Diary Pages: Transport in lockdown

With transport regulations easing under Level 4 of the Covid-19 lockdown, concerns have been raised over the safe regulation of mass transportation. We asked our participants: How has transport affected your experience of lockdown? Has the opening of public transport affected you? Here, we take a look at their responses. NB: We have included combi

‘Those who zol’: Dangerous discourses in a time of crisis

This post first appeared in the Mail & Guardian. To date, South Africa is the only country in the world to have banned both alcohol and cigarette sales during lockdown. When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the government would be reversing its cigarette ban, it took only a few days for minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to

Diary Pages: Trust in Government

Exploring whether people’s level of trust in the government has shifted during the lockdown can give us an insight into how citizens feel the pandemic is being managed. We asked our diarists if the lockdown had changed the level of trust they have in the government, and if so, why. The answers were split between

Diary Pages: Social Grants

The Lockdown has been a period of unprecedented government intervention in post-apartheid South Africa. Interventions include the recently announced increase in Child Support and the introduction of a new Social Relief of Distress grant (also known as an unemployment grant) which offers recipients R350 per month. We asked our participants what they thought about the grants

‘The system is a problem’: The politics of food parcels in Cape Town

This Op-Ed was first posted on the Daily Maverick. ‘Some leaders are corrupted they take most of the food their families’, wrote Nathi, who lives within an informal settlement in Imizamo Yethu, Cape Town. His words seemed to fit a well worn truth in South African politics: the delivery of resources and services are skewed

Policing the Lockdown in Cape Town

This blog was originally published on the Scottish Institute for Policing Research’s blog. ‘If only they could deploy more soldiers and police for effective enforcement’, Zukiswa wrote, efforts to contain Covid-19 might be successful. Like almost half of the residents in Khayelitsha, Zukiswa lives in informal housing. Throughout the crisis, she has seen little of

Diary Pages: Alcohol and Cigarette Ban

Why do you think the government banned alcohol and cigarette sales? How has that affected you, family and friends? Currently, the sale of cigarettes and alcohol is not permissible under South Africa’s COVID 19 national lockdown, nor can home-made beer be shared. The lockdown is considered one of the strictest in the world. As the

Diary Pages: Housework

We asked our diarists: Who does the household chores during lockdown? Has this changed from your normal routine?  Lockdown has changed the way we engage in public, but has it changed the way our homes are run? We asked our respondents to reflect on their daily chores in order to gain greater insight into gender

Diary Pages: Level Four

After weeks of experiencing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, South Africans heard from President Cyril Ramaphosa that the lockdown restrictions would be slightly eased from the highest Level Five to Level Four. Restrictions, he explained, would shift according to the level of Covid-19 threat being faced at any one time. As of

Diary Pages: Back to School?

We asked our diarists: Do you think children should go back to school as proposed by the government?  How has the lockdown impacted the education of children? As South Africa has eased its COVID 19 lockdown to level four, controversy has been mounting over the issue of schooling. The Department of Basic Education faces the