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?
Bronwynne Pereira and Nadine Hutton’s pictorial narrative provides a stirring account of the shameful events that shook South Africa during the outbreak of attacks on foreigners. Their photographic compilation follows the unfolding chronology of the event, showing the focused purpose of the perpetrating mobs, the trauma of the victims and the impact that the attacks have had on broader South Africa. Indeed, we can longer lay claim to being “Proudly South African”.
Glenn Ashton -
Our government is well known for making bizarre decisions. Lets not even go into Eskom, ARVs, the HIV and AIDS ‘debate’, or the arms deals for that matter. Even the small things like why a perfectly good policy on plastic bags was undermined by vested interests, how market related interests constantly trump social interests in seemingly obscure ways all are actions that force us to ask just what was behind that decision?
One of the major swings of policy by our new government was...
Black immigrants in South Africa have been bearing the brunt of unfair discrimination for some time. Timechanging have produced a three-part documentary series showing that the brutality of the recent attacks against immigrants in the townships of Gauteng are really the tip of the iceberg in a long saga of hardship and humiliation that black foreigners in South Africa, especially Zimbabweans, face. See South Africa: The New Apartheid (Part 2) here. See South Africa: The New Apartheid (Part...
Ibrahim Steyn -
Democracy is often presented as an unproblematic concept ubiquitously associated with political competition between rival parties or candidates. Simply put, it’s about people’s ability to elect a political regime or leaders of their choice.
Such a neutral definition of democracy obscures issues of power and vested interests. Africa’s political elite, for example, have been perpetuating a client-patron model of politics inherited from their colonial predecessors. This has...
This Al Jazeera report contends that middle class South Africans, are shopping themselves into a debt hole, living beyond their means trying to maintain a flashy lifestyle they cannot afford. Easy borrowing has fueled in-debtedness. The debt to income ratio is over 70% and we have the banks, who've been dishing out credit without verifying people's ability to service their debt, to thank for this situation.
This Al Jazeera report examines the housing crisis in South Africa. Haru Mutasa visits the shack settlement, Sun City, located in the Eastern Cape.
