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?
Dear Mandela is a documentary film that follows three young leaders from the social movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, over four years, as they resist evictions and take their case to the Constitutional Court.
Dear Mandela had its World Premiere at the Durban International Film Festival on the 26th July.
The film was also screened, throughout the week, in informal settlements where there are no cinemas. It was a special homecoming for the film, which is rooted firmly in the voices of...
Richard Pithouse -
A forensic investigation has concluded that more than R500 million has been misspent from the housing budget in Durban and recommended that criminal charges be brought against top officials, including the city’s manager Mike Sutcliffe.
It’s also emerged that tenders worth more than R80 million have been awarded to the immediate family of the city’s mayor, Obed Mlaba, and that the Mlaba Family Trust was part of an attempt to seize a tender worth R3 billion. There has also...
Richard Pithouse -
Whenever they find a reality that doesn’t suit them / they alter it with a bulldozer - Mahmoud Darwish, A State of Siege, Ramallah, 2002.
Mahmoud Darwish, a poet who wrote, especially towards the end of his life, with a real confidence in what he called the butterfly's burden, the social weight carried by delicate beauty, began his life in al-Birwa, a village in Galilee. He was seven years old when his family fled the Israeli military in 1948 and his life was spun between...
Glenn Ashton -
Owning property in the form of a home is the basis for family and community stability. Homes are usually an individual’s single most valuable economic asset and ownership is a traditional entry point into the formal economy. Homeowners are also able to leverage social security by accessing formal, stable community structures.
A primary demand of the Freedom Charter was for “houses, security and comfort.” This call was realised through the government’s...
S'bu Zikode of the South African shack dwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, is interviewed by Laura Flanders of GRITtv. Zikode, hosted by US-based human rights organisations, is on tour in America building solidarity between the homeless of South Africa and America, and sharing knowledge about strategies to exercise the right to housing. Many Americans who lost their homes due to foreclosures as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis appear poorly advised about their housing rights....
Richard Pithouse -
Bheki Cele recently justified his new R4 million house in Pretoria on the grounds that “If the head of Interpol visits me I don't want him to find me living in a shack.” He’s not the only one of us who would prefer not to be living in a shack irrespective of who's likely to be popping around for a cup of coffee. But the money spent on his house could have paid for houses for hundreds of shack dwellers and neither the incredible inequalities in our society, nor...
