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?
Anastasia Churkina of Russia Today interviews Tom Engelhardt, author of the book American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's about the extent of America's military presence throughout the world.
Engelhardt is also founder of the blog TomDispatch, which tries to make sense of the post 9/11 world and is described as "a regular antidote to the mainstream media."
According to Engelhardt, the United States of America (US) has more or less set up bases of varying sizes all over...
Jane Duncan -
In an editorial in March this year, the Sunday Times newspaper warned against “a culture of political assassination,” becoming entrenched in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa, after the paper published allegations of the existence of a hit list of officials blocking access to tenders linked to the 2010 World Cup.
By that time, seven officials had died in mysterious circumstances, including the Mbombela Municipality's Speaker, Jimmy Mohlala.
The World Cup tender...
Glenn Ashton -
Water management in South Africa is in serious crisis. Consumers were recently told to wash their fruit and vegetables as they could be infected by disease causing E. coli microbes because the crops were irrigated with water contaminated by sewage.
Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is killing not just crocodiles but entire riverine eco-systems. Our dams, rivers and streams are becoming ever more stressed due to the low flows of water that remain in them because of illegal over-abstraction...
Brazilians have voted in Dilma Rousseff of the Worker's Party as the country's next president. She takes over from wildly popular outgoing president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has an approval rating of 83%. Rousseff, who was Lula's chief of staff, says she intends continuing Lula's legacy by carrying on with nearly all of his programmes.
Rousseff officially takes up her post as president of the country on 1 January 2011.
Rousseff defeated Jose Serra of the Social Democratic Party to...
Almost two thirds of world nations suffer from significant levels of corruption. Transparency International (TI) released a new corruption index on Tuesday.
Lack of transparency, accountability and good governance are behind record levels of global corruption, says the TI report.
This year, TI also mentions the global financial crisis and climate change as phenomena that have fueled corruption in some countries.
For example, for the first time in the 15-year history of the league table,...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) occurs in a deepening economic crisis; expressed most notably by the loss of over 1 million jobs in the last year. The prognosis going forward is dire, with government estimates on reaching our developmental goals painting a worrying picture.
According to official projections, as a society, we are unlikely to narrow the income gap, nor reach our employment targets. If there is a silver lining in South Africa’s Millennium Development...
