Diary pages: Community Leadership

The COVID-19 crisis has made the need for compassionate, imaginative, democratic and dynamic leadership more pressing than ever. Community leadership can be hotly contested in South Africa’s crowded civic landscape. Since the lockdown began, Community Action Networks (CANs) have sprung up, joining the NGOs, social movements and political parties that are already active in many

A milestone or a deadend? South Africa’s social grants in the time of Covid-19

The introduction of a new grant and an extended child grant signals a hopeful moment in South Africa but we must not discount the challenges that lie ahead. A version of this article will appear shortly on Open Democracy. ‘At the moment the government is doing what it should of done a long time [ago]

Diary Pages: Exercise Regulations

Level four lockdown regulations stipulated that people could exercise  between the hours of 6am and 9am, within a 5km radius of their home. We asked our participants if they had been among those making use of the allocated time to exercise outdoors. We wanted to know it they used the exercise time, their experienced of

WhatsApp with the new grants?

This post was first published on the Daily Maverick. Times of crisis are often periods of increased intervention by government, businesses and civic organisations. These interventions deserve our attention not just because their immediate impacts can be immense, but also because the laws, regulations and practices forged in crisis tend to live on long after

Covid-19 and Cape Town: Frustration Grows As Lockdown Exacerbates the City’s Inequalities

Instituting Lockdown in South Africa, where inequality is rampant, was always going to be difficult. Since the beginning, one thing has been clear about COVID-19: It is no leveller. Over the last seven weeks, the COVID-19 crisis has collided with the everyday crises that numerous citizens were already facing. Prior to the crisis, many South

Diary Pages: Level Three

Following news that South Africa would be moving to Level Three on 1st June, we asked our diarists how they felt about this. The responses below show the mixed emotions that exist across the city: for some this brought a sense of relief but for many, fears still remain. Relief that some sense of ‘normal’

Diary Pages: Dealing with the virus – Support and Stigma

Viruses can cause fear, and illnesses such as HIV/AIDS have in the past had a stigma attached to them.  To understand how COVID-19 is being received in Cape Town we asked our respondents how people have responded to those who have been diagnosed with COVID-19.  As we report in other diary pages the majority of

Diary Pages: COVID-19

For weeks our diarists have spoken about the many consequences of lockdown. However, very few have spontaneously mentioned the impact of the COVID-19 virus itself on their lives. To understand if the virus was starting to have more of an impact we asked: Have you or anyone you know been directly affected by the COVID-19

COVID 19 and the unequal schooling system

Fiona Anciano, SJ Cooper-Knock, Mmeli Dube, Mfundo Majola and Boitumelo Papane ‘Education in South Africa is in crisis’ declared Tshepo Motsepe, General Secretary of Equal Education, a social movement campaigning for ‘quality and equality in South African schools’. Since Lockdown was announced seven weeks ago, there has been much talk of an education crisis in

Diary Page: Crime

How has the lockdown affected experiences of crime in Cape Town? Statistics released by the Cape Town Central City Improvement District’s (CCID) Safety and Security department show that there has been a 73% drop in all reported crime during Level 4 Lockdown. Are these statistics representative of actual crime levels or only reported crime? Has