Cape Town – The Mother City of Inequality

Cape Town – The Mother City of Inequality

By Dick ForslundThe City of Cape Town is proudly proclaimed in travel brochures as the Mother City – a place of great historical importance, the mother which welcomed a free Nelson Mandela. There is tarnish on this hallowed image – that of a city nibbling away at the...

Interview: Alderman Marion Nieuwoudt, City of Cape Town

Special Ratings Areas (SRAs) are areas in which residents pay extra rates for organizing extra services. If initiators get majority support from 50+1% of the rate paying property owners, all must pay. The rates are collected by the municipality and then paid back to...

Doing dirty work, exposing dirty tricks

Xolani is a municipal worker in Johannesburg, doing dirty, hard, but socially necessary labour for which he is paid the negotiated minimum of R4 330.30 a month. He is an example of one of thousands of workers in similar positions in local government service in towns...