The Black Sash has urged the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to fix the flaws in the social grants system as a new contractor is appointed to replace Cash Paymaster Services.
Pasqua Heard
Brief | 14 October 2015
Communities struggling for adequate housing should do their own surveys of what they need, members of various communities told the land justice conference in Cape Town on 13 October.
Barbara Maregele and Ashleigh Furlong
News | 14 October 2015
People facing eviction needed knowledge of the laws and their rights, a member of the South Road community told the urban land justice colloquium on 13 October.
Barbara Maregele and Ashleigh Furlong
News | 14 October 2015
Bangumzi Balakazi, from Peddie in the Eastern Cape, was among the former gold miners sitting in the South Gauteng High Court this week as the landmark silicosis court case got underway.
Lwandile Fikeni and GroundUp staff
News | 14 October 2015
Grace Mkhize, 78, lives with three orphaned granddaughters and their three children in a mud house in Willowfontein, Pietermaritzburg. For seven years she has been waiting for a new house.
Ntombi Mbomvu
News | 13 October 2015
Loud reggae, pop and kwaito are some of the genres of music that compete with each other as you wander through the market at Cape Town central station taxi rank. Customers bustle through the rows of white container stalls, selling cheap snacks, fashionable clothing, haircuts and more. Among the many women entrepreneurs offering beauty services in the market is Odette Motema. She runs a hair and nail salon.
Text by Pasqua HeardPhotos by Juliette Garms
News | 13 October 2015
Parents of children at Parliament Primary School, Mfuleni, set up to accommodate children who had been learning in a tent, have demanded that the principal be dismissed.
Tariro Washinyira
News | 13 October 2015
While the government earnestly pledges its commitment to reversing inequality, it reproduces inequality in the normal behaviour it expects for itself and the broader elite of South Africa’s political-economy. Two recent and very public events illustrate these opposing positions.
Jeff Rudin
Opinion | 13 October 2015
Software developed by University of Pretoria researchers could bring cheaper hearing tests to South Africa's rural areas. The hearScreen technology, which has been patented and is in the process of being licensed, can turn any smartphone into an audiometer to test people's hearing.
Sarah Wild
News | 13 October 2015
Bonteheuwel resident Qasin Khan and his family have been living in a small informal home in his mother's backyard for nearly 10 years.
Barbara Maregele
News | 12 October 2015
Many South African women are still resorting to unsafe abortions with illegal providers, often with disastrous implications even though safe legal abortion has been available since 1997.
Thembela Ntongana
Feature | 12 October 2015
Bulelwa Vianne lost her parents, her sister and her brother-in-law in a fire in 2008. She was 18. Local officials promised to rebuild her home. They haven’t kept that promise.
Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik
News | 12 October 2015
At the end of grade nine South African students are expected to decide which subjects they would like to continue with for the rest of high school. One of the important decisions they make is whether or not they will continue with maths, or take maths literacy. As five students explain, the decision is tough, affects their future, and is not always made freely and based on their true ability and interests.
Sarita Pillay
Feature | 9 October 2015
In King Leopold’s Ghost, the historian Adam Hochschild uncovers the horrors committed in the Belgian Congo in the years before and after 1900. It is a history of slavery, murder and mutilation – anyone who’s seen the pictures of piles of cut-off hands cannot but be horrified by it.
Marcus Low
Opinion | 9 October 2015
A group of nine miners and Vredendal community members who were charged with public violence after participating in a demonstration outside the Australian-owned Tormin mine on the west coast, made a brief appearance in court on Thursday. Meanwhile, on Friday a group of about 60 mine-workers and members of the west coast community where the Tormin Mineral Sand mine operates came to Cape Town to picket outside the High Court.
Barbara Maregele and Bernard Chiguvare
News | 9 October 2015
Residents of Busila near Gatyana (Willowvale) say they have lost faith in the police after two houses were set alight by unknown men in the early hours, Tuesday. Since July, four people have been killed and five houses set alight. Residents say police are failing to protect them.
Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik
News | 8 October 2015
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