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forced removalslatest news & developments

Is Ngcukaitobi being set up against black empowerment?

The Bar will invoke the cab-rank rule, which generally requires counsel to accept a brief in a field where they practise, even when they dislike the client or cause. Yet the rule…

Rebuild: South African photographer David Goldblatt’s exhibition Fragments of Fietas on at the Goodman
Gallery in Johannesburg honours the resilience of a community fractured and displaced by apartheid.

Fietas and the enduring question of home

David Goldblatt’s Fragments of Fietas captures more than loss — it reveals how memory, belonging, and faith survive even after home is erased

Women of the struggle: Artist Sue Williamson with works from her series of photo portraits from the ongoing series All Our Mothers.
Photo: Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery

The long and short of a 50-year artistic career

Sue Williamson’s new show opens in Joburg and a retrospective is coming soon

Veteran journalist Felicia Mabuza-Suttle

Q&A Sessions: Felicia Mabuza-Suttle, standing on the shoulders of heroes

Veteran journalist Felicia Mabuza-Suttle tells us about how she dealt with patriarchy, her passion for youth development and why she is a germaphobe

Precious resource: Nyantuwe River risks being polluted by Beifa Investments’ proposed coal-mining project in
Dinde, Zimbabwe, according to a coalition of NGOs. Photo: Centre for Natural Resource Governance

NGOs call for stoppage of ‘cruel’ coal project in Zimbabwe

A coalition of NGOs is on a big drive to stop the Beifa coal project in Dinde, as well as casting a spotlight on mineral governance in the country

The City of Cape Town’s COVID-19 lockdown encampment in Strandfontein for up to 4 000 homeless people from around the greater city area. (David Harrison/M&G)

The Strandfontein shelter touches a societal and political nerve

What was the City of Cape Town thinking when it decided to round up homeless people and put them in a camp?

It is regrettable that people who claim to speak for the working class and poor are trying to block it. (David Harrison)

Golf-club lease dispute opens forced-removal wounds

The City also said if the lease were renewed it would reconsider how much the Rondebosch Golf Club would have to pay each month.

Lornaand Leonard Joseph and Denis Petersen are snapped with their minder Togo in about 1959. Photo: Bronwyn Anderson

Proclamation 73: Forgotten people returned to history

An exhibition draws on people’s personal albums to reconstruct a past that is missing from current narratives

The US and Britain are resisting attempts by islanders to return, such as this demonstration in London in 2008 (Andrew Winning/Reuters)

Fight to free Britain’s last African colony

Britain and Mauritius are in the International Court of Justice arguing over the Chagos Islands. But the evicted islanders just want to go home

The Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act, coupled with the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, undercuts the land rights of people living in the former homelands. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Mandela didn’t sell out, post-94 ANC did

Two Acts and the Khoi-San Bill, if passed, will dispossess people in the former homelands of their land rights

Third force: President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid to run for a third term in defiance of the country’s Constitution has provoked widespread anger and protests in Burundi and uncertainty in the region.
Audio

PODCAST: Aunty Patty’s garden

When the coloured population of Simon’s Town was forcibly removed, Aunty Patty’s family remained

I’m not a pilchard, I won’t live in a tin’

Residents facing eviction from their Woodstock homes “have no right or entitlement” to be accommodated at a location of their choice

President of the WFPMA Pieter Haen spoke at the IPM convention

JHB’s nationalistic attitude rears its head in Fattis Mansions, Cape York incidents

Residents from both buildings were relocated to the fields of Wembley Stadium in Johannesburg South after losing their homes.

Down and out: Residents of a Berea building face eviction or “temporary” relocation. Photos: Delwyn Verasamy

Judges can no longer lawfully order evictions that leave people homeless

In a landmark judgement, the Constitutional Court said that judges have an obligation to ensure that evictions will not leave people homeless

Our world ended with a letter

Those displaced still hope to see justice 50 years after their eviction from District Six.

The crime which went away

The crime which went away

Despite the black majority gaining electoral power, the long standing effects of forced removals remain and perpetuate inequalities in our society.

Helderzicht removal ‘just not cricket’

Joan Poole recalls with clarity the traumatic moment more than 40 years ago when she heard her family would have to move from their home.

Displaced for decades, Bushmen return home in Namibia

An elderly woman slowly looks around her new farmland, her wrinkled face lighting up with a shy little smile as suddenly she claps her hands.