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?
Prishani Naidoo & Ahmed Veriava -
Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s in South Africa, our imagination of freedom and its possibility would be shaped by the time. As children, the invisible participants of history, we discovered the world and its possibilities through the struggles of our elders and the passions our parents had fallen into. This was the world of the liberation movement given to us in the militancy of the songs, slogans, and forms of protest that were exploding around us, as well as in the poems...
Fazila Farouk -
Election 2009 has turned out to be a landmark event for the ANC. The party faced some of its stiffest competition and still came out tops, despite a dismal 15-year delivery record.
In an ironic twist, the people whom the ANC has failed most turned out en masse to keep it in power, while those that it’s been bending over backwards for appear to have voted for the opposition.
The actions of both groups defy belief, but in a world where perception trumps reality, perhaps one...
Charlene Houston -
The ANC does not deserve my vote. I dedicated my life to the fight for freedom and a better life for South Africa's poor. During the anti-apartheid struggle, we mobilised people under the banner of the Freedom Charter. But today I’ve come to realise that the ANC does not deserve my vote because it doesn't live up to the vision of the Freedom Charter.
This has been coming for a long time – before the sensationalist hype around the private lives' and lies of...
Colette Francis -
In my first year of business school I sat on a fold-down seat in a crowded lecture theatre, listening to a professor with a Texan drawl hammer home the central principle of modern economics. I looked around to see hundreds of eighteen-year-olds swallow his words like bait on a hook. Self-interest is good. Self-interest is better. Self-interest is best. Tentatively I raised my hand.
"Excuse me, sir,’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t we care about poor people?"
He started up...
Mohamed Motala -
Both the President’s State of the Nation address delivered on 8 February 2009 and the Finance Minister's Budget Speech, which followed a few days later have told us that South Africa's 'policies' are in place and that the main problem facing our nation is poor implementation.
The State of the Nation address and the Budget Speech are the two most important policy agenda-setting opportunities that the two most powerful men in the country have at their disposal. They present opportunities...
Michelle Pressend -
Critics argue that leaders at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) were unable to provide solutions for the complex problems facing the world at the recent gathering in Davos.
These darlings of Davos are the very cooks that have stirred the awful stew the world finds itself in today. But finding solutions to the world’s woes would bring this group of people face to face with inner demons that they would prefer to keep locked away, along with their millions.
Capitalism is,...
