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?
South Africa (SA) has the largest economy on the African continent worth about $300bn and could be an engine of growth. But SA’s growth is stymied by its extreme inequality, which places a drag on growth, argues professor of economics, Leonce Ndikumana of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
One challenge facing the SA economy is that it is a typical capitalist economy where the proceeds and the gains from growth basically accrue mostly to capital. The owners of capital get...
Leonard Gentle -
The decision of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) to cut ties with the African National Congress (ANC) has received poor analysis. Comment has tended to focus on the possibility of a new political party in 2019 or whether all this means that Zwelenzima Vavi will get his job back. As such, the greater significance of the biggest trade union in the country throwing in its lot with a growing movement in opposition to the neo-liberal order, and thus to the left of the...
A new generation of reader is sourcing and consuming news via non-traditional platforms. As the relationship between the press and the web rapidly develops, questions continue to arise over the future of print, and the impact the Internet is having on quality journalism. "Is traditional media actually dying and does it matter?", is the question put to a panel of editors by George Brock, Head of Journalism, at City University in the UK. In this interesting panel hosted by the...
Gillian Schutte -
Brown issues, in environmental jargon, refer to the environmental impact of pollution on communities living in the ambit of big industry. This is the very issue that has been highlighted by the recent Kagiso Extension 1 community uprising against the Mintails gold mining operation on the West Rand of Gauteng. Mintails, an Australian owned company, has been practicing opencast mining and blasting only 100 meters from people’s homes in Kagiso, which, the community say, has resulted in...
Comedian-actor-writer Russell Brand who not so long ago guest edited an edition of New Statesman has emerged as a celebrity with vocal political views. In a recent talk with students at Cambridge University, Brand discusses an interesting array of social, political and economic issues articulating that definitive anti-establishment critique that he is increasingly gaining popularity for. Offering a unique brand of enlightenment and entertainment, Brand manages to inject comedic sauciness...
Every cell in the human body has a sex, which means that men and women are different right down to the cellular level. Yet too often, research and medicine ignore this insight as well as the startlingly different ways in which the two sexes respond to disease or treatment. As pioneering doctor Paula Johnson describes in this thought-provoking talk, lumping everyone together means we essentially leave women's health to chance. Women are not getting the full benefit of modern science and...
