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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On 13 March 2014, The South African Civil Society Information Service and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) South Africa Office co-hosted a panel discussion, 'Beyond Nationalisation', which interrogated how South Africa's mineral resources could be exploited to bring greater benefit to more South Africans.
The discussion was opened by Renate Tenbusch, the Resident Director of the FES South Africa Office and facilitated by Fazila Farouk, Executive Director of SACSIS.
Panelists Ronnie...
Gilad Isaacs -
It has become commonplace for South African policymakers, business leaders and pundits, to extoll the virtues of South Africa’s “world-class” financial system. Indeed, in post-apartheid South Africa the financial sector has grown at almost double the rate of the economy as a whole. Before we applaud such dynamism we must consider whether the greatly expanded role of finance in our economy helps or hinders our ability to tackle the enormous developmental challenges we face....
John Pilger -
The tape is searing. There is the voice of an infant screaming as he is wrenched from his mother, who pleads: "There is nothing wrong with my baby. Why are you doing this to us? I would've been hung years ago, wouldn't I? Because [as an Australian Aborigine] you're guilty before you're found innocent." The child's grandmother demands to know why "the stealing of our kids is happening all over again.” A welfare official says, "I'm gonna take him, mate."
This...
In a Democracy Now! exclusive, one of America's most prolific transparency activists, Ryan Shapiro, reveals he is suing the NSA, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency in an attempt to force them to open their records on one of the country’s greatest secrets: how the U.S. helped apartheid South Africa capture Nelson Mandela in 1962, leading to his 27 years in prison. The U.S. has never confirmed its involvement, but details have leaked out over the years.
Shapiro already has a pending...
Saliem Fakir -
Ask anybody what a market is and they will describe a creature that is self-moving, mythic and almost machine like as its engine drives the economy to a state of equilibrium.
Often this machine-like description fosters the erroneous idea that the market is something that can be calibrated or recalibrated with the turn of a switch.
Adam Smith referred to the ‘invisible hand’ where individual agency within the market wonderfully produces a set of relations, exchanges and...
Anonymous companies are making it impossible to find out the actual human beings responsible for really terrible crimes says anti-corruption activist Charmian Gooch. Anonymous companies protect corrupt individuals -- from notorious drug cartel leaders to nefarious arms dealers -- behind a shroud of mystery that makes it almost impossible to find and hold them responsible. But Gooch hopes to change all that. At TED2014, she shares her brave TED Prize wish: to know who owns and controls...
