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?
Fazila Farouk -
Throughout my encounters with the healthcare system, it's been the doctors that have left a lasting impression on me. I've wanted to say something about them for a long time. Long before the well-publicised doctors' strike started. After all, a visit to the doctor is an intensely personal experience.
The thing that I am most struck by is the number of doctors I have access to.
I am not one of those ill-fated South Africans referred to by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its...
Eamonn McCann -
Shuffling out from U2’s Popmart tour — the one with the McDonalds-style Golden Arch — at Lansdowne Road 10 years ago, I chanced on Philip King, singer, songwriter, television producer and music adviser to the Irish Arts Council.
"Whaddya think?"
"Whatever it is," pronounced the elfin Kerry sage, "it’s a fucking big one of them."
Which has always been the way with the emperors of bombast. Now they, or at least their stage sets, are...
Saliem Fakir -
Julius Malema may have been asked to put the cat amongst the pigeons to test the national waters on the question of the nationalisation of our mines and the general role of a more interventionist state in the national economy.
Since then, there has been a lot of rhetoric going to and fro. Some arguing that nationalisation will lead to disinvestment and job losses.
Fingers have been pointed at the state's incapacity to manage some of its own prized state enterprises, such as the SABC,...
Renowned journalist, Bill Moyers of America's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) interviews former health insurance industry executive, Wendell Potter and discovers that the industry devised a premeditated and intensive campaign to discredit filmmaker, Michael Moore's documentary about health care in America, Sicko. According to Moyers, the anti-Moore strategy document set out clear lines of attack to radicalize the filmmaker in the eyes of politicians, specifically Democrats. The message...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
As Professor Pink lead narrator on the SABC educational programme, 'Knock Knock', explored Galileo’s confrontation with power, the SABC was engaged in its own tryst with changing power.
President Thabo Mbeki appointed the board of the SABC in a move interpreted as incongruous with resolutions taken by the ANC at its Polokwane conference. In possibly an imaginary fisticuff with an ex-President, the admirable gusto of politicians arguing for a free press was expected. Cynics were left...
Richard Pithouse -
Across the country the most vulnerable people in our society are being subject to brazenly unlawful and often violent action at the hands of the state. Homeless people, refugees, sex workers, street traders and shack dwellers are all being taught, in the most literal sense of the term, to know their place. But state illegality is not only aimed at the segregation of physical space. It is also about ensuring that the people on the margins of society know their political place.
This is why...
