On 25 April, the Mayor tabled the draft budget in council, challenging residents to find evidence that it is not pro-poor.
Axolile Notywala
Opinion | 24 April 2015
South Africa is often branded as a country with a high incarceration rate. In certain respects, this is true. For with 290 people per 100,000 imprisoned, it has the highest incarceration rate in Africa. But there is much more to prison population rates than a national head count of bodies behind bars.
Clare Ballard
Opinion | 22 April 2015
Much has been written about why the recent wave of xenophobic attacks took place. But it's more complex than the usual reasons given, argue the authors.
Matthias Krönke and Mpho Raboeane
Opinion | 21 April 2015
News on the labour front over the recent past — and the past week — has involved ongoing infighting, death threats, an assassination, and the petrol bombing of a union president’s house. Little wonder then that an important labour law development has gone largely unnoticed.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 20 April 2015
Craig Oosthuizen describes the dramatic events in Parliament over the past two days that have put Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega's position under severe pressure.
Craig Oosthuizen
Opinion | 16 April 2015
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), campaigning groups and labour supporting members of the European parliament this month launched protests about the continued harassment and jailing of trade unionists and democracy campaigners in Swaziland. ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow has noted that, in Swaziland, “Violations against the fundamental rights of workers have become systemic.”
Terry Bell
Opinion | 13 April 2015
A Land Claims Court judge could opt to jail the Director-General of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Mdu Shabane, for contempt of court. Such a decision, however, may still be too late for Zabalaza Mshengu, who turned 101 in January, and has waited 14 years for his claim to land as a labour tenant to be processed. The case also raises uncomfortable questions about how far government will go to push judicial tolerance in order to avoid implementing constitutional rights.
Donna Hornby
Opinion | 13 April 2015
Equal Education’s recently concluded sleep-in protests in three cities have shown how disturbingly difficult it has become to hold legal protests, even for organisations fortunate enough to have access to resources and legal expertise.
Doron Isaacs
Opinion | 10 April 2015
The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) has asked the Mayor for a plan to deal with sanitation in informal settlements. We have a plan – one that has already been and continues to be implemented as part of this administration’s commitment to making this a city that delivers services to all our residents. Perhaps that is why so many people flock here from other parts of the country every year. After all, no one packs up their family and leaves their hometown for a worse life!
Ian Neilson
Opinion | 8 April 2015
The fact that Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has refused to accept his dismissal from the federation should have come as no surprise to readers. This column has pointed out for months now that the central executive committee (CEC) of Cosatu has no constitutional authority to finally dismiss, suspend or expel any office bearer or affiliate; that only a national congress may do.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 7 April 2015
In their article Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass decry that “the racialization of pain serves to reduce injustices and indiginities to race, foreclosing serious consideration of other forms of injustice and indignity”. I don’t know about Seekings and Nattrass but to me as a black person racism is a primary form of injustice and indignity.
Xolela Mangcu
Opinion | 2 April 2015
“You breathe in oxygen through your left lung and breathe out carbon dioxide through your right lung.” That’s what a life-science teacher taught her class at a Cape Town school where I worked for several weeks last year as part of my teacher training.
A teacher
Opinion | 1 April 2015
The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) has once again proven their obsession with budgets, and their incompetence at interpreting them.
Ernest Sonnenberg
Opinion | 1 April 2015
When Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille tabled the 2015/2016 draft budget last week, she said, “In my years as Mayor, not once has any substantive proof to counter our evidence of pro-poor spending ever been offered.”
Axolile Notywala
Opinion | 31 March 2015
A statue that appears to commemorate racism and imperialism occupies a uniquely privileged position on the university campus, causing evident pain to some students, professors and staff.
Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass
Opinion | 31 March 2015
Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa persists in referring to the mess that is Eskom as “a challenge”. He did so in his Q&A session in parliament last week. But the situation at Eskom is perhaps the greatest crisis ever to face our fragile, non-racist democracy, especially given the global economic climate.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 23 March 2015