The World Social Forum (WSF) has just ended its now biennial meeting, held this time in Tunis. It was very largely ignored by the world's mainstream press. It was attended by many skeptics who pronounced its irrelevance, something that has occurred at every meeting...
Education
Knowledge. The final frontier
Some suggest that unemployment rates are high because of laziness or a dependency effect created by social grants, but numerous studies have failed to find empirical support for these claims. The one drum of this kind that continues to be beaten is the claim that...
Hugo Chavez, Dream Maker | by Eva Golinger
Most of what you read or hear in mass media about President Hugo Chavez is always negative, his faults exaggerated, his discourse distorted and his achievements ignored. The reality is quite different. Hugo Chavez was beloved by millions around the world. He changed...
Egypt: and the revolution?
Interview with Hani Serag, Egyptian democracy activist and part of Peoples Health Movement. This interview was done before Morsi issued a series of decrees giving him sweeping powers, triggering a new nationwide uprising in Egypt. Amandla!: Has Egypt's Arab Spring...
Tax pegging ratio of 25% tax to GDP = A Small State | by Donna Andrews
Revenue from personal income tax is part of how governments are able to fund the type of society they imagine. In the case of South Africa, the government presents a vision of a more equal society, striving to lessen inequality and right the wrongs of the past. For...
Mali: folly of war in the Sahel | by Professor Issa Ndiaye
The current crisis in Mali is not the result of the March 22 coup d'état, which marked only the collapse of a misguided and corrupt democracy which has been so noisily eulogized. The current disaster has been produced by the monopolization of the State and other...
Time to stop the tax cuts
'There is no money!' This is the standard response to the demands with which the government continues to be bombarded by people whose basic needs have still not been met after nearly 20 years of post-apartheid rule. People in South Africa are angry and impatient in...
Personal Income Taxation and the struggle against inequality and poverty | by Dick Forslund
Tax is a most personal matter. It seems that the more rich one is the greater is the resentment about 'my' hard-earned income being taken from 'me' to pay for 'them'. For the majority, on the other hand, tax is indirectly experienced in the increasing poverty of the...
Reconstituting emancipatory activism
Debates about the meaning(s) of activism have been perennial pre-occupations in postcolonial societies. In South Africa, the contours of this debate have been shaped, on one hand, by those who argue that attaining formal democracy renders struggle and activism...



