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?
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Have we reached the end of the road for redistribution in South Africa? Recent publications by the World Bank and the South African Communist Party (SACP) suggest that the time for redistribution may well be over. The oddness of the pairing - usually with different ideological stances - is remarkable in itself, but the underlying logic for reaching the conclusion is even more remarkable.
The policy recommendation is similar. After a strong focus on expanding services, South Africa must now...
Steven Friedman -
Why is an idea, which featured in Marxist debates decades ago now thrown about by all sides in mainstream public debates? Why is it used by both sides in the dispute wracking Cosatu? Because it touches on a core issue facing our society.
The idea - or slogan - is ‘national democratic revolution’ (NDR). Both those who supported Numsa’s removal from Cosatu and Numsa itself say they support the NDR - Numsa complains it is ‘not on track’ while its opponents say...
Richard Pithouse -
As Numsa head towards their special congress in Boksburg next week the tensions within Cosatu, and between Numsa and the SACP, are exploding. The critical question that is up for debate at the congress is whether or not the union should break with the ANC and support another party or set up its own party. If the union does decide to break with the ANC and set up a workers’ party its political credibility, solid organisational base and capacity to generate its own resources from its...
The state of the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance is being hugely debated following an alliance summit last weekend in the aftermath of trade union federation, COSATU, suspending its general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi. His suspension came after months of on-going speculation about strained relations and divergent objectives amongst alliance partners. In the run up to South Africa's 2014 general elections, a weak alliance is not a good sign for the ruling party that depends on the electoral support of...
Leonard Gentle -
Lenin once said, “There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen.” British Labour Party Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was to similarly explore the vicissitudes of political time when he remarked, “a week was a long time in politics.”
It’s too early to say whether the week beginning 12 August 2013 was such a week, as might have been thought of by either the revolutionary Lenin or the reformist Wilson. Yet two events in that...
Richard Pithouse -
(T)he paranoid construction is … an attempt to heal ourselves, to pull ourselves out of the real "illness", the "end of the world", the breakdown of the symbolic universe.
− Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, 1991
Sdumo Dlamini recently informed listeners of a Jo'burg radio station that a multi-headed snake was slithering through South Africa fermenting dissent against the ANC. In the lead up to Mangaung...
