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?
Alexander O'Riordan -
Last week’s State of the Nation Address and the subsequent fallout is being voraciously dissected in the press. Most of the analysis, however, is on what the media presumes are unintended consequences of President Jacob Zuma’s poor planning.
But, what if none of what happened these past few days was unintended? What if everything that transpired down to the reaction of the opposition parties was meticulously planned and delivered exactly as our President expected.
I, for...
Kaja Baum -
There’s a new global development bank in town. And whether it stands to threaten or bolster the long entrenched World Bank and IMF, its presence will likely change the dynamics of development financing for the world.
The BRICS — a bloc of the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — announced last summer that they were founding a “New Development Bank” to compete with Western-dominated financial institutions. Each country has...
Mandisi Majavu -
Early this month, Serena Williams wrote an article for TIME magazine announcing that she has decided to end her 14-year boycott of the Indian Wells tennis tournament. The last time she played at the tournament in 2001, she was subjected to racial abuse. She recounts the whole incident in chapter four of her autobiography, My life: Queen of the court. According to Serena, throughout the whole match she was booed. She said she heard some members of the crowd shouting, “Nigger!”....
Chris Hedges -
BOSTON—“Fifty Shades of Grey,” the book and the movie, is a celebration of the sadism that dominates nearly every aspect of American culture and lies at the core of pornography and global capitalism. It glorifies our dehumanization of women. It champions a world devoid of compassion, empathy and love. It eroticizes hypermasculine power that carries out the abuse, degradation, humiliation and torture of women whose personalities have been removed, whose only desire is to...
Professor Steven Friedman talks about his new book, "Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of Apartheid". In the book, Friedman interrogates Wolpe’s ideas to engage with issues affecting modern-day South Africa.
Drawing on Wolpe's work, he argues that the role of private power in South Africa today is important to understand. “Anybody who believes that the future of this country is dependent on one political party isn't paying...
Saliem Fakir -
Last week the Mining Indaba came and went just like it does every year. Some 7,000 people attended. On its margins, outside of the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), a different kind of mining indaba, a people’s indaba, took place in close by Woodstock. This was the 5th Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI), which serves as a counterpoint to the industry event. AMI voices always struggle to find their way into the CTICC, but the chorus from the margins is growing stronger with...
