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?
Valerie Bell -
It’s hard for me to celebrate on Mother’s Day. I feel the absence of my 23-year-old son, Sean Elijah Bell, who was killed on November 25, 2006. He was out celebrating at his own bachelor party with his friends in New York City. It was only a matter of a hours before his wedding, and I was so thrilled.
Sean and his friends were enjoying their night at a club where there happened to be three undercover police officers present, conducting an investigation of the club. A...
Mandisi Majavu -
Michael Brown joins a long list of black men who have been killed with impunity by the police in the United States. Brown was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a Ferguson Missouri police officer, on August 9, 2014. Last month a grand jury in St. Louis, Missouri has chosen not to indict Wilson for the lethal shooting of an unarmed Brown.
Following the grand jury’s decision of Brown’s death, The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) released a...
In the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, whose killing is making global headlines, John Oliver explores the racial inequality in treatment by police as well as the increasing militarization of America’s local police forces.
Most shocking is the discovery that the city of Ferguson has just three African-American police officers in a town whose population is two-thirds (63%) black. Ferguson is a case of racial profiling gone out...
A new global study that examined protests in 87 countries, including South Africa (SA), found that the highest number of protests takes place in the developed world and the main grievance of protesters is economic injustice. In recent years, SA too has experienced a wave of protests. Is SA part of this global surge in protests or is there something else driving the phenomenon in our country? Trevor Ngwane, a doctoral student and Soweto activist who has done important research on the issue,...
Richard Pithouse -
On the last day of September Nqobile Nzuza, a seventeen year old girl, was shot dead by the police near Cato Manor in Durban. She was unarmed and she was shot in her back and the back of her head. She was part of a large group of people who were gathering to organise a road blockade in protest at both oppression, in the form of violent and illegal evictions at the hands of the eThekwini Municipality, and the repression of resistance to the evictions in the form of two assassinations. The...
In a major new report, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report, "Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World," (PDF) warns of a growing tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right — the right to protest — as a threat requiring a forceful government response....
