It is important that our government begins to address the complex challenges that the youth face with the same energy, creativity and innovation that we as young people see in ourselves.
IJR strongly condemns the recent acts of violence carried out by Israeli armed forces along the Gaza strip, which has led to the deaths of over 60 Palestinians with over 2000 others wounded.
Much has been written about how Cape Town is rife with racism – the interpersonal and systemic kind. Of course, this isn’t surprising – we all endure apartheid’s legacies. But Cape Town, unlike, say, Johannesburg, has an ‘old-world’, colonial-redux kind of systematic separation and segregation.
Jan Hofmeyer, Head of Research and Policy at the IJR, had an interview with The Voice of the Cape on the role of language in obtaining socio-economic freedoms in South Africa. Listen to the interview here
In the post-Apartheid apartheid dispensation, we speak the language of ‘’economic value’’, the language that, if spoken and written, grants you access to education and employment opportunities. While many have embarked on a journey of reclaiming indigenous languages through numerous ways and means, the language that remains the language of access and opportunity is that of the colonial tongue.
The historical record of the world has seen many cultural, ethnic and religious groups of people lost or destroyed by years of conquest, colonialism or plain genocide. This trend does not exclude Libya – we all know of the horrific acts committed by Muammar Gadaffi’s regime – however what has been largely unknown is the historical oppression of the indigenous Tebu group.
South Africa annually celebrates 27 April as Freedom Day, commemorating the first post-apartheid, non-racial and democratic elections held on 27 April 1994. Almost a quarter of a century later, and in the lead up to the 2019 national elections taking place next year, this is an opportune time to consider the status of democratic political culture in South Africa.
Coloured identity is fraught with ambiguity and often inhabits a shape-shifting shadow world, floating and flowing between arbitrary apartheid racial categories - an identity neither here nor there. The architects of apartheid officiated the term ‘Coloured’ as a derogatory label used to denigrate peoples of mixed ancestry.
Besides the ‘how many months are you’ question posed to pregnant women, there is the, ‘what gender is your baby’ concern. Imagine for a second that the response to the latter is, ‘it’s a boy’. What follows from there is a conversation on whether the mother is ready for the trouble that a boy brings. This has to be one of the simplest, subtle and yet ingrained ways in which patriarchy manifests and the reinforcement of gender roles triumphs.
As South Africans celebrate the 27th April as the day that brought about political freedom for all citizens, there is value in asking: how free do South Africans feel 24 years later? Although Freedom Day commemorates universal political freedom, it is important to evaluate the economic context of freedom in questioning whether or not South Africans are free to live the lives they want to and whether different groups experience greater freedom than others?