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?
Dale T. McKinley -
There are few conflicts - especially when money, power and ego are at their centres - that are more intense, brutal and destructive than those involving family members. In this sense, and in case we might have forgotten, at the heart of the more recent and ongoing battles between the incumbent ANC leadership and their Youth League counterparts lies a long-running and ongoing internecine war within the broad ‘family’ of the ANC itself. As shocked and disappointed as many - both...
Noam Chomsky -
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.
A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He...
A new report by the Center for American Progress called "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" shows how a small group of self-proclaimed experts backed by a host of donors are spreading fear and hostility toward Muslims in the United States. According to the report, these so-called experts peddle Islamophobia in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs and carefully crafted anti-Islam talking points.
It also notes that right-wing Norwegian murderer...
Liepollo Pheko -
Africa is again becoming a “country” in the popular discourse of Western media intent on rebranding the entire continent as the eternal basket case.
Despite North Africa’s Arab Spring (which has inspired a global movement against corrupt and undemocratic leadership) and the birth of Africa’s 54th state, Southern Sudan (the result of the Sudanese people’s will expressed via a referendum), the idea of Africa as an uninterrupted landscape of human suffering...
Jan Gehl, architect, urban planner, and author of Cities for People, discusses what he calls "bird shit architecture," a trend in urban planning that originated in the 1950's and persists to the present day. This type of architecture, he explains, is designed to look good from a plane, but is not practical for the actual residents of a city.
He uses the example of the city of Brasilia, capital of Brazil, one of the most famous modernistic cities, to illustrate his point. "From...
Jane Duncan -
A significant debate has arisen between Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Ngoako Ramatlhodi and the University of Cape Town’s Pierre de Vos on the appropriateness of South Africa remaining a constitutional state.
In an article in The Times newspaper, Ramatlhodi argued that the supremacy of the constitution is disempowering the democratically elected government, whose decisions are second-guessed by a judiciary that still remains largely untransformed.
Ramatlhodi...
