By Siphiwe Sithole: Photo by David Van Wyk I have often wondered when I was younger why during the week I would sleep in a nice house where my grandmother worked as…
Year: 2013
The Ten layers of Oppression When You are Black and Poor in South Africa
By: Sipho Singiswa & Gillian Schutte: Photo: Jared Sacks: Oppression, when written about, is often reduced to one layer of suffering. Yet when one unpacks the lives and narratives of the poor…
Pride does justice proud
11 Oct 2013 00:00 Gillian Schutte in Mail & Guardian A new movement for sexual minorities has spurned big business to fight broader social ills, writes Gillian Schutte. The first Johannesburg People’s…
Living on Less than R1000 a Month: How Poor South Africans Survive
By Frank Meintjies Where is poverty located? What are its shapes and forms? What strategies do households use to cope?
Waiting to inhale – The struggle for clean air and adequate housing in Wentworth.
It’s a blistering hot afternoon when we arrive at the Barracks. This regimentally built cluster of council houses was erected as a transit camp in Wentworth in 1972.
Why the South African Youth Are Not Voting.
By Luthando Vikilahle: Mainstream political parties do not speak to the needs and struggles of young people. However the much bigger elephant in the room is the depoliticisation of the South African…
Beauty and the beast: How the beauty industry ‘others’ women
By: Gillian Schutte In the wake of the many global revolutionary rumblings over the past few years I have been pondering the prospect of a mass women’s revolt against the male-owned beauty…
The terminal nature of poverty
By Gillian Schutte & Sipho Singiswa: Photo: Jared Sacks As academics, journalists, social commentators and activists we have a sense that we know the poor. We are outraged by poverty and inequality…
Failing to Feed Our People: South Africa’s Lacklustre Food Security Policy
By Glenn Ashton We are what we eat and on the whole South Africans are unhealthy. Because of our increasingly industrialised food chain we eat far too much refined, processed food. The…
Deconstructing the Baby-Rape Narrative.
To anyone researching the horrific occurrence of baby rape worldwide it is very clear that it is not a racialised or a cultural phenomenon, says Gillian Schutte.