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?
Mandisi Majavu -
With Youth Day upon us again this week commemorating the contribution made by the school-going children of Soweto during the apartheid struggle in 1976, it’s hard to gloss over the enormous sacrifices they made. How tragic it is then that 21 years into our democracy, their massive impact has merely led to a fragile pact between black and white South Africans, where blacks have yet to be unconditionally welcomed in historically white neighbourhoods and institutions, and where white...
Saliem Fakir -
The U.S. is putting pressure on South Africa to agree to favourable terms for its poultry producers before it is willing to include South Africa in a new round of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). By removing tariffs on American chicken imports, South Africa, under AGOA, ought to be able to export its own agricultural products with ease, as long as U.S. poultry producers are given free reign in our country.
The deal is at a precipice. South Africa is expected to agree to the...
Anna Majavu -
South Africa has a growing number of unemployed teaching graduates, especially Black teaching graduates. When Dr Blade Nzimande took office as Higher Education minister, he increased the number of bursaries for teacher training, supposedly to remedy the extreme shortage of teachers. Last year, R2.4-billion was allocated by the Higher Education ministry to providing scholarships for study in “scarce skills” areas, including bursaries for the Funza Lushaka teachers’ training...
Richard Pithouse -
At a public discussion on the land question in Johannesburg on Friday, February 27, Dikgang Moseneke, the Deputy Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court, began his remarks with a well-known quote from Frantz Fanon: “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”
He spoke about the centrality of the land question to the struggle against apartheid and argued...
Busiso Moyo -
Everyone seems to have an interest in food policy these days, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with its ‘Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’, to the G8 with its ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’, to social movements, civil society networks and those who simply care about what they eat. Of course, some voices are more powerful than others. It is for this reason that movements of peasants and other small-scale food providers from around the...
Stephen Greenberg -
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has identified “expropriation of South Africa’s land without compensation for equal redistribution in use” as one of the party’s “seven non-negotiable cardinal pillars for economic freedom in our lifetime”.
To realise this goal, the EFF’s national assembly held in December 2014 passed resolutions on land. The resolutions are very schematic, with only seven points, although they do provide some indication of the...
