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?
Visit the archives.
South African contemporary rock fusion band, All Clear, has just released a superb rock song, Amandla Marikana - from their Faster than Light album - that remembers the slain miners of Marikana and draws attention to the ongoing struggles of minerworkers today.
All Clear is a three-year-old band that describe themselves as, "dedicated to producing original but popular and accessible music with powerful rhythms that draw on many traditions - rock, reggae, folk, ska, jazz and pop - and...
Richard Pithouse -
In 1961 Frantz Fanon described the colonial world as “cut in two”, divided into “compartments .... inhabited by different species”. For Fanon the creation of different kinds of spaces was central to the creation of different types of people and their ordering in a hierarchy of value. He concluded that the ordering of the colonial world must be examined to “reveal the lines of force it implies”, lines of force that “will allow us to mark out the lines...
Bandile Mdlalose is the Secretary General of shack dwellers movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo. In an interview with Fazila Farouk of SACSIS, she talks about her involvement in the struggle for a democracy that respects the rights and dignity of the poor in South Africa.
Mdlalose voluntarily swapped life in a township house for life in a shack in order to better understand the challenges faced by shack dwellers. A leading voice in her community, she talks about the intimidation and...
The world faces two problems in education, says Vikas Pota, chief executive of The Varkey GEMS Foundation. One is that there are many children, about 57 million, who are not at school. The bigger crisis, however, is the fact that there are hundreds of millions of children who are at school, but who aren’t learning anything.
The Varkey GEMS Foundation conducted a global study to find out how to improve the quality of teachers in the classroom. Overall they found that solving the...
On a trip to Palestine and Israel this week, French president Francois Hollande said that “Palestinians should give up on the right of return of Palestinian refugees or become flexible on the right of return” in exchange for Israel to stop building settlements in occupied Palestine.
Talking about the kind of mindset that France is adopting in relation to its foreign policy, Sher Hever, an economic researcher at the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli...
Frank Meintjies -
How does one make sense of the injustice of Johannesburg’s “clean sweep” campaign? In the name of cleaning up the streets of downtown Johannesburg, thousands of street traders have had their stalls demolished in recent days. The lack of strong or widespread objection from the public and urban planners in response to this merciless act by the authorities is remarkable. Perhaps more disappointing is the lack of solidarity action on the part of civil society organisations....
