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 -
Common sense suggests that budgets follow plans, not the other way around. Beyond the headline results of the budget, a closer look at the finance minister’s 2014 budget reveals significant contradictions and suggests a disconnect concerning the relationship between plans and budgets. Consequently, the minister’s budget allocations are far from optimal for us to reach the twin goals of reducing unemployment and decreasing inequality.
Minister Pravin Gordhan once tabled the idea...
Gillian Schutte -
In January this year, between 8-10 protestors were killed by the police in service delivery protests, four of them simply for rising up to demand a most basic right - water. This is a contravention of human rights on many levels and while it sent shock waves through poor black working class and marginalized communities, the broader middle class did not react at all.
In fact, the silence from South Africa’s middle class was resounding and mystifying. Instead of outrage they have...
In Venezuela, opposition party supporters are on the streets calling for President Nicolas Maduro’s resignation. Protestors are largely students from the middle and upper middle class segments of the populations that attend elite universities. There are actually many thousands of students in the Bolivarian University and other universities that haven't participated.
Venezuelan expert, Gregory Wilpert, argues that the opposition’s frustration has been boiling under the surface...
Ukraine is in a state of crisis two days after the country’s democratically elected president was ousted following months of street protests that left at least 82 people dead. On Saturday, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych, a move Yanukovych described as a coup. Ukraine’s new leaders also announced the ousted president was wanted for mass murder of peaceful protesters. Russia condemned the move to oust Yanukovych and recalled its ambassador...
Talking about the nationalisation debate in relation to the mining industry in South Africa, black economic empowerment (BEE) expert Duma Gqubule explains that the value of untapped mineral resources in South Africa’s is US$4.7 trillion. Put differently, the value of these mineral resources is worth one million Rand per South African citizen. Gqubule argues that the mistake our country made in relation to BEE was to set a target of 25% for black people. By definition, a black...
According to David Puttnam, "Those in the media set the tone and the context for much of our democratic discourse. Democracy, in order to work, requires that reasonable men and women take the time to understand and debate difficult, sometimes complex issues and they do so in an atmosphere which strives for the type of understanding that leads to, if not agreement, than at least a productive and workable compromise. Politics is about choices and within those choices politics is about...
