GroundUp 03 - 09 July is Published!

Featured Story - News

Homicidal kid gangsters of Nyanga East

Nyanga has one of the highest murder rates in the country. We interviewed several teenage gangsters who brag about their kills.

Pharie Sefali

News and Opinion

Dancing and tears greet book treaty for blind

Opinion: On 22 June a treaty for the blind was heading for disaster as negotiators stalled and refused to budge on hardline positions. Three days later a negotiator stepped out of a boardroom in the Atlas Medina hotel in Marrakesh and announced to a crowd of tense and exhausted observers, “We have a text!” The tears and dancing that followed is hardly what you\xe2\x80\x99d associate with the making of international law.

Marcus Low

Cameron to African leaders: End stigma against gays

Opinion: This is an edited transcript of a speech by Judge Edwin Cameron on 28 June at the UNAIDS/LANCET Commissioners Dinner in Malawi. Cameron criticised stigmatising laws that hamper the response to HIV.

Edwin Cameron

Chaos at Home Affairs foreshore building

News: Clayton (name changed) is a Zimbabwean man who injured his leg in a stampede at the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) foreshore offices in Cape Town on Monday.

Tariro Washinyira and GroundUp Staff

President Obama, we're not in Kansas anymore

Opinion: I have examined myself and cannot find an anti-American bone. I don\xe2\x80\x99t feel conflicted at the fact that I prefer hamburgers to kneidlach soup or cholent or pap.

Doron Isaacs

Building coalitions against US human rights abuses is hard

Opinion: On Sunday I helped organise and participated in a small protest against human rights abuses and inadequate action on climate change by the Obama administration during his visit to the University of Cape Town.

Eduard Grebe

Egypt's second revolution

Opinion: As massive protests swept across Egypt on Sunday, many outside of Egypt were surprised to see the sheer volumes of people that were unhappy with President Mohamed Morsi and his government, so soon after the revolution.

Mary Fawzy

Microchip road to real democracy

Opinion: The advice of the Italian revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci constantly comes to mind these days: exercise pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. I must admit that it has become a great deal easier over recent months to exercise pessimism of the intellect \xe2\x80\x94 and increasingly difficult to exercise optimism of the will to do something about changing things, domestically or globally.

Terry Bell

The decline of antibiotics

Science: Antibiotics have been miracle drugs, successfully wiping out infections and saving millions of lives. Today, they're increasingly ineffective and we're facing a future where they might not work at all.

Kerry Gordon

“I need an electric wheelchair”

News: \xe2\x80\x9cI\xe2\x80\x99m Selina Lehloo from Khuma. I\xe2\x80\x99m using a wheelchair. I was born like this. I\xe2\x80\x99m 25-years-old. I failed matric in 2011, but I didn\xe2\x80\x99t give up\xe2\x80\x9d.

Mary-Anne Gontsana

Labelling Israeli injustice

Opinion: For three long years, activists across the country campaigned to ban Israel\xe2\x80\x99s practice of falsely labelling goods that are made in its illegal settlements as “made in Israel”. In April this year, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) issued a regulation banning this practice.

Jonathan Dockney

Group demands to know party funders

News: On 27 June 2013 protesters, under the campaign My Vote Counts which is run by activist organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi, gathered outside Parliament to demand that political parties disclose the names of their funders.

Pharie Sefali

Go beyond lawyers for new judges

Opinion: Should only lawyers be made judges? Greg Solik says no. He argues that for the judiciary to transform we need to go beyond the legal profession.

Greg Solik