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?
Imraan Buccus -
Recently we heard the shocking news about a community in the North West that went about burning schools because they were unhappy with a gravel road that was meant to be tarred. To make matters worse school children were prevented from going to school, in an attempt at getting the local authority to act.
Now, sixteen years into democracy, this is very difficult to understand. Why would a community behave this way? Should government respond by saying that those schools will not be...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa is located at ground zero for HIV and TB. Our health is further impacted by the ravages of poverty and poor diet. When a treatable illness becomes a chronic condition, people cannot work regularly or properly. An unhealthy nation is a dysfunctional nation.
Health is one of the fundamental human rights recognised by both the UN Declaration of Human Rights and by our Constitution. The manner in which this right is constitutionally framed is important, as it not only...
Jane Duncan -
Last November, Grahamstown-based media activist Xola Mali produced a documentary about the plight of residents in the Vukani settlement, Grahamstown East. Previously an informal settlement, Vukani now consists mostly of Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, which were completed in 2003. Mali interviewed a resident and activist, Nomiki Ncamiso, who sustained injuries after the wall of her RDP house collapsed on her and injured her leg when a mini-tornado struck the...
Richard Pithouse -
After Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato was slapped in Blikkiesdorp, the police have warned politicians not to enter the area without police backup.
Blikkiesdorp is a government built shack settlement on the barren sands of Delft, outside of Cape Town. With rows of tin shacks, razor wire fencing, invasive lighting and armoured vehicles at the gated entrance, it looks like a concentration camp. To his credit the local police chief describes Blikkiesdorp as a 'housing time-bomb' close to...
Jackie Dugard -
On 08 October 2009, the Constitutional Court handed down its first water rights judgment. The case – Mazibuko & Others v City of Johannesburg & Others – was brought by five impoverished residents in Phiri, Soweto, on behalf of themselves, all similarly-situated residents and everyone in the public interest. The applicants challenged the City’s free basic water policy for being insufficient to meet the basic needs of large, poor, multi-dwelling households. They also...
Stephen Greenberg -
In early September Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform announced a moratorium on share equity schemes as a model for land reform. The immediate response from the mainstream media was to rush to the defence of share equity as the “most commercially successful land reform model to date”. But we need to ask what commercial success is, and who has benefited from it through share equity schemes in practice?
Share equity schemes were introduced early on in the land...
