Feature

Another Country: Hungry Children and the Quest for Four Big Pots

If Alexandra was sitting on a westward facing hill it would look directly over to Sandton, accusingly. Instead it faces to the East and is invisible to its well-heeled neighbour. Another country. This makes it possible for those who live and work in Africa’s richest square mile to ignore the suffering to which they are umbilically connected and to shun their responsibilities even in a time of crisis. But this article is not a story about guilting the rich; it is a positive story about those who get on with the business of saving lives, oblivious to their hardened wealthy neighbours. As if they live in another country. It’s a kind of fairytale.

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Protect and Serve (Food), in Happiness Valley on Freedom Day

On Monday, 27 April 2020, at an informal settlement called Happiness Valley, SANDF Major Andre Meisner told Maverick Citizen, ‘we are not at war with the community’ and invited the writer to participate in a military mission where no blood was shed and where only bread and not bullets were fired. It felt like one of those days that could only happen in South Africa.

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Influential coalition urges President Ramaphosa to increase child support grants

On Friday evening, just as the sun was going down, an important letter was despatched over the internet to President Cyril Rampahosa, calling for an immediate R500-a-month increase to the child support grant for a period of six months. Such a measure, the letter states, ‘is the simplest, quickest and most effective way to get cash into millions of poor households that will otherwise face food insecurity and debilitating poverty’.

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The dignity of the damned

For many years I have been a fair-weather friend of two people who work on the corner of Yale and Empire Roads near Wits University in Johannesburg. One sells newspapers and the other sells flowers. Whatever changes privilege or fortune bestows on my life – disappearing overseas for a few months, moving from an office at Wits to an office in Braamfontein – I know they will always be there. Till death do us part.

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These are the essential conditions needed to ensure the 21-day lockdown is a success

Tonight South Africa begins a 21-day lockdown. While there is unanimous support for the necessity of such a drastic measure it is important to keep level heads; it is also important for the President and the National Command team to be open to constructive suggestions that aim to make sure that the lockdown succeeds in its aim of ‘flattening the curve’ and drastically reducing the incidence of new infections. This article, based on conversations with leading public health experts in South Africa and internationally, must be read in this spirit.

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