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 -
The living party, which ought to make possible the free exchange of ideas which have been elaborated according to the real needs of the mass of the people, has been transformed into a trade union of individual interests. - Frantz Fanon, Tunis, 1961
It’ll be some time before we really know what happened in the National Working Committee (NWC) of the African National Congress (ANC) on Monday. But it seems clear enough that a majority of the NWC supported a proposal to bring disciplinary...
Liepollo Pheko -
‘Gedleyihlekisa’ is president Jacob Zuma’s middle name. It means “one who is crafty when faced with conniving people” or “one who is cunning” or even “laughing when people conspire and gang up against you.”
In the last few years Zuma’s political life has been predicated on a series of private issues, which have come into the public domain. His personal finances and rape trial both became the focus of national discourse sharply...
Richard Pithouse -
When we are the prey and the vulture - Aimé Césaire, 'Batouque', Miraculous Weapons, 1956.
Last week Jacob Zuma visited the Sweetwaters shack settlement near Orange Farm in Johannesburg. He informed the nation that his shock at seeing human beings living like pigs had almost reduced him to tears. He also visited the Siyathemba settlement in Balfour where he, like a typical bullying ward councillor, berated angry residents for asking the questions that mattered.
Zuma's...
Richard Pithouse -
A year into his Presidency Jacob Zuma’s inability to resolve the acute tensions within the African National Congress (ANC) is painfully evident. But this does not mean that the party is drifting aimlessly. There is a clear trajectory and that course is a steady, albeit, lumbering move towards an authoritarian state driving a modernisation project via crony capitalism and the containment of the poor.
The fact that Julius Malema has had to apologise for “undermining the stature of...
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...
Walden Bello -
The issue of corruption resonates in developing countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the slogan of the coalition that is likely to win the 2010 presidential elections is "Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people."
Not surprisingly, the international financial institutions have weighed in. The World Bank has made "good governance" a major thrust of its work, asserting that the "World Bank Group focus on governance and anticorruption (GAC) follows...
