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?
Gillian Schutte -
Over the past eighteen months there have been enough “Kaffir” slips of the tongue, from different echelons of White society, to prove that racism is alive and well and living on the tips of the tongues of most White South Africans. In many cases all it takes is a bit too much wine, a bump in the Spar or a little bit of fame and Eros from the rightwing, to let it slip. And the recent hanging of ‘The Spear’ in the Goodman Art Gallery is not really much different. ...
Gillian Schutte -
The horrified astonishment at the recent cake-eating debacle has shaken up the world and brought the issue of racism to the fore once again this year.
The social media world went into shock this week, as they beheld the Swedish Minister of Culture perform a clitoridectomy on the sculpted vulva of a human sized cake, which took the shape of an African woman undergoing forced genital mutilation. She then fed it to the black-faced artist who screamed in agony as she sliced through the baked...
Gillian Schutte -
The black man has become the signifier for a host of unconscious fears that lurk within the white psyche
My 12-year-old son has a taste for hoodies, rap and hip hop clothing. He carries a blackberry in his pocket which he reaches for every so often to text one of his friends. He has a friendly face and temperament but has also learnt at a young age to stand up for his own rights and speak out against the injustices of the world. Someone once suggested to me that his face is so sweet no one...
Richard Pithouse -
The words that escaped from Darren Scott's private life and crashed into the public realm via an argument in a bar are no unique perversion. For anyone with any doubts about the extent to which white racism not only spills over into the new order but also continues to reinvent itself the comments sections on news and analysis websites, spaces that enable public anonymity, make for dispiriting reading.
But with the exception of extreme figures like Steve Hofmeyer white racism is a...
Richard Pithouse -
The riot has been a feature of English life for a lot longer than William Shakespeare, village cricket matches or, for that matter, The Clash. The English have rioted against the enclosure of common land, fences, press gangs, factories, prisons, bread prices, tolls and banks. Arson, tearing down fences, smashing machines, setting prices from below, looting and throwing prisons open are all time honoured tactics.
The historians of the English riot stress that elites have, usually in...
Leonard Gentle -
The spat between Trevor Manuel and Jimmy Manyi has brought the question of racism to the fore. Manuel rightly attacked Manyi’s remarks about an “oversupply of coloureds in the Western Cape,” for being racist.
Of course, whilst this has been presented as a spat within the African National Congress (ANC), the real manipulator is the Democratic Alliance (DA) playing the race card on the eve of the local government elections in the Western Cape.
At the same time,...
