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?
Saliem Fakir -
The draft twenty-year plan for electricity generation, also called the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010, was released a few weeks ago for public comment. The IRP process is all but a fait accompli. But what goes into the plan will determine the future of South Africa’s energy mix for the next two decades.
The energy choices available to us are between coal, nuclear, gas, hydro and other renewables.
With a projected GDP growth rate of 4.6% over the next 20 years, South Africa will...
Saliem Fakir -
Two more passenger “fast-train” routes are being mooted, one between Johannesburg and Durban and the other from Johannesburg to the north of the country.
Ordinary citizens may wonder if we need to spend scarce money on new rail infrastructure. Is South Africa’s money not better spent on improving freight rail that could take lots of trucks off our roads by transporting goods safely and easily to and from our harbours? And what about public transport for the poor?
Have we...
Liepollo Pheko -
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it,” Winston Churchill said during World War II.
A few weeks ago, the orgy of grief that accompanied the commemoration of 9/11 in the United States was televised across our television screens. It was replete with scenes of the fallen men and women and their grieving families and compatriots. It was human and dignified and even those of us who reject the ensuing War on Terror could understand and share in that loss and the grief....
Saliem Fakir -
President Jacob Zuma’s trip to China happens in the context of China having just overtaken Japan as the second largest economy in the world. By 2030 it may well be the largest.
This trip also follows Zuma’s very recent trip, with an entourage of officials and businessmen, to India. Both countries are held as examples by the government worthy of emulating their growth and development strategies.
This is reinforced by the fact that our own planning commission has drawn from both...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Sixteen Rand is not much. It’s what a single shot of espresso at an upmarket hotel in Cape Town might cost. However, poverty estimates reveal that over 20% of the population attempt to meet not only their food needs, but every other need with less than R16.00 a day.
At an upmarket hotel, a Minister could live, what is called in popular parlance, a “caviar lifestyle.” Consider this: for the estimated half a million Rand one Minister actually did spend at a hotel, one...
Dale T. McKinley -
It didn’t take long did it? Despite the lingering stupor, just a month after the end of the constructed mega-hype of the Soccer World Cup, South Africa is firmly back in the reality trenches. With intensified public attention on important social and economic issues/debates, a host of strikes and re-energised political faction fighting taking centre stage, it seems an apt time to critically redirect some of the fading winter sunlight onto the political, economic and social state of the...
