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?
Alternet Staff -
Hospital facing lawsuit after complying with a swastika-tattooed father's request that only white nurses care for his child.
In Michigan (USA), a neonatal nurse reports that she was removed from her job because of a Swastika-tattooed father who didn’t want his daughter treated by any African Americans.
The nurse, Tonya Battle, had been working at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan, since 1988. Yet when a newborn girl came into the neonatal intensive care unit recently,...
Snatching people off the streets. Hanging people from the ceiling. A man freezing to death alone on a concrete floor. This is the story of how the United States used its position to cajole, persuade and strong-arm 54 other countries to take part in the CIA’s post-9/11 campaign of secret detention and torture. The Open Society Justice Initiative has released a 216-page report, “Globalising Torture” that exposes the extent of detentions and torture carried out in the name of...
From the tragedy at Marikana to the farm workers' strikes at De Doorns, it is evident that the South African economy is not working for the poor. At the same time, President Jacob Zuma campaigned on a ticket of "economic transformation" in the run up to his re-election as president of the ANC at Mangaung.
Will the ANC succeed in its quest for transformative economic development during President Zuma’s second term in office? Is this president Zuma's Lula moment? On 8...
Paul Jay of the Real News Network talks to Patrick Bond about the African Mining Indaba that took place in South Africa last week. Bond is the director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. While the nationalisation of mines is off the table, Bond argues that what we are seeing in South Africa is "an intensification of class and state capital struggles over mining."
Also watch this report for interesting remarks from Bond about the political...
For the past four years that the US’ drone programme has been operational, President Barack Obama, with John Brennan for some of that time, has been sitting down and deciding who gets killed. On Thursday, 7 February 2013, for the first time, the Obama administration released documents to explain the legal basis for the drone attacks to a select senate committee on intelligence.
Human rights lawyer, Michael Ratner, argues that despite the release of these legal documents, the drone...
Adele M. Stan -
Not since the 15th century has a pope resigned his throne. Speculation abounds regarding the pope's unusual decision. Was it the sex-abuse scandal?
Pope Benedict XVI stunned the Roman Catholic Church -- and the world -- with his announcement that he would turn in his sceptre, effective February 28. To find a precedent for Benedict's action, one needs to go back through six centuries of history to Pope Gregory XII's resignation in 1415.
In a statement issued in Latin, the pope wrote:...
