Economic Justice & Civic Freedoms

A series of reflections on urban public spaces with support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Freedom is still an unreachable destination from the peripheries. It is an ideal that easily slips out of our mouths as South Africans, but with little to show for women and gender minorities.

South Africa, like the rest of the world, emerged from the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic battered and bruised on many fronts.

An insight into Freedom Day for dispossessed indigenous people fighting giants to preserve sacred land and water. How can you redevelop sacred land by infilling parts of a river with concrete bulk?

Freedom is not absolute in South Africa and never will be. In fact, the notion of absolute freedom, while it sounds good to say, is an absurd fallacy.

The case of Life Esidimeni is one of the most significant violations of health and human rights in post-apartheid South Africa.

Links between environmental disasters and mental health are increasingly coming into focus as ticking time bombs. It is vital that spatial planning strategies at local government level are adapted with this dual threat to societal welfare in mind.

Heritage Month comes and goes each year, always with much fanfare around celebrating our country’s diverse cultures and history. Yet, many of the government’s proposed energy solutions pose significant risks to human life and the environment, while ignoring customary rights and risking several heritage sites. If not challenged, they will most likely leave communities across the country at a huge disadvantage.

For centuries, resources have been extracted from the African continent without adequate payment or compensation. With colonialism, Khoikhoi and San, the first inhabitants of Southern Africa, lost their land and many lost their lives. During decades of Apartheid they were racially discriminated and still have to fight for political and economic inclusion in the post-Apartheid era. We spoke to the Khoikhoi lawyer Lesle Jansen about her fight for the community and for the legal acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Indigenous people.

Our partner NSM has recently penned an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa calling for an intervention to urgently address the murderous funding issues with women's shelters.

Another year, another budget speech, bail-outs left right and center causing spending cuts in government programmes and services, proposals to slash the public wage bill and minimal increases in social grants.  Yet, again, the budget leaves us with more questions than answers. Who stands to lose the most, asks the Womxn's Budget Collective.