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?
Liepollo Pheko -
Africa is again becoming a “country” in the popular discourse of Western media intent on rebranding the entire continent as the eternal basket case.
Despite North Africa’s Arab Spring (which has inspired a global movement against corrupt and undemocratic leadership) and the birth of Africa’s 54th state, Southern Sudan (the result of the Sudanese people’s will expressed via a referendum), the idea of Africa as an uninterrupted landscape of human suffering...
Richard Pithouse -
It’s now almost three months since David Kato, a former teacher and a leading Ugandan gay rights activist, was beaten to death in Mukono Town in Uganda. Kato was living in Johannesburg in the salad days of our new democracy and, inspired by the progress made here in recognising the legal right of gay people to an equal humanity, he became a key figure in the Ugandan movement when he returned home in 1998.
Homosexuality was first criminalised in Uganda in the 19th century...
Jason Hickel -
The last decade has seen a remarkable surge in U.S. economic interest in the continent of Africa. Policymakers who once considered Africa the languid backwater of global economics are now rushing in to stake a claim in the continent’s enormous resource endowment. Most of this effort operates with a rhetoric focused on “partnership” and “development,” with the vision of using US trade and investment to lift Africans out of poverty. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary...
Glenn Ashton -
Conventional wisdom insists that our burgeoning global population requires ever increasing quantities of food to feed its numbers. We need to ask two questions of this received wisdom. Firstly, is it true that we need to produce more food? Secondly, are the proposed methods of increasing food production suitable, adequate or acceptable?
In order to provide improved food security for the significant proportion (anywhere between 1 and 3 billion people, depending on whose figures you believe)...
Michelle Pressend -
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) celebrated its 30th anniversary at this year’s SADC Summit on the 16th and 17th of August in Windhoek, Namibia. While heads of state congratulated themselves for achievements such as peace and stability - a prerequisite for sustained economic growth - in the region, the reality on the ground contrasts with their embellished sense of accomplishment.
Of approximately 250 million citizens in the SADC, 80% have no access to modern energy...
Karly Curcio -
Foreign aid programs continue to pour funds into what seems like Africa’s bottomless bucket. Illicit financial flows out of Africa are twice the amount of foreign aid into the region. Between 1970 and 2008, according to a study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), illicit flows from Africa totaled at least $854 billion, and could reach as high as $1.8 trillion when taking into account missing data from certain countries and other conduits of illicit flows not captured in the study....
