Spotlight

The WHO –UNICEF-Lancet Commission’s clarion call for us to think how we advocate for the rights of children and the young

A modicum of balance must be brought to the sense of helplessness and nihilism becoming entrenched in society

‘Race’ and class are big inequalities worldwide, which Covid 19 is exposing

The key is mobilisation even under the shadow of the pandemic

…better to die at home than in other people’s country where their families will not even get to see their bodies…

Pandemic in context of permanent crisis of neo-liberal capitalism

Tunatazama – We are watching

He built a powerful intellectual family tree

Derek Carelse An expression of the artist's view that the Covid 19 pandemic is both the spread of a virus and a spread of bourgeois ideology.  

Andile Mngxitama’s Black First Land First (BLF) movement is now officially deregistered, but what is the BLF trying to achieve or prove when it announced that as a result of its failure to appeal against its deregistering it was considering "going underground", with its sabre-rattling threat of waging an "armed struggle"? Andile Mngxitama and I used to drink beer in Melville in the mid-2000s. But how he has turned out over the past few years makes me regret those few occasions. There is no...

South Africa’s triumph in the 2019 World Cup final in Japan was a fairytale – but, sadly, also the extension of a lie. The Springboks became champions with a team that will always be remembered for having achieved a significant ‘first’ and, perhaps, a couple of ‘seconds’ – for, at its helm was Siya Kolisi, who grew up dirt poor in the township of Zwide, in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, and who remembered a childhood in which the need for a decent meal far outstripped any thoughts of fame on...

Harroon Aziz The institution of the family as a repository of values constitutes the foundation of nationhood. A nation’s sense of security, stability, and belonging replicates itself as that of the family. South Africa in its twenty-five years of democracy is carrying 106 years of pain that dates back to the 1913 Land Act. To force male peasants from their settled family life and drive them into deep-level gold mines apartheid expropriated 87% of their land without compensation and legally...

Over the past couple of weeks it has been impossible to escape dire assessments of the South African economy. I’ve read that it is ‘collapsing’, ‘tanking’, and even ‘dying’. A number of commentators seem to have made it their goal to imagine a worst-case scenario for South Africa, and then argue for its inevitability. Some have gone as far as equating the country to Venezuela and Zimbabwe. While no one can be unaware of the serious challenges facing South Africa, I fear that we have become so...

Staff Writer World Diabetes Day was on 14 November and the International Diabetes Federation published a study that found that a staggering 12% of the adult population in South Africa, about 4.5 million people, are living with diabetes, putting them at risk of life-threatening complications. Luleka Mzuzu only found out about her type 2 diagnosis when she woke up in the hospital in 2015 after fainting on her way home from work. Luleka had no major warning until then – she thought she was simply...

Michelle Galloway Sonwabile Mnwana of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Fort Hare spoke at the The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study about his research into how the South African mining industry has excluded the black population and led to land dispossession and poverty. In his research he looks at who the recognised authorities are in rural areas on the platinum belt, the role of customary law in the former homelands and how history has shaped political...

Neil Cole Citizens should not be duped into believing that winning a trophy will transform our country or build social cohesion. The bok team that won the 2019 Rugby World Cup was a decidedly different team to the one that lifted the trophy in 1995, and also in 2007. The 2019 team has a black captain and the tries by two black players won the final for South Africa. This was a moment that the country was yearning for after a week of depressing economic data – unemployment at 29%, public debt...

In all the current debates about the government’s National Health Insurance (NHI) plan there has been a two-fold narrative, which has dominated the public debate. On the one hand, those private vested interests opposed to the NHI are frightened by the prospects of an erosion of the private healthcare system. On the other hand, supporters who emphasise that we cannot continue to have a dual system of healthcare in which some 80% of people rely on an overburdened and under-resourced public...

A petition is being circulated calling for the reinstatement of Dr Arikana Chihombori-Quao to her role as the AU Permanent Ambassador to the United States The injustice of her sacking ought to stir all who are displeased with the global injustice to which the continent, and others in the Global South, continue to be subjected. The sacking two weeks ago of the African Union Permanent Ambassador in the United States, Dr Arikana Chihombori-Quao sent ripples amongst Africans on the continent and...

The drowning of domestic worker Badanile Maria Mahlangu in her employer’s swimming pool in 2012 resulted in drawn out legal battles that ended with a court ruling that is a victory for all domestic workers. Section 23 of the Constitution affords everyone, including domestic workers and precarious workers in general, the right to fair labour practices. The legislative regime in South Africa can be described as generally supportive of the rights of domestic workers. The realisation of these...

Tlamelo M Mothudi The Makhanda community in the Eastern Cape relies heavily on the only hospital in town, Settlers Hospital for emergency healthcare services, especially for rape cases. But currently the hospital is understaffed and rape survivors are left waiting hours for treatment. On Sunday 4 August 2019, I was woken up to news that a young woman in Makhanda was reported to have survived a rape. The survivor numb with the trauma that had been forced upon her body was taken to Settlers...

I am confident that most historians who reflect in the future over the past week’s dramatic events in the Democratic Alliance will show that the primary reason for the resignations of the leader, Mmusi Maimane, and Athol Trollip, past federal chair, was Helen Zille. Her late decision to enter the race for the election of a new Federal Executive chair of the DA – just a few weeks before it took place - is what analysts need to turn their attention to in order to understand the mind of Zille and...

On 3 October, President of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno signed decree 883, ending the gasoline and diesel subsidy, which essentially doubled the price of fuel in the country. Moreno insisted these economic measures would safeguard the dollarization of the Ecuador economy but it has had dire consequences for the citizens of the country. After weeks of protests, that highlighted deep inequality in the Ecuadorian economy, the neoliberal government was forced to repeal decree 883. But the lessons live on...

Breastfeeding is one of the most cost-effective interventions for improving the health and survival of children, with important short and long-term benefits to families and society. However, policies and interventions to support breastfeeding are undermined by powerful multi-national formula milk manufacturers who compete for a share of infant feeding. The Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (BMS Code) including subsequent World Health Assembly resolutions, is an attempt to counter...

School children in warmer climates are at risk