Parental leave has been a trending topic this year, both globally and in South Africa. Corporations, especially global tech companies, have been making headlines as they announce expanded maternity and paternity leave: From Virgin Management’s announcement that parents can now receive up to a year of paid shared parental leave, to Netflix announcing a year of paid maternity and paternity leave.
Czerina Patel
Analysis | 11 September 2015
Cato Manor has a long history of struggle and repression. Women have often been in the forefront of these struggles. This history is well known in Durban. Many families from KwaMashu have roots in Cato Manor. KwaMashu was created to house some of the people forcibly removed from Cato Manor under the Group Areas Act. They were taken from land in the city where they had some autonomy and moved out of the city to a segregated township under strict control of the apartheid state.
Ndabo Mzimela
Opinion | 8 September 2015
What is work? This question came very much to the fore over the past week after Amnesty International, called for “sex work” to be decriminalised. The international human rights organisation made the call after a two-year investigation into the “sex industry”. It came shortly after two local gender equality and human rights groups also called for law change.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 7 September 2015
The reason for the recent protests by Langa residents is the delay in answers to complaints and demands handed peacefully over to the Mayor’s office on the 26 July 2015.
Vusi Mandindi
Opinion | 4 September 2015
The phrasing of the Refugee Amendment Bill calls into question the commitment of the Department of Home Affairs to uphold its obligations under the UN Refugee Convention, write Aleck Kuhudzai and Deborah Won of the Agency for Refugee Education, Skills Training and Advocacy (ARESTA).
Aleck Kuhudzai and Deborah Won
Opinion | 2 September 2015
As it started, by targeting the legacy of one dead white male, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign claimed morality. As it progresses, by targeting the activity of two living white males, the rump of campaigners cannot claim credibility. Members of a university as distinguished as UCT might have been expected to prefer substance over sloganeering.
Allan Greenblo
Opinion | 1 September 2015
The struggle for a national minimum wage in South Africa has a long history, having been waged, largely by organised worker formations, since the 1930s. These efforts have taken various forms, from open class conflict to more subdued trade union representations to the various governments of the day.
Eddie Cottle
Opinion | 31 August 2015
The Medicines Control Council has for many years been severely criticised for the exceptionally long time it takes to register a medicine. It is not unusual for a medicine to become available in Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States years ahead of its appearance in South Africa.
Henry M. J. Leng and David Sanders
Analysis | 31 August 2015
Oh, when will they ever learn? It’s the last line in every stanza of a famous Pete Seeger anti-war song. And it is wholly appropriate this week as we digest the latest GDP figures against a background of ongoing crises especially in the steel, mining and manufacturing sectors. Along with, of course, the continuing collapse of the rand.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 31 August 2015
The 2016 local government elections will be surely be heavily contested. Already in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay, the ANC, DA and EFF are gearing up for tough electoral battles. No doubt too, all the political parties will pour large sums of money into these areas. But quite how much political parties will spend on campaigning, no one knows, because of a complete lack of transparency in the funding of political parties.
Judith February
Opinion | 27 August 2015
A recent judgment in the Durban High Court has confirmed what shack dwellers, urban land occupiers and their lawyers have known for some time – the state’s habitual use of legal loopholes to evict land occupiers from their homes is unconstitutional. What’s more, Judge Mokgohla’s decision has finally showed up the courts as sharing responsibility for allowing these evictions to go on unchecked.
Daneel Knoetze
Analysis | 26 August 2015
Just over two years after the books for the blind treaty was signed in Marrakesh, Morocco, South Africa has finally taken steps toward ratifying the treaty.
Marcus Low
Analysis | 26 August 2015
Every day millions across South Africa do arduous work in jobs that cannot keep them and their dependants out of poverty. These are the “working poor” and according to a new study, there are about five and half million of them.
Gilad Isaacs
Opinion | 25 August 2015
The whole question of colonialism has come to the fore again, courtesy of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and its vehement objection to the introduction of the Chinese Mandarin dialect to local schools.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 24 August 2015
This month, international human rights body Amnesty International voted to “pursue a policy to protect the human rights of sex workers.” Its decision has generated much media attention and debate and has been opposed by many well-intentioned people and institutions.
Marlise Richter and Ruvimbo Tenga
Opinion | 21 August 2015
Being able to vote for our leaders is what it means to live in a democracy. Yet the Eastern Cape government tried to block a rural Eastern Cape community from electing their leader. Yesterday the community won an important court victory. Wilmien Wicomb of the Legal Resources Centre explains.
Wilmien Wicomb
Analysis | 19 August 2015