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?
John Capel of the Bench Marks Foundation talks about the efforts of his organisation to widen the scope of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry (also known as the Farlam Commission), such that the investigation goes beyond and behind the killings of the 34 striking mineworkers, which shocked the world last year, to the socio-economic root causes of the strikes in the Rustenburg mining belt.
A study by the Bench Marks Foundation, first released in 2007 and later updated in 2011, shows huge...
Paul Jay of the Real News Network talks to Patrick Bond about the African Mining Indaba that took place in South Africa last week. Bond is the director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. While the nationalisation of mines is off the table, Bond argues that what we are seeing in South Africa is "an intensification of class and state capital struggles over mining."
Also watch this report for interesting remarks from Bond about the political...
Rüschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. But it receives more tax revenue than it can use. This is largely thanks to one resident - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, whose copper mines in Zambia are not generating a large tax bounty for the Zambians -- but feeding a life of luxury for the villagers of Rüschlikon.
Zambia has the 3rd largest copper reserves in the world, but 60% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80%...
On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Al Jazeera spoke to President Jacob Zuma who argued that South Africa's economy cannot grow while linked to Europe and the US. Pressed on the question of mining companies, Zuma argued that mining is one of the anchor sectors of the South African economy and must make a contribution to it -- "and the manner in which you contribute to the economy is how you pay your workers," he continued.
© Al Jazeera
Leonard Gentle -
How soon we forget…When the striking workers were killed by the police at Marikana there was a universal sense of shock and horror. How could it have come to this? Just 18 years after apartheid and here we go again - the police mowing down demonstrators. Now AngloPlat has announced that it will retrench 14 000 workers and the mood amongst the commentariat is, “Well, what did they expect?”
Angloplat’s announcement seems to confirm our most dismal...
Saliem Fakir -
Is the mining sector in crisis?
It was a source of lively debate at a conference titled, “Mining Dialogue 360 Degrees”, hosted by the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) from 10-12 July 2012 and sponsored by the Royal Bafokeng (disclosure: the author was one of the moderators at this event).
The post-1994 accord that was bridged in Lusaka with business and the multi-party negotiations process led to a compromise. The private sector would be...
