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.
Dale T. McKinley -
Beneath all the recent debates, polemics and general noise around the state of the South African nation, the character and content of nationalisation and issues of national identity and pride centred on the upcoming Soccer World Cup lays a fundamental problem which is rarely discussed or even acknowledged -- the acceptance and embracing of the ideology of nationalism.
Why is this a problem though when such acceptance appears as both ‘natural’ and ‘realistic’...
Richard Pithouse -
Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. - Rosa Luxemburg, Berlin, 1920
As Freedom Day roles around each year it has become something of a cliché for pundits and politicians to observe that while we have political freedom the majority of our people have yet to attain economic freedom. This platitude masks an extraordinarily anaemic view of political freedom. ...
Fazila Farouk -
The news that Julius Malema jetted off to Venezuela to learn more about nationalisation is distressing. Much more depressing than the fact that Malema has appointed himself ambassador for nationalisation in South Africa.
Nationalisation is already poorly judged in our neoliberal dominated world. Yet, if implemented with honour and integrity, it could potentially become one of the most effective programmes for governments to follow to engender a more equitable society, as the Venezuelans (and...
Richard Pithouse -
It really is a sorry state of affairs when a country that has produced so many remarkable people and movements is reduced to abandoning its national political stage to the spectacle of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) and Julius Malema publicly shitting on our democracy.
The AWB are racist and violent thugs drunk on their fragile fantasies of white supremacy. Their brandy and coke fascism was routed by the South African Police in Ventersdorp in 1991, and again by the...
Saliem Fakir -
The death of Eugene Terreblanche and the racial rousing that Malema stokes, brings out from the underbelly of racial and ethnic discord, the remnant question - can we ever be a nation?
Terreblanche’s death and these war songs also come at a time when the world will soon be descending upon South Africa to witness our multiplicity of tongues, religions, races, natural beauty and the conspicuous divide between rich and poor, as they feast their eyes on a spectacular display of the...
Dale T. McKinley -
If there is anything that South Africans should have been reminded of over the past few weeks it is that what happens and is said in the present is inextricably linked to the past. In general terms history is, and will always be, a terrain of interpretative contestation. However, in the more specific context of a country with a liberation history infused with serious ideological, organisational, social and economic polarities, contemporary understandings and presentations of that history,...
