Democracy & Social Justice

Over 2000 Equal Education (EE) members will be marching to the Western Cape Provincial Legislature on Friday 31 October, where they will hold a rally against educational inequality. Speeches, describing a wide range of challenges facing schools will be made by Equalisers from across the Cape Peninsula, and a memorandum will be handed to MEC for Education Debbie Schafer.

Two organisations have teamed up to map public flush toilet locations in Khayelitsha. They will launch an interactive website and phone-based reporting system to improve efficiency in toilet maintenance.

The Social Justice Coalition, a partner of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, welcomes the recent decision made by the City of Cape Town to not renew its contract with Tedcor.

On May 7, 2014, in the significant marker of 20 years to democracy, 18.6 million South Africans at home and abroad came out to cast their votes.The country’s fifth general elections were billed to be ‘the most important elections since 1994’. And indeed, as the first elections in which the first crop of ‘born frees’ – those born after the end of apartheid – would cast their votes, they were bound to be significant, whatever message they would bring.

Provincial education departments must drive a public education campaign on schools funding and the regulations that govern it. This is one of the recommendations that Corruption Watch, a long-term partner of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, delivered at the second South African Basic Education Conference (Sabec).

In response to serious electoral irregularities and human rights abuses in the Parliamentary and Presidential elections in 2000 and 2002 respectively many Western countries decided to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe and its president Mugabe. Is it time for these measures to be removed?

Since the inception of Corruption Watch in 2012, a large number of complaints forwarded to the organisation related to corruption in schools. In response, over the course of 2013 and with the support of the Heinrich Boll Foundation, Corruption Watch launched a campaign to increase reporting of and combat corruption in South Africa's schools.