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?
Dale T. McKinley -
“A council member told me we are too dirty to fish there … they are putting on a party to tell the world it is a beautiful country, but poor people are being trampled on.” That’s what Durban fisherman Khalil Adam told a journalist after hearing that he and thousands of fellow fisherfolk had been barred from Durban’s piers just a few months before South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
And, what was the reasoning behind Durban...
Frank Meintjies -
Many of the deep-seated social and developmental problems facing South Africa today link back to the transition processes of the early1990s.
The issue is not that we should not have had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) or Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). Rather, the problem is that we saw these processes – adopted as political necessity – as “end points” rather than the beginnings of far reaching changes. And the concern is that we are...
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...
On 1 August 2013, SACSIS’ Fazila Farouk spoke to renowned social commentator, author and public figure, Professor Sampie Terreblanche, who has spent many years researching and writing about South Africa’s poverty and inequality.
Terreblanche argues that the ANC’s embrace of the neoliberal approach for economic development is the wrong model for South Africa. He argues further that the ruling party has used the public purse to facilitate an elite transition through black...
Fazila Farouk -
United States (US) President, Barack Obama’s trip to South Africa is a contentious issue that has animated media reporting and provided the necessary ammunition to fire up a debate that pits left against right.
On the one hand, we have the South African Communist Party, Cosatu and some of its affiliates, as well as student and Muslim organisations demanding answers from the US president for a foreign policy agenda that keeps the world trapped in a state of paranoid fear, while on the...
Richard Pithouse -
The distance between the stated aspirations of a protagonist on the political stage and the realities of its actual practices can sometimes mark a genuine attempt at internal contestation. It would, for instance, be a good thing if a group of people in the ANC insisted that the party was seriously committed to the principle that every child has a full, equal and immediate right to an education that could nurture their talents and then backed this affirmation up with real action, including...
