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?
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, an independent weekly journal that's been in publication since 1865, talks about what it means to be a modern liberal. Katrina vanden Heuvel: For me it does begin with a kind of non-corporate approach to life. It begins with a world that is more peaceful, more just. It begins with the mantra, which informed the Obama campaign's best part in my view, which is the organizing from below, which was about respect, inclusion, opportunity, empowerment....
Stephen Greenberg -
One thing that almost everyone across the political spectrum can agree on is that land reform in South Africa is in crisis. The pace of transfer is consistently slower than planned for, and much redistributed land is not being used productively. Government policies favour land redistribution, but land use models are not so clearly defined. In the absence of creative thinking about how land can be used, government has defaulted to a position that commercial agriculture is the only viable...
In the clip above, Amy Goodman talks to Maude Barlow about the global water crisis and examines the documentary film "FLOW - for love of water", a film about how the privatization of water is diminishing the world's supply of water. Barlow is the head of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy organization, and founder of the Blue Planet Project. In a later interview, Goodman talks to Barlow again as well as Irena Salina, the producer of the movie FLOW. Some...
Mohamed Motala -
Both the President’s State of the Nation address delivered on 8 February 2009 and the Finance Minister's Budget Speech, which followed a few days later have told us that South Africa's 'policies' are in place and that the main problem facing our nation is poor implementation.
The State of the Nation address and the Budget Speech are the two most important policy agenda-setting opportunities that the two most powerful men in the country have at their disposal. They present opportunities...
Saliem Fakir -
The recently released Framework for South Africa’s Response to the International Economic Crisis (19 February 2009), by the Presidency, calls for all South Africans to work together and build social solidarity to get us out of this crisis.
But how the one part of South Africa comes to the party with the other is entirely asymmetric, as the weaker half will come limping rather than race to the cause.
The document declares noble ideals to strive for. To get there and build a truly...
Glenn Ashton -
It is clear that we have entered a global economic fire-storm. There are inevitable comparisons between the Great Depression which also began on Wall Street and which will affect each of us, where ever we live, as if we were US citizens.
Besides comparisons being odious, no two historical events are ever identical in either cause or effect. There certainly may be similarities between the Great Depression and the Pretty Damn Massive One into which we are now sinking. Those in the navigation...
