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?
Anna Majavu -
The latest electricity price hike of 14.6% will hit the poor hard - as usual - but in fact it is the least of their worries.
Despite South Africa’s sunny and windy climate, and the availability of huge areas of deserted land where wind and solar power farms could be erected, the ruling party is continuing its love affair with the Russian, French and Chinese nuclear corporations currently trying to sell us their nuclear power stations. Once the poor get saddled with the interest...
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Syrian activist tells Democracy Now! that the people of Syria need popular solidarity from the global community as well as support for their armed struggle against the Assad regime. However, she is adamant that Syrians do not seek international military intervention.
"People here think that the United States and Turkey and some powerful countries in the world will get into Syria after Assad falls. This is the general feeling here in the...
Gillian Schutte -
“Africa your silence is loud! Speak out against patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia.”
So reads one of the many sloganed T-shirts worn by LGBTI rights protestors at the “Say No to Hate Crimes” picket at the Library Gardens yesterday. Other’s read: “My Sexuality, My Choice”, “Phansi Holomisa!” and “Zuma – your silence is killing our brothers.”
The gardens are decorated with bright pink hard hats and gay...
Inspired by Einstein, Vandana Shiva, became a nuclear physicist, but turned her attention to food security and environmental issues early in her career. Much of her work focuses on protecting indigenous seeds.
Shiva takes a strong stand against genetically modified seeds, which are "more costly and leave local farmers deep in debt as well as dependent on suppliers. Shiva, who founded a movement in India to promote native seeds, links genetic tinkering to problems in our ecology,...
"Journalism is really being remade all the time," says leading new-media academic, Adrienne Russell, who examines the underlying cultural changes that reflect the new news reality. A new style of networked journalism has taken shape in the larger media landscape based on new products, tools, new players and sensibilities.
While the rise of the web and the fall of newspapers has heightened anxieties about the watchdogging role of journalism, Russell argues that journalism is also...
Richard Pithouse -
Corruption in South Africa is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in countries like India or Italy. But it is becoming an increasingly ordinary part of the texture of every day life. It is certainly a serious issue and its certainly obscene that even state projects with as urgent a social function as providing school books and housing to the poor are taken more seriously in some quarters as opportunities for personal enrichment than as collective social obligations. Its equally obscene that...
