In recent months the spotlight has, yet again, been shone on universities in South Africa. This time, the focus was on the fact that leading institutions (all of whom were previously designated as for “whites only”) remains largely untransformed. This time around, though, the focus was not only on numbers (even though that remains an […]
Equality
Posted inEquality
#IlookLikeASurgeon: A hashtag campaign that leaves me cold
#ILookLikeASurgeon first appeared on my timeline a week or so ago. I was interested in it because I’m a surgeon in training. Background: it’s a campaign against gender stereotypes. Piggy-backing on a campaign called #ILookLikeAnEngineer, it aims to show that surgeons are no longer just good-looking white dudes (think: Chris Barnard in the sixties) flanked […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A prodigious task facing the humanities: The creation of a new vocabulary
How does one articulate and make sense of the momentous changes that have taken place in the last three decades or so across the world, and that have not nearly run their course, if the existing vocabulary in the humanities is rapidly being unmasked as belonging to a different conceptual dispensation or “paradigm” – one […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics, Sport
This black life matters
Michael Brown was killed a year ago. They used to say, “It’s been a long, hot summer” but it’s been another long, hot, horror-filled year in the US; every single day another Michael Brown. This is someone I know. In high school, Kadeem was a force in the middle of the field. He owned his […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Sex workers’ rights are human rights
By Catherine Murphy Sex workers all over the world face a constant risk of abuse. This is not news. Nor is it news that they are an extremely marginalised group of people, frequently forced to live outside the law. No one would be surprised to learn that they face discrimination, beatings, rape and harassment — […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Media, News/Politics
Anger, ‘outrage’ and the internet
Quite often, when I log on to Twitter, I’ll see comments like the following: “What are we angry about today? Did I miss today’s Twitter outrage? I don’t know what we’re supposed to be angry about this week, but I’m outraged just in case.” It happens especially after incidents like Bic’s sexist Women’s Day ad […]
Posted inEquality
The undignified existence of black women
By Sandile Tshabalala Black women remain the most vulnerable to the endless socioeconomic realities of our society. In spite of this, we cannot ignore the existence of wealthy, motivated and healthy women. It is imperative to grapple with the right to “human dignity” afforded to all South Africans but barely enjoyed by ordinary black women, […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
20 000 women, for nothing?
Twenty thousand women marched in 1956 and changed the world. We celebrate them this month. They are certainly worthy. **** Some time ago, I went for an interview. When asked by the panel why I wanted to leave the job I was in at the time, I responded that I was tired of the institutional […]
Posted inEquality, Media
Race is too much of a sloppy concept to assist us in answering the coloured question
The “coloured question” revived itself, again. This time, not by politicians hoping to gain sympathy votes from the coloured majority in the Western and Northern Cape provinces. Jamie Petersen, a 22-year-old Cape Town resident, writing about her experiences of “being coloured in a black and white South Africa” sparked this latest wave of the debate. […]
Posted inEquality, Media
Caitlyn – our new Trans* icon?
By Chris/tine McLachlan As the world voyeuristically peeked at Mx Caitlyn Jenner splashed onto the cover page of Vanity Fair, I wondered: Is she the new poster girl/woman for the trans* community? This is the woman that was able to beat the president of the United States with the fastest growing Twitter account. The woman […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Obama and Kenyatta’s clash over LGBTI rights highlights the need for a much-needed discussion
By Stephen Buchanan-Clarke President Obama’s visit to Kenya as the first sitting US president will likely be remembered most for the strong stand he voiced on the issue of LGBTI rights on the continent. Standing alongside Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta at a joint press conference on Saturday, Obama unreservedly stated his belief “in the principle […]
Posted inEquality, General
The UN is hiding the true extent of global hunger
As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire, the United Nations and the international NGO community are rallying around the conclusion that this has been “the most successful anti-poverty movement in history”. Poverty has been cut in half, they tell us. And hunger has taken a serious hit, falling narrowly shy of the target. It’s a […]