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?
Jane Duncan -
How important are leaders to South Africa’s politics? Should they be allowed to make or break organisations? Two recent events held last month have thrown up these questions: Numsa’s United Front Assembly, held in Kempton Park and the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) first elective Peoples’ Assembly in Mangaung.
In the case of the United Front, Ranjeny Munusamy lamented the absence of controversial Cosatu general-secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi. She argued that his...
Richard Pithouse -
From our increasingly riotous streets to our ever more fractious parliament, it is undeniably clear that South Africa is not a country at ease with itself. And, as the language of those who come out to defend Jacob Zuma and what has become of the ANC grows more hysterical and sets itself against imagined ‘agents’, ‘criminals’, ‘Satanists’ and ‘Nazis’, the weakness and panic at the heart of the Zuma project becomes increasingly evident. What were...
Steven Friedman -
If the social justice agenda here depends on inflating the popular support and the commitment to equality of a loud group of racial nationalists, it is in more trouble than we thought.
The nationalists are the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), whose 6, 35% of the vote has been hailed by the media, commentators and voices on the left. If we look at the numbers, it is hard to see why the EFF should deserve this hero-worship. If we look beyond them, we will find the reaction to Julius...
Jane Duncan -
As a new political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has generated both excitement and criticism in a short space of time. Its commitment to anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and Fanonianism sets it apart from the gaggle of parties vying for the political centre, and clearly its message has gained traction, especially amongst the youth.
Much of the media commentary has focussed on these aspects of its founding manifesto, especially its position on nationalisation, and some on the...
Richard Pithouse -
Being against [one form of] evil doesn't make you good.
- Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 1952
Over the last ten years or so there has been an extraordinary degree of popular protest in South Africa. The seemingly incorrigible elitism of the higher reaches of our public sphere has meant that, particularly in the absence of sustained formal organisation, popular protest has seldom won the right to represent itself in this space. For years the media, NGOs, academy and political...
Richard Pithouse -
(T)he horses have vanished
Heroes hop around like toads
- Pablo Neruda, Right Comrade, It’s the Hour of the Garden, Chile, 1973
Writing after the French Revolution Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, noted that “while the drama of great political changes is taking place” people “openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries”. Kant did not deny the limits, or even the horrors of the French...
