Last week’s Constitutional Court ruling decriminalising consensual sexual relationships between teens was met with moralising outrage across the country. Sensationalist media fanned the flames of indignation by failing to contextualise the law’s effect on teen sexual relations – including rape.
Under the impugned sections 15 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) teenage rape survivors, especially girls, run the risk of being criminally charged for being raped.
Almost 20 years after South Africa’s miraculous democratic transformation, we, the young “middle-class”, find ourselves to be the emerging leaders of this nation, and in a somewhat of a rut. Black, white, coloured, Indian it doesn’t matter. Race isn’t the discriminating factor as it was all those years ago. We have either grown up with […]
Indifference is a powerful weapon, easily injected into entire atmospheres, hearts and minds. Since the beginning of The Troyeville Bedtime Story, a never-ending Joburg tale that began with a stinking pile of neglected rubble in 2011, my eyes and heart tend toward what appears to be impossible, dysfunctional, overwhelming. I am long suffering from a […]
By Sharon Ekambaram Recently, Mumbai Aids activists took to the streets protesting the Indian government’s failure to protect people living with HIV from discrimination. More than 20 years after South African activists took up the same fight at home, the protests are a stark reminder that the battle for equality, dignity and access to life-saving […]
Some say that 20 years is not a long time to sink teeth into a fully-fledged new democracy. There have been many challenges to ignite economic growth while providing essential services to the South African nation. But the major gripe that seems to resonate in today’s times is that the powerful voice of the working […]
By Frederik de Ridder In 2009, 23 million people registered to vote, and 18 million voted. In 2014, 21 million people in SA will be between the ages of 18-35 years. Seven million people will be between the ages of 18-24 years and 4 million young people will not be in employment, education or training. Also in 2014, 1 million […]
By Refiloe Joala As a nation I believe we have made a concerted effort of doing away with the overplayed notion of an Africa that conjures up images of hungry children with flies around their faces staring blankly into a camera lens. Although in the case of South Africa, one would imagine images of endless […]
By Melo Magolego Every so often, a chorus of scribes invokes the memory of Nkrumah to remind us of the urgent task of uniting Africa, both politically and economically. The 50th anniversary (in 2013) of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) — predecessor to the African Union — proved yet a stage for another hymn. […]
“It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of ‘women’, the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.” Judith Butler: Gender Trouble. At first read, […]
By Athambile Masola As a product of a Eurocentric, former white educational institution, I was once very quick to embrace non-racialism (that race should no longer be used as a marker to understand our experiences). I’ve been living in Cape Town for over a year and have come face to face with the politics of […]
By Jonathan Whittall On one of my first visits into Syria with MSF, I arrived on a cold night in a city with no electricity and shortages of food. A community under siege hosted me while they lived in fear, huddled into basements in an attempt to escape the continuous bombing. I saw field hospitals […]
By Mark John Burke Europe is a great place, it really is. You step off your plane onto a train that takes you to your destination and once there trams and buses stand ready to take you to wherever you want. Europeans have perfected recycling and they go to great lengths to ensure everybody’s safety. […]
