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.
Alexander O'Riordan -
Once again the mask has dropped and we have a glimpse of how the United Nations’ (UN) senior management actively supports and covers up abuse. In 2014, a rare principled UN employee, Anders Kompass found and reported credible evidence that French peacekeepers raped starving, homeless, young boys as young as nine-years-old. Instead of reacting with a sense of urgency the UN’s senior management decided to sit on the report denying any possibility of justice or redress for the...
Jane Duncan -
South Africa is emerging from the most severe spate of xenophobic attacks since 2008, although the attacks have never really stopped. What lessons need to be learned from the latest attacks, and what needs to be done to prevent similar attacks from taking place in the future?
A key problem is political leaders’ ongoing ambivalence towards foreigners. Many lapse into the temptation to scapegoat foreigners for a range of social ills, to deflect attention from their own performance. Who...
Britons will go to the polls on Thursday, May 7, 2015, but membership of all political parties is at an all time low. There are more members of 38 Degrees, a campaigning website than there are of all the main political parties put together in Britain, argues political analyst, Zac Goldsmith.
Overall there has been a downward trend in voter turnout since 1997. Politicians blame the phenomenon on voter apathy, but Goldsmith contends that public disengagement with the political process in...
Alexander O'Riordan -
Reuters, amongst other news agencies, directly links South Africa’s xenophobic violence to King Goodwill Zwelithini’s incendiary statements: “Let us pop our head lice. We must remove ticks and place them outside in the sun. We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and be sent back."
However horrific and objectionable these statements are for migrants, they are also illustrative of the anxieties of the Zulu royal house. Lice and ticks are scavengers that...
Pierre de Vos -
It is not always easy to hold an unpopular or minority view. It is even more difficult to hold a minority view on the emotive subject of religious belief and organised religion. When you happen to be a vulnerable and impressionable child, indoctrinated by parents and subjected to relentless peer pressure, it becomes even more difficult to hold any opinion of your own on the matter. It is for this reason that the right of children not to believe in a specific God or in specific religious...
Valerie Bell -
It’s hard for me to celebrate on Mother’s Day. I feel the absence of my 23-year-old son, Sean Elijah Bell, who was killed on November 25, 2006. He was out celebrating at his own bachelor party with his friends in New York City. It was only a matter of a hours before his wedding, and I was so thrilled.
Sean and his friends were enjoying their night at a club where there happened to be three undercover police officers present, conducting an investigation of the club. A...
