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?
Richard Pithouse -
What stank in the past is the present's perfume
-Lesego Rampolokeng, The Bavino Sermons, 1999
Many societies before us have travelled the well worn path that winds down the slope, gentle at first but then precipitous, that runs from the bliss of a new dawn and into the stench of a rotting dream. And many societies have discovered that neither shared participation in the great drama of a national struggle nor a founding leader that, like Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru or Jomo Kenyatta,...
Talking about how to make South Africa's democracy work for the poor, Steven Friedman, Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy argues, "telescoping" all the countries problems onto one mediocre politician (Jacob Zuma) is misguided. Government does not have a bad record of "sheer physical provision to the poor". The real problem that South Africa has faced over the last 18 years has been that we haven't got to grips with the inequalities in the market economy, he...
Dale T. McKinley -
He advanced to the council-table:
and, "Please your honours," said he,
"I'm able, by means of a secret charm,
to draw all creatures living beneath the sun,
that creep, or swim, or fly, or run,
after me so as you never saw!
and I chiefly use my charm
on creatures that do people harm,
~ Robert Browning - ‘The Pied Piper: A Child’s Story’ (1842)
South Africa’s modern-day political pied pipers are, like the fairy tale character’s clothing, a...
Richard Pithouse -
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
- Antonio Gramsci, Regina Coeli Prison, Rome, 1930
Neil Daniels was murdered in Cape Town on the 2nd of June. His genitals were burnt. Thapelo Makutle was murdered in Kuruman in the Northern Cape on the 9th of June. His genitals were hacked off his body and shoved into his mouth. Phumeza Nkolonz was murdered in Cape Town on the 23rd...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
The fisticuffs around the concept of a “Second Transition” have defined debates in the run-up to the African National Congress (ANC) national policy conference. The drafters of The Second Transition: Building a National Democratic Society and the Balance of Forces in 2012 argue, “The time has come to build a new national consensus for the next 50 years. The consensus should lay the basis for a second transition of social and economic transformation, building on the...
Richard Pithouse -
As the African National Congress heads to its centenary conference in Mangaung and on to the end of its second decade in power there is still considerable popular fidelity to the ANC as an idea and as an identity. But the ANC does face declining electoral support, escalating popular protest and increasing hostility from the media, intellectuals and much of civil society. The authoritarian currents in the party like to blame all of this on sinister attempts to oppose a democratic government....
