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?
Jane Duncan -
South Africans have become used to certain parts of the state being efficient, while other parts are plagued by chronic inefficiency, to the point where many dread having to deal with them.
The parastatal South African National Roads Agency, supported by the government, has finally swung into action in Gauteng, bullying road users to buy e-tags and pay exorbitant toll fees. On the same day that the e-toll system went live, thousands of commuters took to alternative routes to find their way...
What exactly is progressive politics? BBC's HARDtalk speaks to political philosopher, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, President Obama's former Harvard law professor who also served as Minister of Strategic Affairs in Brazil under President Lula. Unger who describes himself as a radical democrat, has an ambitious take on what it means to be progressive. He argues, "On the whole, throughout the world today, the progressives have no project. Their project is the project of their conservative...
Richard Pithouse -
[D]eath is always close by, and what's important is not to know if you can avoid it, but to know that you have done the most possible to realize your ideas.
- Frantz Fanon, 1961.
As a boy without a father of his own and living as a ward of the Thembu Regent, Jongintaba Dalindyebo, at his Great Place at Mqekezweni in the green hills of the Transkei, Rolihlahla Mandela heard stories about people like Nongqawuse and Makana, people who had passed into the realm of myth. When he washed...
Frank Meintjies -
Each year we greet the ‘16 days of Activism to end violence against women and children’ with the usual mixed feelings. This is the dilemma - without it, there would be less awareness-raising on the issue. Yet the campaign is woefully inadequate. It has become co-opted by the establishment; it has become so routinized that key organisations leave their planning till late; key activists openly question the effectiveness of the campaign and, for many institutions, the “16...
Arturo Lopez-Levy -
Just before Thanksgiving, Cuban-American families who had hoped to spend the holidays with their Cuban relatives got some bad news.
On November 26th, Cuba suspended consular services — including the issuing of passports and visas — at its interest section in Washington. The move came after the Buffalo-based M & T Bank announced this summer that it would stop providing Cuba with banking services in the United States. The Cuban government could not find another bank to take...
War reporting is a difficult and dangerous game, and that's the case when those wars are declared and fought out in the open. Then there are the undeclared wars in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia fought through drone strikes and black ops teams -- covert military operations that officials barely even acknowledge. Those are the kinds of wars that Jeremy Scahill covers. Scahill made his name in 2007 with a book on Blackwater, the US military contractor that was paid big money by...
