(April 28th, 2006)
JOHANNESBURG, 28 April 2006 (IRIN) – South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime was officially dismantled 12 years ago, with the nation’s first democratic election. But in many communities, the violence of those years is hardly forgotten. In the early 1990s, as government officials and liberation leaders negotiated a peaceful transition of power, many local communities were [...]
(February 24th, 2006)
MUSINA, 24 Feb 2006 (IRIN) – Every day, Mashudu Beauty Mukavhatsindi fetches water from an outdoor tap. To get there requires an ankle-twisting walk down a potholed road, past garbage-strewn lots that reek of human waste. A resident of the Sihlala Nge Nkani informal settlement in the South African border town of Musina, 19-year-old Mukavhatsindi [...]
(February 17th, 2006)
MAKHADO, 17 Feb 2006 (IRIN) – In the late 1990s – still the early days of South Africa’s democracy – Joseph Makhadi couldn’t afford to continue his studies at a local technical college. He dropped out and lived, unemployed, in a humble dwelling along with 10 members of his extended family. But in 2002, Makhadi [...]
(November 24th, 2005)
Abigail Sibanda, a 29-year-old domestic worker in Johannesburg, says managing a home comes naturally. “I spend my day cleaning – sweeping, washing, doing the dishes, ironing,” she told MyWage.co.za. “Since I grew up doing the work, it’s easy to me.” On the three days a week that she works, Sibanda catches a 7 a.m. bus [...]
(November 24th, 2005)
It’s four a.m., but Phillip Musekene Nare is awake, fueled by endless cups of tea and sheer will. In the dark hours of night, he regularly walks the perimeter of an office building in Auckland Park, a business district just a few kilometers north of Johannesburg’s city centre. In between patrols during his 12-hour shift, [...]
(November 24th, 2005)
When Letta Sibiya began teaching in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township 15 years ago, she was a young single mother entering the workforce reluctantly, out of financial necessity. Over time, though, she discovered a passion and enthusiasm for working with children. Now a grade one teacher, Sibiya says that the benefits of teaching go far beyond monetary wages.
(April 4th, 2005)
It’s impossible to understand Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections last week without understanding the extent of the nation’s hunger. Last year, President Robert Mugabe suspended the vulnerability assessments traditionally used to predict how much food aid will be needed from NGOs and U.N. agencies, claiming that Zimbabwe would produce a bumper harvest and that extra food would [...]
(April 1st, 2005)
In Harare’s Mbari neighborhood, there’s a small outpost of Zimbabwe’s most vital black market. It’s next to the one-room apartments that used to house migrant laborers, where women and children now squat on the sidewalk building fires, and just beyond the open-air workshops where scores of the men now stand in the mud building coffins [...]
(December 17th, 2004)
MUSINA, 17 December 2004 (PlusNews) – Two years ago Judith Nkambule (not her real name) gave birth to baby girl, but something was wrong – the child was sickly, vomiting, had diarrhoea, and eventually died. This year, when she fell pregnant with her youngest child, the fifth of five sons, she agreed to be tested. [...]
(December 17th, 2004)
JOHANNESBURG, 17 December 2004 (PlusNews) – Seven months ago, Nomlindelo Nkoninga began giving her four-year-old son a combination of drugs to stem the progress of HIV. But only last month did he weigh enough to take the antiretroviral (ARVs) medication as three separate tablets, instead of the syrups commonly prescribed for young children. “It’s easier [...]
