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?
Peer reviewed literature in the medical field is misleading cautions Ben Goldacre, a doctor, who argues that when it comes to drug tests, "positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine." In other words, when a new drug gets tested, all the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world to see - except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go...
Alexander Reed Kelly -
A bold experiment is under way in the world’s fifth-largest economy: As part of a recovery plan aimed at plugging a $48 billion hole in the French budget, leftist President Francois Hollande announced last week a 75 percent tax on the personal incomes of anyone earning more than $1.3 million a year, effective for two years beginning in 2013.
The decision has some of the country’s top earners, led in the media by cosmetics tycoon Jean-Paul Agon, suggesting that the new rules...
Glenn Ashton -
Recently government ministers were asked what schools their children attend. Only Angie Motshekga, Minister of Education, responded, admitting her children attended a private institution. Everyone else refused to answer, arguing that this was private information, which was not in the public interest. Their silence spoke volumes.
The state spends approximately R16 000 on each learner every year. The education budget devours more than 20% of our national budget as the biggest single budget...
Seeraj Mohamed, Director of Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development, School of Economic and Business Sciences, Wits University, talks about the increasing role of finance in the South African economy, tracing its roots to the apartheid era.
We've seen a process of policy continuation from the apartheid government to the ANC-led government in following a model of liberalizing the economy by emulating the policies of the US and the UK, contends Mohamed.
He elaborates - as South...
Richard Pithouse -
Only the crudest propagandist would dare to deny that the ANC is an increasingly predatory and authoritarian excrescence on society rather than a democratic expression of society. It is equally clear that the party confronts what is arguably the highest rate of sustained popular protest anywhere in the world, has overwhelmingly lost the support of the intelligentsia and is increasingly resorting to violence and other forms of repression to contain dissent.
COSATU, unlike the SACP which...
Sabrina Artel -
South African farmers went to the US to see what fracking might do to their land -- and what they learned terrified them. An American activist documents their experience and concerns.
South Africa announced the end to its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (known as fracking) on September 7. The African National Congress-led government first declared the moratorium on fracking in April 2011 because of the growing public outcry. This controversial technique for extracting natural gas is a...
