B-Section kids play in danger
A lack of playground facilities in Khayelitsha B-Section means children are risking their lives by crossing the busy Mandela Road in order to get to a playpark in neighbouring A-Section.
Cape Town
Gender violence and child abuse continue during 16 Days of Activism
It is 18 years since South Africa adopted the 16 days of activism international campaign against gender violence and child abuse. South African women are still being abused daily.
The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children has assisted more than 180,000 victims of crime and violence. Situated on the Cape Flats, an area with one of the highest crime and unemployment rates in Cape Town, the Centre houses an average of 100 women and children at a time.
Children flock to the pied-biker of Khayelitsha
A roof-high jumble of old bicycles piled on the sidewalk like a modern sculpture grabs the attention of motorists driving along Khayelitsha’s Mew Way.
The pile is made even more arresting by the shacks of wood and rusting corrugated iron that line the township’s main thoroughfare.
Khayelitsha clubs disappointed with Football For Hope
As part of its 2010 World Cup initiative, FIFA promised to develop disadvantaged communities throughout Africa with their Football for Hope initiative. The first one is situated in the Harare area of Khayelitsha, and offered football as a diversion from drugs and crime.
FIFA launched the Football for Hope initiative in 2005 to help improve the lives and prospects of young people around the world by funding, equipping and offering training to organisations. Khayelitsha was the first of 20 centres that were built.
The healthy and delicious truck food in Khayelitsha
In the age of tshisanyamas in the township, an entrepreneur is offering healthy food as an alternative.
An old school bus, painted black and refurbished as a top quality travelling kitchen, can be found parked outside popular township tshisanyamas and offering delicious healthy food as an alternative to plates full of braaied meat.
Long queues at health centres frustrate chronic patients
The night before David Mashaba (64) needs to go for his monthly checkup and collect his medication at the Gugulethu Clinic, he sets his alarm to 4am in order to get to the City-run clinic by 5.30.
Even though the clinic only opens at 7, there is already a long queue of people lined up before sunrise in the hope that, by being among the first in line, they’ll get out by 3pm, indicative of the achingly slow administrative and medical processes due to the high number of patients and low number of staff at the clinic.
Veggie garden feeds and greens Khayelitsha
The establishment of a food garden at Isikhokelo Primary school in Khayelitsha has sparked a small vegetable gardening revolution in the township.
Founder of the Ikhaya Food Garden at Isikhokelo Primary, Xolisa Banga, said he approached the school to plant vegetables on a portion of their property in 2013 in order to help feed the children and educate the community about healthy eating.
No birth certificate, no education
A seven-year-old Philippi girl has internalized the shame of not having a birth certificate to such an extent that she hides inside the house so that people don’t ask why she is not at school.
Local brothers get learners excited about literacy
Upon entering the classroom at Lantana Primary in Lentegeur, Read to Rise programme manager Roscoe Williams is greeted with hugs and high fives from excited Grade Two learners.
The learners had been waiting in anticipation for their interactive reading session to begin as word spread that Williams was in the building. After three years of visiting the school, his Read to Rise programme has become a favourite activity.
Cyclists crank the Ks for literacy campaign
Four men are to embark on a four-day cycle tour from Ladysmith to Cape Town in a bid to raise money to develop literacy among girls attending the Chumisa Primary school in Khayelitsha.
The 320km ride starting on 1 November, is in support of the Cape Town-based Thope Foundation, an NPO focused on supporting the holistic development of African girls, and the men, all of whom are from the Western Cape, are hoping to raise R100,000 for the Foundation’s work.
Kraaifontein tshisanyama entrepreneur thrives
Mzoli’s in Gugulethu is Cape Town’s most renowned tshisanyama, with locals and tourists gathering in their hundreds to enjoy the braaied meat and party atmosphere over weekends.
Now it seems Mzoli’s has some competition in the form of the Adwa and Wallacedene Cafes near Kraaifontein.
Frontline Community Health Workers kept in the dark
In a country that has the biggest divide between public and private healthcare, community careworkers are not recognized as employees and do not enjoy labour rights and the protection of SA’s labour laws.
In a gloomy room in a cinder block RDP house so cramped there is barely enough space to move his wheelchair, Masixole Sosikela, 29, looks as if he is part of the furniture.
Sosikela lost the use of his legs in a car accident three years ago and has since been confined to the small house he shares with his mother and young brother. With his mother at work and his brother at school, he spends his days alone in the house in BM Section, Greenpoint, Khayelitsha. His only daytime visitor is home community health worker, Nikezwa Bara, who comes to see him three times a week. She spends about an hour with him, washing and dressing his bedsores, emptying his catheter and changing his linen. Bara also prepares him something to eat in the kitchen and wheels him outside to enjoy a bit of sunshine.
Bara is one of 106 community health workers (CHWs) in Khayelitsha who offer essential health and social services to over 1,000 patients who are bed-ridden or chronically or terminally ill. For these patients, the CHWs are a lifeline of care and company.
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