Monday, 27 March 2023
Dennis Webster has a research background in labour, land and housing. He writes about cities, farmwork and popular politics in rural areas.
A fire at the Yeoville African Market in Johannesburg has left some sellers destitute, with shopkeepers saying vigilante group Operation Dudula threatened a week earlier to burn down the market.
In its latest guarantee, Johannesburg’s transport department says that the next leg of the city’s public bus system will be operational by September.
Meet some of the people who have held the steps of the apex court for more than three weeks, sleeping out in the cold to demand reparations for apartheid crimes.
Activists demanding reparations for apartheid crimes finally met with the justice minister, who informed them that the TRC list of beneficiaries will not be expanded.
More than two decades after she helped draft the TRC’s recommendations, human rights lawyer Yasmin Sooka throws her support behind apartheid survivors getting compensation.
People who are now elderly and suffered terrible losses at the hands of South Africa’s white minority regime are determinedly waiting to be heard.
In impoverished neighbourhoods to the south of the city, the devastation of heavy rains is all too familiar. So is the reality that not much ever gets done to mitigate it.
As fuel prices continue to rise, so too does the price of paraffin. People who are most dependent on it, especially in shack settlements, have to pay more for that which kills them.
Sidelined during the Covid-19 pandemic, the country’s deadliest disease has been working under cover.
In 1922, Johannesburg’s white workers united on a scale not seen before or since, unleashing violence against Black miners and destroying their potential to become an organised force.
For the moment, the country’s first date with the infamous lender could be more important from a policy perspective than a fiscal one because while it is small it signals a big shift in practice.
The finance minister’s maiden budget will have to tackle a generationally important question: How will the government widen South Africa’s social security net?
The City had a glimpse of its divided government when 2022’s first council meeting declined into fist fights. More pugilism could be on the way.
Watching the second Test match between South Africa and India from inside the hallowed environs of the Bull Ring was a discomfiting cricketing experience that will hopefully change soon.
South Africa’s biggest city appears to be headed the way of a compromised coalition of the centre, or a grim right-wing bloc.
Kingfish have been swimming up the Mtentu River every year for aeons, but some residents fear their migration may be under threat from the N2 Wild Coast Road Project, along with livelihoods.
The ANC is asking many communities to elect councillors they previously rejected. In an election where the ruling party’s dominance is no longer guaranteed, it may prove to be a gamble.
An independent candidate is contesting the local government elections in a former Eastern Cape Bantustan, revealing deep fault lines in the party’s ward candidate nomination process.
The challenges of the pandemic are not new, but the country and the continent still face a long road to adequate vaccination and getting coronavirus infections under control.
The most highly mutated Covid-19 variant yet is now circulating in most of the country.
Nearly a decade ago, the police slaughtered 34 men at Marikana, erasing parents, life partners and breadwinners. We dare not forget.