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 -
South Africa has a crime problem. The resounding call from society is to incarcerate criminals, to remove them from the population.
Given increasing spending on the justice system, putting more police on the ground, the inevitable result is increasing numbers of criminals entering prison. Prisons become ever more overcrowded and are struggling to cope despite new institutions being built.
Our Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has come in for some heavy criticism over the...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa is located at ground zero for HIV and TB. Our health is further impacted by the ravages of poverty and poor diet. When a treatable illness becomes a chronic condition, people cannot work regularly or properly. An unhealthy nation is a dysfunctional nation.
Health is one of the fundamental human rights recognised by both the UN Declaration of Human Rights and by our Constitution. The manner in which this right is constitutionally framed is important, as it not only...
Glenn Ashton -
Wealth is relative. Anyone with enough to eat and a house to live in is rich. If you are reading this you are probably rich.
Around 80% of people live on less than US$10 (R75) per day. The top 20% consume around 75% of the world’s goods. The elite, upper and top half of the middle class constitute no more than 10% of the worlds population, yet control nearly 60% of global wealth.
Despite global promises to achieve greater equality, we are living in a world that is becoming ever...
Glenn Ashton -
Africa has been catapulted into the electronic age over the past decade and a half by an almost incomprehensibly swift growth in telecommunications technology driven primarily by a massive rollout of cell phones and wireless technology throughout the continent.
While few can deny the economic benefits that this growth has brought to a continent historically hobbled by a patchy telecommunications infrastructure, the physical risks of this explosive growth on the health of the people of...
Glenn Ashton -
Those responsible for formulating the policies required to solve our national energy crisis are clearly floundering, all at sea, while the great white sharks of international capital circle for the kill.
Our national energy policies are a mess. We have signally failed to formulate a comprehensive long-term energy policy since democracy in 1994, instead relying on ad hoc responses by both Eskom and politicians.
The incestuous Tweedledum and Tweedledee relationship between Eskom and the state...
Glenn Ashton -
The world is familiar with the ugly face of the globalisation of labour, where poor African immigrants wash up on the coasts of Spain, Italy, Malta or the Canary Islands, dehydrated and dying after harrowing ocean voyages. This is the fate of ambitious, desperate immigrants who answer the siren song of globalisation to pursue elusive wealth and a better life.
Very few of these tragic cases are covered in the western media, unless it is to decry the threat of illegal immigration. We hear of a...
