Features

With the dust barely settled on the streets from last year’s 100 Men March, South Africa continues to grapple with alarming gender-based violence and femicide.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has cited changes made to visa regulations for tourists and highly skilled professionals, financial support for black farmers and black industrialists and the upgrading and creation of industrial parks as evidence of government’s efforts to secure economic growth and deal with unemployment.

Patricia de Lille is a woman on a mission. The recently appointed Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure is no stranger to taking the bull by the horns, and that is exactly what she is doing in her new role at the helm of the department entrusted to be government’s infrastructure custodian.

South Africans on 8 May took to the polls to elect the sixth administration, 25 years since the advent of democracy, with much optimism.

It is often said that ‘a leopard never changes its spots’ - a phrase known to mean that changing one’s character is almost always impossible to do. However, as far as township economies go - the opposite is true, for these are being turned on their heads.

In its own quiet, no frills, no thrills way, a community-based care and protection intervention project has been providing a life line to South Africa’s orphaned and vulnerable children, as well as the youth, so much so that a large number have now become strong, successful individuals - contributing to their communities.

State land alone is simply not enough to redress land reform. In a country where the majority of the population is black – it is a bitter pill to swallow that only 1-2% of black farmers operate in the commercial space, writes Keamogetse Kgomanyane.