Darkness falls on the Koo valley. Andries Joostenberg, 63, and his son hang up their axes, stack the last logs of cut wood and trudge indoors. The temperature drops. In the farm cottage's kitchen a family huddles in semi-darkness around a wood stove. The electricity has been cut, so too the water: final instalments in a siege designed to drive Andries off the land.
Daneel Knoetze
Feature | 25 July 2014
During apartheid, a nuclear weapons programme at Pelindaba used workers from nearby settlements. Decades have gone by and millions of rands have been spent on investigations, yet questions remain and hundreds of workers who claim to have become ill after exposure to hazardous material are still fighting for compensation.
Mandy de Waal and Jon Pienaar
Feature | 27 June 2014
“The law is the law” said a spokesman for the South African National Road Agency Limited (SANRAL) yesterday as hundreds were left homeless in the rain after the demolition of their shacks on SANRAL-owned land near Strand.
Barbara Maregele and Adam Armstrong
Feature | 4 June 2014
The removal of waste at informal settlements across Cape Town will soon be conducted by new contractors.
Barbara Maregele
Feature | 14 May 2014
Following a campaign in Constantia earlier this week, the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement took their protest against portable toilets to Bishopscourt today.
Johnnie Isaac and Nathan Geffen
Feature | 30 April 2014
While Oscar Pistorius’s trial is one of the most watched in history, the trial of Angy Peter and Isaac Mbadu has been running at the same time. It tells us far more about crime, policing and justice in South Africa than the Pistorius one.
Joel Bregman
Feature | 22 April 2014
The Commission of Inquiry into the 1999 arms deal has been underway for two years. Is it meeting its responsibility to uncover the truth?
Sibusiso Tshabalala
Feature | 9 April 2014
Dream homes have become nightmares for several residents of a government-housing development known as Fountainhead. Situated in Blue Downs the development is a joint partnership of the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements and Motlekar Cape.
Johnnie Isaac
Feature | 31 March 2014
A 21-year-old Somali man, Ibrahim Abdulkhadir from Malmesbury, was turned away from the Cape Town Refugee Reception Offices (RRO) on 5 July 2012 and denied an opportunity to collect his asylum document and legalise his stay in the country.
Tariro Washinyira
Feature | 22 January 2014
On 7 and 8 January, the City of Cape Town’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit demolished more than 40 homes at the Marikana settlement in Philippi East. There has been ongoing conflict between the City and the residents who have settled on this plot of privately owned land just off Symphony Way.
Sibusiso Tshabalala
Feature | 15 January 2014
On the edge of the university hamlet of Grahamstown, there’s a municipal dump where people discard trash. It’s far enough out of town to not smell the stench – or for most locals not to be reminded of the haunting plight of the poor who subsist off the waste.
Mandy de Waal
Feature | 20 November 2013
Natural gas extraction is being promoted as the solution to South Africa's energy crisis. Shell and other energy companies want to harness the untapped reserves of natural gas below the Karoo using fracking. This is meeting stiff opposition, particularly from residents of the Karoo who are concerned about the risks.
Kerry Gordon
Feature | 4 September 2013
As this year’s winter circumcision season comes to a close, communities across the country are mourning the decline of a respected tradition that has fallen into criminal hands.
Edirin Okoloko and Thandile Majivolo
Feature | 24 July 2013
There are severe problems with the way Khayelitsha police are handling rape cases explains Camila Osorio.
Camila Osorio
Feature | 10 July 2013
It has been a little over a month since Health Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, announced in his annual National Health budget and policy speech that the South African government will start administering free vaccinations against human papilloma virus (HPV) in schools beginning in February of 2014, but there is still much to discuss about the vaccination roll-out program.
Edirin Okoloko
Feature | 10 July 2013
Metrorail is one of the three divisions of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), the state-owned enterprise which is responsible for most passenger rail services in South Africa. It is also one of the most troublesome forms of public transport.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
Feature | 6 February 2013