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?
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa remains stuck in the telecommunication doldrums, a victim of its own apathy. There have been massive investments in unprecedented interconnectivity with the rest of world yet our internet speeds, cost and accessibility remain uncompetitive. The country is missing out for failing to hook into the high speed internet revolution, despite years of promises from the state to break a logjam largely of its own making.
South Africa presently has average internet speeds of 2.3 Mb per...
In 1985, architect Paul Pholeros was challenged by the director of an Aboriginal-controlled health service to "stop people getting sick" in a small indigenous community in south Australia. The key insights: think beyond medicine and fix the local environment. In this sparky, interactive talk, Pholeros describes projects undertaken by Healthabitat, the organization he now runs to help reduce poverty - through practical design fixes - in Australia and beyond. A large proportion of...
Chris Hedges -
NEW YORK—What is it that makes a rebel? Why does one willingly step outside society to destroy a system of power, break the law and risk persecution and even death for an ideal? As the state calcifies into corporate totalitarianism, as prominent rebels such as Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are defamed by a bankrupt media and political class and hunted down as criminals, as change through the established mechanisms of reform becomes impossible, as systems of power...
Liz Langley -
I’m late for one of my jobs and after noting my empty gas tank and fighting with a broken car door, I pray to a god I don’t believe in to get me through the first traffic light, which is the longest light on the earth. Children have been conceived, born, and taught to read while waiting for it to turn green. I need to breeze through it.
Of course, this means some pinhead not only cuts me off but then pokes along in front of me at 10mph, assuring that we’ll both be sitting...
Many of the millions of Brazilians who were lifted out of poverty in the last decade are included in the formal economy - that's very much to the credit of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Lula - but the basic structures of the way life works in Brazil still have not changed. That's what the current wave of protests in Brazil are all about, argues Julia Michaels, founder and editor of Rioreal blog. Even though President Rousseff comes from the left, her government...
Mandisi Majavu -
Although recent newspaper reports that the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Socialist Party of Azania (Sopa) are to merge ought to be welcomed by those of Black Consciousness (BC) tradition, the fact of the matter is that the BC tradition in South Africa is intellectually stuck in the 20th century. According to the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM), proponents of the BC tradition have not been able to rethink BC politics for a new situation. The new situation being...
