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?
Shield and Spear interview Maureen and Lerato from the Ikanyiso Collective about life in South Africa. An important issue that troubles the women is the prejudice applied to language policy and practise. The women express frustration at the level of non-interest in African languages from South Africans of other ethnicities. There are 11 official languages in South Africa. Whilst Zulu is the most spoken language in the country, English, which is only the 7th most spoken language, is held up...
Richard Pithouse -
Since the 1920s Charleston has been the name of a dance, a dance with roots in Africa and made white and famous on Broadway. Now Charleston is the name of a massacre, the murder of nine people and the desecration of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Charleston was founded as Charles Town in 1670 when Charles II of England granted land in Carolina to some of his supporters after he was restored to the throne. The city, and its putative Southern gentility, was built on...
In an act of racial hatred, Dylan Roof, a white gunman shot dead nine people in an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina this week. Before pulling the trigger, Roof said, “You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go,” Roof’s Facebook page sports a picture of him wearing the old apartheid-era South African flag, which white supremacists have adopted as their symbol of racial hatred. Efia Nwangaza from the Malcom X Grassroots...
Mandisi Majavu -
With Youth Day upon us again this week commemorating the contribution made by the school-going children of Soweto during the apartheid struggle in 1976, it’s hard to gloss over the enormous sacrifices they made. How tragic it is then that 21 years into our democracy, their massive impact has merely led to a fragile pact between black and white South Africans, where blacks have yet to be unconditionally welcomed in historically white neighbourhoods and institutions, and where white...
Tim Wise -
In a country where being black increases your likelihood of being unemployed, poor, rejected for a bank loan, suspected of wrongdoing and profiled as a criminal, being arrested or even shot by police, the mind boggles at Rachel Dolezal's decision some years ago to begin posing as an African American. Yes perhaps blackness helps when you’re looking for a job in an Africana Studies department, selling your own African American portraiture art, or hoping to head up the local NAACP...
Valerie Bell -
It’s hard for me to celebrate on Mother’s Day. I feel the absence of my 23-year-old son, Sean Elijah Bell, who was killed on November 25, 2006. He was out celebrating at his own bachelor party with his friends in New York City. It was only a matter of a hours before his wedding, and I was so thrilled.
Sean and his friends were enjoying their night at a club where there happened to be three undercover police officers present, conducting an investigation of the club. A...
