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?
Dale T. McKinley -
The ANC might be about to turn 100 years old but when it comes to its contemporary politics, the last four years seems like a lifetime of its own. It was four years ago, almost to the day, that the ANC gathered at the now infamous Polokwane Congress and when it was all over the general view both inside and outside the ANC that it marked a fundamental ‘turn’ for the ANC and the country; not simply in respect of a new national and ANC leadership but more crucially, in respect of the...
Richard Pithouse -
Julius Malema, unlovely as he is, is a symptom, a morbid symptom to be sure, of the crisis that we face. Any assumption that his effective expulsion from the ANC allows us to continue with business as usual will guarantee the emergence of more symptoms, different but equally morbid.
The real roots of our crisis lie in the fact that the post-apartheid deal has not only allowed elites to flourish while the people at the bottom of society have been pushed further into desperation but...
Leonard Gentle -
Two events have been the subject of recent media comment: the ANC Youth League’s (ANCYLs) march for “economic freedom” and the rise of Lindiwe Mazibuko as Democratic Alliance (DA) leader of the opposition. These rather over-shadowed a third, Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan’s, Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).
Gordhan’s message of pre-emptive austerity - doing “more with less” - of course couldn’t compete with Mazibuko’s rise and,...
Dale T. McKinley -
There are few conflicts - especially when money, power and ego are at their centres - that are more intense, brutal and destructive than those involving family members. In this sense, and in case we might have forgotten, at the heart of the more recent and ongoing battles between the incumbent ANC leadership and their Youth League counterparts lies a long-running and ongoing internecine war within the broad ‘family’ of the ANC itself. As shocked and disappointed as many - both...
Dear Mandela is a documentary film that follows three young leaders from the social movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, over four years, as they resist evictions and take their case to the Constitutional Court.
Dear Mandela had its World Premiere at the Durban International Film Festival on the 26th July.
The film was also screened, throughout the week, in informal settlements where there are no cinemas. It was a special homecoming for the film, which is rooted firmly in the voices of...
As South Africa celebrates the 93rd birthday of Nelson Mandela, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now speaks with Ronnie Kasrils, who was on the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress for 20 years.
Kasrils also served as Minister for Intelligence Services from 2004 to 2008.
He recently published a new book "The Unlikely Secret Agent," about his late wife Eleanor, a Scottish South African anti-apartheid activist.
