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?
Glenn is a multidisciplinarian with a background in geography. Besides being a published author, he also edited "A Patented World? The Privatisation of Life and Knowledge," published by Jacana in South Africa. He currently is on the editorial board of the SA Journal of Natural Medicine.
Additionally, Glenn has written many commentaries and analyses of wide ranging issues including waste management, water use, food security, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, health, agricultural fuels, marine resources, climate and many other environmental and socially relevant issues.
He has also presented many papers and talks to a wide range of audiences. He specialises in communicating complex scientific issues in an accessible manner. He is a freelance writer and researcher.
Glenn Ashton -
With between 24% and 44% of the South African workforce out of work, joblessness and poverty are ticking time bombs we cannot ignore, especially given that more than half of 15 to 24 year olds are unemployed.
The neo-liberal economic stance of the government has failed the poor. The results of top-down job creation policies appear equally ephemeral. Perhaps the answer is to turn things on their head and look at creating work from the bottom-up, trickle up instead of trickle down.
There are...
Glenn Ashton -
It is appropriate that Cape Town has been selected as the designated global focal point for this year's UN sponsored World Water Day on the 22nd of March.
South Africa faces serious threats from its increasingly scarce water supplies. We are one of the world's most water-stressed nations and have much in common with many other regions and nations around the world such as Australia, the south-west of the USA and north-west China.
South Africa provides the ideal context for this...
Glenn Ashton -
The reconfiguration of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs has come into sharp focus as local government elections draw closer. The notion of locating traditional affairs at the local government level has detractors and I count myself among them.
The conflation of the two means that patriarchal interpretations of social and developmental priorities will continue to undermine and dispossess women living in those communities.
The battle between...
Glenn Ashton -
The potential presence of natural gas deep beneath the surface of the Karoo has triggered a national hullabaloo. It is not the gas itself that is controversial; it is the proposed method of liberating it in commercially viable quantities, which has everybody up in arms.
If you asked most South Africans around the Xmas table last year what fracking was, you would probably have been met with blank stares. Now, because of applications by Shell Exploration, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, for...
Glenn Ashton -
Namibia, Namaqualand and the Namib Desert are all named after the first people who lived in that area, the Nama. Where are the Nama today? The reality is that they have largely become forgotten bit players in a complex world.
The indigenous people of various nations, descended from traditional hunter-gatherer clans, are broadly referred to as the “first people” or “first nations.” These first nations generally still receive second-class treatment across the world....
Glenn Ashton -
The borders of Sudan, Africa’s biggest country, are about to change, provided all the players in this grand game stay the distance. This could be the most significant redrawing of the colonial boundaries of Africa since the colonial transition that saw the departure of the European colonial powers, abandoning their "places in the sun."
The partition of Africa into its present illogical and arbitrary boundaries took place just over a century ago, during what is now known as...
