Tag: human rights

When we think about the human right to education, we often think about it as relating to children. We imagine children starting their school career at a young age and being supported as they progress through the years. Ultimately emerging from the system as young adults who have the capacity either to study further or to find employment. This is their right. It’s enshrined in the constitution.

If jobseekers in South Africa currently had the right to freely enter voluntary contracts with employers at wages and on conditions acceptable to both parties, the country would not have mass unemployment. Figures recently released by Statistics SA confirm the statement by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) that at 29.8 percent South Africa had the highest unemployment rate in the world. At 4.9 percent the USA had the lowest rate.

The world has largely opened up again after COVID-19. Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get down to the business of educating South Africa’s children. And while technology is going to play an important role in helping us overcome the backlogs caused by the pandemic, it’s not a silver bullet that will miraculously transform our education system.

Paul Ehrlich has spent most of his adult life claiming the world is ending, birth rates are skyrocketing, populations are exploding, famine is around the corner and we’re running out of everything. He’s been largely wrong but refuses to admit it.

The apartheid security juggernaut met its Battle of Stalingrad in the townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in 1985 and 1986. This is the blazing story of how the people’s resistance – in the church, in the civic structures, underground – fought that war.

“It is not a question of patronising philanthropy towards disabled people. They do not need the patronage of the non- disabled. It is not for them to adapt to the dominant and dominating world of the so-called non-disabled. It is for us to adapt our understanding of a common humanity; to learn of the richness of how human life is diverse; to recognise the presence of disability in our human midst as an enrichment of our diversity.” - Nelson Mandela

Gender equality is a basic human right, yet progress towards equal rights for women remains elusive globally.

“Change is inevitable; but progress depends on what we do with that change” - the famous Charles Wheelan quote – one of my favourite quotes, however I would like to add a caveat to this quote bringing in my day-to-day job into the mix.

The mining industry has always been the backbone of the South African economy, and it still is. A healthy and sustainable mining sector should accordingly form part of the focus of our efforts to heal this country and its people. Nevertheless, the history of mining in South Africa has been and continues to be characterised by the oppression and exploitation of workers under the policy of the migratory system.

Virtually every aspect of our lives in South Africa has serious need for change. From politics to education, health care, gender issues, workplace culture and productivity, unemployment, corruption, crime, poverty, race relations and the inequality gap.