Browsing Archive: June, 2011
Posted by Seth Williams on Monday, June 27, 2011,
In :
South Africa
"The ANC never freed us, they only took the chain from around our neck and put it on our ankles"- Rassool Snyman, Anti-Apartheid activist.
In light of the aforementioned, after the African National Congress (ANC) seized a peaceful transition from the clutches of Apartheid, South Africans had been promised that both political and economic freedoms would be given to previously disadvantaged. The latter have been left with the right to vote but simultaneously left with several issues pertaining... Continue reading ...
Posted by Seth Williams on Monday, June 27, 2011,
In :
Human Rights
It is the 21st centrury. People have witnessed the increase in the amount of women and men being openly gay, lesbian or bisexual. Humanity has progressively seen a shift in awareness with regards to sexual orientation. This has birthed a liberated way of thinking that has allowed individuals to be open and express their sexuality in the most comfortable way possible.
Global legislation has been passed by the United Nations to safeguard interests of minority groups in a majority ruled world... Continue reading ...
Perhaps it is a sign of how far “behind” certain parts of the world are with regards to “development,” that the most dynamic, and probably the best publicized, debate about the economic future of poor regions in recent years, has been between three economists. On one side of the argument is Jeffrey Sachs, the author of “The End of Poverty,” and on the other is William Easterly, whose “White Man’s Burden” ridicules Sachs as a modern version of a 19th-century utopian. ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nicholas Dietrich on Monday, June 27, 2011,
In :
Globalisation
Since the late 1980s globalisation has become a popular term for politicians, journalists and social scientists to describe the world that we live in (Flynn & Giraldez, 2002: 1). According to Tomlinson (2003: 311) the first three books with the word “globalisation” in their titles were published in 1988, after which it rapidly became what O’Rourke and Williamson (2000: 1) contend to be “the defining term of the 1990s”.
This article will briefly introduce a lesser-known debate, o... Continue reading ...
Posted by Trevor Kana on Wednesday, June 22, 2011,
In :
Africa
There is no doubt that colonisation falls within the realms of one of the worst crimes against humanity ever envisaged. The ripple effects of such an event are still being felt in the modern era. The greedy pursuit for more power and economic gains resulted in the 1500s for imperialist European nations aggressively expanding inwards into Africa. That rat-race was done with absolute disregard for the people that inhabited the African continent (Raschke & Cheema, 2007: 662). People in the A... Continue reading ...
On June 8, 2011 the Department of Economic Affairs of the African Union officially stated that the departure of Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn from his position at the helm of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), presented “a prime opportunity for the IMF and developed countries to deliver on their commitment to implement major reforms … including those relating to governance” (African Union, 2011: 1). The statement reflects the ongoing discontent amongst member states regarding the legit... Continue reading ...
Throughout time, there has not been much discussion or investigation around the contents of plastic bottles and how harmful the chemicals used to manufacture them. As a cause for concern, it is imperative that we raise awareness about the subject matter.In an age where everything is for convenience, the pace of day to day living has forced the human race to adapt to the ways to modern society. The scarcity of purified water has seen every citizen on a global scale make use of bottled water. O... Continue reading ...
Posted by Michelle Zietsman on Tuesday, June 21, 2011,
In :
Africa
Somalia has been without an effective national government for almost twenty years. Conflict and drought has produced a massive exodus of refugees, with close to half of the population displaced within the country. The Western media’s attention on piracy and arms trade has overshadowed the needs of the people and done little to stabilise the region. Thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Mogadishu have been killed or wounded by indiscriminate shelling from all the warring groups. ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Michelle Zietsman on Wednesday, June 15, 2011,
In :
Asia
In many parts of the world, female children are undesirable. High occurrences of foeticides, infanticides and neglect and abandonment of newborn babies, has consequently deprived the world of over 100 million women (Al Jazeera, 2009). China and India alone are responsible for 80 million missing females. Economist and Nobel Prize Laureate Amartya Sen voiced the first warning against this scourge in the 1980s (1989: 14), though since that time the situation has worsened. Wealth or economic de... Continue reading ...
Posted by Trevor Kana on Monday, June 13, 2011,
In :
Globalisation
Global civil society is phenomenon that has yet to be fully comprehended. The lack of conceptual understanding symbolizes that it is yet an ‘island of meaning’ that is of substance in modern social science and policy-making (Anheier, Glasius & Kaldor, 2001: 3). The difficulties in conceptualising global civil society stems from the plethora of various interests been pushed under this banner. Global civil society can be; anti-globalisation campaigners against the expansion of laissez... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nicholas Dietrich on Monday, June 13, 2011,
In :
Africa
The past decade has seen a re-evaluation of the strategic importance of Africa within the global economy. While what may be termed “the new scramble for African resources” (Roberts, 2011: 1-2) has focussed on the fight for strategic control over energy sources such as oil and gas or mineral wealth (including diamonds, coltan, gold and copper), a lesser-known dimension of the ‘scramble’ has recently come under scrutiny, in the form of another important global resource, land.
Accordin... Continue reading ...
Posted by Seth Williams on Monday, June 13, 2011,
In :
South Africa
The level of unemployment in South Africa has been an implicit result of the post- Apartheid era that has evidently caused immense levels of inequality within South African society. Owing to the racialist policies implemented and the ANC's decision to abandon socialist for neoliberal economic policies has seen the levels of abject poverty and unemployment steadily increase after 1994. This paper seeks to explain how the adaptation of social democratic policies would see a shift in the current... Continue reading ...
Posted by trevor Kana on Monday, June 6, 2011,
In :
Africa
Africa is a continent overflowing with various civil conflicts, from the desert of Darfur in Sudan to the Niger Delta in Nigeria and recently the Arab Revolt in North Africa. Africa is a continent in tears due to the bloodshed spilt by its people. Natural resources and primary commodities are strongly linked to civil wars that are occurring in Africa. Yet it is wise to point that not all civil conflicts are resource based. There was the ethnic violence in Rwanda in 1994 which left more t... Continue reading ...
In 2007, the annual remittances sent from diaspora’s to their home countries exceeded $251 billion. In the Philippines alone, the funds sent from overseas to family members exceeded $1 billion a month (Esman 2009: 6). Who are the diaspora and why are they significant in today’s global economy? More importantly, do they play a role in maintenance of peace or exacerbate conflict in their home countries?
Diasporas arrive as conquerors and settlers, like the Spaniards in the America’s or Nor... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nicholas Dietrich on Monday, June 6, 2011,
In :
Global Trends
Anthony Giddens (1991: 21) considers globalisation to be “the most visible intersection of presence and absence, the interlacing of social events and social relations ‘at a distance’ with local contextualities”. The process of globalisation has served to challenge many traditional notions of time and space, and increasingly, geography, by enhancing the real and virtual mobility of people, things and ideas. The new spaces that have emerged, especially through the internet and the realm... Continue reading ...
Five years after the Liberian warlord, Charles Taylor, was hauled off to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, his name still sends a shiver down the spine of many West Africans. Taylor was charged with eleven counts for war crimes and crimes against humanity that he allegedly committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone, during the brutal eleven-year war that raged there. On 11 March of this year, the trial came to an end and the verdict has yet to be decided.
Founded in 1847 by fre... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nicholas Dietrich on Sunday, June 5, 2011,
In :
Food Security
In 1950 the American author Fran Lebowitz ironically stated that “food is part of a balanced diet”. When you read this on a full stomach it is easy to have a good chuckle and go about the rest of your day, not seeing the irony of what it could represent for many people across the globe fighting against food insecurity. The right to food is one of the most consistently mentioned international human rights to date, yet is unfortunately also one of the most spectacularly violated in recent t... Continue reading ...
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