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?
Tips for watching videos: If you see a message saying that a video clip is no longer available, refresh your browser and the video should become available. If you're having trouble viewing a clip that's already streaming, let the clip play once. It will play fine the second time round.
In a Democracy Now! exclusive, one of America's most prolific transparency activists, Ryan Shapiro, reveals he is suing the NSA, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency in an attempt to force them to open their records on one of the country’s greatest secrets: how the U.S. helped apartheid South Africa capture Nelson Mandela in 1962, leading to his 27 years in prison. The U.S. has never confirmed its involvement, but details have leaked out over the years.
Shapiro already has a pending...
Anonymous companies are making it impossible to find out the actual human beings responsible for really terrible crimes says anti-corruption activist Charmian Gooch. Anonymous companies protect corrupt individuals -- from notorious drug cartel leaders to nefarious arms dealers -- behind a shroud of mystery that makes it almost impossible to find and hold them responsible. But Gooch hopes to change all that. At TED2014, she shares her brave TED Prize wish: to know who owns and controls...
Speaking at a panel discussion on the question of nationalisation for South Africa, former Minister for Intelligence Services, Ronnie Kasrils, who was deeply involved in the negotiations during South Africa’s transition to democracy explains how progressive people oriented policies such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) were quickly shelved in favour of neoliberal policies such as GEAR (the Growth Employment and Redistribution strategy), which led to the...
On 13 March 2014, SACSIS and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung South Africa Office co-hosted a panel discussion about what kind of nationalization would best suit South Africa. We are pleased to see that the SABC 3 News team produced a superb report of our discussion, which aired on national television.
SACSIS and FES hosted the event in an effort to contribute to an informed discussion on nationalisation and debunk myths surrounding it. We are delighted that the SABC reported that...
On Sunday the people of Crimea voted in a referendum with over 95% in favour of leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. President Obama has said that the U.S. will never accept the results of this referendum and European Union officials have more or less said the same thing.
On Monday morning, sanctions were announced by Europe and the U.S. various officials around Russian President Vladimir Putin and in the Ukraine. These will include travel bans and some attacks on their assets in the...
Many people assume that it is much easier to move between social classes today than in the past. But new research by economist Gregory Clark, based on tracking family names across generations, reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, and that inherited advantage remains a deeply entrenched force. The fact that social mobility rates are so predictable at birth "should lead us to consider carefully how much inequality we want to permit in societies” and...
