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.
David Morris -
Since 1945 the number of nations has soared from about 60 to more than 180. The first wave of new sovereign states came with the decolonization movement of the 1960s and 1970s; the second in the early 1990s with the break-up of the Soviet Union. If Scotland votes for independence it may ignite a third wave. Dozens of would-be nations are waiting in the wings: Wales, Catalonia (Spain), Flanders (Belgium), Brittany (France), the list is long.
In 1957 in his classic...
A Link TV report on three important mining battles.
United States of America
An impoverished former mining community in Colorado hopes that a proposed uranium mill will bring jobs and prosperity until environmentalists step in to try to stop it. Who gets to decide? Filmmaker Suzan Beraza documents the debate in her new film Uranium Drive-In.
South Africa
Rhinos are killed for their horn. But now in South Africa they face a new threat -- coal. Plans for an open cast coal mine on the...
Saliem Fakir -
There are three aspects of energy supply that lend themselves to shifting the diversification of a national economy. The mix of supply should reduce dependence on any source, especially if the source creates a foreign dependence or a systems path-dependence that eventually leads to wider risks for the general economy.
In South Africa, coal is becoming too constraining. Our long-term dependence on coal for the majority of our energy, both electricity and liquid fuels, makes it hard to...
Ayesha Jacub -
Sometimes it takes a crisis to test existing structures and expose all the fault lines. Ebola has been pummelling its way through West Africa and in addition to the lives claimed by the epidemic, it has exposed the state of Global Health’s leadership as well as the current paradigms through which we view health at the global level.
Leadership
When the first warning calls about the severity of the current Ebola epidemic came from the quarters of the NGO Medecins sans frontieres,...
A health journalist estimates that a quarter of a million people could become affected by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa by the time Christmas arrives this year. The global response to the crisis has been extremely poor. Rich countries are showing little interest in mounting an adequate response, while the World Health Organisation itself is guilty of ignoring the situation when the virus could have been contained in its early stages. Meanwhile Cuba is the only country in the world that...
Siphokazi Magadla -
“All we are asking is that he pay back the money, why are we getting thrown out?” was the question that came from a parliamentary member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who was identified in a Voice of America news report, as “Female EFF member” on 21 August, the day the EFF chanted “pay back the money”, to a humiliated and ill-looking Jacob Zuma. Right before Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the EFF spokesperson started chanting, I hoped for a longer exchange...
