The launch of the ‘People’s Climate Justice Charter’ this week is important. It is the product of an exemplary campaign, five years of consultation and social mobilisation led by the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign. However, the real challenges to ensure it is taken seriously by society are just beginning.
Social justice
No recovery without redistribution: No ‘social contract’ without meaningful inclusion of civil society
After President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the move to Lockdown Level 2 in his address to the nation on Saturday night, 15 August, South Africa entered a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. But what will this mean to us in our day-to-day lives?
Celebrate our Healthcare Workers: Honour their sacrifices by adopting their Values
How do we pay fitting tribute to Dr Lungile Pepeta and the 181 other healthcare workers who have so far laid down their lives in the struggle against Covid-19?
Covid-19 Emergency & Lockdown: What went wrong and what will it take to fix it?
South Africa is at a crossroads. All of the strengths we have as a society, which could and should have been mobilised against Covid-19 still exist. There is still an enormous reservoir of solidarity, resources and ideas. We can still save lives, rebuild livelihoods, push back Covid-19 and birth a better society. But ‘in the time of contagion the lack of solidarity is first and foremost the lack of imagination’.
A Love Letter to Social Justice Activists: Now is the time to change the world, tomorrow may be too late
These days, civil society often seems to be the last redoubt of dignity and solidarity. It is a place where love and concern for fellow human beings still drives politics. A place where the noble spirit of sacrifice that animated Nelson Mandela and many other freedom fighters has not been snuffed out. But as much as Covid-19 needs action to defend people’s lives and livelihoods, it also now needs the courage to take risks to fight forward for a fair and equal society.
Realising Nelson Mandela’s Vision: Yes We Can!
Tomorrow, the results of the National Income Dynamics Survey: Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) study will be released. They will show that the social harm caused by the lockdown and the Covid-19 health emergency is far deeper and more damaging than previous estimates. But, paradoxically, Covid-19 presents us with an opportunity to make reparations for South Africa’s racially divided past, to rebuild trust, and to create safe neighbourhoods that erect an invisible barrier of community and solidarity against Covid-19 and the poverty it is unleashing.
The Constitutional contract is being broken – we must repair it and demand a fair society
Across the world, capitalist economics is in tatters. As always happens in a mega-crisis on a scale of that brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, governments and central banks are breaking ‘rules’ that in stable times they insist are immutable.
Tackling Hunger with Community Action Networks
Today Gauteng has over 100 community action networks, all of them made up of organisations and individuals who are trying to provide relief in the face of the humanitarian crisis unravelling in their communities.
Does anyone remember Life Esidimeni? Of short memories, public service and truth telling
Throughout much of 2017, South Africa was gripped by a health disaster of another type – the Life Esidimeni tragedy. It seems that its lessons are being forgotten already.
Black children’s lives matter
June 16, 2020, is the 44th anniversary of the start of the Soweto Uprising on 16 June 1976. Because of Covid-19, it will probably be the most difficult year young people in South Africa have faced since those brutal and murderous days. Millions are hungry. Millions have had their dreams of schooling interrupted. Young people will be bearing the brunt of job losses, that is if they had a job in the first place. Sadly, today should be considered a day of shame rather than celebration; a day for an urgent and tangible recommitment to equality for young people.