Human Rights

No room for learners: parents start school in tent

Hundreds of learners are using a tent in Mfuleni’s Bardale neighbourhood as a school after parents say they were turned away from primary and high schools in the area which are full.

Mary-Anne Gontsana

Feature | 29 January 2015

Draft drone rules silent on privacy and weapon concerns

Draft regulations for drone usage in South Africa do not have safeguards against the use of the devices by the state as weapons or to invade people’s privacy, activists have warned. But the sub-committee in charge of compiling the regulations has said Constitutional rights will not be violated.

Daneel Knoetze

News | 27 January 2015

Delays with Home Affairs permits: Zimbabweans sent away from work

Three Zimbabwean men whose permits are pending have been told to leave their jobs at Touareg Tents in Capricorn Business Park and return only when they can prove they are legally in the country.

Tariro Washinyira

News | 27 January 2015

Constitutional rights apply to sex workers too

A year ago, some boys in my street came home late at night with a sex worker. They refused to pay her.

Abigail McDougall

Opinion | 22 January 2015

“Silence must not be allowed to win”

Today GroundUp publishes this image in solidarity with journalists all over the world following the attack in Paris on ​the staff of ​Charlie Hebdo, in which ten journalists and two police officers were killed.

GroundUp Staff

News | 7 January 2015

Farewell to a lovable revolutionary

Sadie Forman (1929-2014) one of the most unconventional, interesting and lovable fighters in the South African anti-apartheid movement, died on the morning of 11 December, aged 85. She spent the last years of her life with her daughter, Sara, in Lewes, in the East Sussex county of England. Her funeral will be held on 23 December.

Terry Bell

News | 19 December 2014

Hope Street carpenter shut down

When it is late at night and Cape Town’s streets are quiet, Mark Philander’s faint hammering at his pavement workshop on Hope Street can still be heard.

Daneel Knoetze

Feature | 18 December 2014

No sign of Zuma’s sanitary towels

In 2011, President Jacob Zuma made promises about the provision of sanitary towels to poor women. Three years later, GroundUp tried to find out whether these promises have been kept.

Pharie Sefali

News | 17 December 2014

R3.30 an hour: De Doorns child labour probed

The Department of Labour is investigating allegations of child labour on a grape and mushroom farm in the Hex Valley, outside De Doorns.

Daneel Knoetze

Feature | 15 December 2014

Empty medicine shelves of Gauteng hospital

Gauteng hospitals are suffering severe medicine stockouts. Here are photos that GroundUp has obtained of the empty shelves of a pharmacy in a Gauteng tertiary hospital. All the medicines shown (or, to be more precise, not shown) are used to treat psychiatric conditions.

GroundUp Staff

News | 12 December 2014

Know Your Constitution: a challenge to students

This is a challenge to young people, and to law students in particular, to think about how we can use the law to effect change: we have a Constitution now, but what are we going to do with it?

Rachel Mazower and Isabeau Steytler

Opinion | 10 December 2014

Parow’s block of flats from hell

Immigrants who live in Goodman Close and Le Ruth Close at 194 Voortrekker Road Parow are fed up with the awful conditions they live in.

Tariro Washinyira

News | 10 December 2014

Life-saving AIDS medicine out of stock in Gauteng

Hospitals throughout Gauteng ran out of essential medicines in recent weeks, including a life-saving drug for people with AIDS called amphotericin B.

Daneel Knoetze and GroundUp staff

News | 9 December 2014

Residents blame Eskom and Zuma for fire that leaves dozens homeless

Residents of Kanana informal settlement in Gugulethu have blamed power cuts for a fire that left over a hundred people homeless on Friday evening.

Johnnie Isaac

News | 8 December 2014

Two dead as police fire on crowd looting rice

Police have confirmed that live ammunition was used yesterday against people looting rice from a broken-down truck near Mbizana in the Eastern Cape. Two people were killed.

Pharie Sefali and Daneel Knoetze

News | 3 December 2014

Militarisation and depoliticisation in South Africa today

One of the striking features of South African politics in recent years is its re-militarisation - a tendency for political issues to be addressed or resolved by force. This is part of a wider problem of violence suffusing South African society in general - that people, especially men, vent their anger with violence rather than discuss what has caused them to be annoyed in areas unrelated to politics, for example so-called “road rage”.

Raymond Suttner

Opinion | 2 December 2014