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?
The White House has announced that President Obama intends to remove Cuba from the U.S. government's list of nations that sponsor terrorism. This issue was discussed by presidents Obama and Castro on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas that took place in Panama City last week. Aviva Chomsky, author of The Cuba Reader and A History of the Cuban Revolution comments on diplomatic developments between the two nations. She argues that the presence of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of...
Femke Brandt -
The Labour Relations Amendment Act of 2014 (section 198 of the LRA) introduces important new rights for labour broker, contract and part-time workers. Two issues emerge in relation to how these new labour rights affect farmworkers in the Karoo. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that the amendments will improve the lives of farmworkers directly. The introduction of more progressive rights for farmworkers is resulting in a backlash from farmers. Secondly, these new rights or yet another round of...
Dale T. McKinley -
Amongst its many other attributes, South Africa could arguably be called the Commission capital of the world.
While there is no official list of how many Commissions of Inquiry there have been in the 20 years since 1994, suffice to say that the numbers are impressive. In the last 14 years alone there have been no less than 10 national-level, high profile Commissions of Inquiry - five of which have yet to run their course - accompanied by scores of others emanating from the executives and...
Deidre Fulton -
Award-winning Uruguayan writer and thinker Eduardo Galeano, considered a leading voice of Latin America's left, has died at 74.
The world-renowned author, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer, died in Montevideo on Monday.
The novelist and journalist—whose work transcended genre and who once said "all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti"—was the prolific author of books including Memory of Fire, a three-volume narrative of the history of North and...
Uruguayan anti-capitalist writer, Eduardo Galeano, died on Monday, April 13, 2015 aged 74. In this 2009 interview, he talks about his penultimate book, “Mirrors: Stories of almost everyone”, a book comprising his reflections on the lives of the invisible and oppressed.
Galeano said, “We are afraid because the owners of power are also the owners of a big factory of fear. The world is a big factory of fear…You are afraid of losing your job or not finding a job or...
Jane Duncan -
In the broader scheme of things, how significant are the recent wave of protests that have engulfed South Africa over the past decade? Are they another means of pressurising the ruling African National Congress (ANC) into delivering better services, or do they represent a new form of anti-systemic politics that promises to change how society is organised, and for the better?
Scholars are divided on this issue. On the one hand, the South African Research Chair in Social Change –...
