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 -
Most South Africans are aware of the public spat between South Africa’s largest cellphone operators, MTN and Vodacom, on the one hand, and the smaller cellphone operators and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on the other.
The spat relates to Icasa’s attempt to bring down the cost of communications by gradually reducing the Mobile Termination Rates, or interconnection rates, through regulations. These are the rates that one network operator...
The Nobel Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has just issued their much-anticipated report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. The conclusions are dire: not only are the effects of climate change already occurring on every continent; the world is ill-prepared for what is to come. The report is authored by more than 300 scientists and it is part of a series of reports that are considered the most comprehensive assessments of climate...
Since 1970 global economic growth has quadrupled and is set to quadruple again by 2050. Economic growth is doing extremely well and yet there are some things that aren’t coming along with it. There is more deprivation, increased environmental degradation and growing inequality in the world. So what should economies be aimed at? Politicians are hung up on keeping the growth curve rising. But does GDP really tell us all we need to know about a country's wealth and well-being? In this...
John Feffer -
The people have spoken. They have elected a government. No, wait, I hear the angry shouts of a demonstration in the streets. “We are the people,” they are crying. The crowd is getting larger and larger. They are pressing against the gates of parliament and the presidential palace. And now the government has fallen. The people have spoken.
I don’t blame you for being just a little confused about the different claimants to the mantle of “the people” in the...
