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 promotes the principle of just economies. We are opposed to economic development that violates social and economic rights and increases inequalities in the pursuit of economic growth.
Richard Pithouse -
More than half of our young people are unemployed. For many of these people there is no formal route through which they can develop their energies and creativity and have them rewarded with a passage into autonomy and adulthood. Time becomes circular rather than linear and as life moves in descending and tightening spirals rather than up and forward, pain and panic set into the bones.
Some people are able to keep their spirits up with the support of family, friends and congregations that...
Saliem Fakir -
A sign of a government that cares about its citizens is reflected by the degree of effort it puts into thinking about the future rather than just the demands of the present.
As South Africans we are not there yet, but we may be getting there soon.
In October 2012, the National Treasury is looking to publish a document on long-term fiscal planning (LTFP). The idea was first mooted by Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, in his October 25, Medium Term Budget Policy Speech last year.
It...
Leonard Gentle -
The spectacle of the blows between a Democratic Alliance-led crowd and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) would have been the stuff of farce if it weren’t so tragically unedifying. The DA has every right to march and be “provocative”. COSATU’s response betrays its own hard-won struggles in the past for the right to march, assemble and protest.
This was no kristalnacht or fascist street gang about to storm the workers’ movement. This was a DA...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa has some of the highest levels of obesity in the world, together with exceptionally high rates of poverty. These two issues are linked in a vicious, attritional cycle.
At first glance it appears counter-intuitive to consider that poverty and obesity could be associated. The fact is that poverty is intimately correlated to several non-communicable diseases. Numerous international studies have shown how obesity and its morbid fellow travellers, hypertension and diabetes, stalk...
Saliem Fakir -
At times it’s hard to take at face value whether what is being said in ANC discussion documents is for real or just rhetorical flush.
The latest ANC buzzword is this notion of ‘the second transition’. The first transition, an ANC discussion document argues, is the consolidation of democracy (a coded way of saying consolidation of the ANC’s power).
The second transition is about social and economic transformation. To some it may sound like a new idea, but in...
Gar Alperovitz -
On Monday (March 6, 2012), Bloomberg News estimated that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 27-year-old founder, will be worth about $21 billion based on his company's forthcoming initial public offering. Although he won't qualify (yet) for a slot among the planet's richest 20 people in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg will still enjoy iconic status as an entrepreneur of mythic proportions. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal credited Facebook with creating "a new way of living,"...
