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?
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
There is some confusion over whether the idiom should be a "600 pound gorilla" or the much larger "800-pound" creature. The usage also differs with some using it as a form of praise for companies that have dominant positions in markets, and others using the idiom to describe a difficult situation, which is not being addressed.
One would hope that public policy analysis would be as simple as identifying the gorilla, but the power underlying public policy choices is...
Richard Pithouse -
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919
Kader Asmal was quite right to warn that powerful people in the African National Congress (ANC) are actively working to build an anti-democratic constituency. Fikile Mbalula's response, crafted with all the delicate subtlety of a blue light cavalcade shooting motorists out of its path, offered quick confirmation of the patently...
Dubbed by the National Review as "the most dangerous political philosopher in the West" and the New York Times as "the Elvis of cultural theory," Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Zizek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce...
Mohamed Motala -
South African politicians have recently made strong statements regarding the use of consultants in government. In June this year the premier of Gauteng Nomvula Mokonyane said that the province would be reviewing its relationships with consultants. This sentiment was reiterated more recently at the local government indaba where the minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka also made reference to the use of consultants in municipalities as one of the areas that...
According to United Nations Resolution 1820, rape is a war crime that must be responded to. However, the women of Congo are being abandoned by the world as the number raped recently reached 500,000. Rape is the weapon of choice in the war in Congo where competing militia fight over the country's valuable natural resources, particularly coltan, which is an essential mineral, used in cell phones and laptops. Worse still, neighbouring countries are fighting their wars on Congolese soil where...
Absolutely, says Professor Leo Panitch who teaches political economy at York University in Canada. "The American dollar is not going away as the global reserve currency. There is nothing that can possibly replace it," contends Panitch. The current speculation around the dollar needs to be seen in context, he says. That context is: Structurally, to be a global reserve currency, a country must have deep domestic financial markets and enormous institutional financial...
