The volunteer-led magazine with ever-changing voices exploring different perspectives on today’s rapidly-evolving world.
For generations, across cultures and continents, people have used music as a form of protest. Lyrics and melodies transformed into mediums for communication that in any other context would be suppressed and unheard. Musical activism has cemented its crucial role in history as being a way to unite individuals in their common goal to end war or oppression.
The Dutch first settled in Table Bay in 1652 after a shipwreck and off the back of the slave trade the Dutch East India Company flourished. We take a look at early Captonian slave trade and how it has shaped the City and it’s culture.
Every year it is estimated that 3,500 children are abandoned and this figure refers to the children who survive. Of these survivors, 90% are under the age of one. They are left alone and defenceless. Although the issue of child abandonment is not often featured in the media, when it is, the blame tends to be given to the mother only. Fortunately, there are many organisations around Cape Town which support abandoned children but resources are tight and the industry is continuously stretched in order to accommodate growing numbers. So what happens to South Africa’s unwanted children?
Every six hours a woman is murdered by their current or former partner. In South Africa every 17 seconds a woman is raped. Here more women are killed by male partners than in any other country in the world and 40% of women are said to have experienced physical violence while pregnant.
It’s a scorching day in Khayelitsha. Even if it’s much too hot to stay in the sun, people are crowded in the middle of the streets, sweat trickling down their backs. The centre of their attention is Mr Bonginkosi Madikizela, minister of Human Settlements in the Western Cape, who is visiting a housing project. ‘When will sanitation be supplied?’ The residents ask him repeatedly. He promises them that he will make sure to fast-track it, before getting back into his car and driving away.
This July, the world has seen assaults in Libya, USA, DRC, Iraq, Syria, Germany and France. And these were just the assaults that made the headlines. What these events had in common was the aim to create terror within communities, to disrupt and divide society. To counterbalance the polarisation which seems to be on the rise, July was also the month to celebrate an icon of peace and unity. Mandela Day 2016 did just that.
According to the HIV Stigma Index, 7% of HIV-positive women report being victims of forced sterilisation. As well as this, 43% of South Africans who are HIV positive suffer from ‘internalised stigma.’ Allegations of forced sterilisation have been made in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Swaziland – among female HIV-sufferers, disabled and underprivileged women.
South Africa has one of the highest incidences of domestic and gender-based violence in the world. Studies have shown that one in every six women in South Africa is regularly assaulted by her partner, and 36.6% of African women throughout the content have experienced domestic violence by their partners.
There comes a time in all of our lives when we grow weary – reach the point where we simply throw our hands up and say ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ The moments that our knees get weak and force us to take refuge in some place, some thought, some belief, or someone. Reaching the point of desperation isn’t a place of giving up, or admitting defeat – perhaps it is just the humble recognition that we can no longer do it all on our own.
In 1994, rather than trying crimes and violations of human rights committed during the apartheid era in a criminal court, South Africa decided to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) where perpetrators could seek amnesty in exchange for true and full accounts of the crimes they committed. The decision centred on the idea of reconciliation, which was a hallmark of the late Nelson Mandela’s leadership.
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