Democracy & Social Justice

The people of Mozambique have been battered in recent times by devastating cyclones and an increasingly virulent armed insurgency in the north of the country. The backdrop is a country battling state capture. This involves a coterie of corrupt politicians, multinational corporations and international banks.

Zainap Salie says if she had the ear of policymakers she would ask for more public spaces, more trees and a school curriculum that teaches the value of urban gardens. In the meantime, she’s doing her bit to green her community.

In a country characterised by myriad gates, security personnel and other barriers, taking ownership of public space might entail both raising awareness of what public space means and thinking about our private spaces differently. Khayelitsha resident Khanya Qongqo takes us on her journey to this conclusion.

Sindiswa Manxeba started a soup kitchen out of her home in Imizamo Yethu, Cape Town, when lockdown began in 2020. She and her team work primarily to help feed the children of the nearby school, who queue in the street outside.

Who are the shady middlemen who derailed Prasa? We turn our attention to Auswell ‘tall trains’ Mashaba, whose business Swifambo Rail Leasing is one of the locomotives of corruption at Prasa.

Ensuring public spaces are accessible to all is the first step to making a city truly inclusive. But, as I’ve come to realise in my 11 years in Cape Town, not everyone is consulted — or even considered — when it comes to the planning of a city. In the first of a series that will appear every Friday, we meet Makgosi Letimile, a wheelchair user from Observatory who is afraid to leave her home.

The link between corruption and lived experience is nowhere more obvious than the erosion of passenger train services in South Africa. Prasa’s service has declined so dramatically over the past decade that the majority of working-class South Africans who once relied on the affordable service have had to turn to more expensive modes of public transport.