search of the best labour deals in the most pliable working environments
The corruptive power of the mighty...
David Korten -
The good news: The changes we must make to avoid ultimate collapse are identical to the changes we must make to create the world of our common dream.
For the past 5,000 years, we humans have devoted much creative energy to perfecting our capacity for greed and violence-a practice that has been enormously costly for our children, families, communities, and nature. Now, on the verge of environmental and social collapse, we face an imperative to bring the world of our dreams into being by...
