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?
Saliem Fakir -
The reaction to Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century was to be expected – both great praise and rejection at the same time. Most studies on inequality, certainly, in the case of South Africa have tended to focus on the middle class, the employed worker and the unemployed through household surveys.
What Piketty’s book has done is to argue that economists have been focusing so much on the bottom of the economic pile that we have lost sight of what is...
Both mainstream and leftist economists are heaping praises on French economist, Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In his review of the book, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues, "The big idea of (the book) is that we haven't just gone back to 19th-century levels of income inequality, we're also on a path back to "patrimonial capitalism," in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled…by family dynasties...This is a book...
Frank Meintjies -
This has been a tough year as far as labour relations go. There have been numerous strikes and many of them have been characterised by violent clashes. The length of the strikes has also taken its toll. Companies, workers involved and members of the public have all faced the adverse effects of major labour conflicts.
The wave of strike action has triggered another round of the blame game. A huge segment of the public blames unions for strikes. Many go further and accuse unions of damaging...
Frank Meintjies -
Some workers earn nothing – they survive on tips. Some earn a daily rate that barely covers the costs of commuting to work and a square meal for the day. Then there are those who earn in the region of the median wage – about R3033 a month – but who fall prey to loan sharks and other debt collectors.
For these and many other reasons, South Africa cannot but consider a single statutory minimum wage. The mechanism has the potential to help stitch together the frayed edges of...
Author, Chrystia Freeland, looks under the hood of global capitalism to expose the technological, economic and structural inequalities pushing society in unforeseen directions. Technology is advancing in leaps and bounds -- and so is economic inequality, argues Freeland. In an impassioned talk, she charts the rise of a new class of plutocrats (those who are extremely powerful because they are extremely wealthy), and suggests that globalization and new technology are actually fueling, rather...
Frank Meintjies -
South Africa is battling the curse of inequality. Inequality impacts profoundly on other key issues, exacerbating social ills, eroding community cohesion, fanning societal conflict and, for us, injects a sense of urgency into next year’s national elections.
We are reaping the fruit of inequality. All the signs are that inequality in South Africa is linked to the high levels of violence, the type and frequency of xenophobic attacks, the pervasiveness of gender-based violence and...
