Friday, 29 May 2020
Lockdown regulations are easing across South Africa, heralding a rise in the movement of people as schools and businesses reopen and the labour force gets back to work. Infections are expected to spike.
Pharmacists at one of the major public hospitals in Gauteng say they only received sufficient protective gear after several of their colleagues contracted Covid-19.
The coronavirus outbreak has left millions at the mercy of the country’s warring factions, which will not stop fighting, despite an escalating humanitarian emergency.
The newly established grant intended to bring informal economy workers into South Africa’s social security net during the lockdown has had a disastrous start.
Impoverished residents in the province, especially those in rural areas, say they are being neglected, ignored and exploited by the very people who are supposed to protect them.
As Brazil’s Covid-19 cases rocket and mass graves are dug daily, beleaguered citizens have to deal with a president who refuses to acknowledge the severity of the crisis.
It is unclear how schools in the province – 1 598 of which use pit latrines – will meet basic sanitation standards. Some parents want to keep their children at home, but face bureaucracy.
As schools get ready to reopen, models suggest the country will still not have enough ICU beds at the virus peak. In the meantime, court battles rage while unions fight to keep miners safe.
Italy, once the epicentre of Covid-19 in Europe, has seen many of its residents affected by the pandemic. But migrants, homeless and elderly people, and women in abusive relationships have been hardest hit.
The Covid-19 lockdown has curtailed training at Eziko in Langa, putting the cooking school in financial straits while its trainee chefs sit at home, unable to put their new skills into practice.
Following Collins Khosa’s death, the high court has ordered the government to fast-track investigations into state brutality during its Covid-19 state of disaster and halt assaults by law enforcement.
Rather than allowing state clinics in Port Elizabeth’s impoverished areas to become Covid-19 vectors, health workers have shut them down until such time they are properly equipped.
Street traders are central to food security in Johannesburg. But since being declared an essential service under lockdown, street trade in South Africa’s biggest city has returned to uneven ground.
The DA has won a high court victory, but the ANC is taking its campaign for power to the Constitutional Court. All the while, residents are left leaderless and without services.
Vulnerable households are struggling to put food on the table as the government lockdown puts their livelihoods on hold. Vouchers and food parcels help, but are they enough to prevent malnutrition?
Constant adaptation is the battle plan in South Africa as the coronavirus continues to spread, but the politicisation of food and a lack of water in the Eastern Cape have compounded the fight.
State assistance, especially during the Covid-19 crisis, helps people who literally have nothing to eat. But it is too little and its delivery is too patchy to bring real relief.
All around South Africa, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers who have mostly been left out of the government’s official response to the food crisis are going hungry.
The struggles of fisherfolk in KwaZulu-Natal have worsened during the Covid-19 lockdown and while they have been allowed to return to the pier, they say it has been difficult to gain access.
For years, hundreds of people have been forced to live in half-built structures with no windows, electricity or running water while the Buffalo City municipality stalls for time.
As the number of infected prisoners and officers spikes – causing the public to shun prison officials – the government heeds the call for inmates to be discharged from overcrowded prisons.