African nationals remain outsiders in SA
South Africa is said to have overcome the peak in covid-19 cases, while many African nationals will take much longer to recover from the lockdown.
South Africa is said to have overcome the peak in covid-19 cases, while many African nationals will take much longer to recover from the lockdown.
Tomase still has longer to wait for her ID document that will give her and her children access to a social grant or the covid-19 emergency relief grant as a cushion against their grinding poverty.
The measures taken by government to slow the spread of COVID-19 have unmasked the face of racialised and gendered inequalities hiding in the folds of democracy.
Despite claims by SASSA that it has dealt with the influx of grant applicants at its Khayelitsha office, those seeking help continue to sleep outside the building hoping not to be turned away the next day.
Hunger and a social security agency that is unprepared for the disbursement of the Covid-19 relief grant is what is causing the long queues.
The long queues at Khayelitsha Mall were especially long and winding this week as the coronavirus temporarily closed two other retail centres in the biggest township in the Western Cape.
The numbers of those infected by the coronavirus in Khayelitsha are growing alarmingly as residents fail to practice social distancing while they queue for food parcels and submit applications for jobs.
The strategy by SASSA to stagger payments of social grants fails as elderly and disabled people and shoppers stand in long queues in poor communities around Cape Town.
Measures to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus are blocking applicants for social grants.
Small informal retailers are a ubiquitous feature of any developing country’s urban landscape. Known as spaza shops in South Africa, they are an important, even […]
Support given to poor households is being taken away by the municipality’s insistence on the recovery of costs for services.
This is an edited extract from a chapter in the recently published The state of the nation: poverty & inequality: diagnosis, prognosis and responses. It’s well-established […]