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 seeks to examine global issues, particularly as they relate to South Africa.
Pepe Escobar -
Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
Reality spells otherwise. The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday to, among other steps, create their own credit rating agency, sidelining the dictatorship - or at least "biased agendas", in New Delhi's...
Giorgio Cafiero -
As Syria’s civil war enters its third year, the country's humanitarian crisis worsens each day and the Levant grows increasingly vulnerable to the conflict's spillover.
In mid-February, the United Nations reported a death toll “nearing 70,000.” Today, one in four Syrians is internally displaced or living abroad as a refugee. No dialogue between the Assad regime and rebels has begun, as the gulf between the two sides’ conditions for talks has proven too wide to...
Heidi-Jane Esakov -
For every two Jewish people, there are three opinions. Contained in this quip is a proud Talmudic tradition that values and encourages debate and enquiry. Despite particularly contentious issues, such as the tensions between Orthodox and Progressive Judaism seeing eruptions of intolerance, the space for debate and enquiry are still vibrant. Yet this tradition is being suffocated by a prevailing Jewish community mentalité, given vitality and validity by community structures, of...
Saliem Fakir -
There is the usual chorus of loud voices, “What is South Africa doing in the BRICS, and does it even belong there?” Such observations are inconsequential to the evolving fate of BRICS and South Africa’s place within it. Whether it belongs in BRICS or not is a wholly irrelevant point by now.
The question that really matters is, “What is South Africa doing with its lofty position in the BRICS?” A feat partly accomplished by the ANC’s historical...
Pepe Escobar -
Now that would be some movie; the story of a man of the people who rises against all odds to become the political Elvis of Latin America. Bigger than Elvis, actually; a president who won 13 out of 14 national democratic elections. No chance you will ever see such a movie winning an Oscar - much less produced in Hollywood. Unless, of course, Oliver Stone convinces HBO about a cable/DVD special.
How enlightening to watch world leaders' reactions to the death of Venezuela's El Comandante Hugo...
John Feffer -
The GDR Museum in Berlin is actually two museums in one. And these two parts, both devoted to everyday life in the German Democratic Republic, subtly contradict one another. That might not have been the intention of the museum founders. But this tension actually captures the ambiguities of East Germany and the ambivalence that many Germans feel today about the erstwhile communist state.
The experience inside the main part of the museum is quite interactive. You can put on headphones and...
