GroundUp Newsletter 31 January 2014: Philippi school struggles to get help for disabled learners and other stories

31 January 2014 | News

Featured Story

Philippi school struggles to get help for disabled learners

\xe2\x80\x9cI have been teaching at this school for over 11 years. Through my teaching experience, I can tell when a child has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS),\xe2\x80\x9d says Liesl Fisher, principal at Dietrich Moravian Primary school.

Pharie Sefali

News

Witness alleges police accepted bribe in murder case

News: While testifying today at the Khayelitsha Commission, a witness stated she believes the officer investigating the murder of her son accepted a bribe to stop his investigation.

Adam Armstrong

Brave women and burnt-out cops

News: Funeka Soldaat told the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry how she had been raped by a group of young men because she is a lesbian. She testified that she is a survivor of “corrective rape”.

Adam Armstrong

Lawyer to Home Affairs: treatment of asylum seekers is irresponsible, hard-hearted, incompetent

News: Hundreds of asylum seekers who have been living in Cape Town for more than five years and have renewed their documents more than twelve times are now undocumented. They may lose their work. They no longer have access to health, education, and bank accounts. And they are vulnerable to arrest, detention and deportation.

Tariro Washinyira

Terry Bell “honoured and humbled” by support

News: The Congress of South African Trade Unions has condemned the suspension of Terry Bell's Inside Labour column that ran in Business Report for about 18 years.

GroundUp Staff, Terry Bell and COSATU

Mother and daughter: alive, productive and healthy on antiretrovirals

News: Nandipha Madolo, from Khayelitsha\xe2\x80\x99s Litha Park, has experienced much in her life, with HIV playing a major part. She watched her brother die from meningitis due to HIV. Her HIV-positive husband abused her. Her youngest daughter contracted HIV, and Madolo found out that she too was HIV-positive. But today Madolo has a healthy daughter, a steady job, and she is a public speaker.

Mary-Anne Gontsana

Pharma plot has consequences for the blind

News: If a secret plot by foreign pharmaceutical companies and their local subsidiaries to delay South Africa's IP policy process until after the elections succeeds, non-pharmaceutical sectors will also be affected.

Marcus Low

Principals describe hardships of running schools in Khayelitsha

News: Principals of two Khayelitsha schools gave testimony at the Khayelitsha Commission yesterday. They explained how crime affected their institutions.

Adam Armstrong

Cape Flats artists launch magazine

News: A group of young artists are putting their creativity on the map. They have launched a magazine called Motswako, which means \xe2\x80\x98mixture\xe2\x80\x99 or \xe2\x80\x98diversity\xe2\x80\x99.

Pharie Sefali

Commissioner klaps SAPS for inefficiency

News: At the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry, the morning got off to a rocky start for the SAPS legal counsel with Chairperson Justice Kate O\xe2\x80\x99Regan again verbally reprimanding them.

Adam Armstrong

Most of Khayelitsha is policeable

News: At the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry, Phumeza Mlungwana has given evidence.

Adam Armstrong

Opinion

The transformative farce of Davos

Opinion: Vague ideas of transformation are all the rage these days. Take the latest bun fight in Davos, for example. The annual gathering of the grandly named World Economic Forum (WEF) that ended last weekend met under the heading: \xe2\x80\x9cThe Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business.\xe2\x80\x9d

Terry Bell

Activist Beat

The week in political activism

Activist Beat: This week we cover Corruption Watch, the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry and protests over the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.

Brent Meersman

Science

Why sugar does NOT kill more South Africans than HIV/AIDS

Science: In a recent column, the editor of South Africa's Business Day newspaper, Peter Bruce, claimed that sugar kills more South Africans than HIV/AIDS has ever done. He was wrong.

Nathan Geffen (GroundUp Editor) via Africa Check

Brief

Over 40 degrees but not a heat wave in Upington

Brief: Temperatures in Upington in the Northern Cape have risen to over 40 degrees. But it\xe2\x80\x99s still not an official heatwave for this scorching hot part of the country.

Selby Nomnganga

Book extract

Young Blood: an extract from Sifiso Mzobe\xe2\x80\x99s novel

Book extract: South Africa had been waiting for a novel like Young Blood when it won the coveted Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2011. Community newspaper journalist Sifiso Mzobe set his debut novel in his hometown of Umlazi, Durban. It is a racy, fast-paced, stark narrative told from the side of the railway tracks where crime is part and parcel of everyday township life.

Sifiso Mzobe