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?
Last week high-ranking officials from football’s governing body, FIFA, were arrested in an overnight raid in Switzerland – the result of a sweeping FBI investigation. “I don’t know what I’m more surprised by; that FIFA officials were actually arrested or that America was behind it. It took the country that cares the least about football to bring down the people who have been ruining it,” jokes comedian John Oliver in his hilarious take down of FIFA and...
Emile Schepers -
The incumbent president, Dilma Rousseff, of the left leaning Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT) won a close election on Sunday, defeating right winger Aecio Neves, of the so-called Social Democratic Party (PSDB) by a margin of about three million votes, or 51.56 percent to 48.52 percent in this huge country of 200 million people.
Rousseff won most of Brazil's 26 states including Minas Gerais, Neves' home state where she was the governor from 2003 to 2010. ...
Sonali Kolhatkar -
Soccer (or football, as the rest of the world refers to it) is the most popular sport globally. But can you love the game while hating the World Cup?
The 2014 World Cup tournament in Brazil has attracted record numbers of American viewers, with reports of 23 million people having tuned in to a single match between the U.S. and Portugal alone. Worldwide, the numbers are expected to be even more staggering over the course of the entire tournament, given that half the planet tuned in to the...
More than 200,000 troops have been deployed in Brazil, ostensibly to protect tourists during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. However, this media report argues that the military has been deployed to sanitize Brazil’s streets of its homeless and suppress protests. Many Brazilians are dismayed by the diversion of public funds towards the erection of new soccer stadiums while other domestic priorities are being neglected. As the World Cup looms, metro workers are on strike in Sao Paulo...
Glenn Ashton -
Media coverage of the Obama-crew’s flash-mob blitz of South Africa showed the extent to which we have allowed ourselves to be policed by a force that continues to display apartheid era tactics. While Obama was touring Soweto legal demonstrators were treated to percussion grenades and teargas for protesting too vigorously.
South Africans have a proud history of peaceful protest, from the women’s march on Pretoria in the 1950s, the pass protests into the cities across the nation...
Sreeram Chaulia -
Historic change eventually comes via small and modest beginnings. The current revolts in Brazil and Turkey actually started in low-key fashion at least one decade ago. Had they been spotted earlier, there would be less befuddlement about explaining the genesis of the mass protests that have mushroomed to force the governments of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to rethink their policy paths.
Brazil’s middle and working classes shot to...
