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?
Richard Pithouse -
The degeneration of the African National Congress has reached the point where it poses a clear and present danger to the integrity of society. Julius Malema is one of the more flamboyant examples of how a movement committed to national liberation has become, in the words of Frantz Fanon, ‘a means of private advancement’. But Malema is hardly alone. The Communication Workers Union is entirely correct to have diagnosed an ‘embedded and deep-seated Kebble-ism’ within the...
F. William Engdal, economist and author of "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order" has recently written about the possibility of a massive oil find in Haiti and how this might connect to United States (US) strategy in the Caribbean. Engdal says, if you look at a geophysical map of Haiti, it jumps out that Haiti and ‘Porto Prince Haiti’ lies right along the convergence of three tectonic plates. Generally where there is such a...
Robert Miller -
Book: Small Change - Why Business Won't Save the World
Author: Michael Edwards
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler
Reviewer: Robert Miller
Michael Edwards spent years working for such organizations as Oxfam International, Save the Children, and the World Bank. Before writing Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World, he directed the Ford Foundation's Governance and Civil Society program. With this knowledge and expertise, Edwards challenges the notion that...
Leonard Gentle -
I have vivid memories of Budget Day as a child. Everyone in the house, particularly noisy children, had to be quiet when the radio broadcasted the budget speech (there was of course no TV then). Maybe it was because my parents were schoolteachers and the matters of teachers’ salaries and tax rates in the budget were crucial to their livelihoods. But they were not alone in this regard. In the build-up, every newspaper and every radio station would alert readers and listeners to the...
When it comes to "improving the state of the world" - the goal of the World Economic Forum - CEOs and politicians have been known to disappoint. But, prankster filmmakers found a solution that helps them say all the right things, writes Brook Jarvis. Each year, political and business leaders travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to discuss “improving the state of the world.” The Yes Men (the prankster duo that has been re-writing corporate history...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
What is to be done? Minister Pravin Gordhan asked the question in his inaugural budget speech. There was a slight pause after he asked the question. He then broke from the written text to say, "Some of you will know where that comes from." The obvious reference was to the title of a political and theoretical article written by Lenin, and in so doing suggestive of a leftist orientation to the budget.
Minister Gordhan then went on to eloquently explain the exemplary objectives that...
