Feature

Pumping iron in Alexandra

Setting up a public gym can be an expensive business, but chance and hard work conspired to create two bustling fitness outlets in Alexandra near Sandton. And these gyms are not just about looking good: a big part of iKasi Gym’s focus is building strength of character.

Jon Pienaar

Feature | 23 January 2015

Is this the dirtiest job in Cape Town?

It’s midday and in 29 degree heat Sannicare contract workers Prudence Brink, Carmelita Johnson and Francious Beukes are having lunch, sitting on empty portable toilets in front of the depot at Airport Industria where thousands of toilets are cleaned daily.

Text by Zintle Swana. Photos by Masixole Feni.

Feature | 21 January 2015

Need that bullet removed from your arm? Then show us your papers

There’s a bullet lodged in Ali Hussein’s body, somewhere between his right shoulder and neck. It has been there for nearly two months.

Joyce Xi

Feature | 22 December 2014

Hope Street carpenter shut down

When it is late at night and Cape Town’s streets are quiet, Mark Philander’s faint hammering at his pavement workshop on Hope Street can still be heard.

Daneel Knoetze

Feature | 18 December 2014

R3.30 an hour: De Doorns child labour probed

The Department of Labour is investigating allegations of child labour on a grape and mushroom farm in the Hex Valley, outside De Doorns.

Daneel Knoetze

Feature | 15 December 2014

Factions fuel violence at Durban hostel

Sitting on a worn-out green sofa outside Durban’s giant Glebelands hostel, Thulani Kati describes in graphic detail his alleged torture by a special police unit on 2 October this year.

Fatima Asmal and Barbara Maregele

Feature | 28 November 2014

“You see yourself vanishing and you think: I’m going to die”

Andaleeb Rinquest remembers the moment she accepted, with certainty, the imminence of her own death.

Daneel Knoetze

Feature | 26 November 2014

We know how to bear hardships, says Chinese trader in Khayelitsha

Next to a small fruit stand and across the street from a hodgepodge of street vendors, Cuiyi Lin sits in front of her furniture store every day waiting for customers. She is the only non-African in the area.

Joyce Xi

Feature | 19 November 2014

Over a million children fall through foster care cracks

Over a million orphans and abused, neglected, and abandoned children in South Africa are falling through the cracks of an overburdened foster care system.

Joyce Xi

Feature | 12 November 2014