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?
Stephen Greenberg -
The World Bank’s recently released 2009 World Development Report - titled Reshaping Economic Geography - suggests South Africa may be out of step with mainstream thinking on economic development approaches. But what is this ‘mainstream’ thinking, and is South Africa really so out of step with it? In the report, the Bank argues that successful development will result from increasing economic concentration in urban areas, and that the role of the state is to enable...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
As Professor Pink lead narrator on the SABC educational programme, 'Knock Knock', explored Galileo’s confrontation with power, the SABC was engaged in its own tryst with changing power.
President Thabo Mbeki appointed the board of the SABC in a move interpreted as incongruous with resolutions taken by the ANC at its Polokwane conference. In possibly an imaginary fisticuff with an ex-President, the admirable gusto of politicians arguing for a free press was expected. Cynics were left...
Glenn Ashton -
One of the crude features of the inequity in our global economic order is that just eight countries, the G8, make the rules by which an entire planet comprising 192 countries have to live by. The G8 have appropriated this privilege because they are the richest countries in the world.
There's something terribly antiquated about the system. If one were to make an objective call on the global economic order, one would have to acknowledge that archaic remnants of 'empire' still permeate...
Richard Pithouse -
From the Communist Party across to the corporate spin-doctors and down to the Development Committees in the shack settlements, more or less everybody in South Africa speaks the language of development. In some ways this is a good thing. It indicates a hard won agreement that the realities of inequality in our society are so cruel and perverse that any social project can only be credible if it will ameliorate these divisions and the suffering they cause.
But one of the key problems with...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
The ultimate conceit in policy debates is to dismiss one’s adversaries with the words: "They just don't get it." In the run up to the elections this year and on the occasion of Cabinet announcements, a common refrain from private sector commentators is that the ‘left’ simply does not get it.
The central argument presented is that the market offers the best options for continued success. The corollaries to this argument are that change takes time, but also that the...
Speaking at a roundtable discussion last month on the topic "Challenging Militarism: Feminist Activism and Scholarship", Professor Fumi Olonisakin Director of the Conflict, Security and Development Group at Kings College, London, argued that global security changes brought about by 9/11, ended the process of post-Cold War demilitarization in Africa and "arrested" security sector reform, threatening democracy and civil society's calls for change on the continent....
