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?
Richard Pithouse -
In recent weeks people have been willing to risk arrest, violence and in some cases death at the hands of our habitually brutal police force to assert a whole range of demands. These demands have included an insistence on the right to the cities, the right to an income, the right to a decent education and the right to a living wage.
The issuing of these demands has often, in direct contrast to the legalism of much of civil society, taken the practical form of the assertion of rights...
Fazila Farouk -
Throughout my encounters with the healthcare system, it's been the doctors that have left a lasting impression on me. I've wanted to say something about them for a long time. Long before the well-publicised doctors' strike started. After all, a visit to the doctor is an intensely personal experience.
The thing that I am most struck by is the number of doctors I have access to.
I am not one of those ill-fated South Africans referred to by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its...
Stephen Greenberg -
Mike Malehase has a strange travelling companion when he moves between his home in Soweto and Vleifontein, a small service centre some 25km south-east of Makhado (formerly Louis Trichardt) in northern Limpopo. He carries a molasses block with him on the bus as a feed supplement for his growing herd of pure-bred Simmental cattle. Malehase, a young man in his early 30s, earns a living as a traditional healer in Soweto, but his passion is farming. He uses money from his healing business to...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Do individuals spend their money better than families? This foundational question in the design of income support programmes for the poor has not been robustly debated. Instead, the strong and robust debates have historically focussed on the possibilities of the universal provision of state income support through a Basic Income Grant (BIG).
During his inaugural State of the Nation address, President Jacob Zuma expressed ANC policy to mean that future expansion of the social grants...
Fazila Farouk -
Finland is known as the country with the best education system in the world. Since the year 2000, Finland has topped OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) ratings for the best education system overall. In 2008, Finland also joined Japan at the top of the leader board to produce the best science students in the world. Finland’s 15 year-olds are the most literate in the world.
Finland and South Africa are quite literally and figuratively, poles apart....
Richard Pithouse -
In the recent election the DA, together with COPE, made much of their intention to defend the rule of the law. But while the dust thrown up in that election is still settling, the City of Cape Town is already engaged in violent and unlawful behaviour towards its most vulnerable citizens.
On Tuesday 19 May, a group of backyard shack dwellers occupied a piece of vacant municipal owned land in Macassar Village, outside Cape Town. Rents for backyard shacks in the area can reach as high...
