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.
In this Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (RSA) animated video, Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, investigates the ethical implications of charitable giving, as suggested by big business. Zizek draws attention to an important debate while the creative genius of the RSA illustrators is enormously entertaining to watch.
Find an edited transcript of Zizek’s speech below courtesy of Alternet.
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I want to develop a line of thought about one point: why, in our economy,...
Liepollo Pheko -
Women's month in South Africa has come and gone without much fanfare, and perhaps rightfully so, since African women continue to be confronted by institutions, policies and systems within an economy that entrenches patriarchy and a fundamentalist brand of neoliberalism.
The broad context is that African women pay the price for failing states and a hostile political economy that deepens poverty and widens inequalities in many societies of the global South, while polarising social and living...
Leonard Gentle -
The public sector strike has been suspended. But whether the unions accept the state's latest offer or not, this strike may well be (and these things we are almost always fated to see only in retrospect) a watershed in South African politics.
Firstly, amidst all the media opprobrium and invective against the strikers and the stories of intimidation, there is also a picture emerging of the appalling state of the public sector.
Whilst the very wealthy and even many middle class people...
Norman Solomon -
On the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.
Hours later, The New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of "the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq." The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying, "that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home." The story went on to assert that Obama "used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as...
The discovery of 72 murdered migrants in Mexico last week has directed international attention to a country in the grip of a violent war between competing drug cartels.
The Real News Network speaks to investigative journalist, Bruce Livesey, who recently returned from Mexico.
Livesey says that the reasons behind the violence in Mexico are complicated. But among them he highlights the role of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which fueled the drug trade in two ways....
In his Oval Office address Tuesday night, President Obama said the US had closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis. But many US bases remain in Iraq, as well as the massive US embassy in Baghdad, the size of eighty football fields, reports Democracy Now, as it features a report on the reality of US bases in Iraq by independent journalist Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films.
Independent journalist and Democracy Now correspondent, Jeremy Scahill contends, "The United...
