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?
Pepe Escobar -
The working title of the Edward Snowden movie is still The Spy Who Remains in the Cold. Here's where we stand:
Snowden could only fly out of Hong Kong because China allowed it.
Snowden could only arrive in Moscow because Russia knew it - in co-operation with China. This is part of their strategic relationship, which includes the BRICS group (along with Brazil, India and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. No official source though would ever confirm it....
Richard Pithouse -
In the last days of June, Nkululeko Gwala was assassinated in Cato Crest - a shack settlement in Durban that is in the process of being upgraded with formal housing. Just over three months ago Thembinkosi Qumbelo was gunned down in the same streets. Both men had been prominent figures in the increasingly bitter struggles around housing that have convulsed Cato Crest in recent months. There have been road blockades, a land occupation – named, as they often are these days,...
It's a standard assumption in the West: As a society progresses, it eventually becomes a capitalist, multi-party democracy. Right? Eric X. Li, a Chinese investor and political scientist, begs to differ. In this provocative, boundary-pushing talk, he asks his audience to consider that there's more than one way to run a successful modern nation.
In this TED Talk, Li argues that the universality claim of Western democratic systems is going to be "morally challenged" by China.
In...
Deadly violence is continuing in Egypt after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. On Monday July 8, at least 42 people were killed at the military site where Morsi is being detained. Meanwhile Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate and former head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, was tapped for the post of prime minister, but the decision to install him as PM was vetoed by an Islamist group participating in Egypt’s political process. However, Tamarod, the campaign...
Glenn Ashton -
Media coverage of the Obama-crew’s flash-mob blitz of South Africa showed the extent to which we have allowed ourselves to be policed by a force that continues to display apartheid era tactics. While Obama was touring Soweto legal demonstrators were treated to percussion grenades and teargas for protesting too vigorously.
South Africans have a proud history of peaceful protest, from the women’s march on Pretoria in the 1950s, the pass protests into the cities across the nation...
Francis Njubi Nesbitt -
Take your guns, pangas, and knives and throw them into the sea.
–Nelson Mandela.
"Who is this man Mandela?" The U.S News & World Report asked in January 1990. Apparently no one much knew, since the magazine could only come up with three short paragraphs about the ANC leader. This sketch of Mandela's life seemed to be drawn from a Who's Who collection, detailing his early education, legal practice, and arrest by South African authorities in August 1962. Referring to him...
