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?
SACSIS is the brainchild of Fazila Farouk. She qualified with a M.Sc. in development planning from the University of Natal in 1996 and has worked in civil society ever since. Fazila has also completed a Ph.D-level course in social theory at Wits University's School of Public and Development Management, which she passed with distinction.
Fazila's experience includes research, policy advocacy and new media. She has written extensively about civil society and development in South Africa.
Fazila Farouk -
There’s been a great deal of hand wringing in South Africa in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre. With the explosion of the underbelly of our society onto the international arena, South Africans have been left with little choice but to confront the demons of nearly 20 years of a failed democracy.
From the fact that no woman feels safe walking alone on South African streets, to the fact that millions of people continue to live without the most basic of dignities, ours is a...
Fazila Farouk -
Highlighting the need for a more skilled workforce, Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, recently encouraged youngsters to choose science and technology as a career path at a prize-giving event linked to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope - the world’s largest radio telescope that will be hosted in the Karoo.
Pandor said, "We don't want to rely on extracting raw materials from mines and exporting them to other countries any longer. Many leading economies in...
Fazila Farouk -
The messages of gloom and doom have been out there for some time now. Just about every other commentator is pronouncing on an impending failure of outcome for the Rio+20 Summit on sustainable development being hosted in Brazil this week.
We are being told to temper our expectations. A colleague of mine has gone so far as to suggest that Rio+20 could be signalling the end of all big summits. To be sure, talk shop fatigue must certainly be settling into the weary bones of diplomats and...
Fazila Farouk -
“We don’t just have a global financial crisis, we have a global political crisis,” said Alexa O’Brien from the Occupy New York movement on Julian Assange’s talk show, The World Tomorrow, which aired this week on Russia Today just a day before the British Supreme Court upheld an earlier decision by the High Court for Assange to be extradited to Sweden to face questioning for alleged sex crimes.
O' Brien’s words have been uncannily prophetic in framing the...
Fazila Farouk -
The United Nations Climate Conference 2011, COP17, kicks off on Monday, November, 28 in Durban when negotiators from nation states around the world will descend on the city to try and hammer out a global agreement to reduce global warming and bring climate change under control.
The parameters of that global agreement are vitally important as a public interest issue because it affects not just environmental policy, but economic and industrial development policy too, with further...
Fazila Farouk -
It’s always been understood that the one group with the greatest potential to bring about change is the youth. After all, it’s their future that’s at stake. And this year, young people all over the world have been at the forefront of news making struggles.
The one thing we should not forget about Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian who set himself alight catalysing the fall of dictatorships throughout North Africa, is that his immediate demand was about direct...
