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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From the tragedy at Marikana to the farm workers' strikes at De Doorns, it is evident that the South African economy is not working for the poor. At the same time, President Jacob Zuma campaigned on a ticket of "economic transformation" in the run up to his re-election as president of the ANC at Mangaung.
Will the ANC succeed in its quest for transformative economic development during President Zuma’s second term in office? Is this president Zuma's Lula moment? On 8...
Paul Jay of the Real News Network talks to Patrick Bond about the African Mining Indaba that took place in South Africa last week. Bond is the director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. While the nationalisation of mines is off the table, Bond argues that what we are seeing in South Africa is "an intensification of class and state capital struggles over mining."
Also watch this report for interesting remarks from Bond about the political...
For the past four years that the US’ drone programme has been operational, President Barack Obama, with John Brennan for some of that time, has been sitting down and deciding who gets killed. On Thursday, 7 February 2013, for the first time, the Obama administration released documents to explain the legal basis for the drone attacks to a select senate committee on intelligence.
Human rights lawyer, Michael Ratner, argues that despite the release of these legal documents, the drone...
Are guns there to stop tyranny? Is tyranny already here? Are there other ways of stopping it than stocking up on munitions?
Political humour group, The Juice Media take a few minutes to explore one of the great debates taking place in the United States of America. It seems that no matter how high the civilian body count, this perennial debate shows no sign of abating, having morphed into a vigorous exegesis of the 2nd Amendment, as Americans seek to make sense of the original intentions of...
Within cities and countries around the world the gap between the rich and the poor is widening in a global trend that some economists have warned will have detrimental effects on society. In the US which has one of the highest levels of inequality in the West, the richest 10% of Americans receive about half of the nation's income.
In a time when economic growth in many countries is slowing and governments are advocating fiscal austerity, is the question of inequality being factored into...
What we're seeing now in the media is the justification of torture and a rehabilitation of the CIA in four new films, argues Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, as he talks about Zero Dark Thirty, Manhunt, Fargo and Green Zone. Ratner was at the recently held Sundance film festival where, Manhunt, the movie about the killing of Obama Bin Laden, received a standing...
