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?
Visit the archives.
Jane Duncan -
How many South Africans are aware of the massive changes in the pipeline for free-to-air television? Not many, it would seem.
Most countries need to switch off their analogue signals and replace them with digital signals by 2015, by agreement with the International Telecommunications Union. In South Africa, this means that existing television viewers will need to buy set top boxes for approximately R700 to decode the digital signal, so that they can continue to receive television on...
Nicholas Pell -
What a difference a year makes. It's hard to believe that this time in 2011, the world was abuzz over the Arab Spring. Flying in the face of the "death of history" narrative, the Arab Spring shocked the world by overturning some of its most entrenched authoritarian governments. Soon after, Occupy Wall Street became the American protest movement, both inspired by actions in the Arab world, as well as urging young Arabs on to further action. It seems pretty safe to say that the 21st...
Ex-Johannesburger, Greg Smith, is a Goldman Sachs executive that sent ripples through establishment circles with his whistle-blowing op-ed, published in the New York Times on Wednesday 14 March 2012 about why he resigned from the investment bank at the centre of the 2008 financial crisis.
The op-ed titled, "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" was published on Smith's last day at the firm. It is a damning critique of the unaccountable greed-fueled corporate culture at Goldman Sachs, a...
A video documentary produced by the American NGO, Invisible Children, titled "Kony 2012", that essentially calls for the capture of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), has gone viral on the Internet with over 100 million views in a very short period of time. The documentary, which shows atrocities committed by the LRA, particularly, its use and abuse of child soldiers, has led to many young Americans and others in the international community calling on the...
Saliem Fakir -
Environmentalists in South Africa are largely seen as lone and desperate voices. Often they are perceived to be white and middle-class, but that is changing slowly.
Environmentalists remain at the margins of the mainstream economy and outside of key decision-making channels. Where they cannot control the excesses and harm belched out of the belly of a gluttonous economy, they mop up the aftermath.
Their fire fighting battles range from dealing with issues such as acid mine drainage to...
Presidential elections in Venezuela are scheduled for October this year. President Hugo Chavez is currently in Cuba getting medical treatment for cancer. Chavez has undergone a successful operation to have a small tumor removed -- reportedly not as big as the one he had last year. It seems that none of the neighbouring cells were affected, so he will be receiving localized radiation therapy over the next few weeks.
Paul Jay of The Real News Network talks to Gregory Wilpert of...
