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?
Fazila Farouk -
Although important work is carried out in this field, we certainly don't hear enough about holding corporations accountable for the profits they pocketed during South Africa's apartheid years.
The focus of South Africa's negotiated democracy has been finding unity in forgiveness. This is important for a country looking forward and trying to construct a civilised society, but it comes with a cost.
This cost is a lack of acknowledgement for the ongoing suffering of South Africans whose human...
Saliem Fakir -
Somebody coming from Mars would be forgiven for thinking that the era of black rule is rife with corruption and nepotism.
The white world would have been thought of as being better if one is to believe that its history was always populated with saints. History though. is infrequently remembered for what it is, seldom uncovered for all of its diversity and always selectively appropriated. Short memory, too, is the enemy of history -- and there is lots of it going around.
When it comes to...
Richard Pithouse -
The rebellions in the ANC against Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have broken the hermetic seal that had been tightly wound around electoral politics by the dominance of the ANC since 1994. It is not yet clear which social forces will be able to manoeuvre most effectively on this new and, for the moment, more open terrain. It is possible that once a deal is brokered between the ambitions and principles of the unruly mix of corrupt crony capitalists, conservative patriarchs, liberals, social...
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) released this video of Barack Obama's visit to South Africa, where he met with the organisation in Khayelitsha, as well as visited a clinic. Obama talks to members of the TAC about HIV and AIDS in America. According to the TAC, "Obama took a strong position on preventing and treating HIV and AIDS and was critical of (former) President Mbeki and the South African government’s response to the epidemic and their disregard and animosity towards the...
John Reynolds -
Is it not ironic that we may soon have to call on Thabo Mbeki to be the 'mediator' in the political fall-out between the ANC and the break-away faction led by Lekota and Shilowa?
Of course, we should be concerned by the nastiness of the fall-out, but we shouldn't be surprised. Like in all families – which very often political parties become – arguments and break-ups tend to take a more vicious form precisely because they are more personal. It's not strangers fighting, where there...
Marlese von Broembsen and Dennis Davis -
Early in its new democracy, South Africa successfully rose to the challenge of ensuring political justice. It developed a progressive and ground-breaking constitution enshrining rights for all of its citizens.
Much attention, debate and litigation has taken place around civil and political rights, and these have been further interpreted and secured. However, the expectations of many of the country’s poor and marginalised for a better life have been largely unmet, and the...
