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?
The relationship between democracy and governance and the realisation of socio-economic rights is an important issue for debate. SACSIS seeks to understand this relationship and identify issues that act as barriers to pro-poor democracy.
Richard Pithouse -
to the fragrance of lemon blossoms
and then to the ultimatums of war
- Pablo Neruda, Right Comrade, Its the Hour of the Garden, Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973
When COSATU and the Communist Party have to rely on the police and their stun grenades, rubber bullets and, by some accounts, live ammunition to force their way into a stadium against the opposition of striking workers it is clear that their assumption of a permanent right to leadership is facing a serious challenge from below....
David Bruce -
On Friday the 12th of October Zenzile Nyenye and Siyakhele Kwazile were arrested. They have been charged for the murder of Daluvuyo Bongo, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) branch secretary in North West. Bongo was shot dead at Marikana on the 5th of October. On Wednesday Nyenye and Kwazile were denied bail by magistrate Carnel Bezuidenhout in the Rustenburg magistrate’s court.
This article is not written with the intention of arguing that Nyenye and Kwazile are innocent of the...
Richard Pithouse -
The National Union of Mineworkers has informed us that workers organising their own strikes are being covertly 'manipulated' and their strikes and protests 'orchestrated' by 'dark forces' and other 'elements' that amount, of course, to another manifestation of the infamous 'third force'. 'Backward' and even 'sinister' beliefs in magic consequent to the rural origin of many of the workers are, we've been told by an array of elite actors, including the Communist Party, central to this...
David Bruce -
During apartheid some of the most notorious instances of police brutality were the killings of demonstrators involved in peaceful protests. It therefore made sense that one of the issues that received concerted attention during the police reform process of the 1990s was public order policing.
An important initial step in this regard was the introduction of new legislation. The Regulation of Gatherings Act, in fact, came into force in January 1994 prior to the formal transition to...
Dale T. McKinley -
Another bombshell is about to be dropped onto South Africa’s raging political and legal battlefield and it involves one of the most highly contentious and emotive issues in our country - land. This week legal papers are set to be filed in the Constitutional Court seeking an order to compel President Zuma to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into “allegations of corruption and mismanagement” covering both the Badplaas area and the Mpumalanga Province as a whole.
The pending...
Richard Pithouse -
Only the crudest propagandist would dare to deny that the ANC is an increasingly predatory and authoritarian excrescence on society rather than a democratic expression of society. It is equally clear that the party confronts what is arguably the highest rate of sustained popular protest anywhere in the world, has overwhelmingly lost the support of the intelligentsia and is increasingly resorting to violence and other forms of repression to contain dissent.
COSATU, unlike the SACP which...
