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Homeless

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House of cards: Despite constitutional assurances of gender equality and the right to housing, women find themselves up against patriarchal norms, unequal treatment under customary practices and little protection from the law. Photos: Seri
ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO

Female & Guardian | ‘Policies skewed against women’

UN report finds discrimination against women in land and housing programmes

  • Umamah Bakharia
5 min read
More evidence of a family signalling to the outside world that a family home is not available to be sold (Thato Monare, 2021)
APARTHEID

Report urges legal recognition of family homes to protect women and children

A new report from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa found that family disputes threaten tenure security, which often results in eviction and homelessness

  • Umamah Bakharia
5 min read
The need for discussion with people living on the city’s street is vital for a just outcome. (Photo by Ziyaad Douglas/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
ARTICLE

Cape Town’s dilemma: Balancing eviction and rights of the homeless

The need for discussion with people living on the city’s street is vital for a just outcome

  • Bukhobethu Matyeni
  • Peter Michaels
6 min read
34 new political parties have been registered since the 2024 national and provincial elections. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
BASIC SERVICES

Women’s voices fade after local government elections

Women make up just 37% of our elected representatives, and gains in representation are slowly being eroded. This should concern us all

  • Sikhander Coopoo
4 min read
Camps Bay home where housing activists are staging a protest. (David Harrison/M&G)
AIRBNB

The young and the rentless: Inside Camps Bay’s ‘hijacked’ mansion

An activist art collective is refusing to leave a luxury holiday home, claiming their protest is to highlight landlessness and growing inequality in Cape Town

  • Lester Kiewit
5 min read
City of Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato along with other officials held a media briefing at their Covid-19 lockdown facility in Strandfontein followed by a tour of the large marquee tents. The media presence incited many of the people in the tents that was quickly stopped after media was urged to move along. The City of Cape Town’s Covid-19 lockdown encampment in Strandfontein for up to 4000 homeless people from around the greater city area. (David Harrison/M&G)
APARTHEID

Blindness: How the Strandfontein camp was set up to fail

The facility in Cape Town was about quarantining the most vulnerable — the homeless — rather than preventing Covid-19

  • Jared Sacks
9 min read