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.
Glenn Ashton -
How to restore the soil - crop - animal - waste nutrient cycle (and save the world.)
The rather unsavoury issue of how we deal with the end products of our sewage has again reared its ugly head in Cape Town. The agricultural smallholding areas of Philadelphia, to the north of the city, are affected by a serious fly outbreak caused by the spreading of raw sewage sludge on nearby agricultural fields.
Sewage sludge is the semi-solid remnant that remains after the rest of the sewage has been...
Ibrahim Steyn -
Democracy is often presented as an unproblematic concept ubiquitously associated with political competition between rival parties or candidates. Simply put, it’s about people’s ability to elect a political regime or leaders of their choice.
Such a neutral definition of democracy obscures issues of power and vested interests. Africa’s political elite, for example, have been perpetuating a client-patron model of politics inherited from their colonial predecessors. This has...
Avi Lewis from On the Map takes an in-depth look at the protests held by COSATU earlier this year, arguing that as a result of their journalistic shorthand, the South African media wrongly presented the purpose behind the protests. From the coverage, you'd think it was a simple labour dispute, but its about much more, he says. These protests were about a dream betrayed by an ANC government that has failed to deliver on its core promises, due to its business friendly policies that have...
Charlene Houston -
The state of our nation is the outcome of a multidimensional struggle. The tussle between the polluters and the sick; between the under-paid and the over-paid; between the owners of wealth and producers of goods; between the greedy and the hungry, between people and corporations; between developed and under-developed nations – all culminate to create our democratic space for engagement.
As democratic institutions, governments find themselves in a tug of war between competing...
This Al Jazeera report contends that middle class South Africans, are shopping themselves into a debt hole, living beyond their means trying to maintain a flashy lifestyle they cannot afford. Easy borrowing has fueled in-debtedness. The debt to income ratio is over 70% and we have the banks, who've been dishing out credit without verifying people's ability to service their debt, to thank for this situation.
This excerpt from the Massachusetts School of Law argues that the IMF and World Bank compelled Latin American nations to make structural adjustments, which are a form of neoliberal economics that include privatization and open markets. Open markets and less regulation in Latin America, as well as in other developing countries, have led to the destruction of small businesses, as large companies from America and other parts of the developed world entered their markets. The video clip is...
