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 -
Editor’s Note: This article is “Part 1” of a two-part series on the nature of black economic empowerment (BEE). “Part 1" here deals with the history of BEE. “Part 2” deals with the more contemporary character of BEE.
Amidst all the usual political propaganda and grandstanding at the ANC’s recent 99th anniversary rally in Polokwane it was none other than Julius Malema who came up with the most honest statement of the day. Defending himself...
Richard Pithouse -
Jacob Zuma’s ascent to the presidency in May last year was an ugly business, a really ugly business. And Zuma was hardly a candidate with the gravitas to rise above the mess. He was the former head of iMbokodo, a social conservative in whose name sexism and ethnic chauvinism were openly mobilised, the former Deputy President who had never stood up to Thabo Mbeki on any question of principle and a man who had surrendered his personal political autonomy to some of the shadiest elements in...
Richard Pithouse -
These men… at the head of a team of administrators…. proclaim that the vocation of their people is to obey, to go on obeying and to be obedient till the end of time (Frantz Fanon, 1961).
Gwede Mantashe and Jeremy Cronin have both recently taken the view that the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) needs to be defended against attempts to organise outside of direct party control. We shouldn’t be particularly surprised by this development given the long history of...
Richard Pithouse -
Gwede Mantashe, the Secretary General of the African National Congress and Chairperson of the South African Communist Party, is not a democrat. He’s hardly the only influential public figure in South Africa who is not a democrat. Julius Malema, with his hysterical attempts to symbolically annihilate the humanity of his opponents, is certainly not a democrat.
And Helen Zille’s attempt to justify her illegal, violent and, in strict legal terms, criminal evictions in Hout Bay by...
Glenn Ashton -
The role that Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) play in South Africa regionally is under unprecedented threat from several fronts.
Under apartheid, and particularly during its dying days, NGO’s had a massive influence on the emergence of the new democratic state of South Africa. Many NGO’s were de facto political instruments of the disenfranchised majority and they also had a profound reach into society as a result of the failure of the apartheid state to provide the...
Saliem Fakir -
There is no gentleness spared when waging war against “counter-revolutionaries” on the question of nationalisation.
It’s the tough business of ruffling feathers. Those who demur get roughed up in verbal scuffles and perhaps worse. There are catcalls and labelling. Not for all of us, this is the time of high economic stakes for a few.
The National General Council (NGC) of the ANC slipped through a quagmire on the issue of nationalisation and only just by the skin of its...
