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.
Gillian Schutte -
The furore over the cartoon depicting the ANC parliamentarians and their electorate as a bunch of inept clowns is indicative of how far we still have to go in terms of embedded and unconscious racism in South Africa. There is nothing wrong with critiquing government in satirical depictions, but there is something horribly wrong when those depictions verge on 19th century blackface stereotypes and entirely overlook the racial demographics of our land.
In this offensive cartoon we see the...
Comedian John Oliver now has his own comedy show on the HBO channel. This week Oliver tackled the issue of “net neutrality”, as encroaching corporate (and government) control over the internet threatens to reduce internet freedom. Oliver takes this grave issue – he calls it “boring” – and turns it into a hilarious sketch that educates the public about a threat we ignore at our peril. Net neutrality refers to all data being treated equally on the internet,...
Jane Duncan -
One year ago today, The Guardian newspaper published National Security Agency (NSA) spy Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance in the US. Digital activists are marking this day by launching a ‘reset the net’ campaign to encourage internet users to take back the internet from the spies and to make it secure for use: a campaign that has received Snowden’s endorsement.
Other forums have taken place recently, focussing on the broader principles that should...
June 5th marks the one-year anniversary of Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency’s egregious overstepping of its bounds into ordinary people's private communications. Journalist Glenn Greenwald who broke the story recently said that the U.S. government is making an example of Snowden and Chelsea Manning to scare future whistleblowers. He argues that the U.S. government is "furious" about Snowden being protected because he’s created a...
As British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared for the announcement of a controversial new fracking law in the UK, Greenpeace activists gave the leader a taste of his own policy early Wednesday when they set up a mock fracking operation at his country estate.
"David Cameron wants to rob people of their right to stop fracking firms drilling under their homes – surely he won’t mind if we kick off the under-house fracking revolution below his own garden."...
Steven Friedman -
OUR real ‘ticking time bomb’ may be not poverty, but what it always has been – race. Our angriest people may not be those forced to survive on much less than they need, but the black middle class.
Poverty is our biggest problem: it affects most people and imposes huge economic and social costs. But the frequently heard claim that poor people are about to rise up and destroy the economy ignores reality: poverty usually forces people to be more pragmatic because more is at...
