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?
Dr. Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University where he teaches contemporary political theory and urban studies and runs an annual semester long post-graduate seminar on the work of Frantz Fanon.
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Richard Pithouse -
The fiasco at Eskom has been oscillating between tragedy and farce at such a rate that it’s become difficult to tell them apart. No one in their right mind is likely to disagree that Eskom, an institution that should serve the public good, has been captured by an avaricious elite and turned into a vampiric excrescence on our society. In the wake of Jacob Maroga’s incredible demand for an R85 million golden handshake even parliament has felt the need to pressurise the cabinet to...
Richard Pithouse -
The devastation of Haiti is not a simple matter of bad luck. Earthquakes, like storms and epidemics, hit the poor with vastly more force than the rich. Much of the press coverage of the catastrophe in Haiti has wilfully disregarded the history of how Haiti was made poor and kept poor by, above all, the same American elites that are now dispensing charity, soldiers and advice. Racism has often been close to the surface or even grinning hideously far above it.
In London Sky News reported that...
Richard Pithouse -
The democratic ideal, the idea that the people should rule themselves, is grounded in equality. It recognises that everyone is capable of thought and it is committed to the right of all people to shape society via free and equal participation in deliberative processes. Because democracy is a politics of equality it is a fundamental rejection of the idea that people should know or be forced to accept their place in society.
One way of containing the radical force of the democratic ideal has...
Richard Pithouse -
The 2010 World Cup is being sold to us as a moment of collective redemption. Patriotism and theological sentiments are being mobilised to persuade us that a moment of millennial grace is at hand. Africa's time, we are told, has come.
Back in 2007 Thabo Mbeki heralded the World Cup as "an event that will send ripples of confidence from the Cape to Cairo - an event that will create social and economic opportunities throughout Africa. We want to ensure that one day, historians will reflect...
Richard Pithouse -
After Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato was slapped in Blikkiesdorp, the police have warned politicians not to enter the area without police backup.
Blikkiesdorp is a government built shack settlement on the barren sands of Delft, outside of Cape Town. With rows of tin shacks, razor wire fencing, invasive lighting and armoured vehicles at the gated entrance, it looks like a concentration camp. To his credit the local police chief describes Blikkiesdorp as a 'housing time-bomb' close to...
Richard Pithouse -
In the salad days of our democracy it seemed fair enough to buy into the idea that our most pressing social problems would be steadily resolved in time. But the time when an easy assurance of a better future could justify the failures and horrors of the present has past.
Democracy is not consolidating and poverty is not being rolled back. These days the self-evident clichés that propped up optimism for so many years look as strangely dated as yesterday's propaganda.
By some...
