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?
Gillian is an award winning independent filmmaker, writer and social justice activist. She is a founding member of Media for Justice and co-producer at Handheld Films.
Gillian Schutte -
George Zimmerman, the Florida neighbourhood watchman who shot dead an unarmed black 17-year-old male last year, has been acquitted of murder.
Lawyers for Mr Zimmerman, 29, argued he acted in self-defence and with justifiable use of deadly force in the death of Trayvon Martin. A jury of five white women and one Hispanic woman voted unanimously in favour of the acquittal.
While Zimmerman’s family and their largely right-wing white supporters celebrated, Martin’s family was...
Gillian Schutte -
Poststructuralist psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, has argued that humans distinguish themselves from animals in the instant during which shit becomes something shameful. Thus it is the norm in ‘polite society’ that humans defecate in the privacy of a toilet in which their waste can be instantly flushed away. In fact toilet training is the foundation for teaching toddlers acceptable behaviour in society.
Yet, due to lack of sanitation services, over a third of humanity is still...
Gillian Schutte -
Joburg Pride has closed it doors, shut down, is no longer in business. They obliquely lay the blame at the feet of the One in Nine Campaign in what seems like a disingenuous bid to garner sympathy and demonise the campaigners, rather than shifting their focus to a more progressive and inclusionary agenda.
Joburg Gay Pride Festival Company (JGPFC) released their statement of intent on April 3rd, the day after the One in Nine Campaign announced a public meeting, which they...
Gillian Schutte -
Women’s bodies have been the locale of war since the inception of patriarchy - a misogynistic trend that saw the female body become the site of restraint, control and oppression. Thus the female body has largely become a meme of violence, suffering and exploitation rather than joy, pleasure and autonomy.
Much of this violence is centred on the vagina from which all human life is conceived.
Rape is an excruciatingly cruel male practice fuelled by a horrible concoction of masculine...
Gillian Schutte -
Madonna modelled herself on a sexually unrestrained, powerful and de-sanitised version of Marilyn Monroe and rebelled against patriarchal Catholic constraints of the feminine, using the notion of wanton sexuality as her arsenal. Michael Jackson refused to be categorised according to race and gender and mixed these up in both theatrics and surgery, to much public speculation and psychoanalysis. Freddy Mercury was openly sexually promiscuous and gay and celebrated his choices with an engaging...
Gillian Schutte -
It was with sheer terror that we witnessed the grotesque spectacle of the bulldozing of fully built brick and mortar houses in Lenasia by government officials last week. Images of desperate women being pulled out of their houses and attempting to stop bulldozers from demolishing their lives haunt our recent memories. This was reminiscent of the forced removals of yesteryear when fully settled communities were forced out of their homes by a draconian apartheid government.
What could prompt...
