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?
Saliem is an independent writer and columnist for SACSIS based in Cape Town.
He is currently active in the sustainable energy field and works for the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Saliem was previously a senior lecturer at the Department of Public Administration and Planning and associate Director for the Center for Renewable and Sustainable Energy at the University of Stellenbosch (2007-2008) where he taught a course on renewable energy policy and financing of renewable energy projects.
Saliem previously worked for Lereko Energy (Pty) Ltd (2006) an investment company focusing on project development and financial arrangements for renewable energy, biofuels, waste and water sectors. He also served as Director of the World Conservation Union South Africa (IUCN-SA) office for eight years (1998-2005).
Saliem has served on a number of Boards. Between 2002-2005 he served as a chair of the Board of the National Botanical Institute. He also served on the board of the Fair Trade in Tourism Initiative, and was a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Reporting Initiative, based in Amsterdam.
He currently serves on the advisory board of Inspired Evolution One, a private fund involved in clean technology.
Saliem's qualifications are: B.Sc Honours molecular biology (WITS), Masters in Environmental Science, Wye College London. He also completed a senior executive management course at Harvard University in 2000.
Saliem Fakir -
World Cup soccer fever has swept across the country creating much euphoria and mesmerisation about South Africa’s ability to host the event and be part of the big league, as we have always strived to be.
The country seems to be caught in some sort of ecstatic purgatory.
Newspaper pages are filled with reports about what is happening on and off the soccer field. Gossip abounds, analysis of team performance is endless and national politics have taken a backseat for now -- to be replaced...
Saliem Fakir -
While they may fight on the shop floor and often agree on little, in a rather strange twist of relations between business and the labour unions, they seem to agree on one key macro-economic policy issue, i.e., on the question of the rand’s value.
Both want a lower rand in order to boost the order books for our locally manufactured goods.
A joint statement by South Africa’s three top unions and manufacturers was issued on the 10 of May 2010. The statement called for...
Saliem Fakir -
An impoverished conception of democracy has prevailed in our country. One, which Amartya Sen lucidly describes in his book, The Idea of Justice, as taking a narrow view of democracy by "focusing particularly on the procedure of balloting and elections" and not going beyond this.
In this regard, we South Africans have too much faith in our party-based democracy. Unfortunately, our reliance on the party led system of political representation is insufficient for building a strong and...
Saliem Fakir -
They go by different names: IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa), BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China). These formations all amount to more or less the same thing: the new “emerging economies” seeking to redefine relations between themselves and the rest of the world.
They are widely seen as new symbols of power in the global arena.
The shaping of the alliances between these powerful new emerging economies raises...
Saliem Fakir -
The death of Eugene Terreblanche and the racial rousing that Malema stokes, brings out from the underbelly of racial and ethnic discord, the remnant question - can we ever be a nation?
Terreblanche’s death and these war songs also come at a time when the world will soon be descending upon South Africa to witness our multiplicity of tongues, religions, races, natural beauty and the conspicuous divide between rich and poor, as they feast their eyes on a spectacular display of the...
Saliem Fakir -
When Minister Ebrahim Patel released his fledgling department’s medium-term strategic plan, he indicated that the Department of Economic Development would investigate the use of pension funds for the purposes of infrastructure development and repair.
No sooner had he announced this, did some economists, in a typical knee-jerk reaction, jeer the idea conjecturing that it was bad. In contrast, there have been some others from the same quarters (private capital markets) who thought it...
