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 youth since 1994.
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 industry that mostly diminishes women to mere objects and creates untold conflict in our psyches. This industry, along with the mainstream media, is premised on beautyism and has employed a very effective tool of “othering” those who do not fit into the idealised picture of what is pleasing to the male gaze.
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 and advocate for equity and a life of dignity for all. We look for ways to bring the voices of the poor into the public debate and ask questions around how we can get democracy to work for the poor. But few of us have even an inkling of the full spectrum of what it means to be poor.