BLOGS

On the 23rd of March President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a national Lockdown and from that day our lives changed. As a Grade 11 learner from the Kgakgoa Secondary School, in Ga-Chokwe Village in Moletjie (Limpopo) , my whole school life has been disrupted. I’ve had to quickly learn and master the skill of self-studying, which has not been easy.
 

We have all heard a similar story; a well-meaning NGO ventures off to save the women of a village by building a well in the heart of their community, only to discover that the women preferred to walk the distance to collect water from a nearby source. 
 

Strategic collaboration between the private sector, civil society and government has never been more important. 
 The number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise despite the lockdown. Infections are now rising at a rate of over 200 a day This is only the beginning.

Children make up 35% of the South African population and according to the Child Gauge (2018) in 2017, 11.2 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 were found to have attended some form of educational facility. This figure constitutes 98% of the country’s children. Given these numbers, our issues as children should be taken seriously.

Empathy is a funny thing. Every day, almost all of us in South Africa find ourselves weighing whether we can or should do something to help others. That’s part of living in the most unequal society in the world, where wealth exists just across the highway from poverty.
 

I recently accompanied one of our Save the Children South Africa (SCSA) community mediators to meet a young girl in Bez Valley, a part of Johannesburg that is a home to large migrant communities. I was there to find out more about the everyday realities of migration, from a gendered perspective. 

A common question at the start of any meeting these days is “where has the year gone?” It is quite normal to lament the fast-paced passing of time around mid-Winter, but 2020 has been extraordinarily different, for many obvious and not so obvious reasons. 

The girl sat with her back to the audience. In a heavy peach-coloured jacket, eyes closed, with a microphone in her hand. And she spoke of life in the township where she lives, of fear and inequality. It was a powerful message that fixed the attention of everyone in the room.
 

One day, not too long ago, a Johannesburg father came home to find his son watching pornography on TV. The father flew into a fit of rage, and beat his son so badly that he ended up in hospital. The case went to court, where the father argued that his actions should be considered as “reasonable chastisement”, which was permitted then under the Children’s Act.