I must admit, the ANC’s election moniker (you know, that it has a “good story” to tell) makes me very angry – probably much more than it should. In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, and the feeling that we’ll never again experience such collective unity or progress as a nation, the ANC’s election spin […]
Equality
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Condemned to obscurity: The state of our population register and the right to vote
By Liesl Muller I recently attended an election-observer training session in preparation for next month’s elections. I was inspired by the chance to play my part in the democratic process shaping the future of our country. Voting is an opportunity many South Africans did not have in the years before democracy and which South Africans […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A Biko moment
I’ve been having a Biko moment for a while now. A “Biko [1] moment” is that moment when someone says something racist but I’m left wondering if I’m reading too much into the situation. That moment when I have to debate in mind if I feel welcome in a space because there’s an atmosphere of […]
Posted inEquality, General
Playing catch up in the classroom
The link between poverty and education is an old story. Education has always been used as a means to an end and as is the case in South Africa, the end is for education to be a tool to get people out of the poverty trap. To illustrate the poverty trap: if a child comes […]
Posted inEquality
Leering glances: The silence on sexual harassment is untenable
Sexual harassment on the streets is a pervasive phenomenon that women from a range of racial and cultural backgrounds as well as social circumstances experience in daily life. Most men, even educated men from so-called respectable backgrounds belittle women’s experiences of sexual harassment. Internationally, this has led to a spate of new films and campaigns […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
How will our society be measured on corruption?
Rita* fled the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Africa in 2009 after suffering unspeakable horrors and grave violations to her rights amid ongoing violence. The department of home affairs immediately recognised her as a refugee but when she was asked to pay a large amount of money to receive her refugee permit, Rita refused […]
Posted inEquality
Springtime in Auschwitz
I visit a death camp — at the wrong time of the year They show a curtain-raiser video on the tour bus from Krakow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a 50-minute documentary based on the work of Alexi Vorontsov, the first Red Army soldier with a movie camera to enter these gates of hell in January 1945. Now […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
India, SA risk forsaking their proud histories on human rights
India and South Africa are increasingly tarnishing their reputations as democratic and rights-respecting nations, most recently by unsuccessfully seeking to undermine a resolution on the right to peaceful protest at the UN Human Rights Council. Wrangling at the world’s premier human-rights body this March has marked another low in international relations for India and South […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Khaya Dlanga…white South Africans are trying
By Jordan Griffiths In a recent article Khaya Dlanga looked at race relations in our country 20 years on and presented the argument that in his view black people have made more of an effort towards the process of integration. He cited how black South Africans move to white suburbs, learn English and Afrikaans and […]
Posted inEquality, General
Floating schools and how access to technology broadens access to education
Until I read about Mosammet Reba Khatun from Bangladesh, I had never heard about solar-powered floating schools. Mosammet teaches in a remote river basin where access to schools is very difficult, especially during the monsoon season. The boat is an interesting model for making education accessible in poor communities because the boat picks the learners […]
Posted inEquality
Over the last decade, 17 million more children are learning in sub-Saharan Africa
By Pauline Rose Sub-Saharan Africa often hits the headlines for the wrong reasons — and this is just as much the case in education as in other areas. Failure of schooling to keep pace with population growth means that the region is now responsible for more than half of the 57 million children out of school. […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A queer understanding of community?
By Matthew Clayton* & Thorne Godinho** It should come as no surprise that South Africa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex community is stratified along similar race and class lines as the rest of South African society. The big umbrella that is the LGBTI term actually falls short of being big enough to cover white […]