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In May, Inclusive Economies launched the second of its country-focused [...]

A small majority of South Africans would prefer limitations on [...]

Conversations with Mrs Ronesia A. Nait-Saidi and Zinzi Mtjeketje

My name is Christopher Tarentaal and I am from the community of Calitzdorp. I am also an ambassador for IJR. There are a lot of social issues in my community, like alcohol and drug misuse, GBV, racism, economic inequality, etc. One of the things that disturb my soul is that our rural community is always left behind and our youth suffer the greatest consequences of the unemployment rate and lack of opportunity. As young adults we also face the aftermath of the apartheid system that placed us in a disadvantage position. This led to several crimes and social issues like, if we don’t have we will want to steal or break in just to have and to survive. Talking about survival and rural communities, people of colour live in a constant survival mode. We don’t have wealth or land to have a constant flow of income. In Calitzdorp the facilities are either out of order or it is under construction. We don’t even have an internet café to use the internet to our advantage and all of this issues fuel the issue of mental health problems. We, also, have a high rate of a lack of father and mother figures, and healthy families where we can have open relationships to talk about anything in life.

The history of South Africa entails colonial and apartheid era violence and trauma (visible and invisible) which ingrained various socio-economic-political-agrarian orders of brutalisation, mass killings, and the displacement of local people from their culture, language, land, agency, and spirituality. Attached to such history, are the intact remnants of the colonial and apartheid eras – national heritage monuments.  The Castle of Good Hope (hereafter the Castle), as a national heritage site, is not limited as being the oldest architectural structure erected in 1666 in Cape Town, nor is it only a transitioning site that tries to incorporate democratic principles of multiple heritage. This site, as a ‘silent witness’, wields memories of both individual and collective historical colonial and apartheid trauma. Thus, it is navigated by resilient apartheid survivors - descendants of the colonised, enslaved, and oppressed generations - as a site of historical trauma.

There has been an increase in the amount of news being sourced from digital platforms such as the internet and social media in Africa. According to the latest analysis from Afrobarometer, Conroy-Krutz and Kone (2022) found Afrobarometer data indeed highlight these digital divides. The privileged still get more from these platforms than the underrepresented. However, there is an increase underrepresented groups enjoying more access to digital media.

Throughout apartheid and into democracy, violence has been a prevalent feature of community life and contributed toward high levels of psychological distress and aggression. Not only overt and physical violence, this, also, includes structural and institutional violence, in the form of forced dislocation, lack of opportunities, and inhibitions to upward mobility for persons of colour.

This year’s Anti-Racism week comes at a pivotal moment for South Africa and the world. As global and local current events have shown, there is an urgent need to radically disrupt and dismantle racial injustice, anti-blackness, afrophobia and the various global power structures that entrench violence and inequity.

The end of February 2022 marked a major turning point in international relations after Russia launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine. Many see this as a flagrant violation of the international norms and standards that have developed over the past decades, including notions of sovereignty, international law, individual human rights and freedoms and democracy. At the same time the invasion has also been hailed as an opportunity for a restructuring of the global system.

Now that the votes have been tallied, it is clear that South Africa’s local government elections have produced a distinct voting anomaly: less than a third of adults participated in the vote. Instead of focusing on which party governs in particular areas, the low levels of voter registration and turnout suggest that there is a more fundamental question to ask after these elections: How representative is our democracy? The core principle of democracy – translated literally as ‘people power’ – relies on public participation. South Africans understand the importance of majority rule better than most. So how did an election occur with only a minority being represented?