Tuesday, 21 March 2023
Ra’eesa Pather is a freelance journalist with a focus on social justice, feminism, grassroots activism, housing, transitional justice after apartheid and governance.
Fifty years ago, anti-apartheid activist Imam Abdullah Haron was killed in police custody. His family fought to survive after his death, and now they are demanding justice.
The Klipfontein Mission Station owned by the SA Methodist Church has mostly ignored complaints of families living in the area. But some local people remain loyal to the area of their birth.
A family still seeks restitution after the apartheid state forced them off their farm and the current government used the ground for the Blikkiesdorp “temporary relocation area”.
Caroline Peters survived being gang raped at the age of 15. Through running, she started to heal. But then she was ousted from the running club she founded in the area she was raped.
The army was brought in to help combat gang violence in the Cape Flats, but rather than bring calm it seems to have brought disappointment instead.
Opposition against the University of Cape Town inviting Steven Salaita to give a public lecture has mirrored internal resistance to changes at the university.
Gang members in Hanover Park use the children leaving Blomvlei Primary after school as ‘shields’ to get closer to their rivals, and gunfire is common in the afternoons.
After a fire swept through a section of Masiphumelele township near Cape Town, razing homes and leaving residents without food or shelter, Sassa failed to respond despite being mandated to do so.
Farm workers in the Western Cape winelands are still living in single-sex hostels at Oak Valley, as they were during apartheid. Now they are taking legal action.
Police Minister Bheki Cele made good on his week-old promise to send the SANDF to the Cape Flats to secure the area while the police searched and raided in an attempt to clamp down on gang violence.
By installing battery-operated smoke detectors, an innovator in Khayelitsha is making homes safer for shack dwellers underserved by firefighters who battle with blocked access.
The sound of gunshots regularly reverberates through the Cape Town suburb where gangs and residents vie for the lives of their youth.
Statistics reveal that 900 people have been killed in gang-related violence on the Cape Flats so far this year and police volunteers risk suspension by speaking out about it.
As the strike at Oak Valley Farm drags on, workers face either total ruin as their families begin to starve or long-term destitution if they give in and take the lower wage offer.
Residents of the gang-ridden Cape Town suburb are drawing together, forming committees and holding sports tournaments to move towards a better future while honouring the past.
Oak Valley farm workers are weary of low wages for hard work and racially discriminating housing, leading to a protest deadlock that now has the union calling on big retailers to boycott the farm.
A precedent-setting judgment has given hope to the families of those murdered by the apartheid regime, but also prompted others to call for liberation movement activists to be prosecuted.
A complaint from a resident surmised to be new to the area about the Zeenatul Islam mosque’s call to prayer has sparked outrage among long-time locals, Muslim and non-Muslim.
Some of the families of those who died at the hands of the apartheid government have turned to the state capture inquiry to investigate political interference in their TRC cases.
There is very little trace of political campaigning in Wupperthal, a village in the region where the wild rooibos grows and where descendants of the Khoi people who first inhabited this land live.
Land Reform Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane has been ordered to court to explain why her office still has not submitted a restitution plan and timeline for the Cape Town district.