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?
Visit the archives.
Pepe Escobar -
And the winner of the Oscar for Best Sequel of 2013 goes to...The Global War on Terror (GWOT), a Pentagon production. Abandon all hope those who thought the whole thing was over with the cinematographic snuffing out of "Geronimo", aka Osama bin Laden, further reduced to a fleeting cameo in the torture-enabling flick Zero Dark Thirty.
It's now official - coming from the mouth of the lion, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, and duly posted at the AFRICOM...
Kwei Quartey -
As early as the 11th century, Timbuktu was a hub for trade in salt and gold between black Africans, the Tuareg, and Arabs from the north. A meeting place for African scholars, Timbuktu was also a center of learning where thousands of manuscripts and books were written, and where universities much older than Harvard or Oxford were founded.
The broad region of West Africa that includes present-day Mali has had its share of geopolitical turmoil since at least the eighth century. From around...
Leonard Gentle -
How soon we forget…When the striking workers were killed by the police at Marikana there was a universal sense of shock and horror. How could it have come to this? Just 18 years after apartheid and here we go again - the police mowing down demonstrators. Now AngloPlat has announced that it will retrench 14 000 workers and the mood amongst the commentariat is, “Well, what did they expect?”
Angloplat’s announcement seems to confirm our most dismal...
Cameron Russell has stomped the runways for Victoria's Secret and Chanel, and has appeared in many magazines. But she is much more than just a pretty face. Russell admits she won "a genetic lottery": she's tall, pretty and an underwear model.
But don't judge her by her looks. "For the past two hundred years, we have defined beauty not just as health, youth and symmetry that we are biologically programmed to admire. But also as tall, slender figures, femininity and white...
Upgrading your smart phone may be cool, but there is a hidden cost: human lives and environmental degradation. The rapid growth of the electronics industry worldwide has increased demand for tin. Almost half of all tin produced is turned into solder for use in smart phones, iPads, and flat screen TVs. And much of the world's tin comes from Bangka Island in Indonesia. Campaign group Friends of the Earth claim that Apple and Samsung use tin solder that is almost certainly being mined from...
Anna Majavu -
The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) fatwa against the annual New Year’s festival by Cape Town’s minstrels and ‘Malay’ choirs has thrown the city’s ever present class and race problems back into the spotlight.
The fatwa prohibits Muslims from participating in the minstrel troupes, or watching the minstrels – on the grounds that “it is generally degrading and undignified for Muslims to dance around in public with painted faces and colourful...
