New structures, same problems for Khowa family
After years of staying in ramshackle accommodation, the Mbundana family were moved to temporary units that have no electricity and are as fragile as their old abode. They want a permanent home.
Stories by: James Puttick
Khowa mourns its heroic working-class activist
Funani George Nqoko has left big paralegal shoes to fill in the rural Eastern Cape town where he set up and ran the Elliot Advice Office. His colleagues say they will continue his good work.
Hair and beauty courses help refugees and migrants
The Jesuit Refugee Service’s skills programme uplifts refugees, migrants and South African women by teaching them business skills and offering beauty and hairdressing courses.
The activists who are greening Wesselton
Residents of this township in one of Mpumalanga’s coal-mining districts have been benefitting from grassroots initiatives to turn ugly dumping sites into precious green spaces.
Land reform leads to eviction after 80 years’ labour
An 88-year-old woman has been threatened with the culturally taboo removal of her family’s ancestral graves after being evicted from the farm she worked on for decades.
Covid-19 Roundup | Breakthroughs and shut downs
In the same week lockdown restrictions are eased and an effective Covid-19 drug is hailed by the medical fraternity, one municipality buckles under the weight of infections.
Pharmacists, denied frontline status, get PPE late
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.
Makhethe siblings hammer their way into history books
Tshepang and Phethisang Makhethe are trailblazers of sorts with their exploits in hammer throwing, an athletics event that doesn’t have many black competitors in South Africa.
From the Archive | Democracy as a community of life
In this second of a two-part series, Achille Mbembe interrogates the salience of wealth and property, and race and difference as central idioms in framing social struggles.
Rural areas in need of coronavirus information
The government has said it has the resources to combat Covid-19. But with repatriated citizens from China set to be quarantined in Limpopo, residents are concerned about the lack of safety information.
LanXess workers strike against exploitation
Striking Numsa members at Rustenburg’s LanXess chrome mine will not budge until management has addressed profiteering, corruption and sexual harassment.
Soweto computer lab gives life to dreams
ACFS Community Education in Meadowlands provides daily meals and after-school support to children, and now has a computer lab. Parents can learn, too, and benefit from the vegetable garden.
ANC family tries to run black farmers off their land
The politically connected Nelani family is suspected of thwarting a couple’s decade-long attempt to formalise the lease for the state-owned land they have farmed productively for 31 years.
Joburg bylaws and apathy stifle trading initiatives
The city’s traders and enterprising entrepreneurs complain that red tape stops them earning a living as they try to create jobs and enhance the experience of public spaces.
Sakhisizwe municipality residents made to live in sewage swamp
The Eastern Cape town is a desperate place for its residents, many of whom are forced to stay in houses overrun with effluent, while the municipality does nothing.
January rain not enough to halt destructive drought
The few days of rain have done little to alleviate drought in the Eastern Cape, leaving emerging farmers with starving livestock and withered crops as some wait for promised government aid.
Land reform is about more than just land
A successful land restitution project in the Eastern Cape is being hampered by government’s failure to provide basic services for the family working and living there.
Eastern Cape water crisis nears catastrophe
Angry residents and activists from the ‘disaster area’ of the Eastern Cape are pointing fingers at government mismanagement and misinformation concerning the water shortage.
Dry times in the Eastern Cape
Water supply in the Eastern Cape is precarious as the continuing drought compounds run-down municipal systems and the government’s failure to pre-empt the effects of climate change.
Abahlali’s Heritage Day rally condemns violence
The shack dwellers’ movement expressed opposition to violence against women and migrants and called on the state to stop neglecting impoverished communities.