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?
Saliem Fakir -
World Cup soccer fever has swept across the country creating much euphoria and mesmerisation about South Africa’s ability to host the event and be part of the big league, as we have always strived to be.
The country seems to be caught in some sort of ecstatic purgatory.
Newspaper pages are filled with reports about what is happening on and off the soccer field. Gossip abounds, analysis of team performance is endless and national politics have taken a backseat for now -- to be replaced...
The only difference between watching the Soccer World Cup in Bethlehem and on the rest of the planet is that in this part of the world, a tournament aimed at uniting the people, is being beamed on a wall that separates them, reports Al Jazeera. This report takes us to the West Bank where a Palestinian restaurant is innovatively broadcasting World Cup matches on Israel's infamous apartheid wall. It's pulling in the crowds, but there’s still a tragic irony to this feel good story from...
Didier Jacobs -
They used to be seven. They embodied power and relished it. Other leaders envied their photo ops. They were the cream of the cream, the top of the top. They were the G7.
And now they are 20, and they meet in Toronto this week. The G20 is the Senate of our global government. It sets global economic policy, giving direction to an alphabet soup of global executive agencies, from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development...
Glenn Ashton -
In order to prevent criminal behaviour we are quite correctly forbidden to purchase goods which are suspected to be stolen or to be associated with criminal conduct. While an individual failure to heed this basic tenet of the law can result in personal conviction, a collective failure to observe it leads inevitably to a breakdown in both the rule of law and social order.
Modern commercial law has given similar legal status and rights to both individuals and corporations. People and...
Liepollo Pheko -
Reflecting on June 16th in the midst of the flag waving, lung busting, slightly mind-numbing festival that is the world Cup has become almost incidental. In years to come one wonders whether June 16th will be remembered more as the day that South Africa’s self respect on the soccer pitch was severely dented or as the day which commemorates our young martyrs in the struggle for freedom.
In fact, the state of our attention span is indicative of how we have reconstructed our collective...
The Upright Comedy Brigade (UCB) is an American comedy group that has satirised the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest in American history and an environmental disaster of mammoth proportions.
To hilarious effect, but also tragically highlighting catastrophic corporate fumbling in relation to this environmental disaster, UCB shows how BP handles a giant coffee spill.
The oil spill, which started on 20 April 2010 after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig...
