While celebrations took place all over the country this week, some young people in Cape Town’s townships chose to spend Freedom Day another way.
Pharie Sefali
Opinion | 30 April 2014
The stories told by the mothers of three children with disabilities at a series of workshops at the Consitutional Court underline the contrast between constitutional rights and the grim reality.
Muhammad Zakaria Suleman and Tim Fish Hodgson
Opinion | 29 April 2014
The call to deploy the army was heard in response to recent gang violence in Manenberg. But that’s not the solution, argues Adam Armstrong.
Adam Armstrong
Opinion | 29 April 2014
The ongoing and increasingly bitter row within Cosatu boils down, basically, to a constitutional clash.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 29 April 2014
In the Eastern Cape, the Democratic Alliance is in bed with a despot convicted of homicide, attempted murder, kidnapping, arson and a range of other heinous crimes. Mandy de Waal asks whether the opposition is wise to hug a tyrant close to its breast, in the hope of defeating the ANC.
Mandy de Waal
Analysis | 22 April 2014
While the Marikana hearings drift through the doldrums in Rustenberg, at Khayelitsha’s Lookout Hill another commission into police failings is cautiously gathering momentum. The O’Regan-Pikoli Commission of Inquiry is a timely and consolatory reminder of the judicial efficiency South Africa is capable of.
Richard Conyngham
Opinion | 22 April 2014
We are in the midst of all the usual fanfare, the pledges, promises, rows and contradictions that accompany any run-up to a major election. But the scheduled national poll on 7 May seems to be beset by more bickering, bitterness and fragmentation than normal — and this is a clear portent for the future.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 22 April 2014
Nearly two decades into our democracy, for most people living in South Africa our Constitution might as well be written in Latin, because it is more than likely that they have never read it.
Tim Fish Hodgson and Tawana Nharingo
Opinion | 17 April 2014
At a meeting on 12 April convened by Ikasi Pride, members of a divided gay and lesbian community discussed the future of gay pride in the city, its steady depoliticisation, its lack of community outreach and its image problem.
Brent Meersman
Opinion | 15 April 2014
On April Fool’s day, GroundUp published a story which claimed that government had made it compulsory for teacher graduates to provide their services in non-model C government schools for one year.
Joshua Maserow
Opinion | 15 April 2014
Farm employer organisation AgriSA last week met with trade union representatives in an effort to strike a deal to allow unionisation on farms — and especially in the winelands of the Western Cape. “Most farmers still will not allow union representatives onto their properties,” says Federation of Unions (Fedusa) general secretary Dennis George.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 14 April 2014
Paul Boughey, chief of staff to the executive mayor of Cape Town, takes issue with Dustin Kramer's article on GroundUp.
Paul Boughey
Opinion | 9 April 2014
You’ve probably heard the news that MTN and Vodacom have gone to court to stop new regulations. The court ruled that the regulations should go head. What does this mean for the people’s right to communicate?
John Haffner
Opinion | 8 April 2014
A crunch point has this week been reached in the platinum sector. Stockpiles are all but exhausted and striking miners are starving. In normal circumstances this would be the time when compromise is reached, a matter of who blinks first.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 8 April 2014
The People’s Health Manifesto is an initiative of the Treatment Action Campaign. With elections upon us, the TAC wanted to know what political parties proposed to do for healthcare. They put 11 questions to them. This is what they discovered.
Brent Meersman
Opinion | 7 April 2014
This was written in September 2011 when Julius Malema was still riding high in the ANCYL. However, the arguments made are, I think vindicated by the subsequent emergence of the EFF. Anyone who thinks the EFF represents a Left alternative is badly — and dangerously — mistaken. I put it out again now because it appears that there are still some otherwise sensible comrades who are considering a vote for the EFF. WASP, for all its faults, is at least a Left bet.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 7 April 2014