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?
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Just over two months ago three grandmothers were introduced to pot for the first time by an intrepid video production team in the state of Washington in the United States where the use of recreational marijuana is legal. The women were given a bong, a vaporizer, marijuana tea and offered some snacks and a card game. The results are both hilarious and sobering. We witness the grandmothers starting to relax, laugh a lot, tell some dirty jokes, talk about their new experience and realise that...
Natasha Hakimi Zapata -
The world’s “humblest” president, the “poorest president” in terms of personal wealth, the “most radical.” How did one man earn so many superlative epithets?
The 79-year-old Uruguayan President José Mujica—who leaves office at the end of next month—is at first glance an unlikely head of state. In keeping with the approach he developed while imprisoned for 14 years as a leftist Tupamaro urban guerrilla, Mujica repudiates...
SACSIS columnist, Prof. Jane Duncan, talks to Creamer Media about her new book, which examines the rise of securocrats in South Africa. Securocrats are officials located in the security establishment – the police, intelligence services or the military – that have the power to influence government policy in their favour. Duncan raises genuine concerns about their growing influence, which is leading to an excessive and unnecessary focus on secrecy and security as well as resulting...
Glen Ford -
He strode to the microphone with a sash around his neck, a gap in his front teeth, and a socialist vision for South Africa’s future on his lips.
“All over the world, the vast majority continue to languish in poverty,” because of a class of people that “do not produce value, but take for themselves the surplus value that the working class produces,” said Irvin Jim, the 45 year-old general secretary of his nation’s largest union, NUMSA, the National Union...
John Feffer -
In the first Crusade, on their way to fight the Muslim infidels in Jerusalem, the armed pilgrims asked themselves a provocative question: Why should we trek so far to kill people we barely know when we can just as well massacre infidels closer to home?
And thus the crusaders of the 11th century embarked on some of Europe’s first pogroms against Jews. These anti-Semitic rampages in the heart of the continent had the added advantage of helping to finance that first Crusade, as the...
Fazila Farouk -
There likely aren’t many journalists, bloggers, cartoonists or comedians anywhere in the world who don’t feel a connection with the massacred staff of French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo. These are the men and women of the world who regularly scale the chillingly exposed platform of public opinion to hold a mirror to the world. It’s a frightening space to inhabit in a world of such diversity and difference of opinion. One never really knows how those whom one has...
