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?
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In a wide ranging interview covering the massacre in Marikana, a turning point in South Africa's history, Prof. Patrick Bond of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu Natal talks to Paul Jay of the Real News Network about the shifting sands of South African politics, workers' struggles and metalworker’s union, Numsa's new initiative to establish a movement for socialism as well as launch a workers' party. According to Bond, a workers' or labour party could emerge to...
Both mainstream and leftist economists are heaping praises on French economist, Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In his review of the book, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues, "The big idea of (the book) is that we haven't just gone back to 19th-century levels of income inequality, we're also on a path back to "patrimonial capitalism," in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled…by family dynasties...This is a book...
The Universe is teeming with planets. Astronomers now believe that every star in the galaxy has a planet and they speculate that up to one fifth of them might be able to harbour life. Only we haven't seen any of them - yet. At Princeton’s High Contrast Imaging Laboratory, Jeremy Kasdin and his team are looking to change that with the design and engineering of an extraordinary piece of equipment: a flower petal-shaped "starshade" that allows a telescope to photograph planets...
Prof. Edgardo Lander Of Universidad Central De Venezuela argues that a major success of President Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution was that social policies led to a very significant reduction of poverty and inequality making Venezuela the least unequal country in Latin America. More importantly there was a significant transformation of popular political culture. For many Venezuelans, the political system wasn't responding to their needs. But that changed dramatically under Chavez....
UK charity, the Pilion Trust, an organisation that helps some of the poorest and most vulnerable, has conducted a social experiment on the people of London to see if they really do care about those who are less fortunate. A man wearing a sign saying, “Fuck the poor” was sent out to the streets of the capitol as part of a campaign for the charity. People were genuinely offended by the sign and took the man to task for the offensive statement.
What do you think happened when he...
On 9 April 2014, one of the world's most respected public thinkers visited the RSA to explore the hidden workings of capital. David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York, unraveled the paradoxes at the heart of capitalism. In this fascinating lecture and discussion the role of rapidly developing technology and its impact on labour is identified as a major challenge. Technology is actually removing labour from the dynamics of capitalism....
