It’s the first lesson on a Tuesday morning in the school hall of the Dominican School for Deaf Children in Wynberg, Cape Town, and the sound of feet stomping on wood, hands clapping and occasional laughter fills the air as 14 learners are put through the paces of a theatre class.
Hearings on poverty will take the people’s grievances to the corridors of power, writes Patrick Burnett.
Although the xenophobic attacks that swept through the country recently were directed at foreign nationals – poor Africans in particular – the violence also focused attention on the deep divisions between South Africans.
”You will hear everyone saying ‘food, can we have food?” It’s about no food and no money to buy food. There is no work.” That’s the message Eunice Klaasens, a 63-year-old pensioner, hears on a daily basis when she works as a volunteer at a Catholic Welfare and Development community kitchen in Manenberg, an impoverished area of Cape Town.
When Scottsdene High School headmaster Karel Cupido was asked what he would do if tens of thousands of rand were donated to his school, he might have chosen computers or textbooks, but he opted for a borehole.
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/ 4 December 2007
The Breede River Valley in the Western Cape is known as a fertile farming area that hosts internationally renowned vineyards, picturesque fruit orchards and tourist farm stalls, but a visit to Ashton’s Zolani township quickly scrapes away the lush veneer to reveal the reality of unemployment, poverty and hunger for many of its inhabitants.
Many students in the Eastern Cape began 2000 with no textbooks Four to one: Headmaster of Benjamin Mahlasela High school Siphiwo Baninzi (left) says four pupils crowd around one textbook. photo: gerald meintjies WONGELETHU Senior Secondary in Mdantsane was one of the lucky schools which received textbooks by January 18, helping to alleviate shortages of […]