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?
Richard Pithouse -
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919
Kader Asmal was quite right to warn that powerful people in the African National Congress (ANC) are actively working to build an anti-democratic constituency. Fikile Mbalula's response, crafted with all the delicate subtlety of a blue light cavalcade shooting motorists out of its path, offered quick confirmation of the patently...
Richard Pithouse -
Abahlali baseMjondolo is a shackdwellers' movement. It was formed by and for shack dwellers in Durban in 2005. Since then the movement has extended to cities like Pietermartizburg and Cape Town. It now has members in 54 settlements.
The movement has campaigned, with considerable success, against unlawful evictions by the state and private landowners. It has also campaigned, with significant although limited success, for access to basic services and for the upgrade of settlements where people...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africans have an alarming tendency to deny wrongdoing. This trait is shared, to varying degrees, with other nations but it is far more extreme here. Our reluctance to acknowledge fault is remarkable. South Africans, particularly men, apparently have an inability to admit wrongdoing or culpability - even if caught red-handed.
This national quirk rears its ugly head every time some sort of scandal breaks. The first response is always denial. The second response is to shift blame....
Dale T. McKinley -
Since the birth of a democratic South Africa in 1994, there are a range of ‘isms that have had, and continue to have, varying degrees of currency and impact on our society. The favourite of the privileged classes and political-economic elites has, of course, always been capitalism while for a sizeable portion of the poor, alongside a few intellectuals and political activists (even within the South African Communist Party) socialism remains the preferred alternative. Some in our midst...
Democracy Now -
Thousands of South Africans are being displaced in preparation for the 2010 World Cup. While Durban completes the finishing touches on its new stadium, thousands of the city’s poor who live in sprawling informal settlements are threatened with eviction. On Saturday, an armed gang of some forty men attacked an informal settlement on Durban’s Kennedy Road, killing at least two people and destroying thirty shacks.
Democracy Now speaks to two South African activists who are...
Glenn Ashton -
The South African government is quietly disclosing information about a seismic shift in our national climate change policy. The 15th September communiqué from the new Ministry of Water and Environmental Affairs reinforces this, in stating that our medium term response to our energy crisis is a continued reliance on coal, with a long-term shift away from fossil fuels. Long term? Have we got the time?
Unchecked climate change holds an unthinkable threat not just to people but also to...
