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.
Homophobia is not uncommon in South Africa and those most affected by LGBT hate crimes tend to be black South Africans. At this past weekend’s Joburg Gay Parade, a group of predominantly black feminist LGBT activists demanded one minute of silence to honour and mourn those who have been killed because of their sexual orientation and gender expression. But instead of showing solidarity with their cause, organizers of Joburg’s Gay Parade assaulted these activists.
Watch this clip...
Jane Duncan -
The Commission of Enquiry headed by retired judge Ian Farlam, into the deaths in August of approximately 44 people at Marikana, and the injury and arrest of scores more, has not got off to a good start.
In the first few days of its existence, the Commission appeared to have scant regard for those most affected by these events, proceeding in spite of the fact that family members of the deceased were not present. The fact that Farlam subsequently saw sense and postponed the Commission is to...
Mark Weisbrot -
On May 30, Dan Rather, one of America’s most well-known journalists, announced that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez would die “in a couple of months at most.” Four months later, Chávez is not only alive and campaigning but widely expected to win re-election on Sunday. Such is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela – it is probably the most lied-about country in the world – that a journalist can say almost anything about Chávez or his...
The world's population is maturing at an unprecedented rate. While developed countries like Japan have long had aging populations, today the aging phenomenon is happening much faster in developing countries -- and few have social protection schemes.
The United Nations (UN) is calling for governments to take action to face this new demographic reality. It recommends policy changes to address caring for the aged as well as policies to support older people to remain active as contributing...
Jim Naureckas -
Back in May, Facebook introduced its Promoted Posts program, giving groups and companies with pages on the social media site the option of paying to get their posts seen by more of their fans.
The way Facebook works is that you don't see every post by every friend or every page that you like–Facebook has a formula called Edgerank that tries to determine how interested you'd be in that post, based mainly on how much you've "liked," shared or commented upon similar posts in...
Peer reviewed literature in the medical field is misleading cautions Ben Goldacre, a doctor, who argues that when it comes to drug tests, "positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine." In other words, when a new drug gets tested, all the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world to see - except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go...
