Your sole is broken

April 25, 2023 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Your sole is broken

A fellow traveller
(a woman to boot)
observes as I stoop
to examine the sole
of an age-old boot

Knee-high they are
rescued me many times
from the searching hands
of apartheid’s police

(contraband stuffed
down my length of leg
the side-pockets usually
filled with meeting notes)

Your sole is broken
couldn’t keep up
with my striding
here there and
whereever too

Your sole is broken
perchance a slip
of the Freudian variety
in these challenging times

(who would have thought
as we are supposed to be
free from all iniquities
post-1994’s Majority Rule

Your sole is broken
can it be fixed
(do we actually want to
and at what cost)
or is it beyond repair

(By David Kapp)

(Image Credit 1: Community Arts Project / UWC Centre for Humanities Research) (Image Credit 2: Community Arts Project / UWC Centre for Humanities Research)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: David Kapp, South Africa, The very unfortunate

Landmark case: In South Africa, ALL pregnant women, women who are lactating, children under age six are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment. ALL. Period.

April 22, 2023 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Section 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa states, “Everyone has the right to have access to health care services, including reproductive health care.” Section 28 of that same Constitution states, “Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.” This week, the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng division, confirmed those sections, in no uncertain terms, in a landmark decision brought by the law and advocacy organization, Section27, and three women: Kamba Azama and Nomagugu Ndlovu, denied free health services while pregnant, and Sinanzeni Sibanda, whose child under six was denied free health services. While the judgement is a decided victory, many question why it had to come to this in the first place.

In 2020, the Gauteng Department of Health issued the Policy Implementation Guidelines on Patient Administration and Revenue Management, which was written and interpreted to allow Gauteng public hospitals to deny free services to pregnant women, lactating women, and children under six. Hospitals began charging exorbitant fees up front before offering any services. They believed provincial policy superseded the national Constitution; effectively, they believed the Constitution was, at best, an interesting document. Section27, Kamba Azama, Nomagugu Ndlovu, and Sinanzeni Sibanda said NO! to that policy and notion, and took the Health Department to court.

Over the last three years, reports of such abuse have increased. For example, “Julian” and his wife and child moved from Maratane Refugee Camp, in Mozambique, to South Africa, seeking, among other things, health care for the infant daughter, who lives with cerebral palsy. As an undocumented resident, “Julian” found only impediments: demands for identity documents, demands to pay upfront as a private patient. Today, he and his family struggle with the R40,000 debt that was imposed on him. Suffer little children …

“Grace Jean”, an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo was eight months pregnant and suffered from high blood pressure. After consulting a clinic, she was referred to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital. She went twice to the hospital. Each time, she was told to pay R20 000 to obtain a hospital file number and be treated. Unemployed, Grace and her husband could not come up with the money. She lost the baby.

“Fezal Blue”, an asylum seeker living with HIV, was in labor. She approached three hospitals. None would take her, because she couldn’t provide South African identity card and wasn’t carrying her asylum seeker permit. “Fezal Blue” gave birth in the back of a car, going to a fourth hospital. Mother and child survived, and the baby did receive nevirapine, preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

In his decision, Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland declared Gauteng’s policy to be inoperative and generally an incoherent mess, not to mention a violation of the Constitution. Additionally, he gave all health establishments, across South Africa, until July 17^th to post in a clearly visible place, the following: “ALL pregnant women,

ALL women who are lactating, and

ALL children below the age of six

Are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment, irrespective of their nationality and documentation status.”

ALL is capitalized in the Judge’s orders.

The Gauteng policy targeted the most vulnerable: asylum seekers, undocumented persons and persons who are at risk of statelessness. It did more than declare them persona non grata, it declared them nonpersons, unworthy of rights, dignity, or simple human decency. As Mbali Baduza, legal researcher at Section27, explained, “The effect of this court order is that it applies across the country… Medical xenophobia or health xenophobia has been on the rise in certain provinces, and this court order makes it clear that all pregnant women and children under six — regardless of their status — can access hospital care for free… and that’s an important precedent”.

Sharon Ekambaram, head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights and a spokesperson for Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, Kaax, noted, “It is concerning that our government needs to be reminded of their constitutional obligations as set out in our Constitution and in our policies. This situation is but one component of a much broader crisis of institutionalised xenophobia”. Dale McKinley, also of Kaax, added, “We should be angry that we’ve had to go this far and that we have to continue to force our government to do the most basic things in terms of what our law says”.

Medical or health xenophobia is nationwide, across South Africa, as it is worldwide, and it’s spreading. Celebrate the victories, such as this landmark decision; and be concerned and angry. Part of the decision was to enforce the rule of law and the power and responsibility of the Constitution, and aprt of the decision was to emphasize the map. No assault on persons’ dignity is unique or individual, they are always part of a pattern of viral growth, and so every response must also be expansive. What happens in Gauteng does not stay in Gauteng.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Jana Hattingh / Spotlight) (Image Credit: Section27)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: asylum seekers, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, health care, immigrant women, Section27, South Africa, women, xenophobia

Someone died today

March 17, 2023 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Someone died today
Just round the corner at the small Woolworths mall in Klipfontein road
Most likely others died too
at the hand of some sordid human feud
Blooding the ground with futility
Not far away from here, not for any good reason

Some died today
not someone I know
I don’t know what she looked like
I don’t know her name
I don’t know her story

She died because someone decided to make a choice
They made a choice to use a firearm in a public space
They decided their outrage, their anger, their pain
was the only thing that mattered
And there she was in the crossfire
Meddling in the moment, her body simply moving as it always did, going about her business
no connection, no relation to the human holding the firearm
Sending a bullet meant for some other body

There was just that one fatality, I heard
And yet there were more today
I know this
because every day there are someones dying
for no good reason
for no good cause – as if there ever is
Every day somewhere there’s a mind failing itself, a heart strange to its own humanity

They die in violence
because we count the unimportant
we plague spaces with a presence devoid of love
Every day we fail our own humanity.

(By Khadija Tracey Carmelita Heeger)

(Image Credit: Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe: “Remember Me” / Revisions)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Cape Town, Khadija Tracey Carmelita Heeger, South Africa

In Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa, the struggle for housing is a struggle for home

February 6, 2023 by Guest Blogger 1 Comment

120-128 Bromwell Street

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa consists of a Preamble and 14 chapters. Chapter 1 provides the “founding provisions” and opens: “The Republic of South Africa is one, sovereign, democratic state founded on the following values: Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. Non-racialism and non-sexism. Supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law. Universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness.” It’s a promising beginning. Chapter 2 is titled “Bill of Rights” and begins: “This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. The state must respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights.” Section 26 of the Constitution, located in Chapter 2, concerns housing and so much more: “Housing: Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right. No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.” This is one of only two occasions on which the Constitution discusses “home”. The other, Section 14, articulates the right to privacy: “Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have their person or home searched.” There’s a great deal, though not enough, of discussion these days of `homelessness’. Recently, that condition has been somewhat refined by calling the loss of housing the state of being unhoused. While a welcome intervention, this still doesn’t tell us what home is.

Beyond the right to access to adequate housing and the right to not be arbitrarily evicted or have one’s home arbitrarily demolished, what is the State’s responsibility to something they, the inhabitants, residents, neighbors, community, call home? This is a particularly poignant question in a country marked by a history of forced mass dislocations, a description as apt for the United States, Brazil, India, England, as South Africa. Nevertheless, when the authors of the South African Constitution codified the right to housing, they remembered, acutely, the dislocations, demolitions and deprivations of housing and home under the apartheid regime. And today? Consider a court decision rendered today by the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, concerning the rights of residents in the Woodstock neighborhood of Cape Town. While today’s decision may mark a turning point, it is not the end of the story.

For some, the story would start on October 30, 2013, when The Woodstock Hub bought 120 to 128 Bromwell Street. On June 30, 2014, residents were served eviction notices and given a month to clear out. Residents, 26 in all including children, began organizing. They went to court. In 2016, the Cape High Court decided in favor of the landlord. The residents’ attorneys argued that at the very least the City had an obligation to move the residents into nearby and adequate housing. Instead, the City proposed to move them to Wolwerivier, far from the city center and with absolutely no public transportation whatsoever. Woodstock, on the other hand, is one of the most centrally located suburbs in Cape Town, and while it managed to avoid forced removals in the 1950s, its location has meant wave upon wave of gentrification, displacement, and struggle. With that in mind, the residents and their attorneys appealed the decision.

In 2021, five years later, the Cape Town High Court decided that the City’s plan for removal to Wolwerivier was indeed unconstitutional. The Court ruled the City must find the residents emergency housing as near as feasibly possible and within the year. In response, The Woodstock Hub appealed, and that’s where we are today. Today, the Court ruled the City plan is not unconstitutional, because the earlier decision “did not identify the extent of invalidity for the City to rectify in its order.” On the other hand, the Court did say the City must provide adequate housing “in a location as near as possible to where they currently reside” before the end of May. It’s a mixed decision. Whether the residents will accept or appeal is unknown just now.

120 to 128 Bromwell Street has been, and is, home to these residents. Brenda Smith is 82 years old. She was born in 128 Bromwell Street. Today, she lives in 128 Bromwell Street. Charnell Commando is 36 years old. She has lived on Bromwell Street all her life. In fact, her parents, grandparents, and great grandparents also were born and lived at her current address. Graham Beukes, 42 years old, has lived all his life at his current Bromwell Street address, where his parents lived for 50 years. What `value’ does their history, do their lives, have? What is home?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit 1: Rejul Bejoy / GroundUp) (Photo Credit 2: Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Bromwell Street, Cape Town, Dan Moshenberg, eviction, Haunts, home, right to housing, South Africa, Woodstock

His father returned

January 12, 2023 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

His father returned

Goods stolen
we bite the hand
that feeds
(same old story)

His father returned
whatever his son
brought home
from his (and others)
ransacking expedition

A ransacking expedition
they bit the hand
that helps others
in their time of need

His father returned
items his druggie son
(same old story)
took without permission
from the Gift of the Givers

His father returned
as many others did
from the community
and the surrounds

one wishes others
would do so too
from wherever

and from whoever
they have liberated
worldly goods
and the like

His father returned

SAFM radio’s Beyond the Headlines presenter – and many others – express disbelief at the ransacking of the Gift of the Givers’ office (Tuesday afternoon, 11 January 2023).

(By David Kapp)

Image Credit: Radio 947)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Cape Town, David Kapp, Gift of the Givers, South Africa, The very unfortunate

As 2022 ends, around the world, mass evictions threaten all that is human

December 31, 2022 by Guest Blogger 5 Comments

“Housing should not be a privilege”. After years in shelters and on the streets, 41-year-old Dwayne Seifforth and his nine-year-old daughter D’Kota-Holidae Seifforth live in an apartment in Harlem, in upper Manhattan. Having a stable and decent place to live has made all the difference. Mr. Seifforth moved from working part-time and living on food stamps to a full-time job. His daughter went to school and settled in. Unbeknownst to them and their neighbors, the landlord’s ownership of the building was tenuous, at best, and now they face eviction, through no fault of their own. “Housing should not be a privilege”. It’s a sentiment expressed around the world, and, sadly, with increasing frequency, given the rise this year in mass evictions. Consider just the last month or so, 2022.

In the United Kingdom, November ended with the revelation that, in the depths of the pandemic and its economic and existential hardships, housing associations, home to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable tenants, had secretly lobbied the government to let them charge more rent. At the same time, the typical salary for a housing association executive was around £300,000 a year, close to $400,000. At the same time, Michael Gove, the `levelling up’ secretary, reported that `at least’ tens of thousands of rental properties across the UK were unsafe, due to lack of maintenance. One minister’s “lack of maintenance” is a thousand landlords’ refusal to maintain. Meanwhile, end of the year reports showed that no-fault eviction notices rose 76% in the past year. 48,000 households in England alone were served with no-fault eviction notices.

In Canada, evictions marked the end of the calendar year. Quebec’s non-urban areas saw a marked increase in “renovictions”, forced evictions under the pretense of renovation. Non-urban Quebecois renovictions rose 43% in the past year and look to continue rising. The Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec describes the situation as “alarming”. In metropolitan Quebec, evictions rose from 1,041 in 2021 to 2,256 in 2022, a 154% increase, again in the midst of a pandemic and its hardships.

For the state of Assam, in northeast India, in December, the state went on an eviction spree, and this in a state that has used mass evictions often since May, 2021, when the BJP assumed power. These eviction campaigns have targeted `encroachers’, who are almost Muslim. At the time of the last census, Assam’s population was around 27 million, of whom around 19 million were Hindu and 11 million were Muslim. From May 2021 to September 2022, 4,449 families have been evicted, almost all Muslims of Bengali origin, most of whom have lived in the area for generations. In November, 562 families were evicted from one site, without notice. In the first week of December, 70 families were evicted. On December 19, another 302 families were evicted. On December 26, 40 families were evicted from one site. On December 28, another eviction drive was announced, in Guwahati, Assam’s most populous city. Repeatedly, the government and its supporters have boasted that there was no resistance to the evictions.

Finally, on December 17, a group of people identifying themselves as part of or related to Operation Dudula, an anti-immigrant group in South Africa, invaded a derelict building in the New Doornfontein neighborhood of Johannesburg and evicted over 300 people, almost all migrants. Included among those cast out were more than 60 people living with disabilities, most of whom were blind, and over 200 women and children. As in Assam, the purpose was to remove `encroachers’ who were somehow `foreign’.

That’s the end of 2022, along with mass evictions of slum dwellers in Nigeria, villagers and small shop owners in Cambodia, Afghan refugees in Greece, long term residents in Mexico forced out to `welcome’ the new remote workers from the United States and Europe, Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, and especially Jerusalem, and, in the United States, from Connecticut to Oklahoma to Missouri to California to Oregon, and beyond and between, eviction filings and evictions are surging, often to record heights. When it comes to access to decent, stable, and affordable housing, the world map is one of violence, devastation and existential crisis.

Globally, the common theme is fear. In India, for example, the government assured the world that everything was fine because there was no resistance. According to residents, the reason there was no resistance was years of police violence against those who protested. Ajooba Khatoon, whose house was demolished, explained, “We did not resist them because there were hundreds of policemen. The police had already instilled a sense of fear among us since their arrival on December 13. We were not allowed to step outside on the eviction day.” Across the United Kingdom, renters live with dangerous conditions because they are fearful of revenge evictions if they speak up. In South Africa, one of the survivors of the eviction in Johannesburg, Lazarus Chinhara, explained, “‘We are not scared of deportation or anything. If we remain quiet, we will become prisoners of conscience.” Tadiwa Dzafunwa added, “I don’t know if we will ever recover from this”.

Around the world and around the corner, neighbors are living with histories of State violence, perpetrated by landlords with the assistance of the police. Thinking of the residents’ and the world’s silence at the evictions in Assam, Moumita Alam wrote, “The silence around eviction however can be attributed to the history of violence that has marked the fate of the protestors …. If every protest begets dead bodies to be buried in silence, ‘peace’ of the burial ground shrouds our memory.” If we silently accept the forced disappearances of neighbors, the web of trauma thickens and tightens as the corpses pile up. What threatens all that is human is the cooperative architecture of violence, silence, and trauma of eviction. I don’t know if we will ever recover from this. Housing should not be a privilege.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Image Credit 1: Next City) (Photo Image Credit 2: LibCom)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Assam, Cambodia, Canada, Dan Moshenberg, evictions, Greece, Haunts, India, Johannesburg, mass evictions, Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States

Ireland and South Africa reject the `natural’ inevitability of eviction

October 24, 2022 by Guest Blogger 8 Comments

“Yet many of these issues, I found, could not really be thought through, and some of them, I believe, cannot even be focused unless we are conscious of the words as elements of the problems.” Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society

The weather in the United States these days is terrible. Virginia and the Bay Area, in California, are threatened by tsunamis, while Hennepin County, in Minnesota, faces the prospect of monsoon. These are not meteorological events. They are eviction tsunamis and monsoons. While the figures of speech portray the intense destructiveness of the eviction situation, from coast to coast, they also provide a bit of an alibi, in that they naturalize the precipitous rise in eviction across the United States and beyond. Evictions are not natural events, they are created by humans, individually and in corporations. Likewise, skyrocketing rents and rates of eviction are not natural events; they too are created by individual landlords and, often, by corporate landlords. To the same degree that climate change is created by human action and especially `economic development’, so is eviction. Recently, Ireland and the Johannesburg High Court, separately, rejected the `natural’ inevitability of eviction and chose to promote the right to decent housing as a fundamental element of human dignity and the right to dignity.

In September, with winter approaching, Scotland temporarily froze rents and halted evictions. At the same time, in Ireland, with an equally bitter winter approaching, a third of renters reported they spend 50% or more of their income on rent. Rents in Ireland are “doubling, tripling”, according to Helen McEntee, Ireland’s Minister for Justice. In October, the Irish government decided to follow Scotland’s example and halted all evictions between November and March of next year. While landlords have claimed they are being `forced out’ of the market, tenants and their allies welcome the respite. Everyone recognizes that a five-month halt to evictions will not resolve the severe affordable housing shortage in Ireland, at least it will provide a momentary respite and a modest recognition of the humanity and dignity of those most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, in the case of Rycloff-Beleggings (Pty) Ltd v Ntombekhaya Bonkolo and Others, the Johannesburg High Court ruled that a group of working people’s access to work and right to dignity had to be considered when adjudicating an eviction notice. The case involves waste reclaimers who have been living on an `undeveloped’ stretch of farmland that lies between a residential complex and a business park in the Midrand section of Johannesburg. In 2018, the owners of the land, Rycloff-Beleggings, decided they wanted to `develop’ the land, and so issued eviction notices. The city offered a site with no possibility of developing waste reclamation economies, and so, in May 2019, the residents sued, demanding to either stay put or be placed somewhere where they could continue to work. On October 4, Judge Greg Wright agreed and gave the city until March 2023 to find appropriate site for the community. Anything else “would leave them at risk of not being able to maintain their dignity and care for their children. It would be unfair and therefore unconstitutional to uphold the other parties’ rights while the reclaimers go hungry. Furthermore, the rights of children are paramount in cases involving children such as the present one.” If people are on the land, it is not `undeveloped’. If people live in a neighborhood, it too is not undeveloped.

At one level, both Ireland and the Johannesburg High Court chose to respect the “indivisibility of all human rights”. While the Irish protections only last through the winter and the South African decision is only one court, the examples are illustrative. First, evictions can be stopped. Second, every human being and every community of human beings has the right to dignity. Third, eviction is not a natural, inevitable event. We can stop evictions. Finally, many descriptions and analysis of the housing crisis focus on large numbers, but we must also remember that every eviction is a housing crisis, and every housing crisis is an affront and an assault on all human rights. Scotland, Ireland, and the Johannesburg High Court acted in the name and service of human dignity and decency. Who will follow their example?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic credit: The Irish Times)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, eviction, Haunts, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa

In South Africa, Hope Gloria Mashilo and Tshebeletso Seremane said NO! to the subjugation of women workers … and won!

September 6, 2022 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Tshebeletso Seremane

Hope Gloria Mashilo and Tshebeletso Seremane used to work, as executives, at the South African Revenue Service, SARS. Mashilo began working at SARS in 2005, and by 2015 she had attained the position of Executive: Workplace Wellness, where she addressed employee assistance programs, occupational health, extended sick leave and chronic diseases. Seremane began working at SARS in 2009, as Executive: Integrity and Organisational Culture. Seremane was effectively the in-house person in charge of ethical conduct and culture. According to Seremane, at first SARS valued integrity. All that changed, again according to Seremane, in 2014, with the arrival of a new Commissioner, Tim Moyane, and of the now disgraced Bain & Company, who were hired to facilitate processes at SARS. Within a month of Moyane’s arrival, the new Commissioner and his friends at Bain announced a new restructuring plan. That’s when integrity left the building, and Hope Gloria Mashilo and Tshebeletso Seremane began worrying about the institution as well as their own positions and well-being. With good reason, as it turned out.

Moyane and Bain’s `restructuring’ was “unveiled” in August 2015. Soon after, many executives discovered their jobs no longer existed and they were re-assigned to ill defined, lower positions. Many, including Mashilo and Seremane, were informed they were now “Domain Specialists”, an undefined job which basically involved turning on a computer, sitting, then turning off the computer. To be clear, people continued to receive salaries as well as benefits and bonuses. Mashilo and Seremane, separately, thought this was, first, wrong and then suspicious.

Mashilo wrote a letter, entitled “Breaking the Silence”, addressed to Malusi Gigaba, then Minister of Finance, and Yunus Carrim, chairperson of the Standing Committee on Finance, with Moyane copied. Mashilo described her own personal trials as well as the illegal appointment of Bain and the spectral situation of “Domain Specialists”. Under South African whistleblower protection laws, the author of this letter should have been protected. Nevertheless, soon after Hope Gloria Mashilo was fired and escorted out of the building.

While Tshebeletso Seremane never wrote a letter, she refused to accept the indignity and illegality of the downgrading and of the “Domain Specialists” position. She too was fired and escorted off campus. Seremane has said the that dismissal had “broken her”. Her marriage fell apart as did other parts of her life.

Hope Gloria Mashilo and Tshebeletso Seremane decided to confront the indignity and illegality of their dismissals. They sued SARS, demanding re-instatement. On August 22, acting Labour Court Judge Smanga Sethene decided in favor of Mashilo and Seremane. His judgement begins: “History narrates that in human tragedies, wars and skirmishes, women are always burdened with sufferings and hardships. The burden of womanhood is a daily struggle encountered by women in all walks of life. Courts should not be meek and gentle when confronted with instances that have all the traits of any attempt to keep women subjugated in any form at workplaces. This case captures the hardships endured by two single mothers and senior executives during the infamous `restructuring’ of the South African Revenue Services (SARS) by Bain & Company (South Africa) during the tenure of Commissioner Thomas Swabedi Moyane … Their main sin was to question the integrity of the 2015 “restructuring” sponsored by Mr Moyane with Bain as a service provider”.

The decision concludes, “The injustice visited upon Ms Mashilo and Ms Seremane deserves the unwavering protection of this court. This court cannot consort with any corrupt activity at workplaces calculated to circumvent any provision of the Labour Relations Act. This court cannot consort with anyone who trampels upon women to exploit their vulnerability at workplaces. If this court were to turn a blind eye on what occurred at SARS during Mr Moyane’s `restructuring’, it would be failing in its constitutional obligations … This court shoulders the responsibility to ease the burden of womanhood at workplaces. It is in the interest of justice and the rule of law for this court to order the current Commissioner of SARS, Mr Kieswetter to welcome Ms Mashilo and Ms Seremane24 back … effective from 1 September 2022.”

Courts should not be meek and gentle when confronted with instances that have all the traits of any attempt to keep women subjugated in any form at workplaces. In refusing to be meek and gentle, courts follow, and honor, the actions and lives of those women who refused, who said NO! to indignity, who seized the power that was, and is, already in their hands. Hope Gloria Mashilo and Tshebeletso Seremane said NO! and won, and their victory is a victory for women workers everywhere, for women everywhere.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: EWN)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, Hope Gloria Mashilo, South Africa, Tshebeletso Seremane

Journeys have a way of evoking unexpected things

July 5, 2022 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Sibongile Mtungwa

Journeys have a way of evoking unexpected things – emotions, memories, reflections, new and old doubts, questions and answers about possible pathways to the future. I’ve been meaning to write about this Mzantsi short left experience visiting one of KZN’s fiercest social justice leaders and community organisers, Sibongile Mtungwa. I’ve known about her work for a while, but for me, the “visit” did much to elucidate her intersectional feminist organising praxis. Her command of complex relationships and nuanced approach to disrupting power hierarchies in a largely traditional socio-cultural set up. Her nuanced feministing that comes so effortlessly that it may be easy to miss. Her everyday facilitation of a critical, if curious, intergenerational dialogue where culture, tradition and so called “modernity” collide into each other exploding into new spheres of imagination.

Her depth and breadth of knowledge on diverse issues and her ability to zone in on what it all means for women is beyond commendable.

As fascinating is her treatment of the politics of identity. In a world where one of neoliberalism’s colonising effects is its injection of a mortal fear in our imagination, that we are disappearing together with everything we once knew or were, identity often becomes the life boat we cling to, sometimes pathologically so, in navigating our way to survival. When it is not the life boat it becomes this perverted instrument for a neo-colonialism of a special type. Her “intersectional” feminist approach challenges and stretches mine, and that of many other feminists, with their tendency to be overly matter of fact and fail the task of recognising the bridges there are for traversing “cites of struggle”. That identities, including cultural identities, can be claimed and repurposed into resources from which to advance liberation, expanding our “decolonial” possibilities as opposed to new identity prisons that patriarchy and his friends prefer to fashion them as. The idea that the art of liberatory feministing, or what the “new” NGOism calls “Transformative Feminist Leadership”, is the ability to creatively and effectively hold contestation as dialogue between intersecting oppressions and possibilities for liberation. Imagine the possibilities for the restoration of “health” and wellness that such an approach can yield!

Leadership like this is only possible to be produced from communities that are rich in spirit, agency, self-knowledge and vision, even when everything exists around them to strangle that vision. And there are as many stranglers of vision in Harry Gwala District Municipality as leaders and vision are plentiful.

Sibongile has chosen for herself a spirituality that seems to ground her faith in, and commitment to the art of possibility. The work she does is a daily grind that can only be made light by that kind of grounded commitment. Those who have organised anywhere, and especially in rural South Africa know how isolated rural activists often are, and feel. Donors have many excuses for marginalising these organisation’s and the rural organising space. Oh it’s too far. The organisations are too small and local. The context is too complex. It’s not easy to reach. We’ve all heard the excuses. Donors don’t like journeying off the beaten path, it’s easier to fund mainstream social change with its mainstream actors and their glossy reports and simplistic narratives and roll-off the tongue (if often vapid) strategies. So despite years of experience, a proven track record and commanding vision, Sibongile’s organisation continues to shrink in capacity because if there are going to be casualties in this war of attrition in social justice it’s going to be those organisations at the cliff’s edge of the urban/rural divide. But she pushes on. Art of possibility. And from the plentiful fruits of her labour the future is birthing itself in the cracks that time has made on the shell of the old.

The girls whose leadership journey her work fosters are beautiful and hopeful and have found the song of their hearts. The old ones are puzzled and curious, if somewhat desperate to believe the past has not taken everything with it. They walk slowly towards the hills where the sounds of water beckon. The future has made its call to the past!

Sibongile is not a lone warrior because she knows that futures that are liveable for all are made possible through community effort. She is a representation of so many multi-generational feministars the world over who are as they say “flipping the script”!

Gazing into those hills, I couldn’t help but be reminded of mama Sizani Ngubane and how in some way her spirit lives in Sibongile and so many others working hard to ensure rural South Africa is not relegated to the country’s own forgotten wild west.

May those she walks with in this organising journey be strengthened by the knowledge their work is known beyond the hills, and it’s kind of philosophies has a name.

Among her many affiliations, Sibongile is a Tekano Fellow and member of the Atlantic fellows global community of leaders dedicated to the advancement of “fairer, healthier, more inclusive societies”.

Hers is an inspiring example of the transformative pedagogy of struggle the pursuit of equity and justice, from a health or any other angle, demands.

Sibongile has told snippets of her story whose contours as vast and deep as her home province. Check this snippet: https://tekano.org.za/tekano-fello/sibongile-mtungwa/

Niqine maqabane ase WLTP!

And as for especially so called “feminist” donors, say thank you, you’re welcome! Fundani nazi and fund the work of women like her. Find Sibongile and fund their visionary feminist work here!

(By Siphokazi Mthathi)

(Photo credit: Siphokazi Mthathi / Facebook)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Sibongile Mtungwa, Siphokazi Mthatha, Sizani Ngubane, South Africa

South Africa’s media landscape is a mess and this must change

July 3, 2022 by Guest Blogger 3 Comments

South Africa’s media landscape is a mess, and this must change.

The horrible news that New Frame will be shutting down immediately because its only funder is pulling the entirety of its support in one swoop, underscores the vulnerability of not-for-profit news in South Africa.

I think this also underscores a massive structural problem in South African for-profit media which relies heavily on progressive, well-researched and investigative *free content* from non-profit media. This is especially the case with the Daily Maverick, an outlet that will publish dozens of articles a week from various non-profit news sites, will make tons of money off this free content, but will not pay a single cent back to the non-profit site in exchange for this content.

This form of crass exploitation by for-profit news in South Africa cannot continue.

Non-profit media in this country needs to come together and rethink this model. They cannot continue to rely on for-profit media for exposure while at the same time allowing the for-profit media to exploit their hard work. Some options that I think non-profit media in South Africa should consider:

Non-Profit Media Consortium. Forming a consortium (or association) which sets a minimum price that all for-profit outlets must pay if they are going to use non-profit content. This minimum price can be per article or per word. But there must be a minimum cost. GroundUp, Bhekisisa, amaBhungane, New Frame, AIAC, ViewFinder, and the list goes on, cannot continue to give free content to for-profit news. This is capitalist theft from the commons.

New Non-Profit News Website. Forming a collectively run or cooperatively owned non-profit news website to rival Daily Maverick, News24 and IOL and that is the primary or sole publisher of all non-profit media in the country. The purpose of this website would be to bring readers over from capitalist outlets like the Daily Maverick and starve these for-profit entities of the free content they rely on so heavily. Why should anyone go to DM for their news if GroundUp, Bhekisisa, amaBhungane, and the others, are all publishing in one collective place and Daily Maverick is stuck with its sub-par journalists like Stephen Grootes who can only write nonsense about Zuma and Ramaphosa?

Op-ed writers and other writers must be paid. In the past, newspapers used to pay people whose opinion pieces they publish. In this day, most op-eds are published without compensation. Again, the Daily Maverick is one of the worst perpetrators. It’s time the media stop exploiting the ideas and unpaid labour of intellectual workers. If the above consortium could also act as a union of sorts or a clearinghouse for opinion writers, they could negotiate with the for-profit media in order to ensure that Op-ed content is paid for. Or it could post the pieces directly on their own website. Those of us, especially those of us who are progressive, must stop publishing think pieces for free in places. If we work instead through such a consortium, not only would we be able to receive compensation, but we would ensure that we also retain the rights over our own ideas instead of giving them away for free to media moguls.

(By Jared Sacks)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Jared Sacks, South Africa