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.
Saliem Fakir -
The expression, as phrased here, is an attempt to demonstrate the hollowness of human rights and a rights based constitution if all they are can be reduced to normative ideals written on fine paper with no material effect on those that matter. Or as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham once mockingly called it, a mere exercise in “bawling upon paper.”
To phrase it differently: What is the point of political justice when there is no economic justice?
Is it good enough to say...
Yash Tandon -
The term apartheid describes a system of governance in South Africa from about 1948 when the Nationalist Party came to power to independence in 1994, but it has acquired a broader usage. “Global apartheid” was first used during the 1980s by scholars, but became famous when Thabo Mbeki, in 2001, explained why the 2006 World Cup was given to Germany, not South Africa, due to a New Zealander’s vote switch.
In 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, he defined...
A "Dream Deferred" is a documentary made to accompany the book, "Forgotten Voices in the Present." The book and documentary compile the "oral histories" of some of South Africa's poorest residents who recount their experience of living in the post-apartheid era. According to information provided by the South African History Archives, "The book is made up of carefully selected excerpts of in-depth interviews with residents of Maandagshoek, Rammolutsi...
Robert Scheer -
What a shame that the one movie about the Iraq war that has a chance of being viewed by a large worldwide audience should be so disappointing. According to press reports, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally found a movie about the Iraq war they liked because it is “apolitical.” Actually, “The Hurt Locker” is just the opposite; it’s an endorsement of the politically chauvinistic view that the world is a stage upon which Americans get...
Richard Pithouse -
On Thursday last week the South African Students’ Congress (SASCO) attempted to close down nine university campuses to add some punch to their demand for free education. They came closest to succeeding at the University of Johannesburg before the police drove them off a burning barricade with water cannons.
These sorts of actions against the commodification of university education have ebbed and flowed since the first days of our democracy. And they have been a regular part of...
Dale T. McKinley -
As much as those of us who identify ourselves as social progressives would like to believe otherwise, the reality is that South Africa is a bastion of social conservatism. Indeed, one of the most glaring contradictions of South Africa’s post-apartheid ‘transition’ is that the widely acknowledged (and regularly celebrated) social progressiveness of the Constitution is, in large part, at fundamental odds with the beliefs and views of the majority of South Africans themselves....
