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.
Richard Pithouse -
Since the 1920s Charleston has been the name of a dance, a dance with roots in Africa and made white and famous on Broadway. Now Charleston is the name of a massacre, the murder of nine people and the desecration of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Charleston was founded as Charles Town in 1670 when Charles II of England granted land in Carolina to some of his supporters after he was restored to the throne. The city, and its putative Southern gentility, was built on...
New data from NASA claims that a third of the world’s water reservoirs are running low and numerous causes, including climate change, are being implicated. Twenty-one of the world’s 37 aquifers are past the tipping point of being sustainable. The most troubled areas are closest to the equator. However, the ones holding the most negative balances are the Arabian aquifer and the Indus Basin. According to this report from RT, scientists, governments and households around the world...
In an act of racial hatred, Dylan Roof, a white gunman shot dead nine people in an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina this week. Before pulling the trigger, Roof said, “You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go,” Roof’s Facebook page sports a picture of him wearing the old apartheid-era South African flag, which white supremacists have adopted as their symbol of racial hatred. Efia Nwangaza from the Malcom X Grassroots...
Steven Friedman -
South African democracy spans two very different worlds. In one, people complain loudly but enjoy full democratic rights – in the other, most remain unheard and battle for the right to speak. In both, life is difficult for those who do not conform.
Among political scientists - and many of the South Africans who can speak - it is fashionable to label this country’s democracy a ‘party dominant system’. Democracy, is, in this view, limited by the iron grip of the...
Glenn Ashton -
South African wealth is founded on our extraordinary mineral bounty, conservatively valued at over $3 trillion (R36 trillion). Our future is dependent on how we manage this geological legacy. We can either harness the full spectrum of opportunities or lay ourselves open to what is known as the “resource curse” where natural resources are exploited by unscrupulous or corrupt entities, with minimal national benefit. A recent example provides some insight in how we appear to be...
The Great Barrier Reef, a natural wonder visible from space and a UNESCO protected site is under threat from coal pollution. Activists warn that four megaports, including one of the world’s biggest coal ports are planned for the Great Barrier Reef. They fear that the reef could become a shipping highway with up to 7,000 ships crisscrossing it every year. Robert Foster of Juice Rap News presents an express Rap News Call Out report, featuring correspondent Ken Oathcarn.
Surely nobody...
